When I last left you, my dear readers, I was looking at zebras outside my fancy tent at the Porini Cheetah Camp (Porini is Swahili and means, “into the wild”). I am currently back in Nairobi at our hotel, in the middle of the night, because my insomnia is what it is, but this means I have time to update y’all on what has been happening! I am going to warn you- a lot has been happening! We had two and half more safari days and then I had a day of souvenir shopping. We still have a whole other week here and I couldn’t be happier! I am so glad we decided on two weeks here and so grateful Nikki split up our trip the way she did. On Monday (my birthday!!) we will begin our ascent of Mount Kenya which is the second highest mountain in Africa and we just found out is the only place on the equator with snow and if weather permits, we will be able to see the highest mountain in Africa, Kilimanjaro at the summit (if we make it). We are trying to have realistic expectations, but we have prepared as best we can with our winter clothing, our altitude medication and allowing four days for the hike. We will see.

Let’s get back to last week when we were on our bougie Kenyan safari. Y’all, my gram was here in the 1960s and here I am, sixty years later, in the same country. I can’t help but feel my heritage with me as I see the same landmarks. I was just rereading one of the letters my grandfather wrote in the 1940s, discussing how he had decided they would not go on an African trip that year. So strange. On Wednesday, other people came to our camp! There was a German family that included the parents, Marco and Katrin, children, Emma (11) and Aaron (16), with their grandparents who speak very little English. They actually live in London now and the children have British accents while their parents have German accents. I immediately gravitated to Katrin when I found out she teaches at King’s College in the Global Health department. She said she only teaches online courses so her students are from all around the world! I shamelessly networked myself and offered to guest lecture sometime and she excitedly admitted she was thinking the same thing! I might be able to have her guest lecture at Duke School of Nursing since her specialty is women’s health! The other two guests were actually veteran Safarians of our same camp from 2019, Loretta and Dave. They are from Pennsylvania and have been traveling extensively in their retirement. This was their first trip since the Covid Pandemic! It was so nice to have other people around the lunch and dinner table and to share in the excitement of all the animals we had seen. The owners of the camp, an Indian couple who bought this camp as a retirement business, also ate with us, which was a really nice addition to the whole group.

Loretta and Dave joined us in the jeep for the rest of our safari trips. We actually went on a night safari from 9p-11ish and saw some of the nocturnal creatures. Our guides are from the Masai tribe, Jacob (Kupere Majkuaya) and Joe (Sarui Rotiken). They were trained to be guides, but grew up on the same land they were showing us. To be official guides, they basically had to learn the English words for things and some of the history of the area. Their primary language is Ma, but they are also fluent in English and Swahili. They were so knowledgeable and had amazing eyes that found creatures I would never have noticed! They also were very gracious with all my questions about their lives and families. It really felt authentic and special having them sharing their land and animals with us. 

Although the manager, John, said that we should have expected the experience to exceed our expectations, we were still stunned by all that we were able to see in those three days we were at the conservatory. We felt lucky to have just seen the spots of a shy leopard in the bushes on Thursday, but on Friday, a different leopard was uncharacteristically out in the open, climbed a tree to get his baboon he had killed and sauntered off with it in his mouth across the river from us! It was incredible! We saw the Simbeguya Breakaway Pride of lions in which three female lions left an old pride and created a new one, which currently has 25 members! We saw the Limony Pride of lions that has teenage males and their mothers. We found out that lions leave their pride at 2 years old and many times, their sisters will leave with them. 

We started each day at 6 am to see the sunrise and always saw the sunset. The views were fantastic, including stars I have never seen before! The sunset actually happens very quickly because we are so near the equator- it was neat to see the sun go down in seconds before my eyes! We went to the Nabushel Conservatory on Wednesday and saw Dik Dik, geese, black-headed heron, goliath heron, grey-headed kingfisher, slate colored boubou, lappet face vulture, jackals, rufus crowned roller, ruppell’s long tailed starling, verreox owl,  and farix eagle owls (this is not a comprehensive list of all that we saw, but I don’t want to bore you)! We always ended our day with our favorite drinks, watching the sun set and returning back to our tents where there were hot water bottles placed between our sheets. It was so heavenly. 

On Thursday we saw 1 month old Jackal puppies, 1 week old baby elephants, still toddling. There were three of them with a lion calling in the distance and the mama elephant responding to warn the lion off. We finally saw the National Bird, the lilac breasted roller, and it was more beautiful than I could have imagined. We found out that baby zebras have brown hair as camouflage but then it sheds and turns to black. The zebras have different stripes like fingerprints, and you can best see the difference at the point of their shoulders. 

On Friday we had our bags packed and brought them with us in the jeep. We were able to see a leopard eating a baboon and a hippopotamus actually outside of the water. I know you cannot experience this through your screen, but hippos smell horrible! They also are very dangerous, so if you encounter them, run! We had our final breakfast with Loretta, Dave, Joe and Jacob. They brought us to the dirt airstrip and Nikki and I flew back to Nairobi. It was so lovely.

We had the afternoon free and I spent much of it napping. We had room service for dinner and then I promptly went back to sleep and awoke 13 hours later! All those early morning wake up calls and late night safari rides had tuckered me out! Today I spent much of the afternoon shopping for souvenirs for family, friends and colleagues. Nik stayed in the hotel room and let me spend all our money. I met Juliet who sold me lots of jewelry and scarves and two brothers who are artists that sold me some of their paintings. Their grandfather is 89 and carves magnets and other souvenirs for them, so of course I had to buy them. I had the best of times and they all assured me I was now their sister (after spending so much money!) I did exchange WhatsApp numbers with Juliet, so we actually may be BFFs for real real.

This leads me to the present, 4 am in the hotel lobby. Nik and I finished the A League of Their Own new series on Amazon Prime and it was ah-mazing! I will write about it more in depth later! I cannot wait to see what the day brings as we tour the elephant orphanage and feed giraffes… is this real life?