4 carts, 14 bags, and 4 people – we dispersed our goods and made it out of the airport no problem. Paul and I had rehearsed our list of contents in case we were asked. Last year, we stumbled over our words and told them that we were carrying spotlights in all ten pieces of luggage. “That’s a lot of spotlights,” the customs officer had said. “Yes, yes it is.” But this year we were traveling with two friends and we made it out smoothly. Karibu Kenya – welcome to Kenya.
I’ve never been one for maintenance, preparations, or anything that you have to do over and over again - I’m a, check things off the list, type of girl. So jet lagged and on the flipside of two weeks of Christmas vegetation, it seemed like a respectable idea to head up to Mt. Kenya and hike to the top of the peak first thing. Hands down, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Of course it wasn’t the routine sitting sessions and frequent trips to the cookie jar over the last couple of weeks that made it this way, no, fault rests fully with the altitude of course. Day 1 – 3 ½ hours of steady incline – we saw some baboons and the remnants of elephant presence, it was about a two honey shot day. (Energy boosts) Day 2 – 8 hours of incline and reluctant decline – we saw a rock hyrax and our guide began making me set the pace for the rest of the group since I was the slowest. I questioned his time estimates one time and he replied, “Well yes, it will take us this long because you are slow,” it was a four honey shot day. Day 3 – the first step was taken at 3:00 am so that we would make it to the peak by sunrise. Our arrival was slightly tardy, but that didn’t matter much because it was snowing and sleeting and you couldn’t see anything but the Kenyan flag waving victory back at you. Dazed and standing at almost 17,000 feet I happily checked this task off the list and directed my wobbly legs back down again. Perhaps I found energy in the reclaimed oxygen or the anticipation of the end, but we left the snow and walked another 9 ½ hours through a bog to our final base camp situated even lower than the camp on day one. We collapsed and let the last hour of the day’s sun warm our sore feet and promptly slept for 11 hours, it may have been a rest of the bottle of honey shot day. In the morning we followed the road for another 2 ½ hours out of the park and drove back to Nairobi, no honey was consumed.
Kenya received a lot of rain in the last month and the drought seemed to be all but erased down at camp. Our paths of travel were overgrown, the beach at our little swimming hole was completely flooded, and some of the badly rutted roads showed no signs of ware - great for our environmental impact. All those lovely thorns that we were stepping on last year had sprouted and now you had new ones scratching you at about ankle level. The ground was covered in about a million caterpillars of various shades and sizes and at every meal Paul seemed to be dressed in at least 4 or 5 of them. The only stagnant growth seemed to be in the 23 trees I had planted. I had told Sam that I expected them to be towering over me upon my return, but only one showed any signs of life. Perhaps my optimism wasn’t well received by reality. What has been growing quite nicely are Sam’s plant plots and partnered with the animal counts that we do every six weeks, we went out with her one day to count grass. The Maasai are usually a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the particulars of their environment so Sam asked this one man herding goats nearby if he could come and identify a plant species for her. Perhaps he didn’t know how detailed she wanted him to be, but he told her it was called “grass” in Maasai and “grass” in Swahili. With the rain came the grass and with the grass came the animals and transects this month showed huge herds of wildebeest and zebra that had survived the drought. Wildebeest populations in other areas of Kenya seem to have been decimated so this was great news for our study site. The carnivores are almost all accounted for, but two of the four collared lions are evading our search efforts thus far. Esipata has been a faithful find though she hasn’t yet willingly accepted us as a part of her life. Monster had puppies while we were away and contrary to our belief that the Maasai don’t really have affection for their dogs, the four puppies were famous and everyone was fighting over them. Both Monster and Bucket are to be adopted as a pair and moved to Nairobi sometime soon, but in the mean time they have accepted us back into their life and stubbornly try to follow us whenever we leave camp.
Before we left last year, I gave Kijalo, Michel’s wife, a bunch of beads to be creative with. I didn’t intend for them to come back to me, but she used some of them to make gifts for Paul and I and our two guests. Pink is becoming the new red in Maasai land and all the men are sporting new pink wraps. This may help explain why the necklace that was made for Paul had a huge pink bead in the center. The rest of the beads in his design were a mix of traditional Maasai beads and some pearl like beads from a broken necklace of my grandmothers. Kwa bwana mkubwa. (For the big boss) I like to call him fancy Paul now.
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