The third try...

This is the third time I'm trying to start this blog post. I'm very behind, as usual, and instead of putting my adventures in three consecutive blogs as I tried last time, I will summarize each adventure as simply as possible.

The first was a three day safari at the Masaai Mara National Reserve. Three days of sitting in a safari van was about all I could take, although it was really cool. We saw everything except for rhinos, leopards, cheetahs, and hyenas. So to translate, it was bunk. Just kidding, it was pretty good. I had to be satisfied with seeing zebras, gazelles, impalas, giraffes, hippos, crocodiles, buffaloes, wildebeests, and several other -beests. The mara hadn't gotten rain in quite a while, but the weekend before we came and even while we were there, it rained some. So the excitement for the trip came whenever a van got stuck in the mud. Notable pinches include when another safari van got stuck right beside a pride of lions preparing to hunt (every camera in the vicinity was trained on that van, waiting for an attack that didn't come) and when our own safari van got stuck about ten feet away from four lionesses who were finishing off a wildebeest (it smelled delightful, and I got lots of pictures of that graphic escapade).

The second adventure was a second trip to Uganda. I went rafting again, twice this time, and I made plans to go back a third time, two weeks after the second. I'm getting a bit better at this rafting nonsense (some call it an addiction), so there were no instances of almost drowning. After the second day of rafting, I met a pair of British girls who invited me to their house just outside of Kamapala, so I went there the following night. They had been volunteering on their own -- they hadn't come with an organization -- in Uganda for three months, were finishing up the following week and continuing on to backpack South East Asia. So they showed me around Kampala, which, as far as I'm concerned, is a far more lovely city than Nairobi could ever be. It was safe, friendly, and very clean. I recommend Kampala and all of Uganda to anyone who travels, it's fantastic. If I volunteered in East Africa again, Uganda would be the place. I hear good things about Rwanda as well, and I'm very much looking forward to traveling there.

The third adventure was a trip to Hell's Gate National Park in Naivasha District. We stayed at a camp on the shores of the Lake, although, as it's a small, warm lake, we didn't really go down there much. I should mention that "we" was a group of volunteers from IVHQ (myslef, Jenny from England, who I currently live with, Jon from Chicago, Andrew from Australia) and another Canadian girl from Vancouver named Abby who we met in the matatu on the way to Naivasha. The main activity was a bike safari through the park, which was amazing. I biked within ten feet of zebras. The road went through a valley and was mostly flat, which made it an amazing ride. Our destination was the rangers' post, where we would hire a guide and take a walk through the famous gorge (which I hear was featured in a Tomb Raider movie). We stopped on the way there, though, so that Abby and I could do some rock climbing on an odd out-cropping called the Tower. When we got to the rangers' post, we hired a guide and set out on a two-hour walk of the gorge. It was beautiful, and I did most of the walk barefoot due to the alternation between climbing rocks and walking through water. Our guide was really cool. His name was John, and he talked to us all about his life story, which was amazing, about the park, and, as all Kenyans do, about the politics of the country. When we finished the walk, Abby, Jenny and I decided to take an alternate route to exit the park. The ride was absolutely miserable. We biked about 20 kms, with a good portion of it being uphill. We were thoroughly exhausted by the time we got back to camp, and delighted in hot showers, huge dinners, and early bedtimes.

Our guide John was so interesting that I feel he warrants a separate paragraph. As we walked through the gorge, he gradually told us some of his story. At fourteen, he was walking home from school with his brother and some friends when they were ambushed suddenly by gunmen. I don't know of the other boys, but John's twin brother was killed. When John was sixteen, his younger sisters (also twins), were supposed to be circumcised, as was the custom of his tribe (the Samburu tribe from the North of Kenya). He said that the circumcision's main purpose is to indicate to the men of the tribe that the girls were ready to be married; they were eleven years old. They had a big party in the days before the circumcision, and on the day of the actual event, John woke his sisters very early and made them walk to a school very far away, where he talked the head teacher into admitting the girls with the promise that he would pay later. Days after the failed circumcision, he was grazing his father's herd of cows when he sold five bulls to pay for his sisters' education. He had to lie to his parents about the bulls, and they were convinced that the girls had run away, died, both, or worse. He only told them the truth after two years. He then joined the army so he could continue to provide for his sisters; he joked that he couldn't marry until his sisters were finished with school, because he was married to them. He was with the army for three years, and during that time, participated in operations in Uganda and Sudan. He left the army, though, after he was deployed as a peacekeeper during the 2007 post-election violence. He told us about the things that he had seen that journalists and photographers hadn't seen, and wouldn't have been allowed to talk about. He said he left the army because he was worried for his mental state. He joined the park rangers after that, because he said that being in the natural world saved him from going insane. And going on the walk with him, we could tell that he was in love with the park and the gorge. He told us about how he went on runs in the morning, through the gorge or through the park, how he went on long walks in the evening to see the animals, how he had trained a wild owl to sit on his shoulder (his father killed the first one because it was a bad omen, but he trained another, and told his father that if he killed the second, he would have him arrested), and how he camped in the caves of the gorge and showered under the hot springs from which Hell's Gate gets its name. Every time we had to climb, he would help all three of us up after he walked up without any effort. Another thing that he loved to do was stop and help the animals and bugs that we would see. He cleaned cobwebs off a stick bug, lifted up a beetle that had a short leg, and picked up a chameleon who was in the middle of the gorge and brought him over to some trees. I'd be very happy to go back again, but only if I could get the same guide. His love for the park showed through everything that he did.

So I have a few adventures coming up. This coming weekend, I'm going to Uganda for a third time. The guys at Adrift have started discounting my one-day trips (from $125 USD to either $65 or $50, depending on how much the guy taking the money likes me), but I'm going on a whopping two-day trip, so that will put a dent in the bank account. The following weekend, I'm hoping to go to Lamu with Jenny. Lamu is a little island on the northern coast that is supposedly the pinnacle of Swahili culture, so we're looking forward to that. I think most of the month of May will be fairly quiet, although I'd like to check out Amboseli National Park and Lake Nakuru, and perhaps I'll climb Mount Longonot. I'll try to post more frequently from now on, so you don't get little blitzes like this anymore.