Tuesday our group spilt up and visited a local 9-12 girls boarding school and the United States International University. Through heavy and death defying traffic, we had an amazing meeting with university officials on a college campus that was global in the truest sense. This university attracts a student population that, year in and year out, has changing demographics. One year, the numerical majority is East African and the next it's Asian.
This university was almost an urban anomaly. It was clean, energetic, with modern facilities, spacious and attractive.
Later that afternoon, we all reconnected for our trip out to Olerai Farm. This is a massive piece of land that sits adjacent to the Masai Mara where we will later do our game drive. It's at this point that we connected with our game drive support who will not only drive us but also prepare our meals and build our tent camp. Peter, the driver, told us we would be at the farm in 3-4 hours. Half way through the drive we came upon the Great Rift Valley. It was a sight of majesty that I had never seen before. I think it was because of it's size. The thing runs from Israel to Mozambique. We stood a couple of thousand feet able to valley below and took in the history of the Great Rift Valley as well as pin-pointed where we were headed.
We trekked through village after village waving at tribe after tribe as they sold their wares, herded their livestock, slept under bushes, toted goods on their heads and looked at us. You can't help but wonder what they think of Westerners (or others) who traipse into their land to observe them! I admit, I feel somewhat awkward as not only an outsider but also as a gawker.
It's hard to explain the details of what you see when you're out in the rural communities of Kenya. More than that, it's hard not to use Western descriptors or non-Kenyan value statements. I don't want to be disrespectful to the native people by any means but when there is no other frame by which to capture or process the vision and thought, it's terribly hard. So, as I write on, know that I have made every attempt to suspend judgment and explain things through more of a lens of helping the reader to visualize for themselves.
We arrived at our farm with sore backsides and dusty everything else! It was 5 hours in a safari Range Rover that seated 8...uncomfortably! Once at the farm, it was another 20 minutes to get to our site which is beautifully called "House in the Wild." House in the Wild is an amazingly intimate set of 4 Masai hut structures that are each decorated like a collision between Architectural Digest, Pottery Barn and National Geographic. I slept in a one bedroom, one bath private hut that sat 10 feet from the banks of the Mara river. Not only could I hear the flowing river below, I could also hear the hippos moving around in the water. If the hut itself wasn't enough, the bathroom in the hut had no permanent wall and the carved concrete tub/shower was completely exposed to the hippos in the river. Words could not do the place justice but just know that I found it to be serene, romantic and exactly what you would envision from a movie-esque night spent on the banks of a river in Africa.
