What Dining Car?

Since we were going to go back to US on Dec 28 we didn’t make any plans for the holiday season and it’s a bit of a ghost town with everyone else traveling, so what are we gonna do!

We decided on a short adventure. Take the train to Nairobi and visit some of our CDC friends who were also not traveling. Its an overnight train, might be fun(??), bought tickets at the station a few days before we were to travel, very cheap, dinner served but no round trip ticket sold, have to buy return ticket upon arrival in Nairobi (hmmmm, first warning bell)

Travel day arrives, we ask our friend Ray to give us a lift to the station. We climb aboard, kids excited. Train is, well, dilapidated to put it mildly, but we are still psyched for an adventure. Kids still happy. Train to leave at 6:30p and around 6:15 we ask what time dinner is served. The conductor looks at me puzzled…. Uh oh… “WHAT dinner?” he asks. Turns out they stopped taking the dining car a week ago but as usual these sorts of things are not communicated when I bought the ticket. The blood drained from our faces as Kayla and I looked at each other envisioning all sorts of horrors that could be experienced when spending the night on a moving train with two small children who wouldn’t have ANYTHING to eat for many hours! BE AFRAID!!

Immediately we go into action, hmmm, 10 minutes to departure… Kayla calls Ray and pleads with him to return to the station as fast as humanly possible with anything edible from his cupboards. I got off the train to try to find something to buy in the station. Hakuna chakula hapa (there is no food here). I only succeed in having a very cathartic scream at some of the railroad officials. Suddenly I see Ray running towards the train with a plastic bag and like in some old black and white movie he hands the bag up to me just as the whistle blows and we are off. Thank you RAY!!!

We are singing with joy as we sit down to our dinner of bananas, frozen banana bread and M&Ms. The train makes many stops on the way of course and on one of the first stops we hear lots of commotion outside. It’s pitch black so I have no idea what’s going on and my Swahili isn’t good enough yet to understand the talk but something is up. And then the machine gun carrying policemen who are riding with us (yes, Max is fascinated with the weaponry) go out to investigate. After a while we are informed that “someone has tampered with the tracks”. Oh wonderful, now what? An hour later we pull away having no idea what really happened. Whatever, lock the doors and we are all off to sleep.

We all have surprisingly good sleep and we wake to our breakfast of bananas, unfrozen banana bread and M&Ms and some beautiful scenery as we move through parts of the Rift Valley shrouded in mist while we enter Nairobi. We still have lots of stops to make before we enter the city. Each time this train pulls away from a station it’s like being shot out of a cannon. It’s a good thing they blow the trains whistle to warn us before they move. Like Pavlov’s dogs when we hear that whistle we all drop whatever we’re doing at the time and run for safety, even little Esther has learned (the hard way, unfortunately) that when that whistle blows she scrambles and grabs for the nearest adult limb.

After eighteen HOURS we finally arrive in Nairobi, (sheesh!) head straight to the ticket office and of course there are no return tickets for the next week! Awww, too bad. Frankly, I’m not THAT disappointed, just hope we can get airline seats this late.

We had great fun in the ‘big city’ for a few days, also had no trouble getting a flight back (oh, yes, they have fixed the Kisumu runway so flights are now running direct again), the kids had fun too, they are actually pretty good travelers now (as long as the can eat and sleep when needed) an adventure was had by all.

P.S. A South African company has just bought the Kenyan railroad and are promising many changes. It would be great for tourism to ride the rails on an refurbished colonial style railroad, we can’t wait.

Happy Chrisnnakah

Hope you all are having a nice holiday! It doesn't really feel like the holiday season here. There isn't the onslaught of consumerism here. Looking around town you'd hardly notice it was Christmas, just a few shop windows decorated, a couple of mechanical dancing Santa's in the grocery store dancing to "The Yellow Roads of Texas" and other non-Christmas type tunes. Also the weather. It's very warm here, like south Florida. We did have a very successful Chanukah party, however; lit candles, exchanged presents, drank a lot, ate a lot. Gladys made an attempt at potato latkes that we hope will be better NEXT year, but all in all everyone had fun.

We made a stop at the YGC orphanage with another Expat family, sang some Christmas carols (yes, I know, but whatever, it was fun and the kids enjoyed it), made a donation. Which brings me to talk about the "neediness" factor here again. It definitely intensifies around the holiday season and Kisumu is no exception. For example this guy John who has started coming to our gate from time to time. Seems he lives in the slum next to the orphanage, they told him to talk to me about his problem. He showed up or I should say 'wheeled' up to the gate two months ago in his inverted bicycle thing, which he uses as a wheelchair since he doesn't have use of his legs. He must have 'biked' 5 miles just to see if I was at home. He tells me he is trying to start a business; raise chickens, sell the eggs, but the chicks are sick, can I help him with purchase of medicine for the chickens, which I did, hard to refuse a soft-spoken, handicapped guy living in the slums. The next time it was feed money, the next time it was some skin rash he had, can I pay the doctor bill. And yes, I helped; I do say no to him for some things but it's not that much money really. We know others like him, and we help them as well from time to time. You might be saying 'boy am I a sap!" and maybe I am. But the way I look at it in New York I had no problem stepping over homeless people in the street and not giving them money even though I knew many of them were legitimately needy. I knew there was plenty of infrastructure in place to help them and paid for by my tax dollars. But here, here is very different. There is no infrastructure for needy people. Nothing. So if a guy comes to me for $20 to keep his chicks alive to keep his business going I have no problem.

Even the middle class is not exempt here. We had a guard who, a few weeks ago, came to me in confidence to ask our help. He and his wife were supporting two kids, one of which is severely disabled and needed special and expensive schooling. His income was very good, but his wife, who was a highly educated and qualified social worker could not find a job! They decided they would open a Montessori school in Kisumu but first she needed to be certified. They wanted our help with her school fees. On top of all this he tells me he is HIV positive (he got the virus from his first wife) and is very concerned about what would happen to his family if something were to happen to him. It was a compelling argument but after some thought we decided not to help. Then, two days before Christmas, he was laid off. No severance pay, no unemployment compensation, nothing. It was incredibly sad, he came to me on his last day in tears. There may be a job his wife can apply for with CDC but there is really nothing we can do to guarantee it, maybe take up a collection for the family or something. I guess my point is, something I've written about before, that there are some many good people in real need here. On one hand it's good to feel I can have such a direct impact in helping people, on the other hand it can feel heavy on you too.

Yo Yo Yo Hannukah Dude!

Oh, Man!!!

Our friend Johanna came to visit for the weekend. She's on her way to see the Gorilla's in Rwanda. Can't wait to hear about her experience! [Photo by Max]

Why Did The Crocodile Cross The Road...?

When last I left you we were slightly freaked out because the day before we were to fly to Nairobi they closed the Kisumu airport. After a long strategy session and several phone called, etc., we decided to drive our own cars to Eldoret (2.5 hours), leave our cars in a hotel parking lot, fly to Nairobi, do the safari stuff with Kayla’s parents, fly back to Eldoret with parents (evening flight) stay the night at hotel, then drive to Kisumu, whew! What a hassle

[There is a new gallery of photos in the Photo Galleries]

So we drove in the pouring-ass rain all the way to Eldoret the next day, not fun on these roads, flew to Nairobi, met Kayla’s parents and the next day we were off to Amboseli Game Park. We hired a mini bus and a driver to take us which turned out to be a stroke of genius; I didn’t have to drive on bad roads that I didn’t know and we were all together in the same car, plus the drive turned out to be very knowledgeable about the parks and roads.




Amboseli:
A different terrain from the Masai Mara, lots of palm trees for one thing. Not as many animals for another, but we did see many more elephants than we had seen in the Mara, a big herd of maybe 50 elephants, in fact. Plus Mt. Kilimanjaro practically in our backyard. Beautiful landscapes. [photos]

We spent 3 days in Ol Tukia lodge, wonderful grounds, great people, not so good food, well at least for the money it wasn’t. Then on to Tsavo game park. It’s a 3 hour drive on dirt roads, through beautiful countryside, Masai towns and not much else. Turns out there had been some robberies in the area so we added a police escort in the bus, complete with very large and loaded rifle [photo].

Tsavo:
I have only 3 words about this part of Kenya: sky, sky, sky. Amazingly beautiful and sometimes breath-taking sky [photos] and again very different even from Amboseli. We could still see Kilimanjaro in the distance but the landscape was far lusher than anything else we’ve experienced. Mostly saw lots of giraffes, and gazelles with zebra but on two occasions saw the rarely seen leopard [gallery photos].

We stayed at Finch Hatton’s. Five star, excellent everything, tented camp. Has a big pond full of hippos and crocks right in the middle of the grounds, plus it is an ‘open’ camp which means any animal can come walking through at any time! After sundown you had to be escorted from/to your tent by an armed guard, what am I saying this ‘armed’ guard was armed with only a bow and arrow. Now I ask you, what is this guy gonna do with a bow and arrow against a charging hippo or prowling silent lion! [gallery photos]




Whatever, anyway, they don’t allow kids in the dinning room so the kids took their dinners in the tent with the nanny which was actually fine for both the adults and kids. One night, as we were walking back to our tents after one of the 5 course dinners, and being a little ‘toasted’ as well, and following the mandatory guard escort, Kayla and Judy were following the guard, closely, and Mike and I were bring up the rear, all of a sudden just as Mike had finished lighting up a cigarette I hear the unmistakable hissing sound of a large lizard. I see in front of me that the guards’ hands are both straight up in the air (holding the bow and arrow) in motion of surprise and Kayla and Judi are gasping and walking backwards. I then notice by the light of the guards’ flashlight (who’s batteries were about to fail) an enormous Crocodile sitting in the middle of the trail with it’s huge jaws wide open. From here on everything seemed to move in slow motion, my instincts were to get the hell out of here before we all were crock dinner! So I turned around and headed for the hills (or the bar, which ever came first) but instead I just plowed right into poor Mike. Almost knocking him down (he hadn’t seen anything and was more startled by his crazy son-in-law’s actions than anything else) with his cigarette ashes flying and me saying ‘move back, move back’!!!! It was like a keystone cops move. In the end, though, this crock was more terrified of us and just made a retreat back to the pond. It was a little scary at the time but we are all still howling with laughter about it now!

Three days in Tsavo then back to Nairobi, had lunch at a restaurant called Carnivore where we sampled the usual fare like Cow and Chicken but also Camel and Crockadile (tastes like Chicken) then off to the airport to our flight to Eldoret. The flight was uneventful and quick. We stayed the night in an Eldoret hotel which by Kenyan standards was good but after Finch Hatton was only tolerable. It was clean and the staff was very nice. Early the next morning we headed out in our cars to Kisumu, 3 hr drive and then run around preparing for Maxs’ birthday party! [gallery photos]