Exciting news

We have finished the first week of our Namibian adventure, but I am not going to talk about that. No sirree. Something much more exciting has happened.

So exciting in fact that we completely overlooked writing about it! One of those things that seems unreal until it happens, but then becomes normality in the blink of an eye.

It concerns a new baby, and a certain taking on of new responsibilities for Joanna and I.

Joanna is… …a new God parent (sorry Tom and Christina, no nephew yet – although a God-nephew if you will) as am I.

He is called Matthew Justin May, and is a cute version of his poppa. He also brings the total of the May children up to six, a ‘perfect’ number (1+2+3=1*2*3=6). Amazing.

One nation, one Namibia

Well here we are in Namibia, joined by family Millward – sans Christina, sitting in front of a wonderfully hot fire and drinking variously beer, cider-  and nothing (poor neglected me). We are on a tour with two randoms – a Japanese ninja enigma (whose name I can’t pronounce let alone spell), and Baron (not ‘the Baron’, Baron is his name). Baron, it would appear, likes his booze and has a predilection for snakebites as well as having bought three bottles of wine.

We arrived a few days ago, expecting a driver to meet us at the airport. However there was no one waiting for us, just a few locals chatting. Our Kenyan phones were not working and it was quite late so we ended up running around for a good half hour looking for the guy. Eventually pity was taken on us by a lady who phoned our safari company. 5 minutes later, our driver (a fat, useless lump) disengages himself from his very interesting conversation (yes, he was there watching us run around the whole time) and tells us it was our fault he didn’t see us because the plane was late (it was early). Eventually, we arrive at our hotel. They haven’t heard of us. We stay the night before being told we have now been booked into another hotel. They too hadn’t heard of us. Not a good start, and fortunately a theme that does not continue.

So eventually, and with considerable relief that it exists, we get on our vehicle (which is not a matatu, joy!) and  speed south to the quiver tree (kinkerboom tree) forest . Of course, these are not trees but tree aloes, but let’s not permit semantics to bother us (especially seeing as we do not know the difference). More upsettingly, the quiver trees do not quiver and jive. The bushmen just made quivers out of them. As a consolation, they were surrounded by rock hyraxes (which I suspect would make a tasty snack).

Just round the corner there is the giants playground, a jumbled collection of basaltic rock caused by an old volcano where we went for a little walk. Again, there were many hyraxes. We then progressed to the Fish River Canyon. This is, err, a canyon - although I doubt there are fish in the river as it is more of a stagnant pond. Nevertheless, the view was amazing. Before we knew it we were in Ai-Ai, a name meaning hot water after the hot springs (as a challenge, try to work out which Ai means hot, and which Ai means water), for a night under canvas.

 

The next day started with a long drive, with periodic potters along the Orange and Fish river valleys. Namibia is a very dry country with many mountains but the locals, who are used to this, do not find this at all interesting. Rather they prefer to show us rivers, small oases of green amongst an otherwise desolate and unforgiving landscape. I very much wanted to jump off the bus and climb a mountain (and maybe find a diamond), but suspect I would quickly have regretted it in the heat. Finally we ended up at Aus and went to watch the sunset.

 

Namibia (which was called South West Africa) is a bit of a strange country –vast and empty. Many superlatives could be used to describe it, but let us just say that it is desolate and very, very beautiful. Whilst it is in many ways one of the poorest countries with many people living on practically nothing and unemployment at 50% it has amazing resources, Gold, diamond, uranium, zinc mines etc. And after Kenya, the towns are just heavenly. They have wide, clean roads (which have lines painted on them!!!), there are very few people, no matatus, cars which stop at traffic lights and even look roadworthy!

Okay, Namibia achieved her independence in 1990 and so is a very ‘young’ country. They have a very good and workable constitution (which the Kenyans could have just copied if they were serious about change - sorry, ridiculous suggestion - too many vested interests),  loads of natural resources and improving education. So is the future rosy? Who knows, but I fear there are storm clouds on the horizon.

Weirdly (at least for me) the Namibians have some strange fascination with words/names with double vowels, such as Keetmansdoorp. Weirdest of all (after Kenya anyway) is we have seen white people working. Eugh. We got to our hotel and there was a white person behind the counter – I actually caught myself looking round for the receptionist! Nevertheless, I shall try not to let this put me off too much and shall endeavour to enjoy myself, whilst stuffing myself with dried Kudu - delicious.

Let me leave you with our Japanese Ninja striking a Ninja pose…

Out West part II

We are slowly getting used to life here. For example what once filled us with fear – matatus - now seem common place. Although I wouldn’t say we are getting used to being crammed into a 14 seater death trap with 25 other people, we feel comfortable enough for Joanna to shout at the conductors when they displease her.

But the death traps, that are Matatus, do raise an interesting question. If ethical investors boycott arms dealers and tobacco companies, why not boycott Toyota who make the damn things? 

‘So why the rant?’ I hear you ask. In two weeks we shall be in Namibia enjoying (hopefully) some warm weather – without any matatus at all.

Well let me tell you. We have booked ourselves on a tour – and what do you think they drive? A Bloody Toyota Hiace – aka matatus. Argh.

Sorry, got a little side tracked there. So we travelled from Kisii to Kisumu by overcrowded matatu - ‘yes your halitosis is impressive, please get your elbow out of my eye’ - a journey of just a few hours. Kisumu is the third largest town in Kenya and backs onto Lake Victoria. Sadly with the decline of the East African community the town has also declined and it is more of a convenient rest stop than a tourist destination. Also sadly, Joanna took it into her head to go shopping so we are now broke (although we have lots of lovely stuff having cost us only a fraction of what it would have cost in Nairobi). 

Kenya Wildlife Service is putting money into the local area and are promoting an impala sanctuary where various animals live in very small cages (a baby baboon was holding the hand of a baby blue monkey through the bars) and you can also go on boat trips, both of which we enjoyed courtesy of a very enthusiastic and persuasive KWS ranger. The major tourist destination is Hippo point, and we can confirm the view of the guide book – there is nothing there. At all. Apart from hippos, Hammerkopf and kingfishers. Otherwise it is a complete void. 

But one thing we did learn in Kisumu is that the rainy season changes as you go through Kenya. So in Nairobi is isn’t meant to rain until October (although it rained today). Western Kenya is in the middle of their short rains. We were sadly unprepared.

And so, all too soon and not soon enough, we found ourselves on another matatu, this time bound for Kakamega. Kakamega is home to the last piece of equatorial rainforest in Kenya. It rains in the rainforest. A lot. Noticing a theme here yet? To get to the actual forest you have to take a decrepit old pickup truck type thing, which has a cabin at the back where people are crammed like Sardines – but it is better for the sardines as they are dead and so miss the discomfort. Sardines also miss the fear of having half a tonne of cement piled on a dodgy roof just above their heads. One then either walks or takes a motor taxi. Being the rugged outdoor types that we are we took the taxi.

We stayed in the Rondo Retreat, a place with an interesting history. It was left to charity by the original owners who owned a sawmill and was converted to orphanage, but obviously people in Africa look after the orphans already so they didn’t have much to do. So they tried to teach farming methods – the priority to farming in the rainforest is to kill the monkeys which they didn’t do (phew). The monkeys ate everything as revenge and so this didn’t work either. And so a fundraising effort was entered into and teams of volunteers organised and shipped out from the States. I hate to think what the volunteers thought they were doing but they built an amazing hotel, right in the middle of the jungle.

Sadly the rainforest, which once stretched across Africa all the way to the Atlantic (which is miles and miles and miles), is now a shadow of its former self (in Kenya anyway). Even so it is an incredible place with mammoth trees, funky birds and lots of monkeys (we saw yet another new species, the red tailed monkey). We went to see the sunrise over the forest. Can you imagine, Joanna got up for 5.30!!! It rained, but was still amazing.

 

Kakamega was also an educational experience. We confirmed that Jo is very good at finding  marauding hordes of Safari (army) ants, which she does by standing on them. This is purely subconscious and she only notices when they start biting her. She is also very afraid of bats. Kakamega was once a gold mining area and we went into one of the mines. Unfortunately, the bats arrived slightly afterwards and so our exit was blocked by a panicked bat which panicked Jo, much to everyone else’s amusement.

Sadly we had to move on all too soon and so we found ourselves on yet another matatu to Kericho, one which stopped to extort more money from the passengers before Jo snapped and told off the conductor – who proceeded to sulk for the rest of the journey. Kericho is the major tea growing region in Kenya and was very popular with the British. It rains there every day, and indeed rained on us. It is a chilled out city, and like many towns here it is a shadow of its former self, with the famous(?) Tea Hotel slowly falling into ruin.

And so we found ourselves on our way back to Nairobi, but we had learnt. No matatus for us this time, ‘Easy Bus’ is the answer. With the slogan ‘have dignity’ (or something of the sort) one gets a whole seat to oneself. Having said that, how we got back to Nairobi without killing anyone or crashing I shall never know.

And finally, we just went get the car tyre repaired. Unfortunately, having dropped off the wheel, the car conked out. Apparently the starter motor has gone. To prove it one of the mechanics shorted it with a spanner and the car then started working. African engineering rules.