After weeks of listening to the SP guys speak East African English, it finally clicked while bargaining for a kikoy on Diani beach. Since then, my new accent (I can't do it unless I hear it) and turns of phrase have served me well.
Two and a half weeks in Kenya, which I treated as an afterthought to Sudan until the day I returned to Nairobi, have come and gone.
This week looked like safari: two kinds: budget and private. Two very different animals. The first to Maasai Mara. Tented camp with cots, spaghetti noodles with tinned beans, minibus with pop-up top. The second near Mt. Kenya at the homestead of the former Tharua ranch, with a British couple and their dogs. Down comforter, fillet steak (can't remember the last time I had steak), sitting on top of the land rover with my feet hanging down the hatch on the Ol Pejeta Conservancy. One and two nights respectively. You can see animals either way, but staying with Martin and Tiddy was a real treat!
Twenty different birds, 11 different antelope, two kinds of rhino, two kinds of zebra, two kinds of giraffe, warthog, elephant, baboon, buffalo, wildebeest, jackal, tsavo cat, but no big cats. Hope is a funny thing - holding out until the end to see your lion - but so is contentment.
Interesting people of the week were
The 32ish lawyer/policeman from small-town Indiana who works in Sudan heading up the police charter for the UN. Ten year olds in the same prison as adults, men dropping their wives by the police station, accusing them of adultery in lieu of divorce. Sounded like an intense job being the Thomas Jefferson of the thing, plus training the southern force, plus living every day with the possibility of some truck loaded with explosives driving into the Khartoum compound and making history.
A 24 year-old cook from the budget safari who helped me get the right buses to and from Mt. Kenya. The British couple weren't too impressed with my new friend, but to be true to him and myself, I accepted his help gratefully. I'm not sure of his motives, given our various demographics, but his mother made me Sunday lunch and I got to meet his brother, sister, cousins, niece, and nephew. As we took the matatu back to Nairobi last night (15 people in a vehicle for nine), he asked if I was wearing my seat belt. I tried to fasten it, but it kept popping open. I finally told him that if anything happened to that bus, we'd all be with Jesus very quickly. He consoled me, "It's just for the policemen." So thanks to all who prayed me safely through Africa.
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