Kenya Log, Day Seven

Day Seven

Woke up around 6.45AM to get ready for breakfast, which was to be promptly served at 7.30AM. Last night it was decided that we were going to go on a mini-Safari today so we were told that we need to finish breakfast by 8.00AM so that we can leave the facility at 8.00AM sharp and come back by noon. Breakfast at BTL was not too different from the kind we were served in Bondo; some sort of bean porridge, oatmeal, scrambled and boiled eggs, toast and marmalade, and a choice between coffee, tea and cocoa was offered on the table.

We (the three that actually wanted to go on the mini-Safari) promptly finished breakfast at 8.00AM and went toward the main entrance as we were told to do so, but the driver wasn’t there; we then assumed that the driver is probably operating on “Kenya Time” which, according to our guide in Bondo, is usually anywhere from 30-60 minutes after the designated time. So with that in mind, we stood around the parking lot for about an hour, walked around the facility a few times waiting for the driver to arrive. But little did we know, that it wouldn’t be until 10.30AM that the driver will actually arrive on the facility to pick us up—some two and a half hours after the appointed time of arrival.

I may have forgotten to mention on day six that BTL is actually in an area about 24km away from Nairobi called Ruiru; the facility itself is gated and heavily guarded, probably due to the fac t that there’s a prison right outside the facility where the prison guards practice marksmanship every morning for about forty-five minutes. I kept joking with Parent 1 that BTL actually felt more like a prison than a “translation and literacy” centre, but who knows, maybe those words will come and haunt me for the next ten or so days I’m supposed to spend here.

The drive into Nairobi was almost as bad as the drive coming into BTL the night before; there was a massive traffic jam in the inbound traffic—probably people going to work or visiting Nairobi over the weekend, which reminds me of another conversation I had with one of the people here: apparently Kenyans work on a five-and-a-half-day schedule, where they work 9 to 5 on the weekdays like they do everywhere else and then work only until noon on Saturday—resulting in sixty frustrating minutes of sitting inside the car as opposed to the twenty-five it would take on any normal day. We had to first stop by a garage because the front left tire was flat and had been running on a spare tire, but when we got to the garage we were informed that the replacement tire wasn’t ready and that we’d need to come back a few hours later in order to pick it up. So without wasting anytime, we decided it’d probably be best for the driver to drop us first for our mini-Safari and then go get his replacement tire.

So another twenty minutes of scourging through Nairobi traffic later, we arrived at Nairobi National Park, the home of the Kenya Animal Orphanage and the fabled Safari Walk. As we got off the car, the driver told us that he had other things to do in town today and told us that he’d meet us at the restaurant area at around two o’clock (there’s a reason why I mention this) leaving us to go explore on our own. Although we were told the day before that the entire park was huge and takes 3hrs to walk from one end to the other, we were disappointed to find out that most of the park was not accessible to pedestrians, so we were forced to choose between visiting either the Orphanage or the Safari Walk; after consulting the man at the ticketing box, we were told that we’d see more animals inside the Orphanage so we headed to that general direction.

The ticket price for the Orphanage was organized in a rather peculiar way. The price range for a Nairobi resident, Non-Nairobi resident and a foreign national were all different; while they encouraged Kenyan Nationals to pay in KSh, foreign nationals were told to pay in USD—the price they expected foreign nationals was 10 USD (approximately 750KSh) per person, while the residents and Kenyan nationals were only expected to pay around 200-250 KSh per person.

The first animal we saw at the Animal Orphanage was a weird looking-monkey (the guide told me what species of monkey it was but I don’t remember what it was called) named “Benin,” named so because it was illegally poached into Kenya from some West African country, probably either Sierra Leone or Benin. The guide then explained to us that most of the animals that ended up in the Orphanage were mostly rescued from the hands of poachers or those that were holding them in (illegal) captivity. We then moved on to meet Patrick and Patricia the warthog, who were to be disambiguated by the fact that male warthogs have curvy tusks whereas females don’t.

As we passed by the warthog cage, my mind couldn’t help but keep wondering if there were any cheetahs in the Orphanage—afterall my sole purpose in coming to Kenya was to tackle a running cheetah—so while my mind was lost deep in hope and bewilderment, we passed by some weird birds (I’ll post links to these pictures after I organize my photos when I get back to somewhere with fast internet) and other insignificant animals until we finally arrived at the cheetah cage.

Ah yes, the cheetah. The runners of the jungle. The cheetah is the fastest animal on land and can run up to an average of a 120km/h (around 90mph); it starts hunting at about six months of age and preys mostly on gazelles or antelopes. Unlike leopards, cheetahs are not solitary animals, although they don’t hunt in prides or in packs like lions do. Although the cheetah is frequently mistaken for the leopard, the cheetah can be distinguished by the distinct black “line” that runs from the side of its eye down to its nose. The guide was “impressed” by my National Geographic-inspired knowledge of cheetah and assumed correctly that I would be very interested in perhaps touching, nay, petting the cheetah, and hinted that if I “tipped” the zookeeper, he may let us into the cage to pet the cheetah. So I quietly slipped 200 KSh (about 3 USD) to the zookeeper and lo and behold! The gate into the cheetah pen was open and we were guided into the cage.

There was a flurry of emotions flying across my brain at that moment; I was happy that I actually get to see my favorite animal up close and personal, but I was also deathly frightened by the fact that cheetahs are also deadly predators and if I had somehow managed to irritate it there probably would be no escaping death or mortal injury. But I soon found that these cheetahs were literally brought up in the Orphanage since they were only a month old and were incredibly-tame; so I decided to try my luck at tackling one while it started runn—I mean, pretend like I’ve beat it down and brought it into captivity. The cheetah that I managed to pet and take a picture with was actually only three months old, which led me to abandon my plans of capturing a cheetah cub and secretly smuggling it back to America to train it so that it would eat annoying dogs that came by; if the cheetah is this big when it’s only three months old, I can’t really imagine how big it’ll become when it’s one or two years old.

After taking a few pictures with the cheetahs, we thanked the zookeepers and left the cage to go see the lazy leopard. This particular leopard which was in the Orphanage was apparently very shy and we were told that we were actually very lucky to have come close to feeding time, else the leopard usually just hides up on the tree. The leopard, however, didn’t do much but lie down and yawn; the guide did however manage to get its attention by rattling the cage a little, after which it raised its head up with a puzzling look, but it resumed its “ima just lie down here and do nothing until you feed me” position soon after it realized it wasn’t feeding time yet.

Just across the leopard cage was the “monkey village” where we met all sorts of monkeys that we’ve never seen before or even heard of; there was one particular monkey which had groomed its hair to look like Elvis which was found in the town where Obama’s family supposedly lives, named “Barack,” which seemed to attract the most attention out of all the monkeys, probably because it started doing all sorts of little tricks and dances when the guide came around with food. We then passed by a Serval Cat, a Jackal, some weird birds, a gazelle fawn until we got to an ostrich cage; the ostrich was actually more eager to meet people than all the other animals we saw that day and it kept peeping over its cage raising its head above the fence to see if any people were coming to visit it.

I do realize that justice would be done best for remembering this day through pictures rather than my boring rambling, so I’ll just end my description of the orphanage by saying, yes I saw lions (and lionesses) and no, I didn’t see tigers, no they’re not only in Kenya and Norway is an awesome place that people shouldn’t “forget” like the weebl song tells you to do.
We walked out of the Animal Orphanage at around 1.00PM keeping in mind that the driver told us that he’d be back to pick us up at around 2.00PM and headed down to the restaurant area. The price of the buffet was 800 KSh per person, which under normal circumstances we probably wouldn’t have paid, but since there wasn’t any other eateries around we decided it’d be best for us to pay up and fill up as we wait for the driver to come back.

Although the ominous experience of “Kenyan Time” was fresh in our minds as we sat down in front of the restaurant at 1.45PM waiting for the driver to arrive, we sat in wait still in our restaurant seats hoping that the driver would come sometime soon. It was only until 2.45PM when we realized that “Kenyan Time” had been in effect again and decided to walk around the park a little more; during the 45 minutes of our walking around we saw a Masai tribe (the oft red-clad nomadic warrior tribe that Kenya is famous for) performing some sort of traditional dance, two weddings taking place in some garden nearby the Safari Walk, and two warthogs curiously outside their cages roaming around the parking lot, crawling on their front two feet.

Just as we were getting tired of waiting, the driver finally arrived, smiling and apologizing, and drove us to the A.F.E.W. Giraffe Sanctuary which was about ten minutes away; we also passed by an elephant sanctuary on our way there but our hopes of seeing any were quickly extinguished when the driver told us that the sanctuary only opens for an hour a day from 11.00 to noon, unless you decide to “adopt” an elephant. The Giraffe Sanctuary cost 10 USD to get in, and it was only after I entered this place that it hit me that I’m actually in Africa; as soon as we entered the sanctuary the first thing we saw was the peeping head of a curious giraffe being fed cereal pellets by amazed tourists all around it. The giraffe sanctuary was built on the outskirt of a simulated giraffe habitat, currently occupied by six female giraffes and two baby (male) giraffe. The “stud” of the pack had tragically passed away two months earlier, but it wasn’t like we could tell the difference between a male and a female giraffe anyway.

Although I had no problem touching or stroking the giraffe, I was terrified to feed it out of my hand or let it lick my face like it was doing to the other tourists when I heard the girl I came with telling me that the giraffe’s saliva was sticky like a web of some sort. The kodak moment of the day, however, was when one courageous American tourist decided to put a cereal pellet between his teeth and “kiss” the giraffe, claiming that it would make a “great facebook profile photo” which it probably did. The funny thing was that he ended up kissing one of the baby male giraffes that got scared after kissing the man; we teased the guy, telling him that he scared the baby giraffe straight in more than one way.

After we got out of the Giraffe Sanctuary, the driver gave us a mini-tour of some peculiar spots in Nairobi; we drove by a Sikh temple, a Hindu stupa, the worshipping place of what was supposedly a Muslim sect, and most curious of all, a freemason church. This freemason church was a place of particular interest that had many rumors surrounding it; the saying goes that even if someone gets into an accident or gets hurt in front of the freemason church, the person will not bleed but just sustain scratches and deep entry/exit wounds—the driver claims that a man who was shot one time in front of the church was taken to the hospital immediately after getting shot but the ambulance that he was taken to the hospital in was miraculously found without a single drop of blood—and asked us if the freemasons are a cult or actually an established religion in America, to which I just shrugged and told him that they’re also very much a mystery in America as well.

We arrived back at BTL just in time for dinner, and after dinner I had to move all my stuff over from the room I had stayed the night before to Parent 2’s room since Parent 1 was leaving to go back to Korea and I’m supposed to room with Parent 2 for ten days. At about 8.00pm the first car leaving to the airport left the facility, leaving myself and three other people to wait for the second car which would take the remainder of the people to the airport, hoping that “Kenyan Time” would not strike again, but it did; the second driver arrived at 8.45PM much to the worries and anxieties of the second group including myself.

The driver, however, assured us that the car would arrive at the airport in time for the check-in time which was 10.00PM, and told us to gear up for a bumpy ride, which we did—fourty-five minutes and twenty traffic violations later our car arrived at the airport at the same time as the first driver that had left forty-five minutes before we left the facility.

We dropped Parent 1 off at the airport along with the rest of the people going back, and stopped by Nakumatt (the local 24hr Walmart) to grab lucozade (the british version of red bull with about 300% less caffeine) and other essentials and headed back to BTL where I drugged myself to sleep once again.