Again, my fellow dancer at Divine (now an instructor), Susan, just breaks my heart with a video that encompasses everything about how I feel about dancing.

As an aside, I know I have been MIA here for a long while, and I’m working on getting back on the horse, and I have a lot to say. I’ll be writing again soon. As soon as I figure out a few free moments.

The weather yesterday was absolutely beautiful, and frigid, but so becalmed that we ended up motoring around with the sails down, looking for orcas. We never did find them, but we saw a lot of sea lions. At the end of the day, though, we ran into a little squall and I got to take the helm as we heeled over, busting a neat 6.5 knots through the whitecaps.

Today was gorgeous and sunny, with a slight breeze, and after having a crepe breakfast, we sailed back down in the sunshine. I was bundled up to my eyeballs, though, as it was absolutely freezing out. By the time we got home I was chilled to the bone, and more than a little sunburnt, but happy. I’m so excited to really learn how to sail and to spend more time out on the water making new friends.

Fiona Apple’s dog, Janet, is dying of cancer, so she cancelled her South American Tour, and this is the letter she wrote to her fans there:

It’s 6pm on Friday,and I’m writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet.
I am writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.
Here’s the thing.
I have a dog Janet, and she’s been ill for almost two years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She’s almost 14 years old now.I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then ,an adult officially – and she was my child.

My baby

Jay Inslee is leading in the governor’s race, and R74 is passing, which allows the legalization of gay marriage in Washington state. This is the first election where voters approved gay marriage, as opposed to legislative law making it legal (see Vermont, etc). Maine and Maryland have approved it in their states, and I believe Washington will make it a trifecta. I am very, very proud of my fellow citizens right now.

My friends Jessica and Ina, who were married in a civil ceremony over a year ago, will be going to the courthouse to ratify the legality of their union on December 8th, and they have already asked me to be their photographer.

Again, I cried. I am very proud and humbled to be a part of their ceremony, and to be honored in this way.

Here’s to us, America:
“There is a morning inside you
waiting to burst open into light.”

~ Rumi

4 more years of me being in charge of my vagina.

4 more years wherein there is no such thing as “legitimate rape.”

Only 25% of Washington votes are in so far, and the projections here are bad, as it still looks like we may have a republican governor and no civil rights extension for marriage, but I am not done holding my breath and praying here.

Fingers still crossed…

One of my students today, working on our lessons.

I was supposed to have a couple of girls in this Filiamujuani class, but they didn’t show up either day. Ken and I were both disappointed, and he tried to explain to me the differing social expectations and pressures on men and women in Kenyan society. A girl will be expected to cook, clean, take care of the family, go to school, and prepare to be a wife. If she is single at 21, she is considered an old maid and everyone begins to wonder what is wrong with her. One of the reasons Ken and I were both so excited for this opportunity was that I would be a woman teaching women, showing them that they really can be a woman in this world, a non-domestic world, if that’s what they want. Unfortunately, I won’t get that chance this year, but maybe in the future. Ken is determined to bring me back next year. In fact, he keeps sending me job leads, hoping I will find something to keep me in Nairobi.

Counseling office behind our office.

As I was leaving the office today, Ken asked me what I had planed for the weekend, and I told him that Krista and I are planning a safari to the Maasai Mara, which is the game park to the west, and homelands of the Maasai tribe. He looked at my 24-105mm lens and asked if I had a bigger lens for the animals. I told him no, and he reached into the safe, pulling out a 70-200 image stabilized lens, and handed it to me. “Borrow this,” he said. “I’ll see you Monday.”

This lens is the one I sometimes rent for weddings, but have never been able to buy. It runs about $2400 new, and is a gorgeous, wonderful piece of glass. My jaw dropped, and I may have become a bit misty. What an amazingly generous gesture. Delicately, I took the lens, thanking him profusely. He just grinned and said, “You need longer glass.”

When I got home, Krista, Doris (the house helper) and I piled into the car with the boys and stopped by the house of a friend of Krista’s. We dropped the boys and Doris off there and continued on to Toi Market, a local market that sells used clothing, mainly, shoes, and pirated music and DVDs (no, we didn’t get anything pirated).

Glassware shop at Toi market.

The market is a warren of sheds made from tree branches, 2x4s, tin paneling, train cars, and anything and everything that can be found and used. It’s an incredibly photogenic place, fascinating really, but the people get very angry if you take a picture of them, or of their shops, and they will yell at you and chase you out of the market,trying to get yo to pay them for the image.

Toi warrens.

Since Krista needs to be able to come back from time to time, as she lives here, that wasn’t really an option for us. However, I did buy some really cool mismatched glassware (of course), so I asked the shopkeeper if I could take a picture of her shop if I bought all 4 glasses (part of my barter), and she reluctantly acquiesced. At another place, Krista told the owner I would only try on the boots he was pushing at me if she could photograph me trying them on. When I didn’t buy them after all, he demanded ten thousand shillings (about $130), and we just walked away. He knew he was being ridiculous.

My new glasses

I took a few sneaky images with my iPhone too, pretending I was looking at messages or something.

Fried fish at the market. You can buy a whole one for a few shillings, less than a couple of bucks. No, i didn’t try it. It smelled unhealthy.

The fish fryer and the man who fries them.

I am going to try to sleep now. Tomorrow Krista and I are off to the Maasai Mara for that safari, and we will be gone for 3 days. I hope we get to see some wildlife action!

Exercising the “rule of thirds.”

Today was kind of a great day. Ken picked me up around 11:00, waving at me from behind his shades as he pulled up in a cobalt blue coupe, smile beaming. We went to the Zindua office, the same place where we met with the other students yesterday, and settled down to the business of talking about photography.

Exercise in changing your perspective.

I don’t consider myself a fantastic photographer, though I do think I have made to occasional interesting or beautiful image, and this is one of the reasons why I was so incredibly nervous to teach other people about this very personal art. What do I know about anything?! Well, today I learned that I do know something, and I’m not terrible at explaining those few things to a handful of Kenyan men. Apparently they learned something yesterday, too, and were really excited to show me the images they captured on their photo walks last night, playing with shutter speed and depth of field.

Frame within frame.

We started by going through their images and trying to answer their questions, some of which were technical (how many changes in the number you see on your display equals an entire f-stop) and some of which were just funny (how do you carry your camera so your neck doesn’t get sore). We talked for about an hour and a half, then wandered around outside of the office to look for example of the rule of thirds, frame within a frame, triangle, and leading line. We would discuss each one, then shoot a few images and I would answer some questions.

It was a great way to get a practical idea of what we were doing, but it was also fun to be out in the 79 degree spring day. We stopped for lunch at the tiny cantina behind the office, which is sort of the Kenyan, wheeless equivalent of a US taco truck, and had lentil, skuma (chapped, cooked, kale), and chapatti (somewhere between a tortilla and a pancake) while my students asked me about life in the US. I had to preface everything I told them with, “This is not how most Americans live, but…” They wanted to see pictures of Otis and asked questions about what kind of dangerous animals live in the water. Of course, that would be a concern here, where you would be liable to be greeted in the morning by an angry hippo or a hungry croc instead of a happy otter.

This afternoon Krista, the boys, Doris (the house helper, which is a typical person to have in a Kenyan house) went over to a friend’s house for a kid playdate. Wendy, a British diplomat’s wife with 3 kids, met us at the door and led us to the back yard with tea. The kids paused to dress up inn pirate gear before tumbling out into the yard (which Wendy calls the garden). They have an entire Swiss Family Robinson style tree house network, with swinging bridges connecting 3 trees, plus a giant sand box with a thatched roof over it, AND a swimming pool. It’s pretty much kid paradise.

Wendy is one of the friends that Krista has made here who will not be staying long. Of course, diplomats move around every 3 to 5 years, and their time is almost up. This is also a normal occurrence with UN workers and missionaries, so the Wendles say goodbye an awful lot. It’s really hard, and not just for the kids. They hadle it pretty gracefully, which I guess you have to do when your life is constant turnover, but I don’t know if I would be able to do it so well. I think I might be more hesitant to make new friends.

Regardless, it’s a sweet little community here, though there is every sort of outside danger you can imagine (hijacking, kidnappings, and robbery are common here), so everyone lives n a gated complex with an armed guard. You get used to it, I guess. Even the offices are guarded and you get your car checked for bombs at the mall. It’s a different sort of normals, and you learn to adapt.

I am working with Ken Oloo, the man who runs both FilamuJuani and Zindua, and a few of his pupils. While Ken is a photographer, and a darn good one, he tells me he doesn’t know where to begin teaching. Because I learned basic photography in a classroom setting, however, I think I have a better grasp on how to break it back down to a classroom setting. That doesn’t mean i wasn’t crazy nervous going into today, though, so I did what any big nerd student does — I studied, I overprepared, and I wrote papers. In total I put together 6 documents on camera controls, light, depth of field, composition, posing, and shutter speed, which I then emailed to Ken to have handouts for the students and reference for me to speak from.

We started by having everyone grab a camera and going over the controls, the shutter speed, and depth of field, or aperture. This was one of the parts that had induced anxiety for me when I was planning curriculum, and so I did what I do when I’m nervous: I went for a walk. The three students followed me outside and we took photos of this motorcycle, changing aperture to get different depths of field, changing shutter speed to control light, and generally having an on the spot Q&A session. In all, it was awesome.

I think the next week and a half of this are going to be amazing. I’m very excited.

The Wendles at the Windsor

The Windsor pool

The boys were so incredibly excited about going to the pool, and once we got there they nearly wanted to jump in without changing into their suits. While it remained cloudy throughout the time at the pool, the water was so warm that it almost didn’t matter. And yes, I got in the pool (and yes, I itched like crazy afterward because I have a psychological thing about the gross, icky, nasty things that are in public pools).

Krista and Ezra in the kiddie pool

Soon, however, we heard the rain coming, as though someone were sweeping puddles with a great broom. The drops moved in, and we tried to wait them out, but gave up once the thunder started. Since it is spring in kenya, there will be a few weeks of hard rain, unlike anything we have in Seattle, rather more similar to texas. this was one of those rains, the kind you think might be coming from all directions at once. We ran for cover, despite that fact that we were already wet from the pool.

The Windsor in the rain

Of course, after I got out (ok, I could only handle it for a little while), i just had to go into the steam room, hidden in the corner of the fabulous locker room, to warm up. The eucalyptus scented steam felt really good on my lungs so I told Krista she had to try it, as we are STILL both getting over our colds.

So much about the way things operate in Kenya is still so oddly colonial, in a way that you just don’t see in America. For instance, the locker rooms have attendants, and ours was a Kenyan woman who probably makes in a day less than what we paid per person to swim for 3 hours. The clearly English speaking, foreign women who came in off the golf course took towels from her without really acknowledging her and moved through the beautiful spaces in the Windsor as though the people who work there were a part of the system of elaborate fixtures. As an American, I don’t have a mental interface for this kind of thing, so it makes me very uncomfortable. Therefore, I tend to be overly effusive with my gratitude and smiles, which just makes the attendant uncomfortable. I’m not sure how to act, so I’m awkward. Brits are much better at this sort of thing, coming from a country where royalty and commonwealths are things that still exist today.

Ezra’s puppy and puppy cake

We returned home and Krista and I made a cake for Ezra while the boys napped. Ezra’s favorite toy is a stuffed dog that is colored like a Beagle. Ez calls him “puppy,” and he is so obsessed with him that he actually has 2, just in case one wears out too fast. While Krista made chocolate cake, using her great-grandmother’s recipe, I made the icing, and then I decorated the cake after it was cooled. never in my life have I had such a gratifying response to a cake. Ezra loved it adn kept pointing out to anyone that would listen, in his adorable 2-year-old-ese, that it was “PUPPY!” or “A DOG!” So cute.

After cake, there were presents, and after presents, Skype calls to grandparents while playing with said presents. By the time the kids were in bed, we adults were more exhausted than they were, and we all crashed shortly after. But I think for all of us, it was a very nice birthday.

Masai Market dancer

Today Krista and I took Ezra (age 2) and went to the Masai market. The market sells art objects and crafts, like paintings, spears, scarves, jewelry, elephants made out of recycled flip flops, stuff like that. It is open nearly every day of the week at a different location, and caters mostly to tourists, but has some really cool stuff.

On Thursdays the market is right near the Wendles house, at the Junction mall, which is a very modern, western style shopping mall. On the top floor of the parking garage, the vendors lay out their wares on big blankets or on tall stands and greet you with “Jambo, sister!” (jambo is hi). You must barter for everything, and i surprised myself by having a lot of fun with that end of the shopping experience. You know you are driving a hard bargain when your vendor says, “Oh, sister! Why you want to kill your brother?” Either that or they just take you for a bigger sucker than you want to believe you are.

I stocked up and some Christmas and birthday gifts and bought a few really cool souvenirs for myself before heading over to the far side of the market with Krista. There a band of singers and dancers joined a couple of drummers to do what they call “traditional Masai music and dance.” (I put that in quotes because I’m not sure whether is really is traditional or not, but they cater heavily to tourists, so It must be a bit different in that respect.)

Of course, there were a few little kids that got really into it and wanted to dance, too.

The spear vendor

When we got home from the market, I carried my heavy bag of purchases into my room and laid them out on the bed, admiring the handiwork and getting excited all over again about the great finds and good deals. While I spread them out, I called Ken Oloo, the man who runs Filamujuani, the organization I will be working with to teach photography. While we hadn’t connected yet, because he has been in Ethiopia, the work that I will be doing with Filamujuani takes up a great deal of my mental space. I’m really looking forward to it. He was really excited to meet and start planning, so I agreed to be ready when he came by to pick me up in an hour. We went back to Junction and had coffee while we went over ideas for the next 2 weeks.

Filamujuani is a non-profit dedicated to teaching kids photography and videography and getting them jobs that will help raise money for their education. They do this by working very closely with Zindua, their sister company, which is a profit making agency that shoots events, portraits, and makes commercials. The kids that I train will be hired to do work for Zindua. In this way they will gain a skill, and occupation, an income, and an education. Ken explained that they decided the business model was necessary after a few years of a very low amount of donations to Filamujuani threatened their ongoing operations. He said, “When you are competing with dollars for aids relief and clean water, education often gets left behind.”  I understand his point, and I also understand that philanthropic organizations often prioritize dollars for the greatest immediate need, so I am proud to be connected to an organization that didn’t give up or beg harder, but instead came up with a better way to gain funding.

I will be teaching photography, including technical and artistic skills, and editing to 5 students for the next 2 weeks, 4 days per week. Some of my students will be the ones who go on to do the work for Zindua, and some of them will be teachers after I am gone. While excited about all of this, I am intimidated and humbled by the opportunity. I need to draw up an 8 day curriculum. After those 8 days are up, we will have what Ken refers to as “the final project.” We will set up studio equipment in a school and offer portraits to families in Kibera, the slum. My students will shoot and I will observe and oversee. Many of these families have never had a family portrait of themselves, or any photograph, most likely, so it will be a fun opportunity for them, but it will also challenge my students to put their money where their mouth is.

And it will be proof of whether or not I succeed or fail in the next 2 weeks.

No pressure, right?

I’m sad. I am not, however, freaking out because I think that maybe someone in America will be able to help me get them when I return (I hope). Meanwhile, I’m going to start posting what I journaled while on the mountain and in Moshi, just without visuals (I know, it hurts). So, please, bear with me.

Today is Wednesday, October 10th, and I have been back in Nairobi for three days. Today I walked up stairs without flinching. Yay! The mountain was amazing, and I am so very glad, proud, and triumphant that I sumitted a nearly 20,000 foot mountain. I had a lot of time alone to think, and I feel pretty settled, centered, like the shifting sand inside me have come to a better rest (not a complete rest because, well, have we met?). I learned a lot.

I’m going to post date the entries from the past 11 days, so they will show up on the day I originally wrote them.

Mabuse, my head porter, just brought me “tea and biscuits” in my tent (a thermos of hot water, powdered hot chocolate, tea bags, powdered coffee, powdered milk, and some hard shortbread cookies), pumpkin soup, bread, beef stew, chips (fries), cabbage, and stewed onions in spices. He calls out the name of each thing as he presents it, so I know what I am eating. It was all very good, but it was enough food to feed at least 3 people! Mabuse laid it out on a lace tablecloth on the floor of my tent, and lit a taper candle, which he stuck into a hollowed out potato. He keeps telling me to eat, but I’m so full it hurts!

I woke up this morning at 5:30 in a dim room at the Horombo Hotel in Moshi, and lay in bed listening to the call to prayer saturate the town from a mosque somewhere nearby. It was beautiful, and such a non-Western sound. My guide, Gideon, told me yesterday that my daypack was “too heav,” so I proceeded to move all unnecessary items to my large pack, for a porter to carry. I stopped midway through, and thought, “What would Thaddeus do?” It’s one of our jokes about his insane degree of preparedness, but it does help me know if I’m missing something. I thought about it, then emptied out my large pack and put all of the clothes, my sleeping bag, and books into the garbage bags and gallon zip locks that I brought with me, just in case it rained, then snapped the rain cover into place over it all. It’s a good thing I did, too, because it rained so hard today that I couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from, and –even with the rain cover—my sleeping bag would have been soaked. I would have been miserable the entire week.

Gideon picked me up with a driver in one of those tiny minivans that you only ever find in non-North American countries. We stopped in front of Café Aroma, the coffee shop my guidebook recommended, and a stocky man in a bright orange t-shirt appeared from behind the coffee shop, lugging a grain sack with a tent and a daypack in it. This, it turns out, is my head porter, Mabuse. He climbed in next to me, stuck out his fist in a gesture clearly meant for me to bump it, jutted his chin out, and said, “Mabuse.” I stared at him for a long second before I realized he was introducing himself. I replied with my name, punched his knuckles, and he nodded, then proceeded to fall asleep with his head against the window. We stopped at a grocery store where I bought my water for the day, and Gideon picked up some ingredients for the week, then we drove on down the bumpiest road in the history of the earth. The fine red dust we kicked up lingered in the air, turning the sky to an eerie, Martian, gloom. A mushroom cloud of this dust hung over our destination, the Londrossi gate.

Every hiker, guide, and porter – from every route – must register at the Londrossi gate and pay park fees, which are $100 per day. In addition, all packs must be weighed. Kilimanjaro National Park imposes limits on how much weight the porters can carry, as a safety measure, so they take your large pack, the bags full of their gear, all of the tents, food, cooking gear, and gas for the stove, and weigh it on a 5 foot tall metal scale. I was a little worried that my giant, multi-day, pack would be to heavy, but Mabuse returned with a smile, heaved the pack back into the car and said, “Is good! Is light!”

We drove another 30 minutes toward the Lemosho gate, down yet another rutted, muddy, red dirt road, until the car could go no further in the deep potholes. The driver pulled over and unceremoniously dumped our bags under a tree. With a quick handshake, he pulled away, and we shouldered our packs to hike up the rest of the road, about a mile to the trailhead, Gideon ahead, me stepping into his footprints to avoid the softer mud.

Originally, I had told the company that I wanted to join a group going up the mountain, and Joseph had given me a departure date of the 29^th, so that I could hike with a handful of Australians. I was pretty excited about that, because Australians are fun, I would have a chance to make some international friends, and not be spending a week alone with my staff on the mountain. However, yesterday the Aussies decided to take the Machame route (3 days shorter), so I am hiking alone after all. I was disappointed, but I’ve since decided that this is just how it’s meant to be, and I will try to grow this week, take time to think, reflect, make some decisions, and learn. I hope it works out that way.

The trek from the trailhead to the first camp took about 2 ½ hours. It was pretty easy, not too steep, but a few minutes in it began to rain. HARD. The tropical downpour turned the wet trail into a mud river in seconds. It must not be more than 4 miles from the beginning of the trail to here, but we went very slowly (“Pole, pole!’ says Gideon – pronounced pol-ay– which means, “slowly, slowly”), trying not to slip and fall into the sticky mud. Gideon told me I am “very strong, compared to Americans,” and we took only short breaks for water or to watch baboons cross the path and Kalabass monkeys pick flowers from the tree tops and delicately devour them. We chatted a little, difficult do to our language barrier, but he told me this is only his second trip up the Lemosho route this year. Most people take the Machame route, as it is the shortest and most direct.

Upon arrival in camp the rain stopped, and I followed two Swedish girls to the edge of the tent are to watch 5 Kalabass monkeys swing from a tree. One was a baby no larger than a kitten, and all sported long, fine hair and white streaks down their backs. They look like very agile, long legged, long-haired skunks, and it’s odd to watch them watching us, as though we are the wildlife, and they are not sure why we are in their space.

This week looms large before me, a bit intimidating, a lot intriguing, and I am very excited. However, as I watch the other campers gather into groups in their dining tents and listen to them laugh, I am already lonely, and I am wishing I had a pal here with me. Perhaps this is the right way, though, and there is something in this alone-ness that I am meant to learn. I guess I will find out.

I woke up at 5:30 this morning, grey light seeping in around the curtains in my room at the Wendles. I was too excited to sleep, even though I had packed and re-packed my backpacks for this trip last night, and there was nothing to be done but wait for my guide to pick me up. I nervously triple checked my packs, both red, one a miniature of the other, which I will carry, one a behemoth, full of clothes, sleeping bag, mat, and other essentials for my week-long trek up Kilimanjaro, which a porter will carry.

I heard Krista cough in the living room and went to say good morning, both of us nursing our colds with hot tea, waiting for my ride to show. Gideon, the guide, and Joseph, the owner of the trekking company, picked me up at 7:30 and drove me to a waiting shuttle bus, grilling me on the way about any dietary restrictions or food allergies (none) and preparing me for the 9 hour drive to Moshi. We stopped in front of the park Place Hotel in downtown Nairobi, and the two men guided me onto the shuttle bus, tossing my packs easily to a man waiting on the roof of the bus. They stepped out to speak rapidly in Swahili, and the bus pulled away, me in my seat, them on the curb, and I had no idea what to do next. That was the moment I felt most helpless, as though my fate was completely out of my hands, and I realized I’d put way more trust into two African strangers than I was at all comfortable with. I leaned across the aisle and introduced myself to the German girl seated there. At least I’d have one western ally.

Gideon boarded the bus at the next stop, making my panic ridiculous, and rode with me all the way into Moshi. At the Tanzanian border the bus pulled up to a checkpoint and the driver shouted something at us. I was pulled along in the human swarm as everyone piled out of the bus and into the border patrol building, Gideon keeping a firm grip on my forearm. This was the Kenyan exit building, and they lazily looked at my passport, stamped it, digitally scanned my fingerprints, and waved me away. Gideon pulled me back outside and we walked across the border, through an open metal gate, and into the Tanzanian entry authority building. It felt strange just to saunter through the gate, elicit somehow, while the Masai women, wrapped in cobalt blue or deep purple cloths, hawked their metal bracelets, beaded necklaces, and giraffe figurines to us from the side of the road. “Missy!” they would call. “One dollar American! One Euro!” Overwhelmed by the color, heat, noise, and dust, I let Gideon pull me along and did not respond.

At the next line I had to pay $100 US dollars for my visa, get my prints taken again, and submit to an iris scan before the woman stamped my passport and yelled, “NEXT!” We were free, and went to sit on the curb and watch bomb sniffing dogs circle our bus before re-boarding.

It’s about a 4 hour drive from the border, all of 80 miles or so, but with a 45 mile per hour speed and a trillion stops, it just seemed to take days. I swayed in my seat, watched the goat herders in their red Masai olgareshas (a swath of fabric they wrap around them to shield them from the sun) flash by in the bright sunlight, and silently thanked my doctor for the motion sickness patches he’d prescribed me.

Gideon ushered me into the Horombo Hotel, which features a little office instead of a lobby, a tiny restaurant that only serves the included breakfast and drinks, and a large, marble staircase leading to the upper 3 stories, where the rooms are. We each had a Coke in the little restaurant and discussed plans for tomorrow, then he checked me in, speaking quickly in Swahili to the office girl, and let me into my room with a 5 inch long skeleton key.

I collapsed on the bed, trying to decide whether I really needed food and exploration more than sleep, but finally gave in to the fact that I needed to hit up an ATM so I’d have enough money for tips to give my hiking team. Reluctantly, I peeled myself upright and forced myself out the door.

The Horombo is on a side street, so I had about a block and a half of peace before I hit the main, downtown roundabout. There 3 men greeted me warmly with, “Hello sister! Where are you going?” I waved them off and told them I didn’t need any help, but they introduced themselves to me and offered to sell me  a necklace from their handy pocket stash “made myself, sister.” Again I waved them away and turned off to the ATM on the corner. They waited a respectful distance away, but as soon as I started down the sidewalk again, they swarmed around me, offering to take me to a place to get “good African food,” or to their “brother’s souvenir shop,” or (from the third man, who scowled ferociously) to protect me from the other two. I told them I needed a place to buy a snack, so they led me to a convenience store where I bought some roasted cashews and a bottle of water.

All this time they had been dangling the necklaces in front on me, and one in particular had caught my eye. I turned back to my hotel and they followed me as far as the roundabout, hawking more services, telling me I needed to pay them for their guide advice, and trying to sell me necklaces.

“STOP.” I said at the roundabout, turning to face them all. “You’ll come no further. I am going to my hotel, and I am not paying you anything.” They all shut up and stared at me. The little one with the jewelry shook the necklaces once more so they clinked. “But I’ll buy the blue necklace for 7,000 shillings.” (This is about $4.50) He wanted 15,000, and eventually we settled on 10,000 shillings, which is $6.35, they left me alone, and I came back to the hotel.

While I argued with them at the roundabout, the high clouds that cloaked Kilimanjaro lifted, and I got my first glimpse of the mountain. While I am exhausted, overheated, and a little nervous, I know one thing for sure from that brief view of Kili.

This is going to be good.

My first look at Kilimanjaro from Moshi.

]]> http://www.vanessacreative.com/blog/2012/09/30/day-7-moshi-tanzania/feed/ 0 http://www.vanessacreative.com/blog/2012/09/29/day-6-the-great-rift-valley-lake-naivasha-and-crescent-island/ http://www.vanessacreative.com/blog/2012/09/29/day-6-the-great-rift-valley-lake-naivasha-and-crescent-island/#comments Sat, 29 Sep 2012 19:51:44 +0000 Vanessa http://www.vanessacreative.com/blog/?p=3175 Today the entire Kenya branch of the Wendle clan (Krista, Jason, Jonah, and Ezra) and I went on Safari.

wildebeest

After a pancake breakfast and a birthday party for two of the kids’ friends, we headed out to Lake Naivasha to spend the afternoon walking around Crescent Island with a guide and a whole bunch of wildlife.

Rain hut

This is the place where most of Out of Africa was filmed, and the landscape is breathtakingly beautiful. Set in the shadow of Mt. Longonot, the lake is wide but shallow, and is a veritable playground for hippos (though they were all submerged in the heat today).

Water buck

The shores teem with herds of giraffes, wildebeest, water buck, buffalo, gazelles, and dik-dik, while the skies and trees are full of heron, egret, stork, blue starlings, fish eagles, tawny eagles, and all species of bird who come to live here, in the Great Rift Valley, at this life-giving lake.

We signed in at the sprawling ranch house, paid our entrance fee and met our guide Josephat, then started our walk around Crescent Island. Josephat knew every bird and mammal species and some fun facts about them, and was full of smiles. He did shout at Jason when he began to wander off into the bush, though, because there were buffalo nearby, the one species there that can be very aggressive.

The Great Rift Valley

We spent about 3 hours wandering the island, gawking at wildlife, snapping pictures, talking, and laughing. We also got caught in a bit of a brief downpour and had to take shelter in one of the thatched roof huts that litter the property in just such a case as this. It was kind of fun, and felt very African as the rain pattered down on the dried rushes.

Gazelles

As we drove out after our walkabout, we ran into a little traffic, but nothing that we couldn’t handle! (Actually, we backed up and let them go by.)

My guide is picking me up at 7:00 am tomorrow (6:00 tonight for you in Seattle) to take me to Mt. Kilimanjaro. I will be gone for 9 days ad may not have internet access at all for any of it. I will journal on real paper during those days and update you when I get back. See you soon!

After that we swung back by the house to pick up Ezra (age 2) and take him with us while we visited Krista’s friend from the Netherlands, Christa, and her new baby. Christa makes a mean latte, and I savored it, realizing it was the first coffee I’ve had since Monday morning in the states.  She has a lovely home and is a wonderful lady.

This afternoon we both decided we needed a nap, of which I was able to sleep for about 20 minutes. I was stirring restlessly when Krista called to me from her office to come quick! I ran upstairs and there were 5 monkeys sitting in the tree just off of her back balcony, not more than 25 feet away. I stared for a few minutes, giggling at their antics and weirdly bright blue balls before deciding I MUST get my camera.

While I snapped a few shots, Krista brought up a banana and set it on the railing. She prefaced it by saying, “I never do this, and you should NEVER do this, but you need this picture, sooo…” (Another reason why I love her.) Two monkeys descended, and took the banana up to the roof to munch on it.

Jonah and Ezra woke up from their naps about this time, and joined us outside. While most American kids love monkeys, thinking they are all Curious George, these kids know better, and are afraid of the little beasts who may bite you and steal your toys. Jonah only stayed with us after I promised to beat any monkey who came to close with a broom.

This evening, we all, including Jason, who just got home from working in Ethiopia last night, went to the local Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. We sat around a big square table out on a patio, near an open fire in a fire ring, and ate lentils, sour pancake, beef, and potatoes with our hands, planning our trip to a safari walk at Crescent Island at Lake Naivasha tomorrow.

The food was amazing, and the atmosphere was wonderful, but what really makes every moment here spectacular are my incredible friends and their sweet, charming children. I feel so very, very lucky to be invited into their home, to be given this opportunity to get to know them again, and to have adventures with them.

Today, Krista and I went to Giraffe Center, the giraffe sanctuary nearby. They house 9 Rothschild giraffes, which are extremely endangered, with only just over 300 of them left in the whole world. The center breeds and releases them into the wild, as well as housing injured ones and rehabbing them.. Some will live at the center permanently, and this will offer them sanctuary and the public an amazing, education opportunity. And also the chance to make out with a 20 foot tall lady. Come on, who doesn’t want that!

Actually, what you see here is Kelly taking a food pellet from my lips. Someone needs to tell that girl she needs some serious chin electrolysis!

I’ve always had a thing for giraffes, as I think they are just so beautiful, elegant, and alien, and today cemented that love further. I’m crazy about these gorgeous, gentle beings.

This afternoon we both took brief naps then played with the children until bedtime. It’s about 70degrees here and only slightly humid, so we played in the courtyard with the neighbor kids until it grew too dark and the bugs (GIANT) came out to make sweet love to the porch lights.

I’m in bed now writing this, ready to pass out at any second, and grateful to be sleepy at night. While today was lovely, and I am loving every moment with Krista, I hope tomorrow is a more fully awake day.

Krista’s fruit bowl: regular bananas, plantains, and zucchini bananas (which are green but will yellow). She had papaya, mango, and some other things I didn’t recognize, too, but I just love all the varieties of bananas here!

She was a bit slow, but nice. I handed her the 2 forms, my passport, my inoculations record, and my $50 fee, and she looked at me blankly until I asked if there was something else. She said, “Yes, where is your orange visa application?” I had no idea what she was talking about, and when I told her I never received one, she said, “Because you were sleeping on the plane. I saw you.” Then she stamped my passport, stuck a visa sticker in it, and waved me through. I hightailed it to the bag claim before she could change her mind.

I picked up my large backpack and large rolling duffel, which I have in addition to my day pack and my small rolling carry on, and placed all of my bags on the 8 foot long table that serves as customs bag check. The agent greeted me and asked me for my form, again, which I id not have. When he showed me a blank version, I shook my head and told him I’d left it with the visa agent. After a little back and forth where he assured me I still had it, and I assured him I did not. After a bit of this, he literally rolled his eyes and waved me on without ever checking any papers or bags at all.

Of course, Krista had figured it out, and there was a smiling driver with my name on a placard when I passed the final gate. He welcomed me enthusiastically to Kenya and whisked my bags out to his car, holding the door for me. We pulled onto a divided highway, which may have been about three lanes either way, if the lanes were marked. It didn’t take long before we were weaving in and out of traffic at 45 miles per hour, honking to let drivers know we were passing, and before I had realized that lanes and lights are more of a gentle suggestion here than hard rules anyone follows.

It was also not long before we turned off the highway and onto side roads, at which point a police officer standing next to a police van, armed with a large flashlight and an AK47, waved us over to a stop. The driver cautioned me to stay in the vehicle and got out to talk to him, locking the car behind him. A rapid-fire conversation in Swahili ensued, after which the driver hopped back into the car and drove away. I asked if everything was ok, and he explained to me that all the police here are very corrupt and that they pull you over for nothing. You have to bribe them a small amount to let you go (generally around $10), or they will take you down to the station, charge you with anything they want, and you will have to pay expensive bribes and lose a day’s work. He shrugged, said it was just the cost of business here, and changed the subject.

We pulled through the gates to Krista’s walled compound (I believe there are 6 houses in the complex) and he dropped me off at her door. She let me in with a smile as signed something for the driver and I waited for her next to a large bush with white flowers that smells like everything good about a perfume shop. That’s when I noticed that the pretty, 12 foot tall, tree next to the front door is a poinsettia. Krista says people get them as plants at Christmas, like we do in the states, and then they plant them and they turn into trees. Welcome to Africa!

We stayed up late and talked about so many life and remember when and how’s your family things, and it feels like old times, absolutely natural to slip back into conversation with her. I love being with my old friend again. This is going to be a very good trip.

Kenya flag (I haven’t taken pics yet, but will soon.)

Now it is somewhere around 5:00 PM on the ground in Nairobi, my destination, and I know that because my in-flight movie keeps shutting off and re-booting to the flight information screen. You may also be interested to know that it is -68 degrees outside, at 39,000 feet, and we are traveling 543 miles per hour. I just woke up with a jolt after falling asleep, as I have been trying to stay awake so I can sleep tonight, only to realize I’d been sleeping for TWO HOURS. Damn.

My computer battery was dead when I boarded, and, unlike BIA or Lufthansa, KLM doesn’t provide power ports at their seats. Or in-flight wifi, which I find very odd. This all means that I have watched 4 movies and 2 tv shows and read almost an entire Kenya and Northern Tanzania guidebook in the past 19 hours, but at least now I have a pretty exact idea of what I want to do in Africa, if things should turn out that way. (By the way, the movie “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is excellent.)

The other thing I realized when I woke up was that I had sent my itinerary to Krista and highlighted my flight number and arrival time of 20:15, but then, because I’m dyscalculic (at least it feels that way), I also told her “that means 10:15,” which is absolutely not true. It’s 8:15. I’m hoping (betting) that Krista is smarter than me and figured out that I’m a bit retarded with numbers and that when she sends the cab he will actually be waiting when I need him. If not…. oh well, we can figure it out then. The idea is that there should be a guy by baggage claim with a sign that has my name on it. I hope that’s the case.

I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that I will be in Africa in 3 hours!!

At the Seattle airport, so happy!