Rift

We survived the matatu ride up the Nairobi escarpment, dropping into the dramatic Rift Valley, part of a huge fault that stretches from Oman to Mozambique. It's this fault that created Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti, the Ngorongoro Crater, and the Red Sea. In our limited experience, the town of Nakuru is a terrible place crawling with touts, scam artists, pickpockets, and prostitutes. There is also a nice coffee shop. Incongruously, just next door is Lake Nakuru National Park, a big salt lake packed at this time of year with flamingoes and surrounded by all sorts of dramatic wildlife. Despite a "guide" who couldn't drive a stick and couldn't tell an African Spoonbill from a yellow-billed stork, or even a lion from a leopard, we had a great safari drive through the park. We saw rhinos up close, both white and black, and even watched two female white rhinos fighting off a big male to protect a calf. White rhinos were extinct in East Africa, but have been reintroduced to Nakuru from South Africa. We were lucky enough to get a great view of a leopard and saw lots of buffalo a Rothschild giraffe, driven nearly to extinction when Idi Amin had his troops use them for target practice. The best part of our visit to Nakuru was the chance to stay at a cozy little banda inside the park. Usually reserved for school groups, the compound was deserted. As we cooked dinner, lions mated loudly in the darkness just beyond the fence. The fence was surrounded by big trees, and the lions of Nakuru happen to be a rare tree-climbing subspecies. The door was kept bolted and bathroom trips were more exciting than usual. It kind of reminded me of camping on a bear trail next to a salmon creek in September in Alaska. We spent the next morning exploring the park some more, with a slightly more competent guide, then heading on to Lake Naivasha. Our home here was another cozy cabin, high on a hill above the lake and surrounded by flowering cacti. It was quiet and beautiful and made a great base for exploring Hell's Gate National Park. They let people bike here and mountain biking among zebras, gazelles, warthogs, and buffalo is pretty cool. Unless, as in K's case, you are stuck in deep sand on a hill when an afternoon thunderstorm rolls in. She went back to town for coffee and cheesecake while I rode across the park in the rain, wary of angry looking buffalo. At the other end is a beautiful network of slot canyons that provided hours of fun, wet scrambling sin guia. There were cool birds, pumice rocks floating down the wash, and hot springs trickling out of the canyon walls. In the evenings we wandered down the very dark road to a tiny village where women were grilling corn on a fire and every shop seemed to include a butchery (Butchery + Hotel, Butchery+Bar, Butchery+ Bookstore), each with huge sides of meat hanging in the window. We found a great place called the Acacia Cafe, a very local affair where we feasted on heaping plates of beans, potato stew, lentils, and chapatis, garnished with a huge ripe avocado. Flourescent lights glared and Kenyan Idol blared on the TV, but the food was delicious and the bill was two dollars. Back in Nairobi for a day, we kissed giraffes at a reserve in the suburbs and ate the most delicious Ethiopian food at Habesa. In the morning we made the long trek back to Tanzania, back to work.

Nairobi

Octopizzo is a freestyle rapper and leader of a hip-hop collective. His career is on an upward arc, with lots of gigs, a new album, newspaper features, a song commisioned for the World Cup, and a new manager who moonlights as a VJ on MTV Africa. If things work out, he'll never have to return to the apartment we've crowded into, deep inside Kibera, one of the world's largest and most infamous urban slums.
Octo's girlfriend is an old high-school friend of K's named Christine. She left a university job in Japan, came to Nairobi to work in the slums, met Octo at a party, fell in love, and is now helping raise his 18 month old daughter, Tracy. Christine works for an Irish NGO, educating mothers in the slums on infant nutrition and health issues.
The five of us spent a couple hours walking here through Kibera. It is estimated that 800,000 people live in the slum, a fifth of Nairobi's residents. They are denied access to the most basic of services and live in very close proximity to their trash and shit. It's called "chocolate city", not for this reason, nor for the river flowing through its center that looks like Willy Wonka's factory, but because from a vantage on one of the higher peripheries, the endless cluster of rusted corrugated roofs resembles a giant chocolate bar.
In the upper, more prosperous parts, one could almost romanticize Kibera. It's dirt streets are almost entirely pedestrian, and framed by blocks of tiny storefronts with hand painted signs. There's a butcher, a locksmith, loads of shops selling small buckets of charcoal for cooking. There are barber shops, little video huts screening Chuck Norris and Kung-Fu films, even a shop advertising wedding dresses. People greet each other and gather in doorways and gangs of childrens accost visitors with their sing-song mantra "how-are-YOU". The scene could be Victorian England, or 19th century Manhattan.
Since we're with Octo, we can venture further, down the labyrinth of pathways, along the sad river, over huge heaps of refuse to the belly of Kibera. This is an island of humanity, completely removed from Nairobi. At night it is ruled by brutal gangs with guns and knives. The police wouldn't think of setting foot in here.
The apartment is an 8x8 room in a long block of 8x8 rooms, mud huts win tin roofs. Octo's 12 year-old brother Jim lives here alone, cooking for himself on a small charcoal stove in the corner. There is a small bed, some chairs, and a trophy Octo won at a hip-hop event. Rats scurry along the rafters. The public toilet outside has fallen apart and sewage streams up to the front door. I can't even imagine what it's like during the rains. Octo and Christine are hoping Jim can get into a boarding school next year.
On the way back, Octo is on edge as we pass various thugs, and has me stash my little camera at times. We visit an artisan collective where cow and camel bones from a butchery are transformed into jewelry and knicknacks. As they describe the process, all we can think about is the fine bone dust everywhere and not a respirator in sight. But the crew is funny and someone I know must need a camel bone salt dish.
Tracy tolerates being dragged around all day and only cries once- when a rat scares her in Jim 's place. She is equally angelic later that night , when we gather at a nyama choma spot for goat and beer.
Despite it's fearful reputation, Nairobi is a fine place to spend a few days. We enjoy wandering the wide boulevards under blooming jacarandas and sipping on some fine Kenyan coffee. Manuevering through the downtown throngs, past the site of the US embassy, bombed by Al-Qaeda in 1998, we come to the train depot. Nairobi exists only because of this train, a fanciful British colonial idea dubbed the "Lunatic Express" because of its logistical challenges. The city sprung up out of nothing as a supply depot along the route, which connected Mombasa, on the coast, with Lake Victoria. The rail was built largely by workers from India. In standard fashion, thousands died in the process, including 134 who were devoured by two ferocious lions during the months the crew spent building a bridge over the Tsavo river. The lions escaped capture for months and the workers all fled, only returning when a British engineer cum big game hunter finally suceeded in killing them. They are now stuffed at the Field Museum in Chicago. We climb around on some derelict engines and sleeper cars and check out the bench seat fashioned for the front of an engine, allowing visiting dignitaries like Teddy Roosevelt to blast away at game as the train rolled through the African savannah.
Becoming more brave, we even try a bit of night exploration in the city, long ago dubbed "Nairobbery" by some jackass. Nothing bad happens, of course, and we steel ourselves for the truly dangerous part of this journey. Tomorrow's trip to the Rift Valley will be aboard a matatu, Kenya's ubiquitous 14 passenger van, with 17 passengers and a driver, possibly stoned on qat, careening wildly through the mountain roads.