Africa part 1 – Mount Kenya and life in Kenya

Nairobi

My 6 week long Africa stay started on Monday morning, the 28th of october. I arrived Nairobi Airport early in the morning, ready for visiting Mount Kenya. After meeting the guide, some repacking and of course some waiting, we headed for the city Nanyuki. I soon learned about “African time”; No hurry, no stress, and Hakuna Matata (no problem, det årner seg…) In Kenya, we don’t think, we live, one Kenyan told me. I think I have just left one of the world’s most organized and structured country, and arrived in a quite unorganized and unstructured one:-) However, both with bad sides and good sides.

We drove to Nanyuki in a 10-passenger-bus. The bus system here works as follows. You go to the bus station, and find a bus going to the city where you want to go. When the bus (10 passenger) is full, it will drive….Not easy to do exactly planning then.. .:-) But it works well, there are a lot of people travelling with the buses. There are some normal public buses too, but that takes really loooong time…. I have heard. (However, near Nairobi, there are the Nairobi public buses, and it exists two different types, so you can choose; Either the noisy, with high music, driving fast, breaking all the rules, or the slow and silent one, following all the traffic rules, but that need much more time to get to the destination.)

The road took us through a couple of villages and cities before arriving the destination. Since the main road goes through the cities/villages there are speed bumps for slowing down the traffic, and I have never experienced such steep speed bumps before.. Not possible to pass them faster then maximum 10 kmh… Other things I noticed along the road was quite a lot of goats, sheeps and cows (Which were pretty thin I think), and that price of fuel is almost 4 times the price of milk, so we shouldn’t complain about our fuel prices at home I guess…. :-)

Vegetables and chipati

Early afternoon we arrived Nanyuki. The city lies on Equator. We stayed the night in a hotel here. And I got the first taste of Kenyan food here. And I love it :-) Chapati (a sort of pancakes), Mataha (peas), ugali (corn), beans, and a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, and the fish Tilapia. For breakfast we also have a porridge from millet – mmmm. The bathroom in my room had a shower, almost just above the toilet, quite funny :-) but it doesn’t seem unusual in this country …:-)

The next the 4-days Hike in Mount Kenya National Park (or climb as they call it here, although it is not anything near climbing…:-) ) started. It was me, a Kenyan girl, our guide, and two porters/cooks, and in addition some more groups along the way. The People here are by the way incredible good in English, although I do need to get use to this Kenyan English dialect… :-) They learn it in school, or also even earlier at home. So since I am quite use to speaking german, and not English, as my foreign language for the time being, it is almost as an English language course for me going to Kenya.

Camp

On the way to the top, Pt Lenana, we lived in camps on the way, consisting of not-well-isolated huts. Wow, it was cold… I froze so much during my first days in Kenya, not very logically maybe…In the huts, there were people from Kenya, America, Australia, and other European countries, but no one froze as much as me from Norway (during evenings and nights in the hut)….Not even the Kenyan girl travelling with me who never had experienced lower than 11 degrees Celsius before… and almost no one was less bothered by the heat during daytime:-) One of the evening, shortly after 20 o’clock when I was talking (talking not yelling, yes) with two german guys, one of the other hikers came from the room and asked us to be quite, she wanted to sleep, at 20 o’clock… I found that a little bit early…. (Didn’t want to go into the cold sleeping bag to early) The huts had fire places, but it wasn\t allowed to make fire in them anymore. At least we hd warm (and very very good!) food, tea and hot chocolate. But except for that, it was a very nice hike. I saw lot of new trees, plants, flowers and animals.

Sun rise in Mount Kenya, 6 o\clock in the morning, 4985 m

And the third morning, just at sun rise, 06 o’clock (Luckily we only needed to sleep in the cold huts until 2 o’clock the last night…) we reached the peak, 4985 m. A wonderful view and sun rise at the top!!!

After that we went down another route, a route that almost no one hike, so there were only us and two other hikers, nice :-) And the route is the nicest one, going along a canyon, and some small lakes. We slept the last night in a camp at 3000 m where it was also allowed to make fire in the fire places – so nice! :-) Outside the camp, we saw mountain antilopes, ilan (a sort of antilope too), and waterbucks – very cool. We also saw footprints and droppings from elephants and buffalos, but they were hiding in the forest. The two days before, we also saw the white, hairy Columbus monkeys, and a lot of rock hyrax (marmot like animals)

The last day we walked a couple of hours, before 4wd took us the last part back into sivilisation. If I hadn’t seen it myself I would never had thought that the land rovers could drove on this “road”. (And if I had knew how slowly and difficult it was, I would have asked to run behind or in front of the cars instead of sitting inside. If it is possible to run or hike, I prefer that rather then driving car. But it seems to be the opposite opinion of the Kenyan (and maybe other) people too; If it is somehow possible to drive, than that is preferred before walking….:-)

The village I live in in the weekend,
outside Nairobi 

I had a very nice hike in the Mount Kenya Park. I had some problem keeping the speed down, so I didn’t walked away from the other, but else it was good (Except for the freezing). A little bit surprising, I barely felt the altitude (Maybe I have got partly acclimatized in the Swiss Mountain the last year….), no problem at all (except that it is colder when you get that high). Back in Nairobi, I was met and welcomed by Samuel and Mary. We went to their live in home in a village just outside of Nairobi, where I spent the weekend. A veeeery easy and calm one. That’s how the weekends are I learned, not exactly what I am used to, my legs are calling they want to run….:-) Although the houses are smaller and not that equipped as home in Europe, they all have TVs, and the TV is on all the time, quite amazing. On Sunday we went to church, it started at 9 o’clock, so we left the house at approximately 9.20:-) (The African time…), driving 7 people in a Toyota Corolla.

I have had quite a lot of time the last days (on the huts during the hike and in the weekend), so, of course, I have been knitting a lot. And the Kenyan people find that very very funny, but also nice and interesting. And I have started drinking tea, actually, the last days, almost only tea, except for some water. Kenyan black tea with hot milk, but it is actually quite good. And the next thing the Kenyan find extremely funny is that I prefer the “milky tea” without sugar…. They are really laughing when they see it:-) But the Kenyan people are really very nice! :-)

Monday morning I will arrive the village Gombolo (or Ngumbulu in Kenyan), where I will work the next week. That is a much more remote and less developed village. Will be exciting and interesting. I am looking forward to the next week, and in 1-2 weeks you will hear from me again I guess :-)

Vibeke

More pictures: Pictures