Hookers and Giraffes

November the 7th, 2009

Last night was a blast. The PCVs took us to a club/bar called Gipsy, which was packed with all sorts. Young, old, Kenyans, Asians, Brits, Germans, NGO workers and prostitutes. I proceeded to get a bit sloshed, and ended up being worked on by a hooker. I bought her a drink and she told me that “Dom” is slang for weed, so I shouldn’t introduce myself that way. High-larious.

Anyway, we drank, we danced, I watched football highlights, and we all made it home at the end of the night. All for about $18. It still didn’t feel like Africa though…

… but the ride today brought me back into the mindset I was expecting. The road from Nairobi to Mombasa is paved! A relatively new feature I’m informed. About 60 miles down the road we turned southwards having traveled past some spectacular landscapes. I now understand what Hemingway meant by those “Green Hills of Africa.” We saw zebras, ostriches, antelope, and above all giraffes. Two fellas were lumbering by the side of the road and offered a spectacular view of themselves.

About 40 miles outside of Loitokitok the pavement ran out, and parts of the road were nothing but dust. At one point is was so bad that the road was completely obscured by the clouds being blown ahead of us by the wind, and we had to stop and wait for them to clear. I was sitting near the front, and as we crested a hill I noticed the landscape ahead was rising upwards into the clouds. I knew it as soon as I perceived it: Kilimanjaro! Or the base of it at least, I still haven’t seen its entirety due to the weather. But even at this distance, 20 miles away, its base took up half of my field of vision!

After arriving in Loitokitok we took a short walk through the town, which lies at the base of the great mountain. I’ve read that the population numbers about 35,000, with the majority from the Maasai tribe. From where we are staying the night at Outward Bound, we calked along a dirt track past fields and houses and finally shops as we made our way through the city centre. Then we hooked back around past more houses and a field where children were playing football. Apparently, we are quite a spectacle. The children kept running out to greet us screaming “Howryu!” They kids are disgustingly adorable, all smiles in their tattered rags. Livestock encumbered our way around every bend, and every five seconds we had to jump to the side of the road to avoid being run down by a motorcycle.

But what I honestly found the most fascinating are the trees. Some erupt into leaves of beautiful purple fireworks. Some are those flat-topped trees that are distinctly African. And some are tree trunk on bottom, but the top branches resemble cacti, as if they were the result of some genetic splicing between oak and saguaro. Truly, this is an alien planet I have landed on.