Home » Kenya » Back to the cradle of man - and 101 photos of Kenya!

Bonjourno! Another VERY long one, but it has been two weeks, so lots to cover, and I promise you it’ll make you think in places. It’ll also definitely make you laugh at me. Enjoy the photos - the connection here is good, and the photos are low quality so it really didn’t take long to upload them. Thought I’d treat you near the end of my travels, especially after the blog length. But it’s quantity over quality. Have fun.

Back to the cradle of man - and 101 photos of Kenya!

Simon Wadsworth
2006-09-04 11:09:08

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safari trucks. No freedom, these passengers just nonchalantly stare into space as if they’re off to jail, often on big 2wks/1month tours - seems horrible. It also means they never see anything of true Kenya.

For example, earlier I stopped off at a local village for a much-needed Fanta (bare in mind I’m in a strange country where soda is cheaper than water), with everyone staring at me - “mzungu, mzungu” (“white guy, white guy” in a slightly derogatory tone), as if I was the first westerner in their village. The usual idleness persists in town - the odd street vendor selling corn, shops that appear to have no custom, plastic little strewn everywhere, and men sit and do nothing in shade, killing time, because they have no jobs and the women presumably do all the work, looking phlegmatic and abstracted. However, all the kids say ‘how are you’, instead of ‘hello’, which makes a pleasant change, and are pleased when I reply in Swahili.

Anyways, while the tourists set off in their yellow trucks and khakis, I signaled down a local passing bus, and hitched my way to Nakuru, Kenya’s fourth largest town for another couple of days. Nakuru is in the middle of an electoral campaign and one that’s reaching national attention for the amount of money sickeningly spent by the candidates every week (over 1 million shillings, or $14k). I asked one local who they would vote for: “the one who saves the most money for the people and spends the least on the campaign.” If only someone told the candidates this.

Despite the microphone noise from the electoral trucks and posters everywhere, Nakuru was a pleasant little place, and I just simply did my usual activity of wandering around and eating in local cafés, where ‘ordinary meals’ = 3 minutes, and ‘special meals’ = 5 minutes. I spoke politics to some locals around the subject of ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’. While chewing miraa (twigs and leaves ...