To preface, when Dick retired from Michigan National Bank in late 1997 I decided that it would be a great thing for the two of us to take a 24 day cruise, Athens to Cape Town. This would be a time when we could regroup and think about what we were going to do in retirement. We still had a 15 year old, Abigail, at home, though the other 7 children were pretty much on their own. Little did we know what a life changing experience that cruise would be. When we left the ship in Cape Town, I surveyed the situation there (Cape Town is fabulous) and told Dick, "I could LIVE here!!". To make a long story short we returned to Birmingham, Michigan, I leased our home for 2 years, sold our car and by August 4 we were on our way to Europe and Africa for a year accompanied by our four youngest children -- Abigail,age 15, Jake, age 18, Ashleigh, age 21 and Brooke, age 23. I kept a journal of sorts, and so following is an exerpt from it:
"As Wednesday approached we were all getting pretty excited. This would be the day that we met Brooke and Jake at the Zurich airport (Ashleigh and Abigail were already with us) and then continued on together on a Swissair flight for Nairobi. We arrived into Zurich at about 4pm, turned in the car and went to greet Brooke and Jake. Thankfully they arrived on schedule so that we didn't have any worries about connecting with our Nairobi flight. Our only moment of anxiety wa when they strip searched Jake because as he passed through security they found a couple of spent shotgun shells in his pocket. As he stood in the curtained-off booth with a security guard, the rest of us stood around wondering what the heck he could have in his pocket. Turns out a friend had given them to him in California, for what reason I know not, but we were immensely relieved when he was released to continue the journey with us. After a quick bite to eat at an airport restaurant, joyous to be reunited, we proceeded to our Swissair flight and soon we were winging our way to Africa.
Brooke was merciless for the first couple of hours, nagging away at me about how dangerous my plan was, about the disease that we would encounter, about the street crime and violence prevalent everywhere. She almost had me believing her.
What a surprise when we arrived at the Nairobi airport and were not instantly raped, mugged and otherwise assaulted. Instead we passed through customs in an orderly fashion, obtained our visas for Kenya and were met by the safari company. Just outside the customs area was a very pleasant looking Kenyan holding a large sign, "Martha and family". He introduced himself as Dixon, our driver and guide for the next 9 days, and directed us to the waiting safari van. As we turned the corner outside of the main terminal we viewed our first wildlife -- directly across the field were several giraffe grazing. The kids were incredulous. After a quick visit to the office in Nairobi, we drove off toward Lake Baringo (and our campsite) in the packed-to-the-gills safari van.
It was a long drive, about 4 hours, but absolutely fascinating as we passed villages and settlements along the way. We climbed to 8000 feet where we stopped for a spectacular view of the Great Rift Valley. This is a very long valley running the length of several countries in Africa, and is where the famed wildebeest migration takes place. Since there are no rivers in this highland area the tribe that lives there uses donkeys to carry water back and forth. We saw many donkey carts carting huge jugs of water up and down to irrigate their fields. Everywhere we drove that day we were impressed with the amount of walking people do here. In China there were a lot of walkers, but also a lot of bicycles. Not so here, and most everybody is barefooted. Since they are the bearers of burdens most everybody had something balanced on their heads, I assume leaving their hands free for other activities. It was incredible to realize how physical the lives are here, carrying everything from babies to wood beams, and walking long distances through rough and grassy terrain. We descended to the valley where Lake Baringo is located, along with several other lakes dotting the Rift Valley.
At the lookout I had been besieged by "salesmen" and conned into buying a soapstone ashtray, an unlikely object for me! But it had a wonderful hand scratched map of the Rift Valley on other side, and everything that we had passed on the road was hand etched onto the stone, including the two satellite stations. Not long after the summit we passed the Equator demarcation thus putting us north of it for the next few days. Kenya sits smack dab in the center of the globe.
Our first stop was at a grocery store in Nakuru (the main city of the Rift Valley in Kenya) to purchase some water and miscellany to carry us through the first part of the safari. All of our food was being provided by the tour, but the extras like water, soda pop and napkins (!) were not. The grocery store itself was a sight. First of all it was fairly large, but the aisles were extremely narrow. There were literally hundreds of people milling around in and out of the store. Dick said it reminded him of the stories of the Wild West where everybody sort of hung out in town. At the entrance of the store I picked up a shopping cart, about the size of a child's toy, and began to push it through the aisles. After running over countless toes and bumping into people I abandoned the cart and decided that the carry basket everyone else was using was probably a better way to go. The shelves and item on the shelves were covered in a thick layer of dust. It was definitely not Trader Joe's, and all I can say is that the whole grocery shopping experience as pretty chaotic.
After loading up our purchases we continued on to camp, about another two hour drive, where we were to have lunch prepared by our cook for the safari, Dominique. Passing through many little villages with rondavels (small mud huts with thatched roofs) we finally arrived at Camp Roberts, our home for the next two nights. This camp is owned by a British woman, and the camping sites are rather primitive. No hot water, pit toilets, and you camp in small two-man tents pitched about 100 yards from the Lake Baringo shoreline. As we pulled into the camp our first sight was the small "dining" table, fully set with silverware and plates on a plastic lace tablecloth. On a small table nearby were three large cooking pots emanating heavenly food smells. Lunch that day was tilapia, hot rice and a delicious vegetable sauce to pour over everything. It was so good. One of my last apprehensions of our journey disappeared as it seemed the food would be tasy and appropriate for all of us --- vegetarian, diabetic and picky Abby included. Dominique managed this magic while sitting on a camp stool in front of the small open fire pit. With pots precariously positioned on rocks, he managed to provide us with a wonderful variety of foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day.
After lunch we inspected the tents and set up our belongings for the next couple of days. In each tent were two cots with foam mattresses and one sheet per cot. Period. They closed up fairly bug-tight with several zippers, so that was reassuring. Dixon informed us that the remainder of the day would be a chance to relax and rest from our overnight flight. We slept a little, explored the campground and tended to mundane activities like the washing of our clothes. Jake had a suitcase full of dirty clothes (surprise, surprise) and I had a few things to wash for Dick and myself. When Jake indicated that he didn't know how to go about washing clothes in a washbasin I offered to show him, and for me this turned out to be the highlight of the day. As we stood side by side at that outdoor sink, scrubbing away, we chatted and laughed and offered each other encouragement as we battled the stains. Four months ago that would have been unthinkable since we had been estranged, and I was very grateful that afternoon for how far we had come in normalizing our relationship.
Back to the wash. We had been challenged by washing our clothes for the last couple of months in Europe. Obviously our European experiences with wash day were only practice sessions for coping with dirty clothes in Africa. The huge tub in which Jake and I were scrubbing away had one faucet from which streamed only cold water. As we worked there I noticed that the water was quite brown and thought to myself that Jake's clothes were really dirty. Mid way through I was informed by Dominique that this water was pumped directly from the lake, and since Lake Baringo is described in the tourist brochures as "chocolate" (I called it dirty brown) it is doubtful how clean our clothes were getting. However we wrung them out and hung them to dry on the bushes, trees and tent poles. It left me wondering if we had finally bottomed out on wash day experiences.
(to be continued)
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