Kenya

Upon arrival in the huge metropole city of Nairobi we were joined by my family (my parents and my brother). They had decided to use some of their leave to come and visit us on our journey and we were going to do a couple of weeks of safari together.

To start our African adventure together we firstly went to visit the slum of Kibera. Kibera is situated right in the middle of Nairobi and is the biggest urban slum in all of Africa. Even though it is surrounded by new high rises, fenced off golf courses and newly built highways on all sides, it is de facto completely cut off from the rest of the city. It does not receive any form of government support, they are not connected to the sewage systems or water supplies of the city, there is no police presence or even any form of supported housing constructions. They get their electricity by illegally hooking up wiring to the main power supply lines with some very daunting and dangerous looking results. It is literally a shanty town made up of a huge amount of clay and metal sheet huts. You can see massive amounts of garbage in open sewer systems and people living under the poorest of conditions. It definitely puts your life into a stark perspective right away seeing the way people here are forced to live.

Nevertheless, as we walk through the streets with our local guides, we are greeted with smiles and waving children all around, people have come up with all sorts of ingenious solutions for small businesses and ways to make a bit of money and there is a lovely sense of community and positivity in the air. We feel a bit voyaristic at first “gawking at people in poverty”. But when we ask our guides how the local people feel about us visiting they said that it was actually greatly appreciated. They usually feel forgotten about, the upperclass residents of Nairobi pretend that Kibera doesn’t exist, so the fact that we come to see how they live, makes them feel like somebody sees them as people and somebody cares. It was overall a very enlightening and humbling experience and just reminds you again how grateful we should all be to be born with the privileges we get to enjoy in the western world.

Speaking of privileges.. next we embarked on 2 full weeks of Safari! This tour would take us across two countries, Kenya & Tanzania, and 6 National Parks. Let me start here with our experience on the Kenyan side.

We spent time in the Nairobi National Park (located right next to Nairobi with the city skyline in the background), Masai Mara and the Amboseli Park.

The main reason for visiting the Nairobi National Park was their contingent of black rhinos there. And we indeed got lucky and saw two black rhinos from about 30m away. And even cooler, some white rhinos including a baby came all the way up to the car, grazing about 2m away from us. Rhinos are incredibly shy so even the ranger said that this was an unusual and special occurrence.

The Masai Mara is this huuuuuge flat expanse of grass plains and as soon as we drove in, it was just teeming with animals. There are gazelles, zebras, pumbas (warthogs) and giraffes everywhere you look.

Unfortunately, even though it is supposed to be dry season right now, they have experienced very heavy rains lately, which made the roads extremely slippery and muddy and difficult to navigate. We were often hanging on to our seats while our vehicle slipped and slid down the tracks and we came across several other cars who had managed to get stuck in the mud.

We got super lucky and had some amazing sightings, first and foremost many many lion sightings. One huge pride sleeping and lazing in the sun, two male lions dragging the remains of a buffalo through the grass, a couple mating and also the two most adorable cubs looking cuddly and fluffy in the setting sunlight. Another cool experience was a group of hyenas gnawing on some buffalo bones. With their incredibly strong jaws, they can crack and then digest even the hardest bones and let me tell you- the noise that the bone cracking produces sends shivers down your spine.

The Amboseli National Park is known for a lot of giant elephant herds and it is beautifully set against the backdrop of Kilimanjaro in the background. We got to see elephants playing, cooling off and swimming in a pond to escape the midday heat and when the clouds parted we could see the snowcapped peak of Kilimanjaro (the highest mountain in Africa) looming over us, which was a special experience.

Each of the parks had its own unique landscape and ambiance and the sheer amount and variety of wildlife was incredible to behold. But it was sometimes sobering to see the stark contrast between these world-famous parks and then to drive through the villages in rural Kenya, seeing the poverty and living conditions. It seems that not much of the money that the tourists bring into the country by going on safari trickles down to the rural communities unfortunately.

But off we go across the landborder into our next destination... Tanzania!