Safari Jema

Sam and I in the Safari van.

A simba enjoying the early morning. At one point there were at least five lions crawling around on the tree.

A hyena strolled along with all the other animals hardly caring. The only ones to tkae a defensive posture were a few cranky warthogs.

Sam and I met in Nairobi on November 18th and visited Masai Mara and Lake Nakuru National Parks before heading down to the Coast and Mpeketoni. Kenya is amazing! It is ridiculous how much wildlife we saw within the national parks. And the best way to see wildlife is to chase it down in a mini-bus with a top that pops up for wildlife viewing. Sam and lucked out and had the whole van - just us and the driver. The diver tore around looking for the big game while Sam and I tried to keep from being bucked out of the van. When wildlife was spotted we would rush off to get as close to it as possible. At one point Sam and I were staring eye level at two young lions not much more than a few yards from the van. They could care les that we were there - that is until Sam waved goodbye at them as we started to pull away. The quick movement seemed to perk their interest!

No joke - this elephant honked at the cheeta after the two spent a few minutes together. The cheeta must of found it difficult to do any hunting with a parade of safari vans close behind.

Chasing down wildlife and bouncing around in the car started to wear on us by the fourth day and last day of the safari. We did away with the driving on bumpy roads and looking at wildlife for two days of just driving on bumpy roads as we went first to Mombassa and then to Lamu. In Mombassa we met with Charles Kirubi’s brother, a teacher in a local primary school. He took us out for dinner and invited us to stay at his place outside of the downtown area. To get to his place we had to board a ferry off of the island that Mombassa is on to get to the mainland. His home was in a major residential area where the homes are too close to fit a car down the winding roads. His home was quite nice with multiple rooms. The only bad part was the shared pit toilet out back that had more cockroaches than I have ever seen in my life. Yeow!

One of the many rhino's we saw at Lake Nakuru national park. The van in the background had to back up as this big guy choose a path that nearly put him smack dab into the side of the van.

The next day we made it to Lamu. Along the way we crossed the Tana River Delta. There hadn’t been a whole lot of rain in the area but the delta was completely flooded. Rain from up in the highlands is all trying to get to the coast via that river it seems. There were lots of people hanging around on the high ground of the road side, some even starting to build temporary shelters. Mpeketoni is not affected at all because it is not in the delta, but many people are helping out with shuttling food and supplies to the affected areas.

Sam as close as he could get to the two young lions.

In Lamu, Sam and I went out on a Dhow, a traditional sailing vessel for a day of swimming, fishing, and getting baked by the sun. Our boat captain and his assistant were more than happy to keep the five passengers entertained with lots of joyful singing. Unfortunately, I had to rush back to Mpeketoni for a big meeting between donor group called the e8 and MEP. The e8 is donating over $200,000 to MEP to rehabilitate the grid and extend it a short distance. That was the first bit of good news, the second bit was that the Ministry of Energy has agreed to have the national electricity company take over the new generators and sell the power to MEP at a rate around 5 KSh/kWh (about 7 cents/kWh). MEC will become a distribution only company and Mpeketoni will get hugely subsidized electricity. Not good for economic efficiency but great for promoting electricity use in Mpeketoni.

Our trusty dhow washed ashore for an afternoon of swimming and hiding from the sun.

In other news, the droop CT arrived and we were able to synchronize the generators (still don’t understand how it all worked), but now one of the generators is overheating so we are still stuck rationing power. We did manage to serve the entire load in town for about two days, but now its back to the same old routine. Only problem is that we don’t have any good leads on what is causing the overheating. At least the generators are keeping us busy, wouldn’t want this to be easy or anything…

We swear by SPF 60 sunscreen to preserve that fresh pasty white look. Sam is holding our fishing gear for the afternoon. Funny part is that we were able to catch three fish with the tackle.