Samburu (longest post ever)

Day 1:
We left Friday morning at about 9:30am, piling us and our stuff into a Toyota van (exactly like the one my dad had when I was growing up) with all of our stuff and our driver, Francis. Within the first 10 minutes, we saw a matatu that had been completely crushed by an overturned log truck and that was scary but I took it as a good sign that that was the disaster of the day and nothing bad would happen to us on that Friday the 13th : ) Once we got out of Nairobi, the scenery was beautiful with a lot of mountains and a lot of goats and cows. We also saw zebras, baboons, impala, and springbucks along the way. We stopped at Thompson falls, a waterfall, where I held a chameleon, which was very strange. After a long and very bumpy 8 hours, we made it to the Yare Camel Club, set up our tents, had dinner, and headed to bed, but not before seeing two spiders and a grasshopper that were the size of fat mice.

Day2:
I was up at 6:30 with the sun and with a lot of birds I had never heard before as well as a baboon doing his grunting thing. One sounded like it was saying “mom” in a very loud and irritated voice. I later learned they call that bird “goawaybird”. I watched the sun finish rising over the mountains, which was really beautiful and reminded me of the mornings in Honduras. I already knew that I was going to fall in love with this place and that this is the kind of place I wanted to be when I came to Kenya. We had breakfast and went out to meet our camels. My camel’s name was “Nivoni” which means “dark camel” because mine was a lot more brown than the other yellowish ones. Camels, I learned in these 5 days, and really disgusting creatures. Their favorite thing to eat is cactus so they have tons of thorns sticking out of their faces. They have huge dirty teeth and foamy mouths and make this horrible gurgling/roaring sound when they are pissed off. Ugh. So we got on the camels, the camels stood up, and we began our walk.
Our guides were “Ernest” and “Doctor”. Ernest is a Samburu warrior (which is a stage in a Samburu man’s life starting with circumcision and having killed a lion) and Doctor is the local Doctor for the Samburu people. The Samburu are the cousin tribe to the Masaai and share a common language with them. Ernest taught us Samburu words and in exchange we taught him Spanish : ) At one point he was saying “como estas” and up ahead Doc was answering “bien” and they went back and forth for a while, which was funny to hear, especially considering where we were. Both of our guides were amazing and warm and by the end, good friends. Ernest taught us to say “Sopa!” the Samburu greeting to which the response is “Oye!”. I told him in Spanish that would mean “Soup!” “Listen!”. : ) He also taught us to say “mata” which means “I don’t have any” and is what we said when little kids yelled “mzungu! Give me sweet!” or “mzungu! Give me balloon!”.
We went to a village where there was a blacksmith who pounded up some old pieces of metal he had found on the ground and melted them in the fire. He then poured the liquid metal into the dirt and when it solidified, began to shape it into bracelets. He gave us bracelets with our names on them later that day. While he was doing that, we went inside his tiny hut where his wife and many children were. They were really cute and interested in the cameras. By the time we got home that afternoon, none of us could sit anymore because our butts were so bruised from being bounced up and down on a camel hump all day and I was also sun burnt in places I had never been, such as the space between my nose and upper lip, and my scalp and earlobes.
Before dinner We played basketball with Doc and another boy, who both tried to master dribbling the ball, but with two hands, and it was cute and funny to watch. We also played pool that night in the bar with Ernest and Doc and some other Samburu men. It was a really good time and a nice atmosphere. Both while playing basketball and pool, and other things during the week, it felt so normal and then I would look around and realize I was in a room full of men wearing colorful wraps around their waists (called kangas) and tons of beads and realized that these men in the U.S. would never be considered tough for wearing “skirts” or jewelry, and here they are warriors! I thought that was really cool. We went to bed around 9:30 and slept well despite some pouring rain. I was thinking it was funny that after a long day of being tired and sore from our adventures, we come back and take cold showers and sleep on the ground.

Day 3:
We went 25 km on the camels on Sunday and I walked a good part of it because my butt couldn’t handle being on a camel all day again. We walked through a lot of forest and tracked elephants by following their poop, but never actually saw any. We walked through a town where a bunch of kids came running and followed us for a while. One of them said “number one” so I said “number two” and we counted back and forth like this until we got to about 30 when they kind of faded off. I was impressed they could count that high in English and it constantly amazes me how so many of the kids in Kenya know 3 languages by default, English and kiSwahili (the national languages) as well as a tribal language. We also saw a sheep that had just been born and its umbilical cord was still hanging from its stomach. Ernest and I sang the “Jambo Bwana” song a lot, sometimes substituting words like “Hakuna matatu” instead of “Hakuna matata” which is sort of funny because it means no matatu instead of no problem. He also taught us a camel song in Samburu that goes “Lorry Dora, Dong Dong Leg Leg Leg” and is supposed to be about how strong camels are and how they sound when they walk.
Doc gave us some “miraa” to chew, which is a plant they chew here to say awake. I just had one piece and wasn’t a big fan. A lot of the men in Kenya chew it though and I am not sure whether it is legal or not as I have heard various things about it.
When we got back to camp, we met Petri, who is a blacksmith and musician and artist. We went into his little hut and he played us some music on his six stringed instrument and sang songs in Samburu, adding in our names sometimes. Then we played a version of mancala, which he calls “the ball game” and on my first try I beat him! He was shocked : )
Before I left for Samburu, I started reading this book called “The White Masai” which I saw in a bookstore and thought looked interesting. It is about a Swiss woman who falls in love with a Samburu warrior and lives with him in the bush for a long time. Little did I know, that it is set exactly where we were and being there was like complete illustration for my book. Everything she talks about, I saw or did. Then, I showed Ernest the book because there are pictures in it from her experiences and he knows her husband Lketinga! At first I asked him if he knew him and he said know, he was from an older generation of warriors, but then he asked his name and when I told him, he said “Lketinga!” in excitement and then went on to tell me about his last name and where he lives and about his wife, which all coincided with the stuff in the book. It was so crazy and so cool and such a wonderful coincidence. I couldn’t believe it!
Sunday night it poured again and I woke up to find the entire bottom half of my sleeping bag soaked from the rain coming into the tent, so I didn’t sleep very well that night.

Day 4:
At one point on Monday there were a little group of kids trailing behind us, being shy and giggly. I had my pant legs rolled up and at one point one of the kids got up the courage to come walk next to my camel. He looked up at me and kind of smiled and then all of the sudden, put his little hand on my ankle and then ran back to his friends giggling. It reminded me of “Finding Nemo” where the little kid fish dare each other to go and touch the boat. It made me smile.
Doc brought us to a big aloe plant where we put some aloe on our sunburns. The aloe though was yellow and left our skin looking like we had been covered in iodine. At lunch time a few kids came over with a lamb that had just been born and they let me hold it! It was so cute and soft, but its umbilical cord juice got on my shirt, which kind of grossed me out.
When we got back to camp I played soccer with a bunch of boys and it was really fun. I was in sneakers and shorts and a tank top while they were barefoot with their woolen blankets wrapped around them and I wondered how they weren’t dying of heat exhaustion, as I was sweating barely wearing anything. It made me thing about how the last time I played soccer with a bunch of barefoot boys was on the equator too, but on the other side of the world!
After dinner this guy in the bar invited us to come over and sit with a group of his friends. He wanted to have a conversation about Samburu and America and we talked about similarities and differences and strengths and weaknesses of each place. It was cool and nice to have a genuine conversation with people and to learn from each other. It was such a change of pace from Nairobi where there is the constant hustle and everyone keeps to themselves except to yell out something not very friendly.
Monday night it poured from about 7pm to 7am and there was a river running through our tent. We had been sleeping on foam mattresses under our sleeping bags, which were like sponges and were completely filled with water. Everything was wet and it was pretty miserable. In the morning we could hear a river roaring at the bottom of the campsite that hadn’t been there the day before.

Day 5:
It was raining when we woke up and continued to rain for the first couple hours of our hike so we decided to go back to the camp site and just hang out for the day. We played cards with Ernest and talked to him a lot about what it’s like to be a warrior. Playing cards was interesting, because warriors don’t go to school, so although he is extremely smart, he can’t read or write, so we had to think of a game that he could play where the numbers on the cards wouldn’t matter and he would only have to recognize the symbols. We played the game spoons where you have to pass cards in a circle and try to get 4 of a kind. It was tricky at first, but he got the hang of it. He kept having more than 4 cards in his hand though and we kept telling him he had to get rid of some cards. He said with a little smile, “That’s why I keep more cards. I want to win!” Haha.
After that we went over to Petri’s hut to see some new beaded jewelry he had just come back from town with, where the women make them. I bought a few things, but didn’t have very much money with me. I was wearing a pair of cargo shorts and Petri pointed to them and said he liked them and would trade me things for them. So I thought, why not, and ended up trading the shorts I had been wearing for a bunch of jewelry and a wooden Turkana bride doll I had been admiring. He immediately put the shorts on and wore them for the rest of the time we were there : )
After that we had an arrow shooting contest with real metal tipped arrows and a box nailed to a tree as the target. It was hard, but on my last turn I hit the box and got 10 points! At dinner one of the women who worked in the office came up to us and said she felt really bad that we had been in the rain for 4 nights and asked if we would want to stay in one of the little cabins for free. We could see no reason why we wouldn’t want to do that and moved our stuff into this little room with three beds AND an attached bathroom with a toilet and shower and sink. I have never in my life been so ecstatic to see a bed or a bathroom inside. Before bed we played Kenyan poker with a bunch of guys and it was an elimination game where each round the person with the most points left in their hand got eliminated. It came down to Whitney and I in the end and I won! Wahoo! We slept very well that night in our warm dry beds.

Day 6:
It was as if all of Samburu knew it was our last day riding the camels. Every single group of kids we passed yelled “Buh bye!” to us over and over, which they hadn’t done on any of the previous days. The first group we passed yelled “buh bye” back and forth with me until we were too far apart to hear each other. It was really adorable, especially to see them waving frantically, some of them with both hands reaching as far as they could above their heads. Also, a lot of the kids ran out singing the camel song as fast as they could. Apparently it is a competition among kids to see who can sing it the fastest. It cracked me up, especially hearing it in their little high pitched voices.
We saw monkeys on our walk that day and a lot of zebras. When we got back we had another arrow shooting contest with a lot more people this time. It was pretty fun. Then we watched the sun set and went and had dinner. We sat with Ernest and Doc and Doc handed us these little beaded rings he had gotten for us. It was such an amazing gift, especially because the Masai and Samburu people make almost all of their money on selling beaded things and other things they make, especially to tourists, and in my experience will never give something away for free. So it made me feel like we had truly made friends with these guys and made me really sad to think about leaving.
We played another round of Kenyan poker that night before going to bed. The sky was finally clear and there were hundreds of stars. It was really beautiful.

Day 7:
I got up at 5:45 to watch the sunrise over the mountains. At first there were a lot of clouds and it wasn’t very pretty, but then the clouds started to clear and these big rays of pinkish orange shot up over the mountains like huge spotlights. It was amazing. Then I went back to the cabin and sat outside for a while, thinking about how much I didn’t want to leave and go back to the big stinky city. We packed up, ate breakfast, and started to say our goodbyes. We went down to Petri’s hut and said goodbye to him and as we walked back up the hill, he called out goodbye again and his voice kind of cracked and he just stood there waving for a really long time. We said goodbye to Ernest, which was really hard because he had been such an amazing guide and teacher and friend. Everyone kept asking when we were coming back, and it was hard to say that we probably weren’t. As we drove away and I looked back at the people waving and started to cry, and couldn’t stop for the next 20 or 30 minutes of the drive. Every time I looked up at the landscape or the little kids on the side of the road waving, I was reminded of the warmth of the people in Samburu or how much Ernest had shared with us or Doc’s smile. I couldn’t believe how much I had fallen in love with this place in less than a week of being there, and how much it was breaking my heart to leave.
I cheered up a little though, when we saw a lot of giraffes and a few ostriches on our way out. We hadn’t seen much wildlife besides the zebras and gazelles and impala because the rainy season was just barely starting when we were there. I guess those 4 nights of downpour helped though, and the giraffes were along the sides of the road eating leaves and stopping to stare at us. It took us about 8 hours to drive home and then we were back in crazy Nairobi where I had to squeeze onto a matatu with my hiking backpack, a sleeping bag, and a 5 liter container of water and the man made me pay for two seats. I hope some day I will make it back to Samburu.