The day after returning from Kili, fresh from two great meals, three looooooooong hot showers, and a fantastic night’s sleep on my Splurge Hotel’s Queen size bed, I met my Kili guide, Arushaa, and his wife for lunch and a little shopping. First I set him up with an email account and showed him how to use it – he wants to start doing some guiding without the tour companies taking the larger share of the money, and I think the web is the small business’ key to the future. Then we went to an open air secondhand market and we found me some jeans and a pair of shoes. I’d been noticing strange American t-shirts all around Africa – "Lake HS Class of ’98," lots of college t-shirts, political slogans, work softball team jerseys, and a memorably profane one from a Fire Dept in Elkhart Indiana; now I realized where all these shirts were coming from! When you donate old clothes to charity, those that don’t get sold in the States are sold in bulk to people who ship them to Africa where they are resold cheaply to the locals. I wondered how long it will take for all the ones I gave away last April to get here, and half expected to spot one.
Then I bought Arushaa and his wife lunch at a tiny locals place that was really good. As I sat there at a common table rubbing elbows with the Africans on either side of me, eating I have no idea what, in a place whose conditions would have horrified me seven months ago, I realized moments like this are what I’m really going to treasure from this trip. It’s meeting people from all over the world, making friends and learning about their lives and how they look at life.
At 2PM I caught a shuttle bus to Nairobi for a three day visit before flying to Rome. With the recent post-election riots and mayhem on my mind, I had my eyes peeled for trouble but the only thing I noticed was squads of geared up riot troops on many corners.
The next morning, I met Waswa, a connection of Arushaa’s who owns his own business doing Outward Bound style team building and consulting with Kenyan companies. We decided to go to Hell’s Gate National Park for a day of mountain biking with all the herd animals I’d only seen from a safari truck before. We went off road to work our way closer to the animals and I followed gazelles, antelopes, and zebra until they got tired of me and wandered off. I chased some families of warthogs and tried to approach cape buffalo – but it was they who drove me off with their defiant formations and intimidating size. I didn’t want to push too close as I wasn’t sure I could pedal faster over the uneven terrain than they could run! It is safe to bike because there are no lions, but leopards have been occasionally seen and we kept out from under trees where they like to sleep on low branches during the day and ambush prey when hungry. Later we parked the bikes and climbed down into a beautiful gorge, past geothermal vents that give the park its name.
After a long drive back to Nairobi with a great conversation that could have lasted all night, I ate at the hotel bar and watched a French League soccer match. Due to the planned opposition rallies, I decided to stay in the city the next day and carefully poke around the city. After the game I watched the local news which included some pretty graphic footage of police shooting two protesters at close range with AK-47s, then kicking the wounded men on the ground as they died. Later, CNN had a story citing “alleged reports” of the deaths, and I wondered how they had missed the local footage, which didn’t look very “alleged” to me.
After breakfast the next morning, I headed out to look around. There were many people out but most businesses were locked up tight. All I saw were lots of riot police and some groups with clubs shooing people away. After the second time I was stopped by police or troops (I couldn’t tell the difference,) in riot gear, I was getting worried. They checked my passport several times and kept asking if I was a journalist as they reviewed the pictures on my camera. I wasn’t sure of the better answer and decided to hole up in the internet café across from my hostel for the rest of the day.
On my way to the airport the next morning, my taxi got stopped at a roadblock where the police tried to shake me down for not wearing a seatbelt in the backseat. Saying it was my responsibility to know the local laws, they were sorry but they “would have to take me to police HQ.” I just stayed calm, refused to get out of the cab, admitted nothing and kept saying they there was no reason to arrest me for that. When they finally did pull me out of the car, I just said that I lived in DC and to make sure they called the US embassy so someone would meet us at the station. That’s when they put me back in the taxi and waved us on. After, the taxi driver said it’s a common police scam to stop cabs on the way to the airport, invent an infraction and try to get bribes from foreigners worried about missing flights. What a racket!
Nairobi looked like a pretty modern, western style city at its center, and the rest of Kenya seemed intriguing too. It’s a shame I couldn’t see more of it.
Next stop – Rome!
Arrivederci,
Clemente
