American Life In The Summertime #9: African Life In The Autumntime

9 March 2008


10 years in the making, this 9th edition of ALITS bears no relation to America nor summer, which makes it an ideal introduction to the updates from the uncertainty which is Africa.

This update comes to you from the friendly confines of the "Drinks Available" internet cafe in Nairobi, Kenya, where we have just finished the first week of our tour & are spending a couple of days in town recharging before heading off to Tanzania. Depending on how many people are estimated to live in the slums, Nairobi could be the 2nd largest city in Africa, after Lagos in Nigeria - home of every Special Finance Minister, lawyer representing the estate of deceased despots with millions to smuggle out of the country, and relative of wealthy western industrialists looking to avoid death duties. Unfortunately Lagos was a little far away to be included in this trip however I feel I have rather got the gist of it with Nairobi. Nairobi has 4 million people and I think every one of them is crammed into this internet cafe with me now reading this email over my shoulder and otherwise interested in the business of white people. Thankfully the locals' command of English is imperfect so every time one of them asks for money, to hook you up with a cheap safari or sell you some authentic Maasai USB drives you can smile and recite some nonsense such as "Your nose is happy like the moon" and they agree wholeheartedly while continuing to walk alongside you hoping to score a prized commission for bringing their bosses a "mzungu" (white person). Once you have established this language vacuum you can pretty much talk a constant stream of nonsense and hope to be left alone, which is not dissimilar to the philosophy I attempt to employ at work so thus far it has been moderately successful.

Flight from Sydney-Perth was brilliant, massive 747 less than half full so I got to spread out across an entire row. They also had those personal in-seat entertainment systems which allowed me to play bad 80's Atari-style video games the whole way - all I can say is that my caveman was pretty adept at finding the exit before the cave filled with lava and whacking mammoths with clubs by the end of the flight. Perth-Joburg was a little more testing, beginning right away when the elderly lady took her seat next to me, spoke to me in Afrikaans, established that I was not in fact South African and proceeded to insist on using Afrikaans for the remainder of the 11 hour flight. I responded by being overly nice and friendly to the black flight attendant every time he walked past and stopping him for chats right in front of her seat whenever he was able. The cold looks I was receiving were met with my broadest Crocodile Hunter "How ya goin'?" until she gave up and read her book, titled, at a loose guess, "1,001 Ways To Be Elitist".

Overnight stopover in Joburg then flight up to Nairobi, where we had the pre-departure meeting for my tour. Most of the payment was made already but there is always what's called a "local payment", which they use for building a kitty to buy food etc as you move through the camping grounds. With Nairobi's reputation as "Nairobbery", our guide refused to take the local payments until we were well out of Nairobi the next day, presumably because if we were robbed, it was better for us to lose it than him. Our first destination was the Maasai Mara, but we stopped about half way to camp overnight in a field owned by some local Maasai. We had to abandon our original campsite when it was discovered that the field had recently become inhabited by a hive of Africanised killer bees. Given that one of the guys on the tour is allergic to normal bee stings, this was thought a wise course of action, however he was carrying some antihistamines just in case so all up I felt it was a little unnecessary to forego the nice little plot of earth I had already picked out.

On the way to the Maasai Mara game reserve we stopped at an authentic Maasai village. The huts are built entirely - walls, floors, ceilings - from cow shit. Given that cows are used as a wedding dowry when a man wishes to take a wife - going rate for a decent woman 10 cows - the better your wife, the more cows you have to give up for her, and the less shit you will have available to build her a house consistent with her station, which, and I don't profess to fully understand the cultural nuances here, seemed to me a little counterproductive. At night the Maasai bring all their cows into the centre of the circle of dung houses to protect them from lions, and so the village centre becomes a sort of cowpat repository, I guess if anyone needs to repair a roof or put in a paradise room. As you walk around being asked to buy beaded trinkets of all descriptions, quite a lot of this building material becomes attached to the bottom of your shoes, but I didn't want there to be a sudden shortage in case there was a rush on new construction so I magnanimously removed as much of it as possible before I climbed back onto the bus. The Maasai seemed pleased with this gesture and I like to think I have done my small part for cross-cultural relations.

The Maasai Mara is everything you expect - it's like someone has grabbed huge handfuls of those plastic toy animals & just scattered them across the plains. We stayed at one of the camp grounds and the camping fee included genuine Maasai guards who stay in your campsite all night tending the fire, presumably to fight off any animals that wander in for a closer look. On the first night we were sitting around the campfire chatting to the Maasai guards when there was an electronic buzz and one of them pulled a mobile phone from under his blanket. Having only acquired a mobile myself within the last couple of years, I'm not against anyone embracing technology, but it does result in a somewhat less authentic African camping experience. It does have its advantages however: when one of the Big Five animals is spotted (Lion, Leopard, Buffalo, Elephant & Black Rhino), the call goes out and within minutes every safari vehicle in the area descends on the beast. And every other safari vehicle in the area sees all the others swarming on a particular area and soon you have the entire game reserve centred on one location. This of course drives the animal away and so what you end up with in the Maasai Mara more than anything else is a fine collection of photographs of animals' arses. I'm proud to say that already we have been lucky enough to see the Big Five arses, although I suspect you don't need to come to Africa for that.

You do tend to feel a bit sorry for the guides: many of them speak very little English and they spend their day ferrying around white people who make little attempt to learn Swahili. I have tried to make the effort to pick up as much of the local language as possible - all the better to spot bargains on genuine Maasai sunglasses as they are offered to me - but there are still massive gaps. Still, the guides all seem to know each other and so even though there are vehicles bouncing in all directions all over the Mara, whenever they happen to drive past each other they always stop and the guards will launch into a lengthy stream of Swahili lasting several minutes, which I suspect translates to, and I'm no expert here, "I'll text you later".

Well the connection at the Drinks Available internet cafe is excruciatingly slow and I think most of the locals watching me type now have a decent enough understanding of my life to move back home and impersonate me indefinitely, so I'll sign off. Not sure when I'll be able to find another connection, but if I need help I'm sure someone will have a genuine Maasai modem for sale. It's been a long time coming, but to once again quote the great Jerry Springer: 'Till next time, take care of yourselves.....and each other.