aowens

I too suffer from the eternal lack of bouncy curls!! I too will forever have curl envy! I think it is always back to the old saying of wanting what you don't have. I also suffer from the waspy pieces that fly in your face and get in your mouth and eyes and sometimes even foul up your pictures. I am glad to know others have this problem as I have never discussed it with anyone before! Ann

Leely2

I am waiting in breathless anticipation to find out what happens with your phone. Don't let me die from lack of oxygen.

Thanks,

Leely "Bouncy Curls" 2

aknards

Nyamera,
I think you're going about this all wrong. What you need to do is take this journal to a publisher and sign a deal to write your first book. You'll get a big, fat advance ($$$!) that you can live on while you write and travel in Kenya.

I'm only slightly joking, Nyamera. Your stream of conciousness style of writing is wonderful - full of detail and observations and insights - that are poignant, humorous and very touching. I'm no expert but I think you have a knack for narrative. I guess, to state the obvious, I'm enjoying your report very much.

Nyamera

Lynn, maybe I could finance a life in Kenya selling some leopard-attracting potion. It would be a scam, but I think it could work in the Mara.

Now I’m not that sure that I want the stupidity to be found.

All money will always be for Kenya.

Aowens, it’s good to know that someone understands this serious problem.

Leely, next to the hairbrush with inbuilt mirror, the mobile phone is the most important safari tool. Though if I had bouncy curls I wouldn’t need a phone. I’d just take a Maasai blanket and walk into any national park or reserve without a guide for a couple of months. I’m so jealous.

Aknards, thanks, your comment is exactly the kind I want to see here. Unfortunately I’m not a writer. If I were, I’d have at least one novel in a drawer somewhere, but I don’t. I do have some ideas for a novel though.

MyDogKyle

Hi Nyamera. I can tell you from personal experience that having a novel sitting in a drawer is not all it's cracked up to be.

I love the idea of leopard potion. Maybe you could also market a leopard cub potion, which you could sell for three times as much.

Now I'm going to join in Leely's (implied) cry of "more more more!"

Nyamera

MDK, I’d feel very pleased with myself if I had a drawer novel.

Leopard potion or something even shadier is what I have to think about if I’m going to get anything done. Cub potion sounds like an excellent idea.

I’ll try to write something this weekend, but I really have to prepare lessons and learn names.

joeyi

waiting to hear about your trip to crater lake, we have pictures of us on that same rock out cropping that you are sitting on overlooking the lake. it brought back nice memories.
and wondering is you had the rejuvenator drink at the lodge?

joyce

Nyamera

Joyce, I went to Crater Lake on day 13, but I only had water.

atravelynn

Day 9

"If anyone knows of something dangerous, but not too immoral that I could do for a lot of money without getting dirty and ugly, please email "

Your emergency may be close, except it's not lots of money and hopefully there is nothing immoral.

I was beginning to wonder if you'd enjoy any more tomato soup.

The Iraq training mission is most amusing. Vivien sounds like the kind of woman who could help you find work if she can train Iraqis at age 67.

Nyamera

Lynn, there’s probably more immorality than money in the emergency. I meant something that I could do for a couple of months and then live in Kenya for years on the money.

A week after I got home I got an “After your safari”-email from George saying “Please send us your brief comments as far as our services and organization
of your Safari is concerned or any recommendation you might have .
This will highly helps us to plan even better in future.”
I made the mistake of taking this seriously and I haven’t got any more emails. I just have to think of the future Nyamera Camp to know that it was a kind of email that would only be sent looking for praise that could be published on my website.

Nyamera

<b>Day 13</b>

I was up early hoping to find a solution to my dramatic phone problem. For breakfast I had tea with toast and jam and that’s what I had all mornings. The price was 190 shillings, which is more expensive than in Nairobi. No mobile phone wizards appeared, but Ofin did, telling me that I should go to a real phone repair place in the village, and off we went. The repair shop was on the second floor of a small wooden building, and in a cramped office a young man with a tiny screwdriver opened up my phone. I nearly fainted, but tried to look calm. He said it was something with the rubber and then he tested about every single function before showing me that the on/off and delete button had returned to functioning perfectly. The price was 500 shillings. The repairman had changed the ring tone and switched the phone from Celtel to Safaricom, but that wasn’t a problem since I don’t understand the difference between phone companies and nobody is supposed to phone me while I’m in Kenya.

I had a message from George at As You Like It. They had 3 Americans that were interested in a 2-night trip to Nanyuki on Thursday (it was Tuesday) and the price would be an insane $595. I replied that I had a problem with high prices and group trips and then I got a message from Vivien saying that the Americans were nice NGO people and asking how much I was willing to pay. I have a problem with nice people as well, but I didn’t write that. I just said that I had things to do in Naivasha and didn’t want to leave, which was true. I wouldn’t have paid a penny more than $250. Then I sms:ed that I was interested in an afternoon game drive in Nairobi National Park. It would be $140 including lunch and I just agreed even though it was too expensive. I think I paid $50 in 2005, but that was a shared game drive without lunch and before the park fees were raised to $40. I’d been quoted hideous prices when walking into safari companies to ask about Nairobi NP.

I decided to do some business with Ofin forking out 5000 shillings for a sole use motorboat. He said that since it was so dry, the animals had disappeared from Crescent Island and Crater Lake would be better. We decided to meet at the Fish Eagle jetty at 11am. I took my leather sandals in a plastic bag and decided to wear flip-flops in case there would be mud getting in and out of the boat. I imagined that to get to the Crater Lake there would be a short walk in green shade with buffaloes.

Down at the Fish Eagle jetty there were five men plus Ofin and a guy called Simon that Ofin presented as his “trainee”. We put on life vests and took off along the papyrus. We had a closer look at the hippos and then Ofin got out a couple of small tilapias that he had bought from some fishermen at the jetty. He was going to throw them to the fish eagles so that I could get good pictures. I felt very uneasy about this, mostly for the tilapias themselves and because I wanted a cero-fatality trip, but also because the eagles could catch their own fish and the tilapias were human food fish. I was too slow to get any water surface pictures and we continued. Ofin pointed out flower farms and where the workers lived on the hill slopes. Though there was more un-developed land than I would have imagined. We landed on a muddy beach full of shoats and then we started a dusty walk in the midday sun through the Crater Lake Sanctuary. The fee for visiting this sanctuary was 800 shillings, so I would pay 5800 for the trip. There was dust, dust, dust, short very dry grass and tall yellow-barked acacias. Zebras and giraffes could be seen in good numbers and they weren’t particularly afraid of humans. The dikdiks and kongonis were more wary. I happened to say “kongoni anakimbia” when one of them ran away and Ofin told me he and Simon had got really “scared” as I didn’t have an accent. Almost nobody speaks Swahili without an accent, so they must have meant that I didn’t have an English accent. I told them that I knew how to say some things in Swahili, but that I didn’t understand anything. I wonder what they had been saying about me … Ofin found some leopard tracks. Leopards were almost never seen, but one was probably watching us. I never put on my leather sandals and I must say that flip-flops really are the perfect game walk shoes. First I wasn’t too happy with the dust and the frying sun, but the animals made it a really pleasant 2-hour or so walk without seeing any other people. Only the last ascending part was a little bit though for someone completely out of shape, but it would be nothing for any normal person. Up on the viewpoint the crater looked ridiculously scenic with its jungly walls and jade green lake with pink flamingos.

We descended to the Crater Lake Camp and walked down to have a look at the flamingos. The beach was so full of flamingo excrement that instead of wading, I took a garden hose to wash my dusty feet. I don’t know how much of my time at Lake Naivasha was spent scrubbing feet and shoes. Ofin found the feet washing unnecessary, as I would get dusty again on the walk back. We had lunch and I asked Ofin about the owner of Crater Lake Camp that was shot in 2005. Ofin had been there with some guests in the morning of the fatidic day. Some robbers shot the owner in the car park. They didn’t need to shoot him to rob, so there could have been some land dispute involved. Simon wanted to talk about football, but both Ofin and I thought it was a really silly game. Ofin never watched it on television and was only interested in Animal Planet. He cuddled the animal print cushions of the armchair and I got a photo of him. Simon didn’t want to smile on photos, as he wanted to look like a gangster. I never asked them how old they were. Ofin showed quite a bit of knowledge and had probably read more than a couple of wildlife books. Guiding in Kenya would be so much better if people like him were given driver’s licenses instead of giving wildlife books to drivers that will never open them anyway.

Then we went down to the water for a walk to the other side of the crater. There was some evidence of buffaloes, but we didn’t see the animals themselves. We did see some colobus monkeys in the trees. Climbing up to the crater rim was a bit much for my level of fitness, but I didn’t complain. When Ofin and Simon asked me if I was OK I just said, “maybe” and “I think so”. The get up on the viewpoint on this side of the crater I took off the flip-flops and climbed barefoot as it was a rocky and steep climb. Then we were down on the other side of the crater. There was a fence and a farm to one side. A young woman came walking with a baby on the front and a big bundle on the back. Ofin said she had been working on the farm and now was walking home to the other side of some hills in the distance. He didn’t add that she didn’t complain, but I really hadn’t complained either. There was a herd of some 20 buffaloes and we walked rather close to them. Ofin said that they felt very safe in a herd and weren’t dangerous at all. Simon said that he felt very safe with us, but wouldn’t be walking anywhere in the sanctuary on his own. Besides the usual zebras and giraffes, we also saw some waterbucks and tommies. Elands were supposed to be around, but we didn’t see them. Then Ofin discovered leopard tracks again. We met a herd of cows that were returning from having had a drink of the lake with their Maasai herder. I tried to photograph some paradise flycatchers, but they didn’t cooperate. At the beach there were two Maasai teenagers, one of them retarded, and some shoats. Two men were waiting in the motorboat and it had been an approximately 1½-hour walk.

We boarded the boat and set off. After just some 100 metres the motor stalled and the captain started taking it apart. The Maasai teenagers began dancing and the retarded one shouted, “kufa, kufa, kufa” (die, die, die). I don’t know why I didn’t ask what he really was shouting. Ofin and Simon were laughing at him and he could have been saying, “kuja”, which is a Kenyan way of saying, “come”, though the correct way would be to say “njoo” to one person and “njooni” to more than one person. The captain got the motor started, but after a while it stalled again. Ofin and Simon were talking and joking all the time. They imitated waiters at the coast and their clever – and very offensive to the guests – way of communicating orders to the kitchen and Ofin imitated the American lady that had warned us of the hippos. She was the funniest person he had ever met. They had a theory that Kenyans were the worst dressed people in the world. Ofin had seen a man dancing at a club in Kisumu wearing a life jacket and there were Maasai that during the hottest time of the year in January wore a shuka, then a warm coat, a blanket and a woollen hat. They were having fun and seemed to like each other very much. According to media, in January Simon’s community were trying to ethnically cleanse Naivasha of people like Ofin.

When we finally reached the Fish Eagle jetty it was time to switch on the hippo fence. I can recommend a boat trip to Crater Lake with Ofin, but it would be a lot less expensive with a matatu.

Agnes was working at the restaurant. I think the restaurant staff worked for 3 days and then had 2 days off, which isn’t bad for Kenya, but they had to wear silly t-shirts. A waiter called Jeremiah had asked her to tell me that he had waited to invite me to a soda in the village before he had to take the bus to Nairobi. Agnes’s face lit up every time she saw new guests approaching the restaurant. There was a Dutch guy that was interested in playing golf in Naivasha and Agnes phoned her friend who was the president of a golf club in Nairobi and arranged for the Dutchman to be the guest of someone so that he didn’t have to pay a fee. Agnes’s husband was a safari driver, but when looking at my photos her eyes became round and she asked me, “What is that animal?” I think she understood that I wanted to be a wildlife expert. Her husband was in the Mara, her 2-year daughter was with her brother in law in Nairobi and was being taken care of by a “girl” and her older daughter was somewhere else at school. I decided to study Agnes to learn social skills.

There were two young girls from New Zealand in the restaurant and they asked Agnes if there were any torches that they could borrow. It was almost impossible for them to find and open their tent in the dark. There weren’t any torches, but she offered them a candle. As I had four torches (an absolute minimum on my packing list) I said they could borrow my small blue torch that was in my bag. I had my big red metallic torch on the bar, as Agnes had observed that it was the same colour as my phone that I had lying neatly beside it. The girls asked if they could buy the torch, but I say they could buy my big black torch the next day as the small one had the name of a school where I had worked on it. I had no fond memories of the school, but wanted to keep the torch anyway. The girls asked me if it was a Kenyan school and I had to tell them that unfortunately it wasn’t. My plan was to charge them a Cadbury chocolate bar for the black torch.

Osman appeared saying that there were some hippos and I grabbed my torch to have a look. I walked carefully so that I wouldn’t touch the electric fence or step in the heaps of dust having to scrub my shoes again. Further down the fence a herd of hippos were grazing. We walked closer, but Osman told me and an English speaking non-American couple, that I couldn’t see well in the dark, to keep a distance from the fence. He said that sometimes people aren’t careful and there is trouble. I added something about how dangerous hippos were and how important it was to be careful. Then Osman pointed out a tiny, tiny calf and I stepped forward shining my torch at the really tiny calf. At the same second the big territorial bull charged and I jumped into a heap of dust when aiming to get behind a tree. The bull stopped before the fence and the English speaking man said that he now had something to tell his grandchildren. We watched the hippos at a safe distance for a while and then I returned to the restaurant where a woman had taken my chair with my bag hanging on it. She was in a group that had arrived in vehicles and were sitting in a ring next to the bar. They were white and I don’t know if they were tourists from another place or if they were living in Naivasha. I said, “Sorry, this is my bag” and took the bag with my camera and binoculars in it and she stared angrily at me. I don’t know if it’s against bar etiquette to occupy a space with your phone on the bar and bag on a chair when you’re away for a while to watch hippos. There were other chairs a couple of metres away. I paid and said goodnight to Agnes and the group, but only Agnes said goodnight to me. I think I had been too far away for them to notice that I had molested a baby hippo, but I’m not sure.

kimburu

The trip to Crater Lake is not quite stupid enough, despite Simon and Ofin.... although the fish eagle story is a bit silly. The baby hippo encounter is really quite stupid, but I don't think the bag and torch placement breached etiquette... although I am not sure what you could have done... perhaps you are supposed to chat to them first and then casually drop into the conversation that your bag is there and you'd better pick it up so they can get more comfortable... Just guessing - you should have asked Agnes.

I'll have to read the rest when I get back.

Nyamera

Kimburu, it looks like I’ve finally told something that everyone will recognize as stupid – the baby hippo “encounter”. Though the real stupidity in this report is not finding a way to stay in Kenya and harassing hippos wouldn’t necessary lessen my chances, as long as I kept quiet about it.
Simon and Ofin weren’t stupid.
Safari njema!

somuch2c

Hi there Nyamera,

Just got back from Kenya on the 1st and just finished reading your report. You're always an entertaining read! I enjoy your take on life - an interesting and slightly zany perspective.

As you may remember, I was most interested in the part of your trip pertaining to As You Like It Safaris and Nyumbu Camp, since we also used the same company and stayed 3 nights at Nyumbu Camp. Being our first safari, I can see where our &quot;take&quot; could be different to yours. We all felt we had an incredible experience. Like you, we had great wildlife sightings. But unlike you, we did have the new Landcruiser. What a wonderful vehicle! It was one of the best we came across. And what a difference this must have made! Especially for my father-in-law, who is still recovering from a fairly recent operation.

If I stop posting, I can start writing our trip report. Just wish I had more of your abilities in that department!

Thanks again, Nyamera, for sharing your journey. It's only stupid when you don't try - don't give it go - don't follow your dreams...

kimburu

&quot;the real stupidity in this report is not finding a way to stay in Kenya&quot;

Of course ... sometimes I forget that's what you were trying to do.... following you around is so interesting.

Nyamera

Welcome back, somuch2c!
I’m very curious about your report. Write something recognisable in the title. I’m missing so many reports lately and don’t know when I’ll be able to catch up. I’ll probably read yours even if it’ll cause me huge work problems. I very much regret not having finished mine as soon as I got home. The old Landcruiser wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d been a normal hat wearing safari goer. Start writing now. You don’t need any special abilities (as I know from experience) as long as you’re half literate and remember things (or have notes). Just write what happened.

Kimburu, don’t forget that you’ve promised to do something stupid within an hour of landing!

joeyi

finally read all of day 13, i'm really impressed that you hiked all that way to Crater Lake. We drove in and up to the top of that overlook.
where there lots of dead flamingos? the shore was littered with bones when we walked around the lake and the lake was very green.
my sister in law said it was not like that the first time they visited and the lake had been clear.

atravelynn

Day 10

How many of us can say we saw the back of a flower shop in Kenya. Too bad about the DVDs.

atravelynn

Day 11

Were you doing reports in 2005? I want to read about the fever at the police station. Obviously everything turned out ok. If there is a link, please put it at the end of this report. If I already read that report, it would be worth looking at again.

Great description of the National Museum. I hope you are right that the animals were the same. No topi is an outrageous omission.

Don't sell yourself short. Maybe you look both beautiful AND rich.

Nyamera

Joyce, thanks! I’m glad someone is impressed with my hiking to Crater Lake. Ofin and Simon certainly weren’t. I didn’t see any dead flamingos, but there weren’t that many live ones either. There were more flamingos at Oloiden that’s nearby. The lake was definitely green, jade green and not clear.
The Crater Lake Sanctuary is almost better than the Crater Lake itself and I think you can walk there without a guide.

Lynn, I still haven’t checked my 20 wildlife films on one DVD. I hope they are there.

2005 was my first Kenya trip after discovering Fodor’s and I wrote a report that you read. It was more condensed than this one and I didn’t expect people to be that interested. It’s here:
http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34652401

There’s a risk I look stupid and rich.