If adjusting to Mlolongo wasn't hard enough for him, on Thursday we headed to Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi and the second largest urban slum in Africa. 170,000 people in an area just 5km from Nairobi's city centre. The first thing we saw was a stretch of houses that had just been burned down the night before. We navigated through the streets with the help of our guide, Octo Pizzo, a now famous rapper in Nairobi who lived in Kibera up until 2 years ago. He still owns a house in one of Kibera's 13 villages, which he took us to. On the way to his place, we passed many horrible sights and smells; makeshift gutters with dark brownish-grey water, dogs with just skin and bones digging for scraps, and piles of burning garbage. The people were friendly of course, waving and saying hello as we passed. After working our way down a dirty drainage slope, we reached a bridge over the "River Shit". When the sun goes down, a lot of the villagers head to the river to relieve themselves because they don't have toilets or the money to use the public toilets (a tin shack with a hole in the ground).
Octo's house was a small 8' x 12' shack with metal walls and roofing. He keeps it for his brother who is away at boarding school, so he can stay there when he is not at school. He wants him to live in Kibera so that he will mature faster.
The most surprising thing to me about Kibera was how functional it is. With that many people in the slum, it seemed to be working like a regular city, just on a much lower income level. It was a lot less destitute than some of the other slums I've visited. Something Tom noticed immediately was the amount of mobile phone stores and "kinyozi" salons there were (barber shops). Its strange to think about what people will spend money on even in such disparaging conditions. It also got me thinking about the impact that communications and technology improvements have had on even the most remote and desolate places in the world. Our safari guide was getting phone calls on his cell to tell him where the interesting animals were, and the people of the traditional Maasai tribes were walking around in their shukas and would suddenly pull out a cell phone. But they still drink cow's blood and live in houses made of mud.
After almost 3 hours in Kibera, we made our way back to Mlolongo and packed up for our 4-day safari. 6am Friday, we were up and ready to be picked up by our guide. They showed up in an old Nissan van with a pop-up roof. The 6 of us (myself, Tom, Deb, Milanne, and her parents Doug and Michele) climbed in and headed on our way. We drove about 6 or 7 hours through the Great Rift Valley toward Maasai Mara National Reserve, stopping along the way at lookout points and for lunch. It was close to 3 when we arrived, so we unpacked and relaxed for an hour before heading on a game drive. Our accommodations were pretty cool. There was a U-shaped line of army tents on concrete pads with thatched roofs on top. Each tent had 2 or 3 beds and a half-circle bathroom off the back with toilet, shower, and sink. There was a main dining hall that was open on three sides where we spent our evenings relaxing.
At 4pm, we headed into the reserve to check out some animals. We saw loads of zebras, buffaloes, giraffes, Thomson's gazelles, and impalas during our drive. We even caught a glimpse of the illusive leopard and a pride of lions taking a snooze in a ditch. Out of the Big 5, we managed to see 3 in our first few hours. (The Big 5 are: Buffalo, Rhino, Elephant, Leopard, and Lion... leopard often being the hardest to spot and the one most people don't get to see).
After a delicious dinner, we called it a night and headed for our beds. In the middle of night, we could hear the howls of hyenas off in the distance. Apparently, they weren't too far out. There are a couple Maasai tribe members who walk the perimeter of the campsite to keep watch for any hyenas trying to come into the camp.
The next morning, we headed out around 7:30 for a full-day game drive. This time we headed much further into the reserve, heading as far as the Tanzanian border where were could see the Serengeti. On the way, we passed many more animals, the usual zebras, gazelles, buffaloes, and giraffes, but we also saw our first few elephants. There was 4 of them and they got pretty close to us. We managed to see the leopard again, this time it a much better view than before. It was walking around so I got a couple good pictures of it. We also stopped at a river loaded with hippos. There must have been about a hundred of them in various parts of the river just sitting below the water with their eyes and ears poking through the surface. We walked further down the river to where the crocodiles are, but none of them surfaced. We only saw the back of a baby croc a little way down the river.
After a picnic lunch where a monkey stole Deb's sandwich right from her lap, we headed back. It was a long drive but we saw some more animals here and there. I took a nap in the back and woke up to another small herd of elephants nearby. As the drive was winding down and we were getting closer to the gate of the reserve, our guide John got a call on his phone and stepped on the gas. Something good was going on. We pulled up next to another van of the same company and saw a cheetah, fresh off the chase of a Thomson's gazelle. He was hiding in some shade behind a tree stump with the gazelle at his feet. We could see his narrow chest heaving in and out as he worked to catch his breath. We waited a good 5-10 minutes until he finally started to dig in on his catch. Starting from the rear, he tore off some skin and dug in under the ribs. He started to pull off one of the back legs and we could hear the bones crunching between his teeth. Occasionally, he jolted upright and took a look around, worried about another animal coming in to steal his meal. It was the coolest thing I have ever seen. We weren't more than 15 feet away from him, and when our driver turned on the van to head out, the cheetah felt threatened and gave us a bit of a growl. That's when I sat back in my seat and slid my window closed.
Our 3rd day on safari started out early at 6am. We went back into the reserve for the final time. This time, we saw a pride of 16 lions. They were scattered in the tall grass near the road, having just finished eating their morning kill. We saw one of them still chomping on a leg of some sort. After a few minutes, they started to stir and got on their feet. They walked toward the row of safari vans on the road and wove in between them, coming right up to where we were. A few of them looked up at us and kept going, another trailed behind with the leg still in his mouth.
The afternoon was spent in our van heading to Lake Nakuru. We got there in the early evening, waited around in the lounge until dinnertime, then headed for bed. This morning, we headed back out on the road for a drive around Lake Nakuru National Park. We saw a few more animals, some monkeys who tried to sneak into our van to steal some food while we were in it, and a few baboons who jumped into another safari van (not ours!) at a lookout point and stole some bananas. We saw the final of the Big 5 - the rhino - though off in the distance. Aside from that, it wasn't terribly exciting. We saw loads of pelicans and flamingoes, but they didn't really compare to the cheetahs, lions, and elephants.
After lunch and another 4 hours in the van, we arrived back in Mlolongo. Tomorrow morning, we fly out to the coast for 4 days and 3 nights in Diani Beach.
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