So what if it's been almost 7 months since I left Africa... I feel like I have an obligation to write this final blog post. Next to me I have my journal with what I remember to be about 25 pages of notes from the last few weeks of travel...So I'll see what I can do to fill you in on all the details. I'm actually super excited my self to begin to flip through these pages and transport myself back into this strange reality that I will never forget.
Last I left off was my last day on the program, where I'll begin is a few weeks later where I have some time in Nairobi to decompress and reflect on my experience, while also filling up like a balloon with anxiousness to go home and a constant fear of impending death, robbery, or serious injury that would prevent me from going home. Here though, I spent a significant amount of time writing my "Brainstorming list" which ended up being a 23 page mess of stories, notes, quotes, and much much more. If I thought a lot happened while we were on the program, that was nothing compared to the weeks to come.
Last day:
In brief, such a fuckin' shit show. Ian, Kallie and I were responsible for pulling out travel money for a lot of the group and ended up with a backpack full of /2,000,000 shillings in a flea market in downtown Arusha. Hopefully I can get a picture up here at some point too but my house doesn't currently have internet.
Mt Kenya:
As 8:00 AM approached on the first morning of post program travel and our bus to Nairobi was scheduled to leave, our group convened for one final breakfast filled with laughter, tears, hugs, goodbyes, see you soons, and most importantly a good many "Thank you"s to everyone for providing the real meat in an experience that I can now say has significantly affected me and changed my life more than anything else I've ever done. Soon after though, our bus left and about half the group headed up North from Arusha to Nairobi. That was planned, but everything after that was not. As Ian, Kelsey, Justin and I arrived in Nairobi we bought a Taxi for Tom to take our extra bags to his host families house as we stayed downtown in search for a Matatu to take us up north to the equator in a town called Nayuki at the base of My Kenya. More money troubles began our adventure with me spending over an hour on the phone with my bank trying to give them permission to let me extract money in Kenya, Justin ended up loaning us almost $800 total so we could pay for our trip in cash (THANK YOU JUSTIN) and we were finally ready to go. After a quick lunch I begin to cross the street, look to my left, begin to step, start looking to my right, and WHAP Ian flings his arm across my chest causing me slight pain and the reaction to step back and catch myself, no more than a half second later I feel wind rush inches from my knees and see the blur of a car race off to my left. To this day my heart has never stopped so suddenly nor have I every been so thankful. Ian literally saved my life that moment and I am forever in debt to him. On the theme of death...normally I avoid Matatu's at all cost in the city, let alone any longer of a journey, but it happened to be the easiest way out and up north so we took our chances and got the ride. The people in the car along with the driver were pretty nice and low key for Kenyan standards, which we were happy about seeing that we passed not one but two fatal matatu accidents on 3 hour drive to Nayuki. The first was simply a matatu sized hole in the railings of a bridge and a large crowed gasping in horror as the looked over the side... Not more than 30 minutes later traffic is stopped and a few get out of the cab to investigate. The nice man sitting in front soon came back with signs of sadness in his face to inform us of "An accident...very bad...whole family...much blood..." as he sat back down. The driver thankfully took note of the situations and drove at a much more reasonable speed the rest of the time and even dropped us off in front of our hotel to avoid any danger we might be in from walking around this city on our own. The ride and my close encounter gave us a lot of time to think about the value of our own lives and the risks that we are taking by traveling on our own. Definitely much different then with lewis and clark, and it gave us the mindset that we have to be very very careful over the next few weeks, even if it means missing out on some opportunities.
As we get to the hotel, what our guide book told us would be $15-20 per room, the hotel hard balled us at over $30 a person, more money then we even had if we wanted to still go on our trek up the mountain the next morning. So, us being cheap Americans took another risk and left, secretly hoping they would call us back in and give us a lower price (classis haggling technique). But, alas, no call arrived and we were out on the streets much later then we should in an unfamiliar town in central africa known for it's Somali influence. NOT the place we wanted to be. Luckily another hotel with much fewer stars was down the road and we split a room there for 6$ total. There were cockroaches but no rats, people wandering up and down the halls, and a poor lock on the door. We took shifts going down to the bar and ordering some heavily fried food for dinner before we passed out for the night after a long day of being thankful for our health, thankful for our safety, and thankful for each other.
We awoke the next morning stoked for our adventure but still unclear if we actually had a reservation or not, seeing that Ian had not heard back from the company for almost a week. But, sure enough they were there waiting for us and as we gave them our deposit, rented some gear, and met a nice spanish women who was joining us on our trek we were off. Before we left Arusha, our professor from the beginning of the trip, David, informed us of the miserable time we were going to have with rain constantly, mud above our knees, and the unlikely chance we'd even be able to see the peaks. Boy was he wrong.
Day 1: Uneventful for the most part. A half day trek from 8000-11000 feet mostly along a dirt service road through a beautiful forest filled with birds (that Devin had never seen before), absolutely incredible flowers, black and white collobus monkeys, and a few downed power poles that the elephants have "been knocking over for fun". Never in America have I had a power outage due to some large beast simply knocking over the power polls for fun... before nightfall we reached our camp at 11,000 feet and above the tree line on the mountains. There we met a few hikers on their way down who confirmed David's suspicions. They had a miserable summit day filled with minimal visibility and blizzards, but it was "totally worth it" but nonetheless continued our low expectations.
Day 2: Begin similar to the first day with clouds but no rain and little mud. Off in the distance with spotted either a heard of eland or oryx (regardless they’re big ungulates) and that was pretty cool. Soon after the clouds lifted for a second and we got our first glimpse of the dramatic twin peaks that are the summit of Mt Kenya and took the opportunity to snap many poor pictures before the clouds hid them again. The hike itself was very hilly and filled with lots of ups and downs, weird forest of high-altitude-non-prickly-cactus-looking-tall-skinny-plant…things, beautiful gorges, and an abundance of hyrax who were much meatier than the one we ate with the Hadza… As we approached our camp at 14000 ft we got an AMAZING view of the peaks as the sun came up and hopefully I’ll be able to find a picture to post here of it. Incredible, expectations already exceeded. Our camp was literally at the base of the peaks, but we got little time to enjoy the view seeing that we were waking up at 3 AM to being our summit hike the next day.
Day 3: We awoke groggily but healthy all still fairing well from the altitude (we grabbed some extra altitude sickness pills from the kids who planned ahead and knew they were climbing Kilimanjaro before they left…). The hike was pitch black as their was no moon and we were still hours from the 6 AM sunrise. The peaks loomed eerily over us as their presence was alerted to us by their outline in the starry sky. Up there, with no clouds, we could see millions of stars to the point where their was almost as much dim white in the sky as black, making a perfect outline for the dramatic peaks. Soon, as dawn hit, we reached our first glacier and had the fun experience of throwing snowballs on the equator. As we reached the summit of Pt Lenana (16,354 ft), the third highest peak on the mountain, we watched the sun rise from below the horizon and light up the African continent. We could see for hundreds of miles over planes, hills, deserts, all the way down to Kilimanjaro and almost out to the coast. Gorgeous. Perfect. Soon though, the cold hit us and after a few picture began to head down for our peak circuit around the main points in the mountain. We took a small nap in the sunny windows of a hut at 15,000 ft and proceeded on an unbeatable day hike around one of the most beautiful and oldest mountain peaks in the world. 12 hours, countless hills, a snowstorm, and many miles later we returned back to camp to relax and celebrate our accomplishments.
Night/Day 4: That night though, was another near death experience and probably the most scared, homesick, frightened, and miserably I’ve ever been. Either I got food poising or altitude sickness hit me late but from 12-4 AM I was physically unable to stop puking and completely unable to control my diarrhea. For hours I was in and out of my bed attempting to quell my sickness with no avail. It was -20 outside and the total was an outhouse attached to the room we were sleeping with, but just as cold. I have memories of just sitting there, literally covered in my own shit and vomit crying my eyes out wish I was home. But I was at 14,000 ft in the middle of fucking Kenya. Literally one of the last places on earth I would want to be dying. By four I was so dehydrated from not being able to drink anything without it immediately coming back up that I thought I could really die up there. This thought really really scared me and made me miss the safety of home more then anything. I would have literally given up everything at that point to immediately be home. But, I would take an Imodium and puke. Take a pepto bismal and puke. There was nothing I could do and I was terrified. Thankfully, after every ounce of fluid was out of my body and I was white as a ghost, I ate quarters of a pepto bismal over the course of an hour and was able to hold it in. Once that began to work I took a couple Imodium and was getting ready to attempt to leave that hell of a camp. Problem was, our plan was to hike in one trail and out another, and the other trail involved hiking out 1000 ft up before beginning the decent. After a while, I decided to tough it and walk ahead. The porters, guides, and other people I was with were generous to split up my pack as I took just the water that was on my back and some packed breakfast should I want to eat it. I left before the rest of the group with one of the guide to get a head start and to make sure I could actually go this route before they all caught up. Amazingly and to everyone’s surprise I made it to the top to begin the decent down, and I started to feel better soon too, even at that altitude. To this day I’m still unsure on what caused me to get sick, but I’m just thankful it’s over. Anyway, if I thought the hike up was pretty, I understand why they wanted us to go down this other route. Rumored to be covered in feet of mud, the multiple clear sunny days before this day dried the trail. We were literally the only people for hundreds of miles as we walked down glacier carved canyons in the most beautiful and sublime place I have ever been. Canyons with rivers flowing down from glacier peaks into waterfalls falling into crystal clear lakes. All while we view in awe from the tops of cliffs hundreds of feet above the valley floor with spires of rock, African birds, and clear skies all around us. Incredible. As miserable as that hike up 1000 ft in the morning was, it was all worth it for the rest of the day. Mid afternoon we arrived at camp, an old army base that was converted into the African version of a lodge. I slept for the next 17 hours, and awoke once to eat (and stomach it this time!).
Day 5: Our last day on the mountain and a huge hike out, we had the option to pay extra to be picked up in a jeep halfway and chose to do that in the interest of time (we wanted to get to Nairobi as soon as possible to find a way to get down to Dar es Salaam as soon as possible). That ride was probably one of the most fun, ridiculous, and hilariously unsafe rides I’ve ever been on. Bouncing up and down for over an hour there were points where the jeep was so deep in mud it would run in through the open window. The jeep literally tipped on its side at one point onto an embankment and we had to push it right side up. The porters climbed on tope and we ended up with 7 people in the seats of the jeep with 5 more on top and all of our luggage and supplies. Nuts. Luckily the jeep didn’t break down like the other tourists we passed… Once in town, we parted ways with our guides, porters, and new Spanish friend and boarded yet another matatu for Nairobi. Note: we paid about a dollar more for the higher class matatu in order to minimize chances of death.
Swahili Words I still wish were used in English:
Pole: Sorry, excuse me, my bad, condolences, the every thing sorry word, always appropriate.
Bado: Not yet!
Karibu: Welcome, but like, Karibu my home, Karibu chai, Karibu this Karibu that…
Sema: Say, sup, speak
Safi: Pure, clean, a state of being
ZANZZZZZIBARRRR:
Per use, the moment we arrived in Nairobi was a total shit show. We needed to obtain bust tickets to get to Dar es Salaam ASAP, but, as usual, obtaining more money was a total bitch. We arrived around 3 PM and the company we were planning on using on sold tickets day of starting at 6 PM (the bus left at 2 AM that night). Not wanting to wait around in downtown Nairobi (one of the most dangerous cities in Africa and the world), we decided to just by tickets for an 11:30 pm bust that night from a sketchy hole in the wall company called “Spider coach” or something with all these sketchy bad ass spider decals everywhere on the bus. Most of our stuff was left out in Rirtua with Tom, who didn’t join us on our climb and instead just hung out with his host fam, and we needed to make it out there to trade out our cold weather clothes for out beach supplies. Like always, the bus we take took 2 hours in rush hour traffic to go it’s normal 30 minute route, and made it out to riruta right around dark. Our plan from there was to grab out stuff and head to the next town up, Ngong, where we would meet up with the family of Justin’s boss from Denver and (as was previously planned) to stay the night with them. Unfortunately we never arrived until close to 8 and had to leave by 10 to catch our bus. So, after a short dinner and pack we were off again. Ian, flying out to Amsterdam the next day did not join us on this section of our journey and was our saddest goodbye yet. Not only had we all just shared an incredible experience with him, but he was off on January 1st for another 4 months in New Zealand.
As we arrived in downtown Nairobi we were very much aware of how silly it was for 3 wazungu to be there that that hour, especially looking like tourist with our backpacks and shorts. No busses are allowed to run at night in Tanzania, so in order to make to Dar es Salaam by sundown, we had to be at the Kenya Tanzania border as the sun rose, the reason for our late departure. We arrived to the office of the bus company at an hour that even a white person versed in Nairobi street smarts would rarely walk on the streets, but we wanted to make sure we got on our bus and that everything was going to be ok. Meanwhile, we left Tom in Riruta where he attended “The BEST party he had ever been to in his entire life” (Tom is 29). After much convincing, we got him to take a cab downtown with ten minutes to spare in order to catch our 11:30 bus on time. Naturally, the bus (coming in from Uganda) didn’t even arrive to until around 2 AM so we were stuck in downtown Nairobi for 4 hour attempting to kept Tom from pissing in the street, and drunkenly wandering off, getting mugged, and causing even more misery and stress for us. Note: we were in the office almost exclusively at this point to avoid attracting attention and the extreme danger of being in that area at that time.
All and all we eventually got on the bus to continue with our long day of travel. After a few hours of sleep we arrived at the border and thank fucking god Tom was finally sobering up. There was a slight moment of panic when we realized that Justin’s Tanzanian visa that we acquired in Zanzibar was misprinted and the incorrect information was simply hand written in. Super sketchy, super illegitimate looking, but, typically, they didn’t give a fuck and Justin got into the country. As we drove off, I witnessed another top 5 sunrise as the sun rose directly behind Mt Kilimanjaro. At this time I was beginning to think that the bus ride wouldn’t be all that bad from here on out, the inside was nice, there were no goats in my lap, and the charterish looking bus even had a tv! Boy was I wrong. Soon, my beautiful sunset moment was horrifically ruined by the conductors decision to play the film “Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings” on the television located almost directly in front of us (as well as the full volume blown out speaker). This is one of those things that, too this day, I will NEVER understand about some parts of Africa. This film was honestly on of, if not the, most horrifically violent and pornographic movies I’ve ever seen. As heads were chopped off with barbed wire and lesbians got it on (only soon to be brutally raped and killed) not a single person (aside from still slightly drunk tom) seemed remotely interested in the film, but even more surprising, not a single one of the Muslim grandmothers, mothers, fathers, or any person spoke a word about how horribly offensive (so us Americans found it) the movie was. There were many children on the bus who, I would like, would likely be pretty effected by watching something like that. I’m still having trouble noting exactly what this says about the culture here, but it is definitely something absurd to make note of. We were tempted to speak out, but as we learned in our months prior, it’s sometime better to just let things happen the way they do without interfering. The rest of the 16 hour bus ride was semi tolerable with minimal bathroom stops, greasy street food, window side venders, and really strange loud music with creepy puppets dancing on the tv… One nice thing about the streets of Africa is that you can buy almost anything you need for next to nothing out the window of your vehicle (fun fact!). By 6 pm we arrived in Dar es Salaam where we met up with Doopy and Kat at the local YMCA hostel.
Dar es Salaam is a much nicer, cleaner, and safer city then Nairobi. So, naturally, we went out clubbing until the wee hours of the morning. The next day Justin, Kelso, Doops, and myself headed out to the ferry dock for 7 days of pumziking (relaxing) on the beautiful white sand beaches of Zanzibar. After a ferry ride and a taxi we arrived at our hotel on the south east side of the island. A modest place where the ocean was a stones throw from the balconies of our bungalows and us four were 2/3 of the entire hotel residents. We paid the exorbitant amount of around $15 a night, but hey, what can I say we were on vacation! After a difficult walk on the beach into town to buy some fresh mangos and pineapple we ate dinner and got a cab to take us up to the next town for a supposed bumpin’ beach party. With no luck we returned to a beach bar near out hotel and the irresponsible trend of partying with our cab driver continued…Luckily we were only a short walk from the hotel, plus the driver was “occupied” in his cab with a lady friend during the later portion of the night. The next day was one of the most difficult days I’ve had in Africa. I’ll just list my problems and difficulties here:
· Getting out of bed
· Slicing my pineapple
· Sand on the water bottle
· Walking further to the water during low
tide
And…that was about it for
problems. Outside out hotel a
local fisherman caught a gigantic red snapper which one of the other 2 hotel
guests suggested we eat together.
Unfortunately, previous dinner engagements rose so they were unable to
attend our dinner. Though, one of
the men, a professional chef in Sweden, still prepared it for us. Still one of the best, delicious, and
spicy meals I’ve ever had (only ~ $6 too, which was really expensive actually…I
love Africa…) Post dinner we were
the only ones in the whole hotel and naturally took over with our own music and
the like until the power shut off around 8 and killed the party. That night, Tom and Kat had traveled up
to the North West Coast where we had stayed a couple months before, had cheap
hotel connections ($12.50), and new would be a little more “upbeat” then the
quite part of the island we were at. The next day was Kat’s 21st birthday, so naturally we purchased 4 gallons of ice cream for her in Stone Town and held it against the air conditioning as we paid our taxi driver extra to speed up north. Kat threw up by around 4 and passed out before we went out to dinner, but all and all I’d say it was a pretty successful birthday party… And Mali showed up too after a stressful travel day filled with matatu like plans, hand written tickets, and motorcycle taxis! Her bags never showed up though and she ended up getting them in Nairobi a week later. The next day was an average beach day in Zanzibar filled with much swimming, tanning, and a few drinks from the bar here and there. Justin and I had the genius idea of paying a local to have 20 chapati’s read for us every morning and spent the rest of our time there eating fried dough. There was another incident involving us attempting to buy around 75 pocket sized packets of Konyagi from a bunch of sketchy rastas. Fuck rastas. That was the beginning of us hating the beach boys that wander around the beaches attempting to sell us snorkeling trips, sunset cruises, drugs, rip us off, hit on the girls, etc etc. That night we went out the The Nungwi Night Club and had yet another African party night filled with run ins with hookers, drunk cab drivers, Germans, and more…
The adventures of Tom’s foot: Tom’s foot was a shit show for the entirety of our trip, always having a fungus, or athletes foot, or weird dead skin and whatnot. Anyway, he decided to use this cream that made his foot extra sensitive to the sun, but before this had never caused him any problems. Well, after the first full day out on the beaches tom got a NASTY sunburn on his foot. Fueled by Konyagi and an urge to dance, he still came out with us to the Nungwi night club and danced the night away. When he awoke the next morning though, he was in blister city. Like, this thing was bigger and taller then my thumb, on top of his foot…in blister form. Gross. He was careful all the next day to not pop it and just didn’t wear any shoes. But we wanted to go out that evening to eat a cheaper restaurant in the village and fashioned tom a makeshift show out of a broken sandal, sock, and duct tape. But, as we returned Tom said his signature, “This is so fucked”. Ooze was oozing through the sock and the blister had popper. I went to go clean up in my room and as I exit the shower I hear, many rooms away, the profanity that tom has learned over the last 29 years. Words I’ve never even heard before came out of his mouth as he screamed in bloody agony. Apparently Kelsey and Doopy are drunk idiots and convinced him to poor African strength hydrogen peroxide on his foot which immediately burned all the skin and everything else off the popped blister, causing 30 minutes of some of the worst pain Tom had ever felt. By the time we were on a bus back to Nairobi a few days later, it had became so swollen and infected that it was twice it’s normal size and finger indents in the swelling would last for minutes…His foot is fine now by the way, but it just shows how easily something can get super fucked up.
The next few days were along the same lines. Unsuccessfully hitting on germans, getting harassed heavily by locals, tanning, swimming, the usual. Fucking asshole beach bums everywhere…I still get angry with them to this day. “Don’t ask me what’s up, ask me how are you, respect me, if you don’t respect me maybe I won’t respect you”. Shut the fuck up…uhg..The best (worst) was when this one guy basically threatened to kill Justin with a huge rope for 2000 shillings (about $1.30). We still didn’t give him money and he just disgruntled walked away.
Out last night on the wonderful island of Zanzibar was one for the books…and probably the last time I will be on that island for a long time. We traveled out to a beach bar a little ways up by cab to a place where we stayed a few months prior. After some fun dancing we noticed Justin had gone missing. Assuming he was just with a girl on the beach we didn’t really think too much of and continued dancing. After about an hour we spotted him walking towards the dance floor and enquired as to where he had been. Speechless, he shrugged his shoulders to every question we asked him and gave a small thumbs up when asked if he’d “gotten a beej”. We assumed he was just drunk but his eyes looking different directions suggested something else. A short while later and a random slap to my face later, he was slightly more coherent and noticed a huge hole in his pocket, as if someone had cut it from the inside. We then came to the conclusion that he was drugged and then robbed in his zombie state (though no idea why they needed to cut a hole in his pants…he was pretty defenseless). Luckily all he lost were 6000 shillings (about $4) and his old $5 cell phone that was going to be useless in a few days anyway (and his much more expensive shorts to the huge hole in the pocket). Hilariously, they left his Konyagi packet in his pants…Even the thieves didn’t want to drink that shit. All and all we were just happy he was ok and ready to leave that party. Though, the night soon turned from bad to worse as the beach boys and locals got more and more forceful with the girls in our group. Knowing what happened to Justin, we weren’t about to take any chances and were getting ready to leave as soon as the music ended around 3. Though, as always, we couldn’t find fucking Tom and tension were rising. To make a long and blurry story short, while combing the beach for tom the beach boys began to get more and more belligerent, forceful, creepy, and dangerous. They began trying to pick fights with the guys and more and more physical with the girls. As the music ended, more people left and it gave them more of an advantage to pick on us. The night ended with finding drunk tom, running to the cab, and paying him extra to peel out and drive off as we closed the door and they banged on the side of the cab. I’m not a fighter, but there was a moment where a guy grab my arm, I turned around, said “Don’t ever fucking touch me” slapped his arm away and got in the car. Never have I ever, and hopefully never will ever be so close to turning and punching a large African man in the face...
After that night, 120 total Konyagi packets, and Zanzibar as a whole we were more then ready to leave (especially since a bunch of beach bums were ready to literally kill us). We caught a ferry that afternoon to the mainland where we some how snuck up into first class (read: being white casually walking into first class). The next 3 hours were spent in bean bag chairs on the covered roof of the ferry watching the ocean pass behind us. A week prior we hired a man to buy us bus tickets and met with him to exchange the rest of the money for the tickets. Overall the guy was kind of an asshole, but we still put a lot of faith into him. Turns out the tickets we received for 6 am the next morning to Nairobi were legitimate tickets, but two of them were for the same goddamn seat on the bus (“Martin seat 39”. All the tickets had generic white people names). After some stress we used our East African connections and ended up contacting the manager of the bus company directly who personally assured us everything would work out. We had to meet him at the terminal instead of the bus stop though which meant getting on the bus at 4:30 am. Another early morning… Though, in the end everything ended up working out just fine! This bus ride was much more tolerable and incredibly less offensive then the last. Problem was that the bus had engine issues before we eve left and occasional engine smoking and stops were frequent along the 22 hour journey. Then, like nothing had happened, we were once again in downtown Nairobi at 2:30 am. We quickly hopped into a taxi before getting in a “Nairobbery” and showed up to the Trans-Africa house (Justin’s bosses family) at an unreasonable hour. And then, traveling had ceased. That house in Ngong is where I stayed for the next five nights and with Justin there for the next 3. Him along with most others left on the 20th so I spent the 2 days bumming around Riruta and Ngong by myself. These days in Nairobi were fairly uneventful and spent mainly collection thoughts, resting, buying presents, and generally preparing myself for my return home. As I wrote then as my last journal entry: “These last few days have definitely hit me that its time to come home and by now (especially after Zanzibar) I’m more than ready.” I had been going on a slight chocolate binge to hold myself until my return and on my last whole day I met with Katie where we went to the local Nakumatt market (high class shopping center) to attempt to assimilate ourselves into western culture. Though, sitting there next to a frozen yogurt shop in a western style mall was more than overwhelming. And as I finished my journal, “I can’t even imagine what being home will be like”.
