I catch a matatu into the depths
of Kibera, fascinating. Home to 200, 000, this is Kenya’s biggest slum. Humongous
rubbish piles, thousands of corrugated iron houses stretching for miles, crowds
of people (especially as today is church day); plus endless stalls – fruits,
hot chapos, boiled eggs and mandazi, butchers selling choma meat with hanging carcasses, h air
salons and kinyozis (barbers). Very
dangerous here at night, and even in the day… Ushirika clinic is a 24/7 medical
centre built by Moving Mountains in 2003 – it offers medical consultations,
drugs and maternal services at a cut-off price of 1000Ksh. During the morning
we see many cases of malaria (the mossies DO seem pretty hungry round here…),
and one guy who was properly beaten up last night by thugs – probable broken
wrist – injected with morphine and sent to Kenyatta hospital…
‘Carnivores’
for lunch, with Hannah and Charlotta! This is Kenya’s most famous place to eat nyama choma, and has also been voted one
of the world’s 50 best restaurants. ‘A beast of a feast’…literally. We sit
among banana leaves and cacti, at a table set with gourds, banana leaf mats and
zebra seats (although the serving of game meat is no longer allowed here). At
the entrance is a huge smoking BBQ pit (all lit up in red; like something out
of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’), and the meat is basted on real Masai swords. The
waiters (dressed fetchingly in zebra aprons and boaters) appear constantly at
your shoulder with the next sword of roasted delicacy – you just have to keep
saying ‘no’ to keep up (alternatively you can knock over the flag on the table
for a break, or remove it for complete surrender). Before the meat is brought
you are given maize, soup and bread, and ‘Dr Dawa’ appears with his ‘medicine’
(‘Dawa’ in Swahili), which is a cocktail of vodka, lime and sugar, stirred with
a bamboo stick twisted in honey… We have a multi-storey tower of sauces to
accompany each meat (the waiter reminds us which each time) – fruit (for
ostrich), wild berry, garlic, marsala, chilli, mint… plus matoke (mashed green
bananas), sukuma, salads… The iron plates are sizzling hot, and are filled
constantly with crocodile (a sweet, fishy chicken flavor!), ostrich (my
favourite), oxen balls, chicken gizzards; plus perfectly cooked lamb, beef,
pork,chicken, turkey, you name it… (*Ahem*, veggie must be officially set aside,
for one day only; besides, this stuff is *so* dead already…). Trick is to try a
little, then move on, for digestion’s sake - we eat from 1 – 3.30pm. Just as
you surrender, icecream and Kenyan coffee is served. Next door is the equally
famous ‘Simba Saloon’, which hosts amazing live Jazz nights – all of Kenya’s
biggest musicians come to play here. All in all, a once-in-a-lifetime culinary
experience, and I have never been so full in my life…
At night
in the guest house kitchen – the rustle of cockroaches, plus GIANT spiders.
Also, bed bugs DO bite…
Today I
am a tourist (‘you will see many mzungus’, Oti informs me). We drive out to
Langata and Karen districts, past the Nairobi National Park where baboons
swagger along the roadside looking for unsuspecting picnickers. First is the
David Sheldrick Conservation Trust, which raises orphaned elephants (from
poachers, or victims of wells, mostly) and also black rhinos – with the aim of
reintroducing them to the wild in Tsavo National Park. They come sprinting from
the park for their milk (they spend the full day there and only meet humans for
an hour at 11am) , very cute - they are weaned on 4 tins of SMA Gold per day,
specially imported from England (one can’t help but think of the babies in Embu…)
and grab the giant bottles with their trunks. The tiniest are swaddled tightly
in masai blankets, tied with a rope belt. The keepers are with them 24 hours
each day, and one sleeps in the straw with each individual each night
(important, as they are their surrogate mother, and elephants really do die ‘from
heartbreak’). Such funny, smiling, furry beasts with their comedy black-tipped
spiky tails; v happy rolling, farting, pinching the keeper’s spade, trunk
swingin…
Next;
the Rothschild Giraffe Centre, where you can stand on a raised wooden platform
to feed the residents at eye level (apparently they are on a ‘diet’ of 2 pellet
handfuls per visitor…yeah right; anyway, ‘no food, no friend’, or even a horn-butt..
I)f you place a pellet between your teeth, a long purple tongue will delicately
extract it (you can see how they fish for ants in the thorn trees) – how Romantic
(although motives questionable) - up close and personal they really do have bizarrely
long snouts.
Opt for
the cheap lunch option, away from tourist prices – roadside ‘hotel’ (always
tempting digestive fate) – beans and chapo for me, sawa, but Oti’s matumbo
(tripe/intestine) is extremely well-‘plumbed’ and rather furry… Everywhere,
everywhere you go, the red-painted stalls are advertising ‘barudika na Cola
buridi’ (enjoy a cold coke) – in Kenya, there is always time.
Within
the Karen district lie’s Karen Blixen’s original Colonial house, set in the beautiful
grounds ‘at the foot of the Ngong hills’ (Ngong means ‘knuckle’ in Masai – the
peaks really are similar, all 4 of them!). Loved seeing it all for real (I finished
reading ‘Out of Africa’ last night!) – there are the lion and leopard fur rugs
she shot, the stone mills outside where she sat to grind flour with Kamante,
the oil lamps used to signal her mood to Denys Finch-Hatton… would have been
quite happy to wander but the tour guide is painfully slow as he goes through literally
every item of furniture, in each room, as ‘orrrrriginal’ or ‘not orrrrignal’… I
nod lots.
One of the last chapters in ‘Out of Africa’
is called ‘The Giraffes go to Hamburg’ – about 2 giraffes captured and sent
from the port of Mombasa to a travelling zoo in Hamburg’ – “gentle amblers of
the great plain; cantering side by side; crowds will laugh at the long slim
necks and the graceful, patient, smoky-eyed heads; little noble heads that are
now raised, surprised, against the blue sky of Mombasa…”)
Last is
the Nairobi Park Animal Orphanage – normally they feed here in the afternoons,
but today everyone’s full, and not chatting, either, ah well. Not much to see.
Patricia the warthog is sun-bathing though – unbelievably brown and ugly – I find
her far more funny than is fair…
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