Things are Changing!

Many of the things traveling around East Africa for the past 10 years sadly, yet wonderfully, I’ve become accustomed to. However, that was not the case this morning!

Today we start our trek home. The journey begins with battling it out with Nairobi traffic at possibly the worst time of the day, early morning, and us needing to go from one side of town, through City Center out to the airport.

Little did I know that the Southern By-pass had been completed. It’s been part of the scenery for a long time providing jobs for Kenyans with the Chinese winning the contract and overseeing the job. In times past we’ve been on a very short completed section of it, but today Julius, the driver from our guest house, assures me that now that it’s completed, we can accomplish the journey from guest house to the airport in perhaps only one hour instead of the usual two or three at this time of day.

Today I saw parts of Nairobi I’ve never seen…just to getting to the on-ramp of the by-pass. Once on it, it was crazy! Instead of the congested, no lanes policy on the typical one or even three lane streets of Nairobi, here was a California two-lane marked freeway, cars moving about 50 mph (ok, that’s not so much CA!); very few matatus—the bane of all of Nairobi driver’s and pedestrian’s existence, filled to the max with 12 people in a 9 passenger van, weaving in and out of cars at will; “lorries” speeding along undeterred delivering products up-country; and relaxed drivers motoring away respectful of the road and each other. It was almost a bit disappointing. East Africa is changing—at least in the cities. They call it “coming up,” as in coming up to a higher level with “first world” countries. After two months of travel in typical, rural Africa, my brain was seriously scrambled!

But, hooray!!! All is not lost!!! Indeed, I am still in Africa! While things may be changing, change comes slowly and while the new begins to seep in, some things, thankfully, are slow to relinquish generations of tradition and lifestyle.

Here are some examples:

Suddenly slowing down, I looked up to see why Julius was putting on the brakes, but no big deal and barely worthy of a comment by him, it was just two, traditionally clad, red plaid-blanketed Maasai warriors fresh off the plains, crossing the road with their small herd of goats.

Alongside either side of the “freeway,” streams of people were walking mostly in single file hurrying in the early morning fog to get to a job or buy or sell at one of the many traditional markets. Women were dressed in longish skirts with double kangas (traditional African piece of fabric), one to keep her warm, the other to double wrap herself and her small child or baby strapped with another piece of fabric to her back; and men were wearing big parkas to ward off the dampness and cold from the rains last night.

And, yes, as is very typical, there was a herd of skeleton-thin cows herded by two Maasai men, spears in hand used as a walking stick, a cattle prod, a leaning stick or to ward off predators. These protectors of the community’s wealth are constantly in search of grasses for their precious cattle, and if it happens to be alongside the freeway or even in the middle of busy Nairobi, so be it.

As always, stately acacia trees stand tall. They speak so profoundly of the ones in Maasai Mara providing shade for lions, food for giraffes, a limb for a leopard to haul their kill up, so they can eat without being interrupted. In the city, they provide shade for folks to sit on the ground and rest under. Oftentimes their vast branches provide precariously balancing nesting spots for huge, loud storks and their young. They seemingly could care less that crazy, hectic Nairobi life is going on all around underneath them.

And, in very common entrepreneur style, many people have set up their businesses in make-shift wooden stalls alongside the road to sell morning African tea (half hot milk, half tea and about 4 teaspoons of sugar) and mendazi (fried donut type triangular breakfast item) to potential customers.

Stretching out alongside the road was believe it or not, the western boundary of Nairobi National Park where nature co-exists with urban life…well, ok, limited, but there is acreage designated to give value to definitely one of Kenya’s most prized resources—if not to Kenyans at least to the hundreds of tourists coming each year. Lions, zebras, rhinos and many other animals find safety in this space. Today we saw far in the distance a family of giraffes majestically walking in single file across the plain, oblivious to the frantic pedestrians racing to work and speeding cars, like us, anxious to get to Kenyatta International Airport.

These are just a few of the things I saw early this morning. For absolute sure, there’s no place like home in California; but I can confidently say, there’s definitely no place on earth like Africa.

Here are some rather poor photos, taken from our dirty-windowed car speeding by traditional sites. Hopefully, they’ll give you an idea of some of the things we saw.

So, that was the drive to the airport…after howdy-do’s with several security stops and a lengthy visit with the gal at immigration…I don’t know something about Roger having to give his fingerprints because he’s under 65 and my not having to being over 65 and her laughing and joking about how proud Roger was to have an older wife…anyway, you can see it all takes time. It’s the lovely Kenyan way: most human encounters are another opportunity for relationship. Anyway, once truly inside the airport and settling down to wait out the hour and a half til departure…we joined the rest of the travelers in what is perhaps the best thing to do: