Arie Goes to Nairobi: More Like Snoreway

This was my only real day in Nairobi (I wrote about my initial impressions before), and Lonely Planet was singularly unhelpful in deciding what to do (it recommended coffee and Chinese food). Instead I decided to have a wildlife adventure.

I woke up a bit before 6, checked out of my hotel, and got in a cab. The driver took me to Nairobi National Park, a wildlife preserve a few miles outside of Nairobi. The park is surprisingly large considering it's right next to Kenya's capital, and it's really odd -- big expanses of savannah with steel skyscrapers rising in the background and jets flying overhead.

We drove around the park a bit as the sun rose -- first to an overlook so we could try to spot animals. We didn't, really, so then we drove around a bit blindly, saw a few antelope, nothing special. A few birds. I'm not really into birds -- they all look more or less the same to me. This one is yellow. I guess there are lots of unusual birds in East Africa. Shrug.

Pretty soon, though, we had to stop because there were lions in the road. Two of them, females, probably hunting. Fortunately they weren't hunting mzungu -- I had the windows rolled down and they didn't seem interested in jumping in. They basically ignored us as we drove right up to them and took photos. They stayed on the road for a bit and then meandered south in the direction of the antelope. We were apparently very lucky to see lions, most visitors to the park don't.

When I arrived in Kenya I was a little disappointed to find that there weren't lions on every street corner. This was more like it, I thought -- out here for an hour and already two lions. At that rate I'd have seen thirty lions by the end of the day. Sadly, and I'm writing this now so that the reader isn't in suspense, these were the only lions I saw. They don't have manes because they're female (though certain males, particularly those adapted to swimming, also lack manes) -- lionesses do most of the hunting in lion prides.

We drove a bit more and saw some antelope and then a zebra. I just finished reading Guns, Germs, and Steel (overrated), which asserts that zebra are too ill-tempered to be domesticated. They looked friendly to me, but my driver said I wasn't allowed to go play with them or he would get fired. Fine. I stayed in the car. Also I thought they ran in giant herds so their stripes made them blend together or something, but there were just a couple.

Then we saw two rhinoceri. These guys are white rhinos, the same species that I petted back in Entebbe, although again I was not allowed to get out and pet these. Apparently it's very rare to see these too. We then drove on to various groups of antelope and then ostrich. First we saw one ostrich, then two, then maybe twenty. At this rate, the world will be filled with ostrich within weeks. Fortunately, they're very tasty (see below).

After a bit we came upon some giraffes. They were basically standing around looking at stuff from above. The driver said that they were looking out for lions, but really lions will rarely attack adult giraffes because giraffes kick very hard, and because when lions bite giraffe legs they tend to slide downward. Baby giraffes, however, are tasty lion treats.

We drove a bit more and found a little lake surrounded by birds. Some of them were marabou storks, the worst of all birds, and others were crested cranes, the national bird of Uganda. Then more zebra, the giraffes again, some birds, more antelopes, and we left the park.

Our next stop was a giraffe center. I'm sure they had some sort name that would excuse it, like the Giraffe Wildlife Preservation Group or the Giraffe Education Center or something, but really it was a place you can go to feed and pet giraffes.

Sure enough, there were three or four giraffes standing around and a bunch of keepers and buckets of food pellets. I took a bunch of pellets in my hand and immediately a surprisingly large head on a very long neck dipped down and licked them out of my hand while I petted it. Giraffe tongues are raspy and purple.

I felt bad that the giraffes had to bend so far down (they already have blood pressure problems -- so would you if your heart had to pump blood that high), so I climbed up into a little pavilion that the center had built at about giraffe head level and fed the giraffes some more. A keeper warned us not to come too close to one of them -- "Betty likes to headbutt". Then he suggested that I feed her, which I did, and then he suggested I try to snuggle up to her and stroke her head while I fed her. I think he was trying to get me headbutted. The moment I ran out of food she went for me, but I was expecting it and dodged.

Then I went back downstairs and at the direction of a keeper put a food pellet between my lips and a giraffe bent down and licked it up. That was surreal. The keeper explained that giraffe saliva is antiseptic, but I wasn't really concerned -- how many illnesses can jump the giraffe-man barrier? And anyway, that would be a great way to get sick.

Incidentally, giraffe saliva really is antiseptic. They eat acacia trees, which are covered in thorns, so their faces get cut a lot, so they've evolved antiseptic saliva to deal with it a little. Also some of the trees they eat have a symbiotic relationship with ants where the tree produces sugar for the ants and when the giraffe tries to eat the leaves, the ants run into the giraffe's mouth and nose and sting it. One of the reasons giraffes have such long tongues is to lick the ants out of their noses.

Our next stop was an elephant orphanage. There are a lot of orphaned baby elephants in Kenya. Much like people, baby elephants without good role models can grow up to be poorly socialized, violent, and prematurely sexualized. So Kenya takes all the orphaned baby elephants it can find and puts them together into a little elephant pack, where they're reared for two years by a bunch of keepers. Every day between eleven and noon they feed the babies, and for that hour only the area is open to visitors.

I'm told that the New York Times Magazine recently ran an article about this place, which might explain why it was so crowded. There were tons of people, but fortunately elephants (even baby elephants) are pretty big, so we could all see. The first pack they brought out comprised the youngest elephants, and they were very excited to be at feeding time.

Feeding time is also mud time, it turns out -- the keepers filled buckets from the waterhole and poured them into the dirt, and the excited baby elephants immediately ran over and starting rolling in the mud. They were clearly happy elephants. I went to an elephant camp in Thailand where the elephants were trained to perform various tricks and they seemed fairly content with their lives, but these guys were different -- they weren't domesticated or even tamed, they were just wild baby elephants having fun in the mud.

Then they led them away (by way of the edge of the field, so I got to pet them) and brought out the adolescent elephants. They keep the orphans in packs because the elephants make friends amongst the pack, and each pack is released into the wild when an appropriate group of adults is nearby, but never before every member of the pack is at least two years old. This pack was almost ready for release -- there were only two elephants left that were under two years old.

The adolescent elephants were fed milk -- three large bottles per elephant. They were clearly very excited about the milk. After feeding the adolescents played in the water for a while, rolled around in the mud a bit, and then walked off. The keepers tried to get them to play some soccer, but they weren't into it. The orphanage also had a baby black rhino in a cage. He used to come out and play, but apparently one day he got violent and now he has to stay in the box. Rhino jail.

After the elephant orphanage, I went to Carnivore, a famous restaurant outside Nairobi. It serves all sorts of exotic meats (I had lamb (OK), beef (not bad), chicken (good), ostrich (my favorite), alligator (a little fishy), and crocodile (second favorite)). And a very dry brownie for dessert. Carnivore is sometimes considered one of the best restaurants in the world, but I wasn't convinced.

Then a taxi back to my hotel -- I straightened out some plane tickets and then took a taxi to the train station to wait for my train to Mombasa.

Incidentally, I was continually struck by how different Nairobi is from Kampala. The roads are in much better shape, there are more and taller buildings, lots more infrastructure. There are virtually no motorcycles, and no motorcycle taxis at all. There are matatus (share taxis), but they're different from the ones in Uganda -- they are driven more carefully, they're better maintained, and they all have speed governors that limited them to 80 kilometers (about fifty miles) per hour. But the biggest difference is that they are highly decorated -- lots of posters covering the back windows, fancy paint jobs, etc.

Nairobi would be a great city, I guess, except that the crime problem really ruins it. It's unsafe to walk at night and walking in the daytime is borderline (when I went to walk to an airline office mid-afternoon, the hotel tried to send a guard with me). My taxi drivers made sure to roll up the windows and lock the doors when we were downtown, even mid-day. When we were near the train station, I suggested that I walk the fifty feet to the door because of the mess of cars there, and the taxi driver told me that I wouldn't make it to the door with all my bags. Great place to visit. Incidentally, this sign was up at my hotel -- it explains that the staff cannot open the safe, and then says "Should you wish to illegally take our money collection, you may take the complete safe. PLEASE DO NOT HARM OUR STAFF." This from a hotel with a twenty-four hour security guard. In Kampala, virtually all the guards carried automatic rifles, but here I saw virtually no weapons -- even the police were unarmed. I'm not sure if that's part of the reason why the crime is much worse here, or if weapons would just mean that the robberies would become murders.

Either way, I'm not eager to return.

You might want to read about my train ride to Mombasa.