Visited an Island and a Mourning House

23.02.2007 - 25.02.2007 25 °C

Sunday 25th February 2007

Things are well.

Yesterday, fed up with the city a matatu’d out to Lake Naivasha again and took a boat onto Crescent Island. The island (a crescent shape) was a former volcano crater rim and commands a view of another volcano Mount Longonot (blog…), the cliff of Hell’s Gate (blog… ) is full of lots of beautiful animals. During the boat trip I saw my first hippo (with Longonot behind).

I just walked around the island for a few hours, in amongst the Gnu (Wildebeast)... you remember that song Mr Fee used to sing
"I'm a GeNu, How do you do?"

Dave is in Africa, Honestly

Thompsons’ Gazelles, Grants Gazelles, Imapala, Water buck

and the ubiquitous Zebras. But I had been warned to keep away from the thick trees and bushes because that’s where the Buffalo were hiding… Yes, Buffalo, together with Hippos are by far the most dangerous animals in Africa – killing and maiming many more people than lions or leopards… because their grumpy!

On arrival back in Nairobi, I met Ben (Kenyan guy from work). We headed out to Eastlands for a drink in a properly African pub, with African music, dancing and no Musungos (whites).. it was great. Then onto his cousin’s mourning house in South B to hang out for a while. Similar in many ways to the mourning house Kai and I visited in Sri Lanka … people hanging about outside the house under a covering sitting chatting, laughing, most not seeming to be particularly interested in the fact that Ben’s cousin’s wife had just died. The difference was that in Kenya they were playing a Shine Jesus Shine dvd at full volume on the TV and I was very careful not to pay any attention to drunken uncles who might ask me to sing a song. There was no repeat performance of Brown Eyed Girl from Dave.

After the death house, I attended the ex-pat party of the week… hosted by The Italians.

Oh, and here's a pic of Paul flipping pancakes at my place last Tuesday