Day Off! Nanyuki and Mt. Kenya.

Yesterday was our first day off. We decided that the course for the day would be to drive to Mt. Kenya and go for a short hike or just relax at the top of the track (it is possible to drive up above the tree line, but you can't very close to the peak.) On the way to Mt. Kenya, we stopped in Nanyuki to look around and buy some souvenirs if we wished - it was our first chance to actually visit a Kenyan community. We drove into the main part of town and stopped in front of a row of shops with a row of stalls facing them. Even before the land rover had fully stopped, a swarm of people - mostly men - had gathered, hawking various goods or advertising their stalls. It was overwhelming. As soon as we stepped out, we were pushed back against the sides of the land rover by an insistent crowd trying to sell us DVDs, sunglasses, watches, or invite us to their stall with various incentives or pleadings. They introduced themselves, shook hands, asked where we were from, told us about their families, asked how long we would be in Kenya for, tried to barter for our belongings, and explained why their goods were better than anyone else's (in fact they were all essentially the same - additionally, the whole crowd of stall-owners actually operate in a cooperative manner and share out the profits of the day.)

Armed with 5000 kenya shillings, I innocently went with one of the stall owners and ended up being the first sucker of the day, overpaying outrageously for a teak elephant carving, a bangle made of brass, copper, and iron which I am wearing right now, and a teak hair clasp. “Please, I will give you a good deal,” the vendor explained, taking out a pad of paper to write down his prices, shoving various items into my hands, well aware that he had a beautiful opportunity to make a killing on someone who hadn't any idea of the correct price for things. “Please, promote me. Promote me. Be my first customer of the day! It is good luck for both of us.” So, what the hell. I was vaguely aware of being suckered, but then again, the cost was still good by North American standards.

Afterwards, a small crowd of other vendors descended upon me - next in line was Patrick, who gave me a beautiful story about how he wanted to trade me a pair of salad spoons for my hairbands, because he would bless them and give them to a group of girls in the community who did hair. “I am a collector, I only want the hari-bands,” he pleaded. “Take these,” handing me various salad spoons. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, I accepted the salad spoons, only to return them to him when he explained that he needed money to cover the cost of the wood. “Only the cost of the wood! The price it costs me. For you, this good price, because I am a collector, I only need the hari-bands for the girls. For the girls, you understand.” Rejected. Sorry, Patrick. I left him one of my hari-bands, in case it was actually of any use to him, and was promptly latched onto by the next in line.

“My name is Bob.” Bob and I got along well - by this time my sucker-status was fading, and as he more gently pressed items into my hands, some of his carvings of Masai soldiers fell over with a massive clatter. “It is an omen! It means they want to be sold!” he exclaimed, but began laughing, as did his friends, as did I, at the ridiculous line. After a bit of bargaining, Bob offered me a price about 1/6 of what the first guy had charged, and I paid for two more carvings. Live and learn. I certainly won't pay any more than what I gave Bob, after this. I'd feel badly about the first guy getting the big profit, except that Nathan told us they share it out afterwards. Indeed, the whole process was cooperative - I only had large 1000-shilling notes from the ATM at Nairobi airport, and to give me change Bob had to get notes from all of his friends that had gathered around.

I spoke with a woman who had actually traveled to Victoria to visit family she had there - it was quite a shocker to have the second person I talked to in Nanyuki be someone that could talk about Saanich, Douglas Street, and the University of Victoria. “It was too cold for me!”

We drove through more of Nanyuki on our way to the highway out, and it was a chaotic, seething, dusty, colorful mess. Very few personal vehicles, as might be expected - many rickety old bicycles, trucks, matatus (this is how everyone gets around; like a cross between a cab and a bus, they are minivans that get crammed full of people and drive from settlement to settlement. Till recently they were extremely dangerous, because the drivers would cram in as many people as they could and drive as fast as possible. Many people died in matatu crashes. Now the government has regulated the maximum number of passengers, and I think they are constructed to have a maximum speed. There are frequent roadblocks all along the highway to inspect the matatus. Nevertheless, they aren't completely under control; some will still be overstuffed, a white passenger will inevitably be overcharged, and many of the traffic cops are corrupt.) The roads were all dirt, and the stores were a patchwork of dilapidated buildings, shacks, and mere wooden frames walled with fluttering sheets of black plastic, all with people spilling in and out, back and forth, clothed in a mishmash of random American t-shirts and plain cloth. It's quite a contrast from being up at Mpala, where most of the Kenyans we see fall into two categories: the workers at the center, or Masai pastoralists, who still bear spears to herd the cattle and dress in traditional clothing and beads. In Nanyuki the atmosphere was frantic, overstuffed, a miasma of dust kicked up by the traffic coating all the brightly painted signs and rainbow of clothing.

There are schoolchildren everywhere, recognizable by their uniforms, and we passed crowds of them - as well as every other kind of person - as we drove down the road towards Mt. Kenya. The kids would look up and wave and shout at us in Swahili as we passed.

Mt. Kenya was beautiful. But this is getting too long, and I have reading to do, so I'm going to cut it a bit short, and leave you with a few vague lines:

Lying in the tussocky grass up at Mt. Kenya talking to Greg or Laurie, smelling the sharp fragrant alpine herbs and feeling the swift blustery chill that falls when the clouds cover the sun. It's as though the thin air is infinitely weak, infinitely unable to hold onto the heat of the sun.

The shift in vegetation is swift as well - after two weeks of nothing but parched ranch land, the thick forest going up Mt. Kenya was almost too much for my eyes. Vines? SHADOWS? Trees with more leaves than thorns? What's going on???

I painted on my real watercolor paper for the first time and was fairly pleased with the results - if it photographs well, I'll post the painting, as I didn't take any photos up there. I'll try and get ahold of someone else's photos.

Additional news: yes, my digestive health has been fully recovered for ages. However, due to my own foolishness, I smashed my fingers under the land rover's roof and now have a little band-aid on my pinkie finger. Not serious, no worries. Obviously I am still typing like a maniac.

Working on my brevity (with little success),

Jenn