In addition to a tour of Lamu town, the other compulsory tourist activity was to take a sundowner cruise on a dhow. Dhows are the sailing boats that Arabian traders have used for over a thousand years along the coast of Africa. They look like the pictures in history books of ancient sailing ships on the Mediterranean. I wasn’t that interested in a slow sail around the harbor, but Wendy twisted my arm, and so I agreed. The first part of the sail was uneventful. We saw the sunset, had our cocktails, took pictures, then we set sail to go back to our hotel. Of the two crew members handling our dhow, the younger one now took charge of the sailing. Because of the direction of the wind, the boat set off toward a point up the coast from our hotel. I assumed that at some point, it would tack back in the other direction. I was wrong. Our junior captain headed us straight into the beach about a mile from our hotel. When he realized what was happening, it was too late. We ran aground on the beach. With help from his crewmate who jumped into the shallow water and pushed, he was able to get us freed from the sand. However, the wind was blowing directly onshore, making it impossible to sail the boat. The young crew member began poling from the deck and the other stayed in the water and pushed. After about an hour of this activity, we came upon a dock only a quarter mile from our hotel. We jumped out on the dock and walked the rest of the way. We had a great time, but a message from the U.S. embassy, later in the summer, made us think twice about going back.
Warden Message: Alleged Threat to Kidnap American Citizens Inside Kenya
U.S. Embassy Nairobi has received information that Islamic extremists in southern Somalia may be planning kidnapping operations inside of Kenya. There are indications that Islamic extremists based in Somalia may be planning to target Westerners, especially American citizens, in the Kiwayu Island tourist area and other beach sites frequented by Western travelers on the northeast coast near Somalia. All U.S. citizens in these areas should exercise extreme caution and remain vigilant at all times.
Lamu Island is in the area referred to in the communication. We hadn’t been planning another trip there, but this made it certain. Lamu is a wonderful vacation spot, but I didn’t want an extended vacation in Somalia.
Later in the summer we had another great experience spending a long weekend with a small group of acquaintances in Tsavo National Park. Someone had discovered that the Kenya Wildlife Service had excess residences within national parks that rented out for nominal fees and had made the reservation for our group. We stayed in the old warden’s house, a large, reasonably comfortable but spare facility. It was fine; we weren’t expecting a five star.
Tsavo is located southeast of Nairobi on the road to Mombasa, Kenya’s major port. The long ride gave us an opportunity to make a number of observations. Since it’s one of the most heavily traveled roads in Kenya, one might assume that the Nairobi-Mombasa Road would be well maintained. That would be a bad assumption. There were sections of highway in the middle of the journey that were not bad and allowed driving at the speed limit. There were even sections of four-lane dual carriageway (divided highway). Evidently, the entire highway was supposed to have been dual-carriageway, but for some reason, the money disappeared before the project was completed. Things like that seemed to happen a lot. Often the situation was just ignored. Sometimes the perpetrators were publicly exposed with accompanying outrage, but then things would just blow over and there would be no consequences, even when there was significant evidence of criminal activity by politicians. For example, read It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower by Michela Wrong.
In contrast to the reasonably good stretches of road farther away, the sections near Nairobi were terrible. In addition to the standard broken pavement and potholes, another phenomenon could be observed. In cross-section, the rutted pavement looked like two capital letter Us side by side, connected by a convex curve in the middle. This pattern had obviously been generated by overloaded trucks and an underconstructed highway. Someone probably made money on underbuilding the highway, and someone else was probably continuing to make money by allowing overloaded trucks to travel it. Without even careful observation, it was obvious that Kenya imported heavier goods (machinery, vehicles, and equipment) than it exported (flowers, coffee, tea). The road ruts were much deeper on the highway coming into Nairobi (sometimes a foot deep) than they were going out to Mombasa.
Despite the road, we were looking forward to visiting Tsavo, which is a large but lesser visited game park. It was made somewhat famous by the movie The Ghost and the Darkness with Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer. The very scary movie, based on the book The Man-eaters of Tsavo, tells the true story of a pair of lions at the turn of the twentieth century who sought out humans to kill and eat. During this period when the Trans-Kenyan Railway was being built, these lions killed over one hundred people. Since the period described in the movie, the lions from Tsavo have been involved in numerous other killings. Some people have speculated that these lions are a different and more aggressive subspecies. Studies have supposedly shown that the Tsavo lions have shorter manes and a higher level of testosterone than lions found elsewhere. We didn’t know how much was real and how much was hype for the tourists, but we were going to be careful.
The warden’s house was spacious with lots of beds for the eight of us. Wendy and I got lucky and slept in the master bedroom. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, the house came with comforts. The caretaker was our cook, and he had a stove that ran on bottled gas. The diesel generator ran when we needed light. There was even a hot water heater that consisted of two recycled steel drums with a fire pit underneath. When we wanted to take a hot shower, we just asked the caretaker to build a fire.
The major attraction of the house was a porch with viewing deck above, which faced a waterhole. We looked forward to seeing the game in close proximity, but based on experience, we knew that came with potential downsides. We asked the caretaker if it was necessary to close all the windows at night to keep out baboons. He said baboons weren’t a problem but not to go out after 11:00 p.m. because that’s when lions often came to the watering hole. Every night, we were all safely locked inside the house well before 11:00 p.m.
After settling into our rooms and having a nice “sundowner” gin and tonic on the viewing deck, we all sat down to dinner on the front porch. Only one couple knew everyone in the group. The rest of us felt like we were part of a group that had been assembled for some auspicious (or suspicious) activity that was about to unfold. It was like the opening scene in one of those movies where someone in the group gets murdered in the middle of the night and the rest of the group is trapped and can’t leave.
As we ate and drank, the mood lightened up, and we became fascinated by the geckos climbing on the brick wall next to the dining table. Five geckos were congregating around the lightbulb, which naturally was attracting large moths and other insects. The geckos were like a group of teenage males out for a Friday night adventure. They were hanging out together but competing at the same time. We became fascinated as they would carefully stalk the moths so as to not scare them off and then pounce when they got just close enough. The competitive stakes were high because the gecko that captured each moth got to eat it all. All of the geckos were incredibly fast, but there was one who outshone the rest and got to eat a lot more moths. Another was very clever and was able to catch a cricket. As the alcohol flowed, we became more and more engaged and entertained by the details of the digestion as well as the capture. The geckos invariably caught the moths by the tail and then proceeded to devour them like a snake swallowing a pig. The moths continued to wriggle around and flap their wings as if to escape, but none ever did. Once they were caught by the geckos, the end was inevitable.
The waterhole adjacent to the house did not disappoint. During the day, various animals wandered up to have a drink or a splash and then wandered away. We saw impala, waterbucks, and warthogs. But the real action was at night. In addition to the smaller game, a family of elephants visited both nights; and on Saturday night, we were visited by a herd of fifty buffalo.
Elephants and buffalo weren’t our only night visitors. During dinner, one of our fellow guests used the bathroom off our bedroom. Shortly after emerging, he stated that there was a “monster in our bathroom sink.” I went in to check and everyone on the veranda heard when I yelled out a two-word expletive. In the sink was what appeared to be a very sturdy spider more than six inches in diameter. Upon further observation, it might have been an insect since it seemed to walk on only six legs. But then there were the two additional forelimbs that ended in menacing pincers, certainly for grasping and conveying prey to its mouth. It could have easily been a model for those movie creatures that come from outer space to take over the world. Thank goodness the light was on.
I didn’t know if this creature was poisonous or would bite, but I didn’t want to find out. Before doing anything, I had to get a picture, but then I planned to smash it with my heavy shoe. I was shocked when one of the women in our party intervened. She knew that it couldn’t stay in the sink, but she didn’t want it killed. Being braver than I, she managed to trap the creature in a covered plastic bowl and deposited it outside at a safe distance from the house. I showed the picture to the rest of our party, but Wendy didn’t want to have nightmares (who knows, it might have had a mate lurking nearby) so she didn’t even look at the photo until several days later back in Nairobi.
The next day, we discovered that the other bathroom had more but less threatening visitors, tiny frogs hiding in the corners and crevices of the sink, tub, and toilet. The poor fellow, who had discovered the creature in our sink the night before, also discovered the first frogs. He was doing his business when apparently a frog leaped out at him as he flushed the toilet. We don’t know who was more frightened. Upon more careful inspection, approximately twelve tiny frogs were discovered. From then on, most of the women were a little nervous about sitting down.
A Quick Visit to the United States
And Going Home to Nairobi
In June, our daughter, Diana, graduated from Ross University Medical School, an event not to be missed. The ceremony was held in Lincoln Center in New York City. Wendy left Nairobi earlier than I because she wanted to visit friends in California and my mother in Washington DC. I flew straight to New York. Wendy had numerous travel problems with weather and mismanaged luggage by a now-merged airline (whose nickname was north-worst), but after a last-minute $100 round-trip taxi ride from Manhattan to Newark to pick up luggage, we were all safely in New York with our clothes.
The graduation ceremony was wonderful! Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center is an elegant and prestigious venue for a graduation, and the graduates looked so impressive in their caps and gowns. Following the ceremony, we took lots of pictures with Lincoln Center providing many great backgrounds. Then we headed for a late lunch with friends and family at a nearby restaurant, the first of a number of celebrations over the next two days. On Saturday, we had the main party. It was a late afternoon cocktail reception. We had commandeered the bar area of an uptown restaurant, which was packed with relatives and friends, some who had known Diana for twenty-five years and some who had known Wendy for nearly forty. It was wonderful to share the occasion, and everyone who came was greeted by Sallie Mae, Diana’s recently acquired and appropriately named five-foot-high stuffed animal giraffe.
For those who didn’t already know, we recounted the story behind Sallie Mae. It started during a family visit to New York when Diana was eight years old. One of the sights we saw was the famous FAO Schwartz toy store with its collection of unique and amazing toys. Among the especially attention-grabbing items was an eight-foot-high toy giraffe, priced at about $2,500. Diana had asked me to buy it for her. I told her that I would buy it for her when she graduated from medical school since Diana already knew she wanted to be a doctor. My answer got me off the hook at the time, but I really meant it. I never forgot my promise and neither did Diana.
Some months before graduation, Diana let me know that she remembered my commitment but that she was releasing me from it because she wouldn’t have enough room in an apartment, and it would be an excessive amount of money to spend. However, I still wanted to remember the commitment with a symbolic gesture. I searched online for various types of toy giraffes. I looked at many small toys at varying prices, and then I found the one I had to have. It was a five-foot-high stuffed animal with a cute face and a reasonable price, shipping included! Several days later, Diana got back to her apartment just as the UPS delivery man arrived with a large box. Diana was frequently accepting packages for her neighbor, so she assumed this was just another. She was very surprised when the UPS man said it was addressed to her. She muscled the box inside and opened it carefully. When she opened it up, she smiled widely and felt a lump grow in her throat. She immediately called me to say thank you because without reading the card, she knew where it had come from. Then she began to think of names. She finally settled on Sallie Mae to represent the government loans that had helped to pay for her medical school tuition.
After my very short trip to the United States, I arrived back in Nairobi. It was very strange to be on vacation in the United States and go back to Nairobi to live. The Nairobi weather was very different from what we had left just two weeks earlier. It had gotten overcast, gray and cool (less than 70 degrees F). The locals called this cold and had been warning us that it would come in July. Occasionally it got “really cold” (almost down to 60 degrees F). It was amusing to see the locals bundled up in their heavy parkas and wool hats.
As I jumped back into my daily routine starting with walking to work, some things were very familiar, such as inhaling the smoke of open trash fires and the sooty exhaust from diesel trucks, which probably combined to equal the harmful effects of smoking a pack a day. Other things seemed new as I saw them in more depth, such as the terrain over which I walked to work every day. In some places, I walked on real, raised, concrete sidewalks. In other areas, the sidewalks were at street level but protected with steel posts that prevented cars from running over pedestrians. Some places once had sidewalks but were now covered with intermittent concrete and broken rubble over bare dirt. Along some roads, broad dirt shoulders substituted for sidewalks, but matatus cruised onto these recklessly to disgorge their passengers and zip away. In some places, the dirt shoulders were below the road surface and only wide enough for a narrow footpath with a deep drainage ditch on the other side. Along other roads, the only choice was walking on the roadway, facing traffic as we were taught as children (except that in Kenya, it meant walking on the right instead of the left). Usually this was safe, except when drivers made extra lanes to pass cars they didn’t feel were going fast enough. Even this was usually safe because you could see the cars speeding toward you and squeeze to the edge of the road as they passed. Unfortunately, that didn’t cover every situation, as we learned one morning when we walked out our apartment gate, turned right to face the traffic, and were nearly hit from behind by a matatu speeding down the wrong side of the road. He didn’t want to wait in the line of cars backed up at the stop sign. Welcome back to Nairobi.
As I became more attentive to the details of my walking, I planned my route more carefully to safely navigate the traffic, and I developed two important new safety rules. My first rule, opposite of what we were taught as children, was to cross only in the middle of the block, not at intersections. In the middle of the block, traffic is only coming at you from two directions. In the middle of the block, you can see cars from a distance, judge their speed, and calculate when to bolt across the street. At an intersection, there are no controls (or they’re ignored); traffic can come at you from at least four directions; and cars are unpredictable as they jockey for position, trying to outmaneuver their competitors. My second rule applied to actually crossing the street. Before crossing, look back and forth continuously. First, because the situation is constantly changing in unpredictable ways; and second, because if you grew up in the United States where the traffic drives on the right you will instinctively look the wrong way for oncoming traffic and then step in front of a speeding truck. Obviously, few people make this mistake more than once.
Of course, sometimes you can’t avoid crossing at intersections. At one place on my way to work there was a traffic circle with multiple streets coming together. At this point I just had to follow rule number two and seize the opportunities as they came. These opportunities usually came when cross traffic provided blocking, but I still had to be watchful for crossing cars that decided to turn, without signaling of course. It was exciting every day.
Matooke in Uganda
Genocide Memories in Rwanda
Wendy and I flew to Kampala again to work with Erastus as he built up the Uganda TechnoServe program. Our flight was supposed to arrive at 2:00 p.m., so I thought I would have plenty of time to get to the TechnoServe office and get on a conference call by four. I say “office” because I had heard that TechnoServe would have a working office by the date of our arrival. Our flight arrived a bit late and immediately after another plane, so the lines were long at immigration. When the TechnoServe driver picked us up, we were told that an office had been rented, but it did not have furniture, telephone service, etc. We went to our hotel, and with traffic, arrived right at 4:00 p.m. I asked to go quickly to our room so that I could get on the call, using my cell phone. At about 4:10, I dialed into the call. After beeping a number of times for no apparent reason throughout the call, my cell phone cut me off after about forty minutes.
I didn’t know why the cell phone was no longer working, but I thought I might be able to get back on the call using Skype. So I went to reception to see how to get on to the Internet. Their process to get on to the Internet was to sell access codes that were good for a fixed period of time. I agreed to buy some codes, but they were out. The woman at reception promised to call the service provider and then send someone to my room with the codes. A half hour later, someone came to the room with the access codes. I tried them, but couldn’t get on. I called reception, and they said they would send someone up to check on my problem. About fifteen minutes later, a very pleasant young woman came to our room carrying a laptop. After looking at my computer and then trying a few things on her own laptop, she apologized that the wireless wasn’t receiving in our room. She indicated that it was working in the corridor and garden area, just outside my room. At this point, I was certain that the conference call had finished and decided it was time for cocktail hour. C’est L’Afrique!
The next morning, Friday, Wendy and I were working on our computers in the small garden area outside of our room where the wireless network was working. We were waiting to go to a meeting with a potential donor. Erastus arrived and told us our meeting had been pushed out to the following week and so we had nothing scheduled for the day. We had planned to go to the field to observe the TechnoServe matooke project on Monday, but now the logistics would work better to leave right away. Matooke (ma-toke-kay) is a member of the banana family, called a starch banana, that is boiled when green and eaten almost like mashed potatoes. William, a project manager who reported to Erastus, was already planning to take Payson Bullard (son of the TechnoServe founder) to the field to document our success on this project, and this way, we could all go together. So we quickly packed up some clothes and set off from Kampala toward Mbarara (hum the M, but longer than in Swaziland, bah-rahr-rah) in the southwest corner of Uganda, near the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), which gave Wendy some pause, but we headed out anyway.
During this time period, the eastern region of the DRC continued to experience unrest due to the multiple factions asserting their power against the weak central government. Some of these factions were guerilla groups left over from the 1994 “troubles” in Rwanda and the resulting migration, and some were more modern criminal gangs engaged in illegal mining. Often the lines were blurred, but there were periodic flare-ups in the conflict, which usually resulted in thousands of refugees fleeing across the border into Uganda.
For much of the drive, the road was incredibly good compared to what we had previously experienced in Africa. It was like a two-lane rural road in California. It would be interesting to know the history of various roads, as to when they were built and who built them because there was such diversity in the quality. We heard that President Museveni had originally come from southwest Uganda, so the roads leading to his home territory were especially good.
Our drive reminded me of my impressions from our previous trip. Uganda was green everywhere. Some people would say verdant. Practically the whole country gets enough rain for good agriculture. As we drove through farmland, my favorite view was overlooking the hills covered with tea plants. As it’s growing, tea is very dense. The low shrubs are very bushy and planted close together. From a distance, the overall effect is of a thick-pile green carpet covering the hills. I wanted to reach out and feel its dense softness.
About halfway through our trip for the day, we stopped for lunch in Mubende (Moo-ben-day) at a café William knew. We parked in a dirt lot in front of a nondescript concrete-block building. We walked inside where it was dark because there were few windows and no lights. The only electricity was being used for two soft drink coolers. William ordered food for all of us, and we walked outside to sit on the porch and wait for our food. The porch seemed to be the place to eat because there were several sets of turquoise, molded plastic tables and chairs, all with dark blue, oilcloth tablecloths imprinted with beer advertising. There were no other customers, but it was past normal lunchtime.
When lunch came, it was our first introduction to the typical diet in southwestern Uganda: nearly 100 percent carbohydrates! We had large helpings of rice, Irish (white) potatoes, sweet potatoes, and matooke. There was some peanut sauce to go on the matooke, which would have provided some protein and fat, but it was burned so we didn’t eat it. There were also two small pieces of chicken to share amongst the four of us. It didn’t look that appealing, so Wendy and I deferred to William and Payson who gladly devoured it with just a few bites. Later, when we reached our hotel, Wendy had an attack of hypoglycemia, and she had to be very careful over the next few days to get some protein with her meals.
Since the next day was Saturday, we decided to visit Queen Elizabeth Park. We couldn’t get reservations at the lodge inside the park, so we stayed in the town of Kasese (Kuh-say-say), just a few miles north. To quote the Lonely Planet Guide to East Africa, “Kasese is a boom-and-bust town that tasted glory during the copper years…but generally seems to have passed its use-by-date. It’s a small, hot, dusty, quiet town in a relatively infertile and lightly populated area, and it wears an air of permanent torpor.” I thought it was a perfect description. We were among the few guests at the best hotel in town. The accommodations were Spartan but adequate, and the modest dining room had a diverse menu with some very tasty meals, especially for $7 apiece.
On Saturday, William, Wendy, Payson, and I visited Queen Elizabeth Park, bordered on the north by the Rwenzori (Rw as in Rwanda-en-zoree) Mountains (also called the Mountains of the Moon) and on the west by Lake Edward (its outflow is ultimately a tributary of the Nile) that is shared with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The park contains Lake George, which flows into Lake Edward through the Kazinga Channel. The many bodies of water encourage the varied species of animals and particularly birds that are found in the park, and the number one tourist activity is to take a cruise on the Kazinga Channel to see the wildlife.
On our cruise, we saw the expected crocodiles and hippos, as well as lots of buffalo and a few elephants. However, the more interesting aspect was the bird life. Queen Elizabeth Park is purportedly home to six hundred species of birds, and we saw many of the most interesting ones. We had seen the majestic fish eagles and giant goliath herons before, but here we saw many new species including the wonderfully colored saddlebilled stork. This tall elegant bird, with its primarily black and white coloring, is initially reminiscent of a conservative waiter in a tuxedo, but the bright red and yellow highlights on its beak quickly establish it as a rakish dandy.
As we cruised the Kazinga Channel, our guide pointed out the small fishing village where he grew up, which is still allowed to remain within the park’s boundaries. He also recounted several stories that highlighted the unique dangers of living in rural Africa. The most memorable was from his early teen years when he and two friends were walking home one night after playing games at another friend’s home. A lion had come into their village and was watching in the dark as the three boys approached. Our guide and one friend walked by the lion, but the lion attacked their other friend. The first two boys ran and escaped, but in the morning, the villagers found remains of the other boy’s clothes and skeleton. Several other people in the village had been killed by lions in the intervening years. As if to drive the point home about the unique dangers of living in rural Africa, that evening we heard that earlier in the day a speeding bus on the nearby highway had hit a wandering hippopotamus. Several passengers on the bus, along with the hippo, had been killed. At times it was easy to get comfortable and complacent about living in Africa, like being a tourist and only experiencing the interesting highlights. But then, a story like these would wake us up and remind us how different our life was from those around us.
