Week 9

Thursday 16th June.

Medditeraneo madness.

We had a super dooper lazy day. We spent most of the day in our tent and on the phone/skype talking to people. We had a great time talking to and catching up with Mandy and Andy. we skyped Ingrid and got to say hi to all the girls. We skyped my sister Donna and her fiance James, but their computer was too slow so they could see us but we couldn't see them, and we also skyped mum and dad and had a really good chat with them.

We watched a movie and had an afternoon nap. Hungry from our 'busy' day we headed to a nice restaurant at the Junction shopping mall called Medditeraneo with Marcus and Fiona, Jerome, Wil, and Mark. The food was really nice, we had some prosciutto, I had beef ragu with homemade pasta and Alex had a steak. The wine was great, we had good company and I finished off the night with a yummy lemon sorbet with strawberry sauce. `

Friday 17th June.

Medditeraneo madness: Part 2.

We were up early (and by early I mean 9.30am) to go to Crossroads to find a cardboard box, some newspaper, and some bubble wrap. We found everything at Nakumatt, the gigantic supermarket and took it back to Karen Camp. Luckily for us there is a really friendly, super efficient Swiss man who likes packing things that was happy to help us. Everything bubble wrapped, newspaper stuffed and taped into the cardboard box we jumped into a taxi with the friendly, super efficient, packing loving Swiss man and Fiona and went back to Crossroads to send the parcel home. 22kgs of souvenirs. Whoops. It was going to cost us US$130 to send the box via cargo ship which would take 3 months or more, or US$170 to send it via airmail and it should take a week or so. We ended up spending a little bit more to have it home sooner and safer.

From there we got another taxi to take us all back to Junction and spent the afternoon wandering around the mall, Marcus and I bought a few tshirts from a Kenyan tshirt brand called Bonk. In the early afternoon we went to a sushi restaurant for lunch. It was even better than the other sushi restaurant we had been eating at. Then we continued to wander around until we were hungry enough for dinner. We didn't think it was ever going to happen, but amazingly we did find enough space to go back to Medditeraneo and have a late dinner.

Saturday 18th June.

Medditeraneo madness: Part 3.

We spent the day packing up what has been our home for the past week and reorganising all of our stuff. Benne, Jimmy, Aileen and Emma got back from the coast, they had a pretty wild time and it made me even more glad that we had stayed in Nairobi and spent our week relaxing, rejuvenating and eating and drinking lots of yummy stuff.

I spoke to mum and dad again on skype, it might just be the last time we get internet fast enough until we get to Cairo, as we have heard that internet in Ethiopia and Sudan is hard to come by.

We went back to.... wait for it...... Medditeraneo for dinner with Marcus, Fiona and Jerome. By this stage the staff recognised us and were upset when we said we wouldn't be able to make it in again because we were leaving the country.

I was up until 2am writing week 7 of my blog and then had a really bad sleep afterwards. I don't know if it was because of revisiting all of the emotions experienced in Rwanda and writing about them in detail, or the anticipation of moving into the new truck tomorrow morning, getting good seats and getting back to truck life after our week of relative luxury. Perhaps a little from column A and a little from column B.

Sunday 19th June.

Survivor: African adventure.

We woke up and waited around impatiently to see the new truck. We are not getting our original truck back now because it is still in the shop getting revamped and they don't expect to be able to go through Syria so the company wanted the truck in East Africa, not stuck up North. No one had seen inside the new truck because Farron had kept it locked all week so that everyone had a fair chance at seats and those that had gone to the coast or to the Masaai Mara didn't miss out from not being around.

Finally Farron gathered everyone up and took us on a guided tour of our new home. It is so much smaller than the old truck, both in the lounge room and storage wise. It is also a different set up with the front half of the lounge room consisting of forward facing seats, the back half consisting of inward facing seats, and a row of seats along the back wall. There is under seat and above head storage space which is a bonus, but there is no beach (flat platform area at back of truck where you could sit or lay down on) which is a shame.

After the guided tour Farron asked everyone who wanted to sit in the front half to stand to the left, everyone who wanted to sit in the back half to stand to the right, and everyone who didn't care to stand in the middle. Then one by one the groups of people were let on to the truck to choose their seats.

Although it is well known that the only person who had a set seat is Farron and all the others are fair game, we all tend to stay in the same seats. Mainly because all of our crap is above, below, on and beside the seat that you sit on. For that reason there is not much moving around in the truck and you really want to make sure you like where you sit. We wanted to sit in the back half on the inward facing seats, preferably near Marcus and Fiona, and not near certain other people. The whole week at Karen Camp had resembled an episode of 'Survivor', with people conspiring to make sure they wanted to sit near certain people, or avoid certain others, there was a lot of insider trading going on with what other people wanted and who wanted to sit where.

Its funny how relatively little things can turn into massive things when you have nothing else to focus on.

In the end everyone was happy with their seats, and we got inward facing seats in the back half of the truck across from Marcus and Fiona. Phew.

We packed all of our stuff into our new home and said goodbye to Karen Camp for the last time at 11am. We stopped at Crossroads to do some shopping in the Nakumatt. Five cook groups had to shop and we were told to stock up for ourselves as well because the options will start to become real limited in Northern Kenya. This of course sent me straight into survival mode and I bought enough to live on for a good 3 months, plus every AA battery that Nakumatt had on its shelves.

We drove down a bad highway filled with potholes and surrounded by roadworks until we reached Bantu Lodge at the base of Mount Kenya (although Mount Kenya was no where to be seen). We set up our tent and headed for the bar. It is a nice enough place that has a river flowing around the property and a small lake  at the back, but it did feel somewhat like a school camp for indiscernible reasons.

We ordered some food, which took more than 2 hours to come out, and watched some bad African dance competition on tv. Almost ready for bed I ordered a mug of coffee for Jerome and a pot of tea for myself, and an hour later we were given one very small cup of hot water, some hot milk, some sugar and a spoonful of instant coffee in a bowl. That took them an hour.. Giving up we went to bed and watched a National Geographic documentary on the laptop about crocodiles in Africa.

Monday 20th June.

2 months today!

We had a bit of a sleep in, not getting up until 9.30am because as far as we knew we were leaving the camp at noon. When we got up we decided that we had enough time to enjoy breakfast before packing up our tent, luckily, because we found out that we were now staying another night because Farron was waiting on a truck part to be delivered from Nairobi.

We spent the day fishing and exploring the camp grounds, watching baboons, colobus and vervet monkeys play and taking photographs. Cook group made a really yummy chili concarne dish and after dinner us newbies celebrated our two month anniversary of being on the truck by playing drinking card games.

Tuesday 21st June.

T.I.A.

We left Bantu Lodge at 9.30am and had a cruisy drive, arriving in the very rural camp- Arches Post in Northern Kenya just after lunch time. Farron organised a game drive in the Samburu National Park 5 minutes down the dirt road. He thought that the fee paid for park entry was for a 24 hour period, not one calender day so he said we could do one afternoon drive and then a morning one tomorrow.

We had enough time to eat something and set up our tent and then we got in the truck and made our way to the park gates. Bu they had changed the rules so that entry was for one calender day, not a 24hr period so we went back to camp. T.I.A.

We ate dinner and went to bed early in anticipation of our early start for the game drive.

Wednesday 22nd June.

Samburu sensation.

We were up at 5.30am and on the truck  by 5.45am so that we could be at the gates to Samburu National Park at 6am when they opened. This was our first, and probably last, game drive in our home. It was nice to be in a truck with so much space and with all of our gear in easy reach. There was us, Marcus and Fiona, Lars, Jerome, Janet, Wil, Kate and Geoff so there was a lot of space.

We saw a lion, heaps of antelope, baboon and vervet. We also saw the 'Weird 5', 5 unique varieties of animal only found in this area being: the reticulated giraffe, a different type of zebra, the oryx, the girrantelope (a.k.a. the gerenook), and a different type of ostrich. It was a beautiful park with a wide river flowing through it lined by towering palm trees. We stopped along the river to have lunch and ate while watching antelope and zebra cautiously drink from the croc filled river, we finished lunch by warding of the gang of baboons that had surrounded us. There was one that was jumping on the roof of the truck and trying to climb up the stairs. Cheeky bugger.

We got back to camp at 3.30pm happy with our day and about 500 photos richer. There was the option of doing a Samburu village tour that Farron had organised. I was really keen to go and Alex came along too, it ended up being a private tour for the both of us because no one else wanted to join in. We were led on foot by a local Samburu woman to a village just outside the camp grounds. We were met at the gates to the village by 10 or so Samburu women singing a traditional welcome song for us. We were then led into the village circle where the women sang more songs for us including a traditional woman's celebration song that they got me to join in on.

We learnt that this village is populated by about 40 women and their children. There are no men here, and it is a kind of refuge village for women who ran away from home to escape early arranged marriage, or by those abandoned by their husbands and made un-marriageable by the abandonment. There were round mud brick houses with cow poo roofs that take 6 months to build and only last for 6 years, a center area where the animals are kept locked in using acacia branches, and a preschool and playground for the children.

The women had set up a little market for us to look at, filled with local crafts made by them. We bought a traditional Samburu beaded necklace and two tiny little Samburu beaded bracelets for my sisters twins. The baby bracelets are actually meant to be curtain holders or something similarly useless, but will make adorable bracelets and then maybe napkin holders when the babies grow out of them. I paid a pretty high price for the items, but knew it and didn't mind because all of the money made from tourists like us goes to sustaining the village and building more play equipment for the kids.

After the tour we were escorted back to camp by 10 or so women, singing us goodbye songs. It was so good and also a good opportunity to get photos of the Samburu people who refuse to be photographed and will yell at you if they catch you trying to get a sneaky snap. I spent the afternoon organising and re-touching photos. Cook group made a vegetable and potato stew and Alex was on clean group. Not long after he had finished cleaning, exhausted from our long day we went to bed and watched a movie.