Lions and cheetahs and wildebeests (oh my!)

So last weekend I went on my second (and final) camping safari. My housemates and I went to Masai Mara National Park -- probably the most famous park in Kenya, for good reason -- and we saw so much wildlife, including the annual wildebeest migration, when over a million wildebeests migrate from Serengeti in Tanzania to Masai Mara in Kenya after they’ve eaten all the grass in Tanzania. We didn’t get to witness them crossing the Mara River, but we saw probably hundreds of thousands of them roaming in big groups and some of them traveling single-file in huge lines.

The road to Masai Mara is, I think, the worst I’ve been on since I’ve been here (I feel like I say that every time I go on a new road). Seriously, this one was so bad, that when he could, our driver drove on the dirt next to the road, rather than on the road itself because of all of the potholes.

Once we got there, we stayed in a campsite for two nights that was much fancier than the one in Amboseli -- it had permanent tents with little beds in them. This turned out to be a good thing because it pored down rain both nights, but we stayed totally dry (and I doubt we would have in a little pup tent on the ground).

The campsite was operated my Maasai, and if you had to get up and use the bathroom in the middle of the night, a Maasai appeared next to you, seemingly out of nowhere, to take you to the latrines. I don’t know if this was just to keep people from getting lost and wandering off (the campsite was really dark), or to protect you in case animals came into the camp (people said they heard hyenas really close to the camp on the first night).

OK, I could go on, but I think I’m going to let the photos speak for themselves …

We saw three lions! This one was sitting on what looked like an abandoned road or bridge or something. (Don't worry -- that's a yawn, not a growl.)

We got a little closer to the cheetahs here than we did in Amboseli (and I figured out how to use the digital zoom on my camera).

Three cheetahs were sitting in the shade under this tree, which was really close to the road, so we sat in the minibus for a really long time watching them poke their heads up out of the grass, roll around, and sit up every once in a while. The cheetahs were adorable, but after a while I noticed just how beautiful the tree was, too!

Wildebeests!


This is us on the border between Kenya (Masai Mara) and Tanzania (Serengeti).

Hippos on the Mara River. At this point, we got out of the minibus and an armed Kenya Wildlife Serice guide took us down to the river (hippos are very aggressive and territorial). I didn't ask if his gun had tranquilizers or bullets in it, and luckily, we didn't find out.

Zebras -- I love the way they stand like this, it kind of seems like they’re hugging each other!

As we left the park on our last day, the light was just amazing.

That’s it for now! After two great weekends of traveling, I’ll be sticking around Nairobi this weekend and unfortunately spending a good chunk of it on my bluebooking assignment for journal (quite a bit less exciting than going on a safari, but I’m really not in a position to complain). Type to you all later!

Good Luck!

Danny, Jeanette, Brad, and everyone else taking the bar exam tomorrow and Wednesday -- I’ll be sending you good vibes and extra brainwaves from across the Atlantic Ocean. I’m sure you’ll all do great! Hang in there, guys -- it’s almost over!!

Zanzibar!

So I spent last weekend with two fellow interns in Zanzibar; it was a wonderful trip, marred only by a few transportation mishaps.

Mishap #1 occurred after we boarded the plane from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam and the pilot announced that there was a "minor problem" with the plane -- they couldn't start the engine. Now, I'm not an expert on airplanes, but I'd say that an inability to start a plane's engine would qualify as a bit more than a "minor problem." It did turn out to be more than a minor problem, but luckily, there was a spare plane at the airport, so they unloaded us from the first plane and onto the second, and two and a half hours later, we were off to Dar.
We only stayed in Dar for the night and caught the first ferry out to Zanzibar early the next morning. The island of Zanzibar is part of the United Republic of Tanzania, but has its own president and House of Representatives. One of my friends told me that the relationship between Zanzibar and Tanzania is similar to that between Scotland and the UK or Wales and the UK. (And it meant that I got two stamps in my passport instead of just one!) There are basically three main reasons for visiting Zanzibar -- visiting Stone Town, touring the spice plantations, and going to the beach. Being the conscientious interns that we are, we only had enough time to do the first two before heading back to Nairobi early Monday morning to go back to work.

Stone Town is the old part of the capital of Zanzibar, and it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, partially because it’s a great example of the fusion of many different cultures -- Swahili, Arab, African, Indian, and European. The architecture really reflected this mix and the city was truly beautiful -- not in a pristine picture-perfect sort of way, but rather in a lived-in, history-filled, slightly dilapidated sort of way. It’s full of tiny winding streets, great old buildings with intricately carved wooden doors, beautiful mosques, and lots and lots of shops.
We also just happened to be in Zanzibar for the Zanzibar International Film Festival, so on Saturday night we sat in an outdoor amphitheatre inside the old Arab fort to watch a documentary about a Ugandan dentist who is also an Elvis impersonator (apparently, he makes more money as an Elvis impersonator and enjoys performing a lot more than dentistry, but his parents don’t want him to quit his day job) and another one about female prosecutors and judges in Cameroon.

On Sunday we took a tour of the spice plantations and our very knowledgeable guide took us to see (and taste) ginger, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, cassava, vanilla, pepper, turmeric, neem, coffee, cocoa, lemongrass, and a couple others I can’t remember off the top of my head. Here are a couple of things I learned about spices this weekend: almost none of the many spices grown in Zanzibar are native -- they’ve been introduced from all over the world, and the island just seems to have a great climate for growing them); neem, although it can be used for just about everything under the sun -- insect repellent, soap, treatment of malaria (if brewed into a tea), etc. -- is one of the most bitter things I’ve ever tasted; and too much nutmeg will make you horny -- we didn’t actually find this one out for ourselves, we just took our guide’s word for it.
Other than not making it over to the east coast of the island to go lie on a beach for a day or so, I really only have one complaint about Zanzibar. I had said earlier that it’s hard to walk around Nairobi without constantly being asked if I want a taxi, but it was even worse in Zanzibar. As we got off the ferry in the port, we were immediately pounced upon by a hoard of taxi drivers and guides, all offering their services. One even followed us for a while as we walked to our hotel, trying to get us to take his taxi instead. and all weekend there was the ever-present “Jambo, sister! Taxi? I’ll give you a good price, hakuna matata!”
As we walked to the ferry on Sunday afternoon to head back to Dar for the night, I began to anticipate transportation mishap #2. I get pretty motion sick on just about anything that moves -- planes, buses, cars, subways, boats, roller coasters, merry-go-rounds, anything -- and although I felt a tad queasy on the ferryboat from Dar to Zanzibar, I was mostly ok. Since we were leaving at a different time of day than we had arrived, I started to worry that we had come over at low tide and that we’d therefore be leaving at high tide, which can mean rougher seas.
The second we pulled out of the harbor and started towards Dar, my worst fears were realized. I have never, ever been on a choppier sea, and I’ve never been so seasick in my life. At first, I thought it was just me -- I do have quite a history of motion sickness -- but then I heard the rustling of plastic which turned out to be the crew passing out little plastic barf bags to every passenger. My two friends (neither of them have a history of motion sickness, and one of them did research for her master's thesis in meteorology by going up in a small plane and flying around storms to collect data, never once getting sick) spent the two and a half hour trip puking into the barf bags and off the side of the boat. I spent the whole ride curled up in the fetal position, literally paralysed with motion sickness -- I felt so sick I couldn’t even move my arm to reach into my purse to find my phone to see what time it was (and therefore how much longer it would be until we reached Dar) or to take another Dramamine. You know that Adam Sandler song from the Wedding Singer that has a chorus that goes something like, “somebody kill me please, I want to die”? Yeah, that was going through my head for a good portion of the trip.

We finally got off the boat, found our way back to our hostel, went to a restaurant to slowly sip some sodas, and laughed hysterically about the voyage from hell. The next morning, our flight back to Nairobi was about an hour late, but I didn’t care. I’m generally a pretty impatient person (and I wanted to get to work, see conscientious intern, above), but I was just so happy to be on solid ground that I really didn’t mind. And once we were finally in the air, we even got a great view of Kilimanjaro from the plane! Even with the voyage from hell, it was a wonderful weekend and we had such a great time. But I’m never, ever getting on another boat as long as I live.

Zanzibar entry coming soon...

Hi everyone, sorry I haven't posted about Zanzibar yet, it's just that I decided to quit my internship, drop out of law school, and become a spice farmer in Zanzibar, and I've been a little busy deciding whether or not to plant mostly cloves or cinnamon.

Just kidding -- it was a great weekend, but I've been a bit busy at work this week so I haven't had time to finish a blog entry. I'll post one -- along with photos -- tomorrow!

Mt. Longonot National Park

So last Sunday I went with another group of interns and JPOs to hike Mt. Longonot, a dormant volcano in the middle of the rift valley. (For anyone keeping track, that's my fourth national park in four weeks.) Most of the way, the road to Longonot was pretty decent -- we were on a relatively new highway, but then we had to turn off onto a dirt road and drive for 13 kilometers on one of the bumpiest roads that I've been on since I've been here (and that's saying something). Also, they're building a paved road right next to the dirt road, so there were all these trucks and construction vehicles driving around and kicking up so much dust it kind of felt like being in a sandstorm (or how I'd imagine being in a sandstorm would feel). I'm also noticing a relatively large number of bruises on my arms and legs with no recollection of how I got them. I think it's from banging into the side of the car/whoever is sitting next to me as we drive down all these bumpy roads!

The hike was really steep (but that's good -- I need practice for Mt. Kenya), we went up about 2300 feet in elevation! And when we got to the top and could see into the caldera (the hollowed out part in the middle of the volcano), it was really neat because the ecosystem inside the caldera was completely different than the ecosystem at the base of the volcano. So as we were hiking around the path that goes around the edge of the whole caldera, if you looked down to your right, you saw the grassland and savannah of the rift valley, and if you looked down to your right, you saw a really lush, green forest inside the caldera.

Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy, so I didn't get many really good photos. (Mom and Dad, it was a little like hiking through the clouds last summer in Grindelwald!) But I think it's often pretty cloudy up there -- as we were hiking, I heard what sounded like rain, which was strange, because I couldn't feel any. Then I looked up and I saw a tree that looked like it had rain coming out of its branches, and the ground under it was completely soaked, even though everything else around it was dry. I think the leaves from the tree take moisture out of the clouds and condense it into water droplets, so that the tree can basically water itself!

OK, Anuradha tells me I've been spending too much time in national parks, so she'll be happy to know that this weekend I'm going to Zanzibar (yes, I know how lucky I am to be able to type that phrase), so I'll be spending my time checking out Stone Town and the beaches there. (Oh, and Jennie, I hear you've talked Anuradha into going camping -- good for you and I think you should definitely take her hiking as well!)



(That's me and the view into the caldera.)

Photos of Daily Life

OK, so I’ve had some complaints that all my photos are of wildlife/mountains/trees/etc. and not about my daily life in Nairobi and at the UN, so here you go …

Two of my housemates, Joe and Eleonora, and our housekeeper, James, cooking dinner. Notice the pineapple in the foreground – pineapples here are so good and so cheap (about 30 cents a pound, if I did the math right). We’re constantly eating them, and I’m getting pretty good at cutting them up!





Our water heater, which you have to turn on half an hour to 45 minutes before you want to take a shower.









The stuff I use to clean fruit and vegetables that aren’t going to be peeled or cooked. To be honest, it kinda makes your food smell a bit like bleach, so I’ve mostly been eating fruits and vegetables that I can either peel or cook. (Pineapples, mangoes, and bananas are good substitutes for apples, grapes, and nectarines, I can wait until I get home to have a nice, big salad.)






Village Market. This photo was taken in the morning, but on a weekend evening (or a night when the World Cup was showing), this place is packed. The food court (shown here) has just about any kind of food you’d want to eat, including some really good vegetarian Indian food. Village Market also has: a grocery store, movie theatre, bowling alley, pool hall, restaurants, water slide (!), and lots of little shops. It’s located right in between the UN and where I live, so it’s very, very convenient.


Garden path between T Block (where I work) and W Block at the UN. The landscaping here is really amazing – sometimes I feel like I’m coming to work in a Hawaiian resort or something like that. There are lots of little pools and some waterfalls, and there’s actually even a whole wetland. The actual offices are in long, 3-storey, concrete buildings called blocks, which are kind of ugly and not very Hawaiian resort-like. I think there’s 1 block for every letter of the alphabet (or at least almost every letter).


Me at my desk. See, I haven’t been eaten by wildebeests. I’m also wearing my new kikoi, a traditional East African woven cloth that you can wear as a scarf, shawl, sarong, or turban (haven’t quite figured that one out yet), that I bought for myself at the Maasai Market downtown. Shopping at the Maasai Market was a crazy experience and will get its own blog entry soon.



OK, I hope that helps you guys picture my life here a little bit better.

The O.C. in Nairobi

So last Friday I moved again. (Yes, this is the third place I’ve lived since I’ve been in Nairobi.) Both of the host families I’ve lived with here have been very nice, but I am so much happier now that I’m subletting a house with a few of my fellow interns.

I’ve definitely gotten back some of the independence that I felt like I had lost when I first got here – our house is close enough to the UN that I can walk to work and I’m finally able to cook again. (As I was making dinner on Sunday for my new housemates I realized that I hadn’t cooked anything in over a month!!) And it’s also just really nice to live with people my own age again.

The house definitely has some interesting quirks – it’s actually got great hot water (as long as you turn the heater on about 45 minutes before you want to take a shower), but it’s got really, really horrible water pressure (it’s kind of a struggle every morning to rinse all of the shampoo out of my hair). Also, I’m living in the room of a 15-year-old girl, which has posters of the characters from The O.C. all over the walls. (I shouldn’t complain, though, my friend Eleonora got the room of the 15-year-old girl's twin brother, so she’s got posters of the Olson twins and a half-naked Jennifer Lopez.) On the whole, though, the house is great, I really like my housemates, and I’m glad that I’ll be living there for the next two months.

I spent pretty much all day Saturday trying to figure out what judges I should apply to for clerkships after graduation. It turned out to be a more involved process than I had originally thought (the law school’s manual on how to apply for judicial clerkships is 84 pages long!!!) and so I didn’t get quite as far as I would have liked.

But by Sunday I had had enough, so I “unplugged” myself and went to Aberdare National Park for the day with some other interns and JPOs (Junior Professional Officers). JPOs are great people to know, because like interns, they are relatively new to the area so want to get out of Nairobi and see the rest of Kenya on the weekends, but unlike interns, they have cars. Well actually, SUVs, which – as much as I hate to say it – you really, really, really need here, both for driving on dirt roads through national parks, but also for driving in downtown – to survive the potholes, and to muscle your way into roundabouts and other intersections, because traffic lights and traffic laws in Nairobi? Not so much.

Anyway, so our nice, very multicultural (Slovakian, German, Argentinean, Finnish, Italian, Kazakhstani, and American) group of JPOs and interns, after going through the very illogical and inefficient Smart Card buying process that we went through at Nairobi NP, we entered the park. (According to the BBC, even with the Smart Cards, Kenya loses $2.8 million a year in park fees that never end up making it to the park.)

Aberare was really, really different than Nairobi NP or Amboseli NP. It’s at a high elevation – we were at about 10,000 feet, – and it felt almost rainforest-like. We didn’t see quite as many animals as we had seen in Amboseli, but we still saw quite a few. It was kind of weird to see the same animals in such different habitats. Amboseli is flat, dry grassland, and Aberdare is mountainous, wet forests – so it was really, really weird to see an elephant in both places!

Here are two photos of the roads we took in Amboseli (top) and Aberdare (bottom) to show you how different the two landscapes are.


Well, that’s it for now. Have a great weekend everyone and type to you later!

Quick Post

Things are pretty busy at work right now, so I haven't had a lot of time to add new content to the blog, but later in the week I'll write about my new house -- I'm renting a place with a bunch of other interns and am very happy there -- and I'll post some photos of my trip to Abardare National Park. (Hmm, is anyone sensing a theme to my weekends?)

For now, I leave you with this Erica in Nairobi reflection:

I can smell rain in Nairobi. Every once in a while at home I can smell the rain coming, but every single time it's rained since I've been here, I've thought to myself, "hmmm, smells like rain" about 5-10 minutes before it begins to fall. It's not exactly a useful skill -- when I wake up in the morning, I can't tell whether or not I'm going to need an umbrella later in the day, but it's still pretty cool.