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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to the forest the following morning.

I met a very friendly and knowledgeable guide called Nancy, who took me round the forest telling me lots of fascinating facts that one only ever needs to know for a game of Trivial Pursuit, such as where a monkey drinks and which plant cures prostrate cancer. A guide was a necessity too as none of the trails are marked, although I did go for a walk on my own, employing the art of wooden sticks for arrows on the ground. It made a change to see monkeys other than Long-tailed MaCaques, and there were plenty of Black and White Colubis Monkeys, and Blue Monkeys to keep me amused with my nerdy binoculars for hours, before retiring to bed with my oil lamp.

Nancy also invited me to her family’s home - the first Kenyan thatched, mudhouse I’d ever been inside of and very cosy, with lots of cushions, calendars and a cat. But the real treat came the following morning, getting up at 5am and climbing, by torchlight, a nearby hill, in time for sunrise. The jungle was slowly waking with a flooding cacophony of sound, and the stunning view from above the tree-tops, covered in mist as far as the eye can see, as the sun slowly rose above the horizon, was indescribable in words. Coming back, we took a detour into a bat cave slightly smaller than Batman’s, but with hundreds of bats, their wings flapping about my face, testing that old manhood of mine from New Zealand once more.

And that’s my journey across Kenya complete - I said goodbye to Nancy, balancing myself on a poda-poda, and took two matatus (one of which ran out of petrol) to Kisumu back on the south side of the Equator once more, where I am now. It’s Kenya’s third largest town and situated on the edge of the great Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest freshwater lake. It’s been an interesting two weeks and besides what I’ve said here, I feel I’ve also gained a greater understanding of the country.

The situation in Kenya is difficult to describe, that I dare not say too much; it’s best if people come to see for themselves, as long as they keep their eyes open and don’t spend all their time in big, yellow safari trucks. On the surface, things seem good and sights are no different to the poverty I’m sadly used to seeing in Asia. There’s free primary school education, much traffic on the roads, many are taking hold of a new work-ethic, whether it’s selling yoghurt through a bus window or making coffins on a street corner, and public transport does at least exist and is cheap. Even the subsistence-style mud and straw huts make a more positive impression on my eyes than many of the concrete dumps you see around.

However, look further and you notice the incredibly poor road conditions (though, this is not hard), hospitals only present in the major towns, businesses in towns and villages struggling to get 10 customers a day, one fire station to serve all of Nairobi, and the odd slums seen on the passing buses.

Reading the national newspaper, an even bigger picture emerges - corruption is a common story and there were two recent 2-page spread articles I read: the first discussing a squatter settlement of people relocated by the government and then deliberately ignored and now forgotten; the second explaining how of Nairobi’s 3 million people, only 200,000, less than 10%, have access to clean drinking water. Well, at least it’s allowed to be reported in the national press, which is more than can be said for many stricter countries. Though, when a newspaper in Kenya is 7 times more expensive than its counterpart in India, and few own TVs or even have electricity, one wonders who gets to hear these issues…

Something for me to think about at the Queen Vic…