Turkana Blog part 1

Hello all!!

As I write this I’m stuck at home with a stomach bug. Everyone else on our trip has had it, so I guess it’s only fair.

Lake Turkana was an amazing experience. In one week we got to see more of Kenya than most Kenyan’s will ever see. Every day we drove through amazing extremes, from lush forest to desert, from no man’s land down to the Rift Valley. Kenya is fantastic and beautiful.

We went with a group called Gametrackers, which leads a lot of different tours around Kenya and East Africa. We took what I think is a converted lorry, there was a separate cabin for the driver, cook and assistant cook (who were all amazingly sweet, and made delicious food too) We sat in the separate back area that had all the seats that we sat in, along with Steven our tour guide. To get to the back area you had to climb up a small ladder. All of our supplies for the week (including about 400 liters of water) sat underneath the sitting area.

The first day we drove from Nairboi north past Thika, across the equator (where I fell off the bus and got a beautiful bruise on my arm!) around Mt Kenya, which we couldn’t really see because it was cloudy, and up to Samburu National Park. Along the way we stopped in a few different towns for bathroom brakes and the like, and at one point our tour guide turns around to us and says, “this town is know for being the last town with paved roads.” And sure enough, it was in fact the last town with paved roads. Roads in Nairobi are often filled with pot holes and are known for being awful, and interestingly enough these roads were probably better off than some of the paved roads that we’ve driven on.

We stayed in Samburu for two nights. The first full day we were there we went on a morning and evening game drive, which was amazing. We saw so many elephants, zebras, giraffes, dik-diks, oryx, hornbills, gazelles, baboons, and a number of other animals. My favorites were the elephants. So adorable, plus they’re matriarchal, which doesn’t hurt. At one point we watched a few baby elephants play fighting. There were also a lot of really cool birds, including ones that are called suberb starlings.(or something) they’re bright blue with green bellies. It rained during our evening game drive, which was pretty cool because a lot of the animals came out after the hot day. We saw a cheetah with three of her cubs, and 2 leopards lounging in the trees, along with the usual assortment of other wildlife.

During the day we went to a local Samburu village that survives by having visitors pay money in exchange for a tour of the village and a few cultural dances (cultural tourism is fascinating, and is both frustrating and awesome…I’m still not sure how I feel about it, and we visited three villages that week….) when we got there the women from the surrounding clans came and put necklaces around us. First the moran (warriors, men between the ages of 19 and 29, or from circumcision until about 30) did the dance that they do about hunting and strength, which is combined with a few very high jumps, and then the women pulled our hands and made us join them in dance that the warriors dance with the young girls of the tribe. After that the women sang the welcoming song. We took a tour of the village, sat in people’s houses, saw the classroom, and the blacksmith’s workshop. The we were made to run the gauntlet of women and young girl trying to sell us way too expensive jewelry.

It was interesting to see that way that people decorate themselves. The Moran like to decorate their hair a lot, and we saw one man who had sewn plastic flowers in his hair as a Mohawk. It was awesome. It was also really interesting to see what life is like. The Samburu are related to the Maasai people, they speak the same language, with different accents, and look very similar. However, while the Maasai have largely stopped female circumcision (which was outlawed in Kenya in the last 10 years or so) the Samburu still practice it. A girl is circumcised on the day she is married, usually about age 14. Men on the other hand are circumcised at around 15, but not married until late twenties early thirties. Our tour guide Steven, was samburu, but despite living in Nairobi still wanted to marry a 14 year old circumcised girl. Girls younger than 14 usually are the girlfriends of moran, and are free to have sex with them…and people believe that girls this young can enjoy sex. The man who showed us around the village had also studied in Nairboi, and because of this he doesn’t want to marry a girl who is circumcised, but he knows that if he brings a girl from another village to his village to marry he can’t leave her alone because she’ll be circumcised while he’s not there. Very very interesting.

That next morning we work up to an interesting surprise. Right next to our outhouse, which was pretty close t o camp itself. Were huge piles of elephant poop. Apparently elephants walked right next to our camp, and none of us noticed.

There was also a family of baboons that keep trying to steal food from us as we were eating, and while we weren’t looking they snuck into our bus and stole some of our food. We’re still not entirely sure how they got in there.

The next day we drove up to Marsabit national Park, stopping to see a few different volcanic craters. It was really interesting to drive through the dry savannah land only to drive up a mountain and end up in a forest where everything is lush and green. We stopped by a place called Paradise Lake, which isn’t really a lake anymore, because there’s been so little rain recently. On our drive to Marsabit we drove by two mountains that are sacred to the Samburu..when it hasn’t rained in a long time people go there to pray and with in a few months it rains again. It’s called Blue mountain (I think). We also had our first experience “Checking the tire pressure” otherwise known as bush toilets, which became increasingly more hilarious as the week went on and there was less and less vegetation.

well this about covers the first third of the trip...i'll be posting again later this week with the rest!
miss you all!