Jambo

I'm here. It took forever (43 hours to be exact), but I'm here. Honestly there is too much to write--I feel like a computer that's been overloaded with data--but I will try to give some highlights.

During my 12-hour layover in Heathrow, I went in to London. After a mini sightseeing self-guided tour, I went to meet Caroline (who is studying at Oxford this semester) for lunch. We ate in Notting Hill, and it was a fantastic last little jaunt in "civilization," complete with an amble along Portobello Road, where we wandered into the most amazing antique shops I have ever seen; my favorite of them was, of course, the one with the pith helmets and binoculars and trunks and brown riding boots, or, in other words, the one with all of the safari gear.

Well, about fifteen hours later, I found myself in Kenya. At first glance, the country seemed really similar to the developing countries that I've been to in Central America, but then, all of the sudden, this funny thing started to happen. I started seeing animals. And I'm not talking about the cows and goats which, though certainly slightly funny looking, are also found in Latin America. Visible from the Kenyan highway (which is by no means as big or well-groomed as the highways traversed by Jack Kerouac and the rest of us in the U.S.), were animals. Our heavy-duty Land Cruiser (definitely not the type of SUV you see in the states; these ones seat ten, and have three viewing roof windows for safaris, no air conditioning, and manually-opened windows), which had been completely devoid of chatter due to the utter exhaustion of its inhabitants, suddenly, at the beck of one voice calling out "giraffes" became a hub of oohs and ahhs, inquiry and delight.

And it didn't end with that one sighting. During the rest of the 6-hour drive from Nairobi to our camp in the foothills of Kilimanjaro (Kilimanjaro Bush Camp or KBC), we saw at least a hundred zebra, all in different packs, probably about ten giraffes, two wildebeest, and one ostrich. From the road. Not in the middle of a national park. From the road. It was unbelievable. So unbelievable, in fact, that when I awoke from a dream about home during a nap in the car, I was convinced that the self in that Land Cruiser was the dreamer--I just couldn't understand where I was, or what was going on.

Finally, I will share one last little tidbit. When I woke up this morning at 6:30am under the cover of my mosquito net, I girded myself to take a shower (which I desperately needed) in the cold water of the cool morning. Having searched about our dark banda (or hut), and having located all of my shower materials, I walked out the door into the pale light of the new day, the sun visible yet behind the trees to the east. And as I turned right and walked up the path to the bathrooms, I saw it: Kilimanjaro.

Kilimanjaro in all its glory, small white snow caps clearly visible from my little location in the south of Kenya. I was looking right at it, amidst the songs of birds, and chattering of bugs, my first morning in what was increasingly appearing to me to be a magical country to my now rested self. The snows of Kilimanjaro, cresting the pale brown/grey silhouette of the mountain, standing above the trees in front of me. Majestic.

Now I hope I haven't led you to believe its been all animals and play. The extreme heat of the afternoon today was draining, I got prickly plants stuck in the bottom of my feet, we only have cold showers, and I'm pretty sure I found mice poop in the bed next to mine (which is not occupied by a person but rather my stuff). But those moments are fleeting, and I know that tomorrow I will awake to Kilimanjaro again, and as Robert Frost wrote, that has made all the difference.