Trying to Describe Kenya

Breathtaking sunset, Nanyuki, Kenya

The other day I tried to describe Kenya to someone and I was kind of at a loss. How do you describe living a dream, a fantasy to someone? I've travelled to a lot of major cities and to a lot of places in this world, but I have never been in jaw-dropping awe of someplace every moment I was there before.

I always dreamed of Kenya. Born Free was on the television - perhaps the Wide World of Disney on Sunday? I had to have been no more than three or four. What I saw made me obsessed with lions and Kenya for decades after. I can't tell you why I never took a job travelling or just backpacked for a few years. I took the responsible job route and have lived to regret it.

But I had the opportunity to travel to Kenya last year on my honeymoon. For most women the wedding was the high point - to be honest I wanted to get that over with so we could be on a plane for our short (NOT) 2 day trip to Kenya.

Arriving in Kenya was easy. We waited on line for really less than an hour to get entry into the country. We got our Visas right at the airport. I remember having our passport stamped with Kenya on it - such excitement!

We had a driver waiting for us since we had just missed the flight to Amboselli and had to take a minivan the four hour trip. Directly out of the airport - right in Nairobi - we saw our first giraffe. A giraffe! In the wild! After about 2 hours driving we stopped to get a soda and some gas and then took our turn off the main road and into Masailand. We passed the local Maasai market where everything from cloth to fruit to goats were traded. And then the land opened up. It just literally opened up to the biggest sky I've ever seen. The air was dry and thin. The sky was bigger, bluer, more three dimensional than I've ever seen it. It was like when Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz lands in Oz and black and white turns to technicolor. The land and the air smelled too - a good smell of dryness, dirt and faint animal smells. What I remember noting is that everything was so dry. Kenya isn't a jungle - it's a savanna and the colors are green and gold and red and brown.

Young elephant in Amboselli

As we drove to our first camp, our driver picked up and dropped off various people - Maasai tribesmen getting a lift in their day. I remember looking at us in our khakhis and our beige clothing with our beige skin and looking at them - with their dark brown skin nd their red robes and tons of beadwork bracelets, belts, necklaces, earrings that would make any woman jealous. Every safari book admonished us to get a wardrobe of beige and khaki. This helps camouflage you to the animals. What a crock - our guides were as colorful as peacocks! And far more beautiful. I look at our pictures and compare their color to our blandness and I laugh!

On safari

We stayed at Porini Ecocamps - totally solar powered, they sit on conservancies. We went to a Maasai village and I remember the people - how we as Americans would think of them as "poor" or "in need of help". These people need nothing from us. They are rich in culture, in family, in beauty, in livestock and in land. They have natural remedies for everything from coughs to bug bites to animal scratches. They are far wiser than us. And they do go to school. In fact a lot of the people we met go to university in Nairobi and come back to live in their villages. Culture and tradition is important to them and they strive to not lose that. The only thing they would like from us is for us to come to Kenya so that they can earn an honest wage as a cook or a driver or a guide.

Beautiful Maasai Girl

But I haven't spoken about the animals. The only thing I can say is that to see these animals that we've all seen in pictures and in zoos here...in person...living, running, playing, having babies and even dying is a gift that I will cherish forever. Now more than ever I feel the need to protect nature and wildlife.

In our travels throughout the country, we saw elephants nurturing and protecting the smallest possibly newborn elephant I've ever seen. We saw a pride of lions on a hunt at night - their calls so deep that the ground shakes. We saw two male lions - brothers - one healthy and robust, the other bony and sickly. The healthy one will stay with the sick brother, making sure he is fed, making sure he is not attacked. He will stay with this brother until the brother is well or dies. He will stay even if it means his death.

small lion, big world

We saw Mt. Kenya's snow capped peak and the Abadare mountain range. We saw lions nursing their cubs. We saw warthog families runnin, teeny babies in tow with their tails straight in the air, like flags waving. We saw a cheetah mother teach her cubs to hunt and a zebra separated from her herd - limping, knowing she probably wouldn't make it through the night.

And we saw death. We saw an elephant that died stuck in a mudhole. We saw the carcass of a wildebeest that had died while still running - the body eternally in a run position. We saw an antelope carcass in a tree, it's horns hooked onto a branch. Placed there by a leopard so she could come back and finish her meal.

Eat or be eaten - first rule.

But we mostly saw life. Life in every form. The struggle to say alive, be it hunter or prey. The life in Kenya's people - full of pride and laughter.

They say Kenya and the Great Rift Valley is the origin of mankind, perhaps the origin of all living beings. Being there that's easy to believe. The land, the very air is alive and she sings a song. It's a song of freedom. It's a song of coming home. And that's the only way I can describe Africa - for all her strangeness and differentness to the United States - it's like coming home.