On the second day of 2012 we leave the Kenya coast and head inland to Nairobi where we will spend a few days getting back on our feet and sorting out a new passport for me. Our original plans would have taken us into Tanzania at this time but of course all that has now changed. Nairobi, ironically, is often referred to as Nai-robbery so possibly the last place we should be going; but needs must.
The fco (foreign and commonwealth office) website explains that it can take up to 12 weeks to have a new passport delivered to Kenya. My plan is therefore to visit the BHC (British High Commission) to get temporary travel documents so that I can fly home, get a new passport then return to Kenya. Once through the significant security checks I learn that actually passports can be processed in 3 weeks so I order one up ($250!). Apparently since 2010, passports require such high technology to be manufactured that they are now only made in the UK. My application first however has to be processed in Pretoria.
On my way to the BHC I purchased a local newspaper, the Daily Nation. I ask the man how much it is and he says '50 Bob'. It wasn't that he'd guessed my name but rather that here they still use the old name for a shilling that was common in Britain until decimalisation. At home, I rarely read newspapers but I've become somewhat hooked on the local press as it provides a tremendous insight into local life, culture, politics and humour. The agony Aunt section is required reading as are the dating adverts (apparently being God fearing is the top requirement; no requests for gsoh). However, there are a couple of top stories that won't have hit the BBC that are worth sharing here.
'Hippo victorious in battle with villagers baying for its meat'. The headline kind of tells the whole story but let me illuminate a little further. Hippos are 3.5 tons of gorgeous animal that spend their days in water to avoid their skin cracking, often walking along the bottom where they can hold their breath for up to 5 minutes. At night they come on shore to graze and walk around. They are quite aggressive and very dangerous. More humans are killed by hippos than any other animal. This hippo had a wee baby that had got stuck in the mud so as day broke mum had to remain on land to protect it. In the UK this would bring oohs and aahs all round but here a stranded hippo is the next week's dinner for the whole village. Luckily the villagers were armed only with stones and batons which were no match for an angry mum the size of a small armoured vehicle. Before long the KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service)intervened to save the animals but not before having to send for armed police to protect themselves from the hungry/angry locals!
The other story has been running for weeks. The deputy Chief Justice in Kenya is Nancy Baraza. Now, position and hierarchy are much more deeply ensconced in the national psyche here than at home but there's pressure for that to change, corruption to end, all citizens to be equal etc. These are big topics for the elections due later this year. Nancy obviously felt above the law however as she walked past the mandatory security check on entering a shopping mall. The brave security lady followed her to a chemist shop and insisted she be searched. According to her testimony Nancy refused to be searched ('don't you know who I am'), squeezed her nose hard (a Laurel and Hardy moment), threatened her with a gun and allegedly told her bodyguard to shoot her. Well, the papers have been having a field day ever since and it looks like she'll be suspended unless she resigns. Meanwhile the security guard has become a bit of a folk heroine.
So we spend the next few days planning the next few weeks and sorting out new credit/debit cards, new driving licence etc, before taking an 8 hour bus journey to Kisumu, Kenya's 3rd largest town that sits on the Eastern shore of Lake Victoria. Kenya has only a small piece of this huge lake, the rest being split between Uganda and Tanzania. Kisumu is safe and quiet compared to Nairobi but not what you'd call pretty. It's amusing however to observe the shadows of old Britain still visible here. The train station still has a machine for 'platform tickets', men typically wear a shirt tucked into flannel trousers and proper shoes ('only children wear shorts'), they love to fill in forms before mercilessly stamping them into submission and they even like their beer to be warm.
We next head east to Kericho, famous for its tea plantations. We stay in a local hotel that has notices explaining that 'couples not in wedlock cannot share a room' and 'no alcohol allowed in the room'. Oh well, 0 out of 2 for us then. The news today carries stories of imminent terrorist attack from the al-Shabab group resulting from the Somalia situation near the Kenya border - we decide to stay out of Nairobi for as long as possible. We spend our day at the Tea Hotel, originally built by Brooke Bond and quite a grand building, crumbling a little now but still with magnificent views across the plantations. They've since sold the hotel but still own a small plantation which we visit with our guide. Fun as this was, we really wanted to visit a factory and with some persuasion an appointment is made for 10am the next day at Kapchebet tea factory.
We arrive at the factory and are introduced to the boss and his production manager. We learn a great deal about the tea business in Kenya and discover that James Findlay and Unilever are two of the larger operators here. The factory process itself is simple but fascinating. Lorryloads of bags of freshly picked tea leaves arrive at the front and are emptied into long troughs where they are wilted or dried, losing 20-25% of their moisture. From here they are chopped up by 4 consecutive machines, each making the pieces smaller. The smell here is like someone just mowed your lawn whilst making you a very large pot of tea. The mulch then moves slowly along the conveyor belt, fermenting as it goes, which changes the colour, smell and temperature. Then it's cooled and dried before being sorted and packed.
The pickers can pluck their body weight in tea leaves in a day and each kg sells to the factory for 20KSh (about 15p). So a picker yields about 1000KSh of which they probably get about 300. The dry tea that we are all familiar with weighs less than a quarter of the picked leaves, such is the loss of moisture during the process. Kenya is the 3rd biggest tea producing country in the world and makes some of the best quality which is then usually blended with Indian tea by the manufacturers. We finish our visit back with the boss and learn more about his challenges over a nice cuppa (except they always use hot milk here). One of the worst but infrequent risks they have is frost which recently destroyed most of a crop in a neighbouring county.
Before leaving Kericho I venture into a local barber for a haircut. Spotting a chance to overcharge a customer I'm whisked through the queue to a waiting chair and a clearly nervous young man. He sets about me with the clippers but has obviously never cut a white customer's hair before as he's running the clippers in the wrong direction which is giving me a look that Johnny Rotten would have approved of. I ask how many 'Mzungus' he's had in before (nil, I reckon) and explain the proper method. This yields much better results but he's attacking my hair in the most haphazard manner. Once it reaches an acceptable state I am ready to escape as he hovers over me with a gelled-up Phillishave and hot towel. I asked him 'how much', he hesitated, looked very sheepish and said '500KSh'. I asked if this was a 'special' price and he reddened (quite an achievement) as he nodded. I paid up though as the experience was worth it. That evening we grab a beer and a few games of backgammon in the safer of the two local bars. We are a real curiosity as foreign visitors are few enough but ones that pop into this boozer for a beer are clearly as rare as uncorrupted Kenyan coppers.
A hair-raising (sorry) and overall unpleasant matatu ride takes us to Nakuru where we stay the night before heading up to Robert's Camp on scenic Lake Baringo. The matatu is stuffed as usual despite assurances otherwise and we're fast having a humour bypass for all this nonsense. The locals are afraid of the conductors, drivers and touts who are basically bullies, and therefore don't back me up when I complain loudly. We change to a smaller matatu in a tiny village. On boarding we're told (by 'Captain John') that the fare is 150. We know it's 100 but his mate backs him up. Another local (an unfeasibly tall bloke called Eric) takes us aside and confirms the price is indeed 100. We board the vehicle which has 8 seats and only two others on board. They only depart when full and this is clearly not a popular route, so we buy the remaining 4 seats as well as our two, offering to pay the required 600 KSh (£4). Captain John is still insisting it's 150 a shout but a thoroughly impatient Jo shouts at him 'we know it's 100 so you can just save your breath mate'. The other two passengers are in stitches, Captain John is a beaten man and we head off to our destination. The 'Empire' fights back eh?!
Robert's Camp is set on the edge of the lake and by day you can watch hippos munching the long grass in the water whilst keeping an eye out for crocodiles. Watching the hippos eat I'm reminded of the old game 'Hungry Hippos' and realise for the first time how accurately it reproduced the way they eat. Their upper bite does indeed just open and close constantly as they hoover down huge quantities of grass. There's no fence between the lake and the cabins so you have to sign a waiver before you can stay there. We are escorted back to our cabin after dinner and warned to be very careful when popping out for a nocturnal pee. This advice is invaluable as I find out at 3am when I open our door to see two hippos barely 5 feet away doing a fine job of mowing the lawn. They pull up the grass with their lips and you hear them well before you see them. Which is just as well as they can outrun a human and could literally bite your head off with their huge powerful mouths. An awesome sight and worth the trip for them alone.
On the way back to Nakuru we again have to argue the toss to pay the correct fare but we get on and await departure. While waiting a lady comes up to me and says 'are you strong in your relationship?'. Pardon? 'Maybe you have some.....problems?'. She says this with body language which conveys the Kenyan equivalent of nudge-nudge, wink-wink. I then realise she's carrying a plastic container of what looks like Castrol GTX but I assume is some Viagra-like elixir that she thinks I may require. I politely decline, explaining that maybe her target audience is sitting next to me.
We're heading for 3 nights at the Masai Mara now and need to get an earlyish matatu to Narok where we'll change for a 2pm connection. We're told the journey is 3 hours so we board at 9:30 to allow for delays. We leave an hour later and discover that this route takes us over roads that wouldn't be out of place in the Dakar rally. Add to that frequent stops where we wait for non-existent passengers and a 20 minute break for the driver and conductor have lunch and we arrive 5 hours later and are forced to stay the night in Narok. As we take a look around before dinner we find that we are quite a curiosity to the locals and all the wee kids shout out their only three words in English: 'how are you?'. Of course we smile, say 'fine and how are you' but obviously they're yet to have lesson 2 as they just look back dumbstruck at us.
We are advised that we should buy tickets by 1pm for our 2pm matatu so we pop down to check out the typically chaotic scene and find our bus which resembles a cattle truck and most of its 25 seats are already taken by locals, their luggage and all sorts of cargo. We decide to buy tix immediately and I leave Jo to fight for two seats while I return to the hotel to get our backpacks and bags. I struggle back to the bus but there is only an empty space where it last was. It's gone! As I consider my tactics the locals gape at this stranded old white bloke surrounded by luggage and one assures me it's just gone for petrol. Right enough the bus returns after about 15 minutes having been round two petrol stations but apparently not actually getting any fuel.
So, we're expecting a three hour journey but of course 3 means 5 here and after another bone-jangling, meandering, multi-stop trip we finally arrive at Aruba camp. The last 45 minutes of our journey actually took us through the Masai Mara park and the bus nearly toppled over as everyone tried to get a good look out at the lions, elephants and buffaloes. We check in and quickly assess the immediate priorities, carrying these out with unswerving focus - shower, beer, food. The camp is quite lovely and is right on the edge of the park so we sign up for 3 game drives over the next two days. These prove to be a great success. We watched a whole herd of elephant slowly pass by as they munched, drank and sprayed wet mud on their backs to cool down. We saw large prides of lions, including adult males and cubs, and we watched them rest, stretch, interact and even roll over with their tummies in the air! We saw a cheetah with a young cub and finally, on the last day, a leopard! Absolutely awe-inspiring. I think we can confidently say that we've 'done' Kenyan wildlife now.
We return to Nairobi, discovering on the way that there was a much faster route to Narok from Nakuru, but our spirits are high as we plan to stay with friends in their lovely big house in a posh part of Nairobi. He works at the BHC so they have 24 hour security, a maid, a gardener and just in case....panic buttons connected to armed support. Ahh, the colonial lifestyle. The owners - Steve and Jo - are actually away for a couple of nights so we're home alone and our only duty is to walk the dog (Jaffna). We set off for his daily exercise and notice the stares from the locals - clearly dog-walking isn't a common pastime here. We also notice that they're giving us a wide berth and we learn that they are very scared of dogs here - presumably because dogs in Nairobi are typically for security not cuddles. (Freud may argue that there's little difference between the two.) Now Jaffna is about as aggressive as damp cotton wool but we take full advantage of the situation and enjoy for once having the upper hand.
So, no sign of my passport yet but hopefully next week we can make our way to Tanzania. Reading the Daily Nation today I see that the ICC (International Criminal Court) will be passing judgement on the so-called Ocampo 6 who are accused of inciting the violence that killed 1200 people after the previous Kenyan elections. The accused include two current presidential candidates and the incumbent deputy prime minister so things may hot up here a bit if the decision isn't popular. Best we stay encamped in our British High Commission funded fortress! Will we make it to Tanzania? Find out in the next blog. Cheers!
Robert
