Days 19, 20, and 21: Masai Mara

I woke up around 3:15am, and we left on time around 4am. The airport was only about half an hour away, so we had plenty of time before our flight. On board, I was seated next to a man in a suit who said he is from Mozambique and works for Save the Children. We arrived in Nairobi at around 6:30am, just as the sun was rising.

Downtown Nairobi

Although we were supposed to be picked up at 8am, our transportation arrived early, so we left the airport at 7am. We first went to a small market in Nairobi, where we got water and food/snacks (like Toblerones). Next, when we stopped for gas, we went inside and got chicken and ice cream (the first ice cream since I got to Kenya!).

"Mint Crisp" Ice Cream!

We traveled for about 2 hours and arrived at our lunch destination, which was a small buffet in a small town between Nairobi and the Masai Mara. We ate lunch and continued for another 3 hours; the last 2 hours were on a rock/dirt road which was crazily bumpy (especially at 80 km/hr, or about 50 mph).

At a stop along the way

Wombat! (First Wildlife!)

At around 3:45pm, we arrived at our campsite just outside the Masai Mara reserve. We dropped our belongings off at our tents and went on our first safari trip. In the three or so hours we were there, we saw antelopes/gazelles/impalas, water buffalo, wildebeest, elephants, and lions. At about 7pm, we headed back since dinner was at 7:30pm. The meals were provided at a building where all members of our camp ate together. We met two Australians, two Missourians, and two Danish nursing students.

My Tent

Our tents only had electricity from 6:30pm to 10pm, and since we had to get up early anyway, we went to bed at 9pm. I was awakened at 2:30am by a very strange, hysterical laughing sound... something between a man uncontrollably laughing and a dog barking. It took me a minute to realize it was a pack of hyenas.

Saturday morning we woke at 6:30am and ate breakfast at 7:30am. Afterwards we left for safari. I've combined pictures from all three days below to show the variety of animals we saw; there are many more pictures, but due to limited internet, I've only posted a few.

Elephant

Lion

Impala/Gazelle/Antelope Thing

Water Buffalo

Giraffe

Wildebeest

Zebra

We ate lunch along a river, where we saw mongooses, vervet monkeys, hippopotamuses, and a crocodile. The mongooses and monkeys tried to steal our food until a ranger shot at them with a slingshot. After lunch, we continued to adventure around until about 5:30pm, when we left the Masai Mara and went to the village where the local Masai warrior tribe lives.

Part of the Masai Village

Their village was a small circle of a few huts made of sticks and dried cow manure. The ground was almost entirely manure from the various animals they kept (cows, goats, chickens, dogs). The Masai showed us the inside of their huts, which were very small, with beds made of dried cow skin. They taught us one of their tribal dances and explained how the man who jumped the highest paid the least number of cows for his wife/wives (normally about 20 cows per wife, and each wife needs her own hut). They also told us that the previous night, they had to fight off a group of hyenas that was attacking their animals, which explains why we heard them at 2:30am. We left the village and went back to eat dinner at around 7:30pm.

It was at dinner that we heard startling news: that the US Embassy had issued a terrorist warning for Mombasa, that there was an "imminent threat of a terror attack" from an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group, and that bombs or bomb components had been found in both Nairobi and Mombasa. Since we didn't have internet, we couldn't find out any more information, so we still didn't know exactly was happening. Later we would learn that Kenyan troops had been sent to Somalia in October 2011 to help oust the Islamic militant group al Shabaab, a close ally to al Qaeda. The group threatened retaliation, and various bombs had been intercepted in Nairobi and Mombasa, and some bombs had gone off in Nairobi.

Nonetheless we planned to go to the safari early the next morning, at 6am, so we went to bed around 10pm. The next morning we went on safari for about 2 hours before returning, eating breakfast, packing, and leaving for Nairobi at about 10am. We stopped at the same place for lunch, and continued until we got to a secured area (I don't know what it is called) where we waited for the Elective Africa Nairobi coordinators to talk to us about the safety situation. We also walked around a market to see what it was like (people persistently tried to sell us stuff). Finally, we went to the airport and took our 8pm-9pm flight back to Mombasa.

When we got back around 10pm, we started watching the Euros (England vs. Italy... Italy won). I was on my computer working on my blog, and I decided to check to see the status of the terrorist threats in Mombasa. I was the first person to read the news about the grenades that went off at 9:45pm earlier that night. Since then, students in the group have been indecisive about staying in Mombasa and only leaving to go to the hospital, or leaving early. We went to bed after the Euros, unsure of how bad things were or how bad they will get.