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Update History

25 February 2005

Serengeti, Kenya/Tanzania

"There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne - bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive." - Karen Blixen


The drive from Nairobi to Amboseli takes about 14 years. It would take less time if all of the roads were paved. Some are just paths of dirt. During the wet season they take the long route. Along the way there are tiny villages, people living in incredible poverty, roving animals, and lots of dirt. By the time I got there I was wondering if it was all worth it. This was not the main wildlife spot I would be seeing, but merely a minor destination before the main event.

My cabin at Amboseli was very nice. I was expecting little more than a glorified hut, but it turned out to be one of the best lodgings in which I have ever stayed. It was well designed for both ventilation and security against mosquitoes. It also looked good and fit in well with the natural environment. But in a few short days I would be taking an even longer drive to my next destination. I was originally thinking that I could have skipped this place and spent more time elsewhere.  

After scraping off the filth of the road and a mediocre lunch I wandered about the grounds. I came to a sign that pointed one way for “elephant view” and another for “mountain view”. My cabin was on the elephant side and the only elephants I had seen at this point were probably those vague small dots far in the distance. I followed the mountain arrow and turned a corner to find myself standing in the middle of a postcard. Casually standing before me as if it was no big deal was Mt Kilimanjaro. The thought that going to Amboseli might have been a waste of time disappeared faster than most women I have known after the first date. Kilimanjaro is the largest mountain in Africa and yet I had not seen it until I turned this corner. Despite the heat I was feeling, the mountain was crowned with snow. At almost 6000 meters it always is. An old Maasai legend tells of a great and angry god who lives atop Kilimanjaro. It is said that he will turn numb the hands and feet of anyone who dares enter his territory. To people who have never seen snow or heard of frostbite this seems perfectly reasonable.

Mt Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania but best viewed from Kenya. On the Tanzania side it looks like a few different jagged peaks and is often too shrouded in clouds to be seen well. On the Kenya side it looks like every photograph of Kilimanjaro you have ever seen. The plains and acacia trees in front of it make it ideal for wildlife photography. From Tanzania there really is no good vantage point where animals are concerned. It should be in Kenya anyway. It sits within the Kenya side of the diagonal border between the two nations. When the British controlled Kenya and the Germans controlled Tanzania they agreed to bend the border just enough to fit Kilimanjaro within the Tanzania side. The myth is that this was Queen Victoria’s birthday present to her grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II.
 
When I returned to my cabin I found that the small dots in the distance were indeed elephants. They were slowly coming toward the cabins and were soon close enough to see quite clearly. I eventually became accustomed to the sight of an elephant herd outside my window. By the time I left Africa, seeing elephants had become commonplace.


The view from my porch at Amboseli


My first game drive in Africa was rather uneventful. Other than elephants, zebras, buffalo, gazelles, vultures, lions, giraffes, hyenas, cheetah, impalas, jackals, monkeys, warthogs, ostriches, topi, wildebeest, eagles, herons, and the assorted birds, small mammals, plantlife, landscape and scenery, I did not see much. The goal in most game drives is to see the Big Five: buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion and rhinoceros. These were the most coveted of the big game animals back when hunting them was legal, supposedly because they are the hardest to track down and eviscerate. I can see where leopards and lions would be hard. Elephants and rhinoceroses would be difficult because they are very large and tend to react negatively to being shot. But buffalo are neither fast nor too terribly smart. Killing them should be like shooting buffalo in a barrel. Now that they are protected (as if no one kills them anymore), rich white people come from all over the world to look at them.  

It is probably easier to shoot the Big Five with a camera. They do not run away as much. Most of them just ignore the people. Elephants walk where they are walking regardless of who or what is in the way. On more than one occasion lions came up to us. The shade of a safari truck can be a great place to nap when the sun is just too much. Leopards are always hard to find. They do not care much for visitors. There are none at Amboseli anyway. Rhinoceroses do not shy away from humans, but it is generally a good idea to keep a distance. The white rhinoceros is relatively social as long as no one interferes with its eating habits. The black rhinoceros will attack pretty much anything. The average sized rhinoceros can turn the average sized safari truck into local gift shop souvenirs with little effort. At one point or other (not necessarily at Amboseli) I got close enough to spit on most of the Big Five and a variety of other large mammals. Not that I did. We never tried to get too close to a rhinoceros.

When I say we I am referring to myself and my driver/guide, whose name I have since forgotten. It was something exotic, like Larry. Ordinarily one has to pay extra for a private safari. Most companies send people out in groups of 8 to 12 or more. For reasons never satisfactorily explained to me I was in a group of one. At first I thought this might be an indication of how popular this particular company is, but after spending some time with Larry and his wildlife wisdom (if he made it all up he was quite convincing), I decided that this was not such a bad deal and I was, in fact, rather fortunate. There are serious benefits to not traveling with a group of strangers whose preferences and interests may be different from your own.


Some of the many, many steps up Observation Hill


In the middle of Amboseli stands the cleverly named Observation Hill. It is little more than a hill, ideal for observation. A sign says that it stands 1150 meters above sea level, which is curious since Amboseli itself is 1200 to 1400 meters above sea level. When you ignore the math problems and the fact that someone somewhere did not do their research the view is remarkable. There is a completely unobstructed panoramic view of Amboseli, Kilimanjaro and the entire Noomotio Valley. The declination gets you a pretty good sense of just how many safari trucks there are out there. When you are alone in the bush your impact on the environment seems negligible. If you add up all the individual trucks that drive through every day, year after year, it is hard not to realize just how much damage we are doing. Everyone who comes here wants to see and experience this unique environment, and yet we are all helping to destroy it. Most of the animals ignore us, but all these trucks driving through their homes must certainly interfere with their breeding, feeding, and migration habits. In the national parks like Amboseli vehicles are only allowed to drive on designated roads; mostly dirt trails. In the national reserves like Maasai Mara small trucks and cars can drive pretty much anywhere, creating more dirt trails each day. Maasai Mara is the most popular game park in all of Africa. It gets more visitors than all of the national parks in Kenya and Tanzania combined. It is large enough that it should be years before we completely destroy it, but we will eventually. Africa used to be the Dark Continent. Its jungles, plains, deserts, savannah, rainforests, wetlands, grasslands, and valleys took up far more space than its cities and developed lands. Today North America has more wilderness than Africa. Some have suggested that the game parks limit the number of visitors each year, but that would mean considerably less money for those agencies that collect the fees, and money is the single greatest reason the continent is allowing outsiders to destroy its natural inherency. Money from visitors is also the main funding for preservation efforts.


Sunset at Observation Hill


The drive from Amboseli to Lake Nakuru is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. Not that I have any enemies. Other than the asshole who invented squeaky shoes for children. Lake Nakuru is fairly small, but it is home to one to two million flamingoes (they breed elsewhere and do not always come back), 44,000 pelicans, 450 species of birds, and a wide variety of wildlife. It is impressive, but the drive to and from takes away far too much from the experience. I would suggest flying in. It is more expensive, but the time saved and pain avoided should balance everything out.

Lake Nakuru does not sit within a national park or national reserve. One side of the lake borders a game reserve where the animals are protected. The other side borders the small village of Nakuru. The lake itself is under the jurisdiction of several different agencies, all of whom claim sole possession. Appropriately, all of the agencies consider it illegal to hunt or otherwise kill the birds that feed off the lake. Without the birds there would be absolutely no reason to visit Lake Nakuru. The adjoining game reserve has a few white rhinoceroses brought in from South Africa, but there are plenty of black and white rhinoceroses at Maasai Mara and other reserves.

I spent less time at Nakuru than I did getting there and leaving, and that will always be what I remember. There was an amusing incident at the lake where a soldier from one of the reserve agencies solicited and received his regular bribe from my driver. This is apparently nothing new, and Larry told me that this particular soldier has a reputation for gouging the safari companies. I call him a soldier because, like most of the people we would call game wardens, guards and police, he was wearing a military uniform and carrying a large automatic weapon. This is standard. The police in Nairobi walk or drive in small groups, carrying large guns and wearing camouflage.


Lake Nakuru




Maasai Mara is best known for its annual migration of over 1 million wildebeest, 400,000 zebras, and assorted affiliates. Every Spring this massive herd travels across the Serengeti from Northern Tanzania into Southern Kenya. While crossing the Mara River many drown in the raging waters, since they cross while it is at its most active, and others are snatched by the river’s crocodiles. For those who survive there are always hungry lions waiting beyond the banks. Most do survive, and they reach their final destination by July or August. For whatever reason they do not return together. They gradually go back in small groups at different times, which is far less impressive to watch. Not coincidentally the Tanzania side has most of its visitors in April and May and the Kenya side in July and August. I was there in late January and February, so I saw none of it. But even without the stench of a million wildebeest and various rotting corpses strewn about the plain, the Mara is a great place to visit. It is with good reason that this is the single most popular game park in Africa. The scenery alone is worth the price of admission. The Mara also has almost every animal you will find anywhere else in Tanzania and Kenya, south of the Equator. North of the Equator the wildlife changes dramatically. It is one border most of these animals seem unwilling to cross. After about five minutes in the Mara I decided that it would have been best to skip Lake Nakuru altogether and spend more time here, although I am glad I did not.

Maasai Mara is where I watched lions mate (very quickly), kill (very quickly), and eat (very loudly). I saw a family eating at Amboseli, but I did not witness the kill. I saw the military precision of elephants as the adults surrounded the cubs. Because they are so large they look like they are moving slowly. But as we approached, the larger elephants had covered the small faster than you can see a needle wink its eye. They were not afraid of us. A small safari truck is no match for several fully grown African elephants. But when humans are around it is always best to use caution.  

I got close enough to touch the supposedly shy cheetah. I am fond of my outer extremities, so I chose not to try. As we were driving along the side of a small hill my guide spotted something in the tall grass several kilometers away. I could not even make out the tree he was pointing to, let alone what was lying next to it. Previously he had dramatically spotted something, only to find nothing, so I was not sure if this was for show or if he really could see these things. After we drove down the hill and around a small river any doubts I had were forgotten. He had seen the head of a cheetah sporadically peering out from the tall grass while driving a good distance away. We drove up to the tree very slowly, both of us expecting the cheetah to flee at any moment. It completely ignored us as we got closer and closer. We stayed inches from the cheetah for quite some time, since this was a rare occurrence, but my driver decided we should leave when he saw a few other safari trucks approaching. The more optically challenged drivers will look for trucks that have stopped anywhere for a few minutes and head toward them to investigate. While driving away we told the first truck to arrive what we were watching all that time. Although there is competition between safari groups it is common courtesy to tell others what is where. Especially if you are leaving. As we drove away I watched three trucks approach the cheetah tree. The cheetah predictably sped away. He was not moving at full speed, but it looked pretty fast to me. In the bush it is best to get there first. On another occasion I watched a small family of cheetah search the horizon for dinner. We did not get as close to them, but we were close enough to interfere. They were looking for food and we did not appear all that appetizing, so we were ignored. Cheetah do not like an audience, but none of these seemed all that concerned by our presence.  

At the Mara River I watched as about a hundred hippopotamuses did pretty much nothing in the shallow, Dry Season current. I saw a crocodile stalk a large bird. He lunged at it as they do in nature documentaries, but the bird flew away, only to land several feet away on the same river bank. I watched the sun rise from a hot air balloon fairly high above the Serengeti. I had my most international experience to date. I, an American teaching English to Chinese children had a rudimentary German conversation in Kenya with a French teacher from Switzerland. And I spotted the elusive Phil Collins.

Taking the hot air balloon ride was never part of the original plan, but at Lake Nakuru I decided that it would be stupid not to. It did not last very long, they crammed entirely too many people into the basket, and it took up almost all of my spending money. But it was worth it. The view from a safari truck is amazing. The view from a balloon is even better. The weather was perfect if not too hot. The sky was clear. When the sun rose over the plain it was a Kodak moment™, priceless™, a time made for Taster’s Choice™ and Miller time™ all rolled into one.


Flying above the Mara


It is a cliché to say that Africa changes a person. But I think it does in some way. I think it may be impossible to go to such a place and look at the place where you came from the same way again. When Dr John Carter returned from his first trip to DR Congo he said that it was a life-changing experience, but he was not sure how. True, he is a fictional character, but according to one episode he and I were born just days apart, and Noah Wyle was very good in “White Oleander”. To paraphrase Einstein, in the universe everything eventually balances out.

One night as I sat on the porch of my cabin gazing at the stars, a couple wandering toward me glanced upward as well. No matter where I am or what I am watching, if there is anyone else nearby they will inevitably look toward whatever it is I am looking at. The couple, whom I decided were British, seemed perplexed. The man mentioned that he could not find the North Star. I chose not to point out that we were in the Southern Hemisphere since I could not immediately find a way to say so without overt sarcasm, and I was abstaining from sarcasm for the duration. As he said this I was looking at the Southern Cross. I am certainly no astronomical authority, but the Southern Cross is pretty easy to spot, especially when the sky is devoid of smog or anything even resembling city lights. The couple left after she spotted the Big Dipper (it wasn’t) and I just sat there staring at the clear sky and enough stars to make Carl Sagan proud. Although I have always been aware of it, it really occurred to me how incredible it was that someone of my background and upbringing was sitting here and had been to so many different places and seen as much as I had. I have a good job, a home, and a woman who is madly in love with me. I have a good life. It could all end tomorrow in a million different ways, but right now I am extremely fortunate. And I know it.


Just another day in paradise



21 February 2005

Nairobi, Kenya



When I worked at that airline I decided to take a trip to Africa. We had a brochure from an interline travel agency and, among other trips, they had a few African safari packages. The great thing about working for an airline is the 90% discount on airfare. I had always thought going to Africa was something only rich people could do. Ironically. I would consider myself lucky if I could ever get to Europe, let alone Africa, and this was before I ever got to Europe. With the airline discount and the interline discounts I could go to Africa for about half of any package I could get online. I looked it up. I was going to go to Tanzania and safari across the Serengeti where 1 million wildebeest and a few hundred thousand zebras would be migrating and occasionally providing dinner for a few lions and crocodiles. After the safari I was going to spend a few days at Lake Victoria. This was going to be the trip of a lifetime. While I was pinching pennies and clipping coupons, my employers were buying a few 100 million dollar aircraft and generally flushing money down the toilet. Once I found myself unemployed I used the money I was saving on other luxuries, like food and rent. My safari was not to be.

Five years later I was on a plane to Africa.

The New Year/Spring Festival is the biggest holiday of the year. Americans call it Chinese New Year. Obviously the Chinese do not. It is Christmas, New Year’s Day, Fourth of July, and Columbus Day all rolled into one. Everyone gets time off. Even those people who actually work for a living that you hear about. Unfortunately, it is based on the lunar calendar and not the internationally accepted solar calendar that most of us humans use. Why base your calendar on a satellite that revolves around the Earth? Does the day begin when the moon appears or the sun? Call me biased, but I think the solar calendar makes much more sense. The Earth revolves around the sun once and that is a year. New Year’s Day is January 1st. Always. According to the lunar calendar the year begins at the first new moon of the year. Whenever that is. Since 2004 was a leap year, 2005 (or 94 according to the Chinese calendar) began a week into February. 2-8-2005 = 1-1-94. These people have to be good at math just to figure out what day it is.

The only problem with the 85 breaks per year that my school takes is that I never know when they are going to happen until about a week ahead. This works out for Korea, but simply will not do if I want to plan a trip to Africa. Ordinarily I use Boss Lady’s travel agency to book my airfare and/or hotel, but I was not about to risk this trip on people who have no concept of advance planning. I am more than willing to book everything myself and make sure that all is confirmed long before I set foot on any plane, but that is hard to do when you have no idea when the break will be. During my research, which I almost never do on other trips, I found that most African travel companies recommend booking about four to six months ahead. That was never a possibility with me. I was lucky to find out when the break would be one month ahead. Throughout December I asked Boss Lady daily when the break would be. I know I was annoying her, but if she gave me the dates a week in advance Africa would be lost. Finally, at the end of December, I told her that I had already booked a trip beginning in late January. I had not, but it forced her to pick a date. Usually everyone takes their break at the same time. The school is closed and everyone is happy, especially the children. Because of my preemptive strike Boss Lady and her husband took a week off while the school was open. Then the first week I was gone the school was more or less still open, which meant a Chinese teacher had to take my classes. That is always a hoot. The second week I was gone the school closed and everyone took a break. And the third week I was gone the school was open, but most of my classes were still off. Logistically I am sure it was a nightmare for Boss Lady, the school’s principal, owner and Chinese English teacher, but I would have been perfectly willing to take off whatever time would have been more convenient if only I had been told what that time was. Foreigners are trouble. Everyone knows that.

The main benefit to living here, aside from being paid to live here, is the cheap travel. Asian destinations are cheaper, of course, because they are much closer. But I can go anywhere outside of North and South America for a fraction of the price I would pay from North America. My current trip to Africa would end up costing about the same as the trip I was going to take five years ago, even though it lasted longer and included more destinations and a lot more transportation. It would have been much cheaper, but due to a problem with my return flight from Nairobi I extended my stay and took a detour into South Africa.

Once again I left home in the rain. The end of January is much colder than anything I had previously experienced in my tiny farm village. The eternally long summer is so hot and so humid that it is hard to believe it gets this cold in winter. I was told it was going to be even colder in February. Fortunately, I would be out of the continent most of February. Just to get to the airport I had to wear several layers of the closest things to winter clothing I have and my largest, heaviest coat. I knew it was summer where I was headed, and it would be hot. I knew I would have to carry around all these heavy clothes, but the trip to the airport would have been disastrous without them.

Unless you are coming from Europe or the Middle East it is hard to find a direct flight into Africa. The best I could do was Hong Kong to Bangkok to Nairobi. The flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok was full of Asians and, as far as I could tell, one white person, myself included. To me this is normal. As soon as we landed in Bangkok all the Asians got off the plane and were replaced by Africans. This was new to me, but if you have a problem with Africans, do not go to Africa. Watching the different people of different cultures was interesting. As the Asians left they took more luggage than they should have been allowed to bring into the cabin and all of their shopping bags. When the Africans boarded they brought on more luggage than they should have been allowed and all of their shopping bags. In Hong Kong the Asians took forever to load all of their bags into the overhead bins and scrambled around looking for more room. In Bangkok the Africans took forever to load all of their bags into the overhead bins and moved people’s things around looking for more room. No matter where people are from, whatever their background and culture, there is one universal truth that encompasses all of mankind. People love their crap.

Most of today’s commercial aircraft have at least some form of entertainment system. The problem is that whenever any member of the crew makes an announcement it overrides the music I am trying to listen to or the Adam Sandler movie I am not really watching. Within the English-speaking world this is not so bad since English is the language of international aviation. However, in other territories all announcements must be made in English and whatever language the locals speak. On the way back from Japan the crew interrupted that Adam Sandler movie where Drew Barrymore has amnesia with several announcements in English (the language of international aviation), Japanese (the departure point language), and Chinese (the arrival point language). The English announcements were short and to the point. The Japanese translations lasted about the same amount of time. The Chinese versions always took about as long as it takes me to clean the lizard shit out of my bedroom window gutters. The Chinese are nothing if not verbose.

I still have no idea how the movie ends.

To Nairobi all the announcements were made in English (the language of international aviation), Chinese (the departure point language), Thai (the transfer point language), and Swahili (the arrival point language). “Flight crews, prepare for final check” took about half an hour. When we flew over the Equator they did not bother to let us know, which was fine with me since that announcement would have taken the rest of the flight, but the in-flight navigation console told me. I looked out the window and was unimpressed. The tops of equatorial clouds look about the same as the tops of any other clouds.
  
Since everything arrived early it only took 26 hours from my front door to Nairobi’s airport. That is not bad for a 200km road trip from my tiny village to the airport and 8000km worth of flying. I was expecting to get off the plane to a tidal wave of intense heat. It was five o’clock in the morning so it was more of a dull ripple.


Nairobi market
Nairobi is the “City Under the Sun”
I do not know many cities that are not under the sun
But this close to the Equator it is pretty hot


I spent a little less than two days in Nairobi. I saw all of it. The fact that it is the largest city in the nation tells you just how small the cities are in Kenya. Nairobi’s City Centre takes a good ten minutes to walk through at a leisurely pace. No matter how long it takes for some horrid affliction to siphon away my memories one day I will always look back on Nairobi as a beggar’s paradise. In my first hour of wandering the City Centre at least a dozen beggars approached me. The basic strategy of the basic Nairobi beggar is not to ask for spare change or try to make the target feel guilty. They simply approach people with their hand held out. No dialogue is needed. It gets sad when you see parents send their children out to do their work. One small child no more than four years old approached me while I was walking. He never said a word, but his hand was out, just waiting for the inevitable manna from heaven. I kept walking and he followed me. After about a block I wondered just how long he was planning on following me. It seemed endless. I almost gave him money for perseverance alone, but I knew he would just give it to his mother. He earned it, not her. I was a little impressed that he could keep up with me. I was in no hurry, but I do walk somewhat faster than most four-year-olds. Some time later my safari guide told me that the children will try to give people nearby the impression that their mark is their father, the goal being to embarrass the target into giving up the money. I do not think this strategy works on white tourists. But it was nice to learn that I was not being singled out because I was obviously a white tourist. The beggars attack the locals, too.

After a pretty crappy lunch I was heading toward a mosque when I was approached by a man who said that he was going to study at UC Davis soon. He said that he wanted to ask me questions about the educational system in the United States and whether there was a lot of discrimination. I do not know if he recognized my accent or merely assumed that I was American, but I was just waiting for the mention of money. He kept talking, and I was there to absorb the culture, so I talked back. You can learn a lot about a place from the people who live there. Especially the random strangers who approach you on the street. He suggested we sit down in a little café and since he had not mentioned money and I really had no plans I agreed. He was very polite and friendly and asked me if I wanted anything to eat. I told him that I had just eaten a pretty crappy lunch and he suggested that I at least get a drink since it would be considered rude to sit in the café and not get anything. I told him he should get something and that I was not going to. He offered to show me the site of the US Embassy bombing once we were done talking about education in the US.

In the café he told me that he and two of his friends, who were currently incapacitated with diarrhea (thanks for that information), had escaped from the troubles of Uganda and that their visas to Kenya were going to expire tomorrow. He went on about how he was a teacher and had to flee without any of his possessions or legal documents. He said that he met a missionary in Kenya who was going to send him and his friends to Mozambique, where they could get visas to Europe or some other safe haven. He described some of the atrocities in Uganda and how his life would be in great danger if he were forced to return. I was sympathetic to his alleged plight and agreed that the situation in Uganda was not very attractive, but I pointed out how I have very little influence on the government or people of that country. Finally he got to the point. He needed money for his safe journey to Mozambique. I knew it was coming, but I was so disappointed when it did. He told his story so well, but there were too many glaring flaws to ever have the chance of drawing me in. If he was going to be deported and sent back to his imminent death tomorrow why was he wasting time talking to people on the street about education systems in other countries? If he had to leave without his legal papers how did he get a visa to Kenya in the first place? How would he get one in Mozambique? And why is Mozambique a better departure point to Europe than Kenya? If his plan was to escape to Europe why did he initially tell me he was going to study at UC Davis? I have driven past UC Davis. It is not in Europe. It occurred to me later that his insistence on my ordering food at the café was most likely an attempt to see what kind of money I had on me.

Once it became obvious that I was not going to give him any money he remained polite and offered to show me to the Embassy. He seemed to be in a hurry to get rid of me and after we had walked far enough I told him that I was not really that interested in it anyway. He pointed down a street and told me that it was just down there. If I kept walking a little farther I would see it. Then he disappeared. While walking down the street I thought that he had deserved the money simply for telling such a good story. No more than two minutes later a man in a cheap suit approached me and asked me how I knew the man to whom I was just talking. By this time I had become accustomed to strangers asking me questions in the street and I had no doubt that this man also wanted some free cash from the foreigner ATM. I told him that I knew the previous man the same way I knew him. He was yet another person begging for money. The new man said he was not a beggar and showed me a laminated identification card and told me that he was with the secret service. The man I had been talking to was a terrorist. I immediately liked this angle, but wondered how it could possibly end with me giving him any money. When I was told that the first man was a terrorist I told the second man to go get him. He said that they already had. That seemed a little fast. Someone I was just talking to was arrested no more than a block from me and I neither heard nor saw any commotion whatsoever?

The second man seemed pretty serious. The way a secret service agent would, as far as I know. He told me that I could get into serious trouble talking to terrorists and asked me where I was going. I told him that I should not be talking to him since maybe he was a terrorist and I could get into serious trouble talking to terrorists. He did not seem to like that. In hindsight if he had actually been a secret service agent then the way I was talking to him would not have been the best course of action. He became even more serious and told me that he was only trying to help the president. I assumed he meant Kenya’s president, but he kept that fairly vague. He wanted to know how I knew the first man, what we talked about, and where I was now going. I told him that just like everybody else who approached me the first man was just someone who wanted money. I did not tell him about the Uganda story. I did not want this guy to steal it. This second guy did not seem to like my attitude and suggested that I come with him for further questioning. I told him that unless he arrested me, I was going to go to the old US Embassy. He told me that the Embassy was no longer there and that if I wanted to go to the new Embassy he could get me a taxi. Offering to get me a taxi seemed a little strange just seconds after threatening to arrest me, but this guy was starting to annoy me anyway. I told him that I was going back to my hotel and that if he had any problem with that he could come and see me there. Of course, I never told him which hotel. As I was walking away I hoped I would see the first guy, but never did. I have no idea if they were a team or if the second guy merely follows the first guy around. Either way, the first guy’s story seemed better for soliciting money. I am not sure how the second guy expected to get anything.

I really was going back to the hotel, but made a few stops along the way. If any government agents or terrorists were watching me they never made their presence known. This quickly became one of those situations where it would have been much better if someone were with me. This would be a great story if I had a witness.

I never did see the old US Embassy. And it is nowhere near where the beggars told me it was.


Jomo Kenyatta Ave
Also known as the Handout Highway, Beggar’s Blvd
or Just Give Me Some Money Already Lane


Not long before dusk of my first day in Nairobi I was walking around the City Centre with my camera. Some would say that is dangerous, but I am a rebel. Not the kind of rebel who leads armed conflicts against established governments but the kind who scoops ice cream from the edge of the carton rather than the center. Generally I try not to look like a tourist. I have been to many places that I know nothing about where people have asked me for directions. I can go practically anywhere in Europe and North America and someone will ask me how to get somewhere. I have found that in Asia and Africa people assume I am a tourist anyway. For some reason I do not seem to blend in well.  

If you are a white person walking around downtown Nairobi with a camera every beggar will immediately track your sent. At least they took turns. As soon as one gave up and walked away another took his place. It seemed almost organized. A small group of people doing absolutely nothing told me that I could take their picture if I bought them dinner. I told them that I would take their picture if they bought me dinner. They were confused and probably thought I misunderstood their offer. Seconds later a man approached me and asked if I recognized him. I had seen roughly 42,368 beggars by this point. I was not about to recognize one over another. He said he worked at the hotel and was the front desk clerk who checked me in. Ok. So what? He suggested that I did not recognize him because I was tired when I checked in. True, I was. I am sure every white tourist is tired after the agonizing flights to Africa. He said he was on his way to the hotel with food for tonight’s dinner, but his car had broken down. I told him I did not have any money and he said that he did not want money, just help moving his car. I pointed out that there was no way in hell I was going to break my back pushing some stranger’s car. He said that I must have misunderstood. He did not want help moving his car. He needed money for gas. How could I misunderstand that. When he said he did not want any money but wanted help moving his car that meant he did not want help moving his car but wanted money. Either way I knew he was a beggar long before he said a word. I was staying at a large, European style hotel. Their front desk staff does not wander the streets gathering food for the kitchen. One would assume the kitchen is stocked in a more orderly fashion.

What annoyed me about this particular confrontation was that this guy mentioned my hotel by name. I was going to trip him up by pretending not to know where the hotel was and ask for directions, but he told me the name of the hotel before I could. Either that was a very lucky guess or this guy did his homework. Back at the hotel I told the front desk manager about my encounter, expecting him to say that Nairobi is full of beggars and they will say anything to get money. He did, but he also called the security manager, who told me that he would stay at the hotel until the person who works the front desk in the morning hours (when I checked in) came back for his next shift. At 8:30 that night I got a call from the security manager asking me to come downstairs to see if the front desk person was indeed my beggar. He wanted to make sure that his staff was not doing that sort of thing. It was someone else, of course, but we both agreed that my beggar was probably hanging around outside the hotel and watching people. This, the security manager pledged, was something he would deal with accordingly. Many managers would have simply given me some patronizing speech to get rid of me as soon as possible. I was just surprised he took the time to at least go through the motions.

That was the end of day one.



Nairobi at dusk



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