People are the Most Interesting Animals

Days 14-15

After my somewhat stressful Saturday, it was a relief to have no plan whatsoever on Sunday, aside from Mass. As it was, the day was good, but not worth much text here. It consisted of the aforementioned service, a stop at the internet cafe, a shopping trip to Nakumatt mostly to pick up supplies for my safari, and a trip in search of rugby on television.

The rugby trip involved me taking a matatu out to Karen and searching for a bar called the Outside Inn, which appeared easy to find in my guide book. I planned to be there for the 3 pm start of Wales v. Canada, so I left Tumaini at 2 to find the matatu to take me the 10K or so to Karen. Unfortunately, I had to wait nearly 30 minutes to get a matatu and then deal with incredible traffic for half of the journey because apparently all of Nairobi was heading to the Ngong Hills Races, and that was on the way to Karen.

Finally I arrived in Karen and started walking. Of course I was immediately asked by every taxi driver at the local taxi stand if I needed their services, but I was sure I could get there on my own. I then proceeded to walk approximately 5 miles in a triangle, bringing me back to the cabbies and then asking for a ride to my destination.

In fairness, the bar was not right on the main road I thought it was on, and it had changed names to the Double Inn, Nairobi’s only Irish pub. By the time I got there it was starting to rain, and Wales-Canada was almost over (Wales won 42-17), but at least I was there, and I got to see South Africa dominate Samoa, drink some Tuskers, eat some excellent chicken wings, and talk a little rugby with some native Kenyans before calling for a cab home.

It rained almost all night Sunday, making for a very messy walk to Kibera through muddy roads Monday morning. I cannot imagine how bad it is during the rainy season- it is supposed to be dry this time of year, which probably means bad things for crops when all is said and done. Strangely, Kenyans don’t really talk weather like, say the Irish, for whom weather is a national obsession. I say it is strange, because the weather has a massive impact on life here, whereas in Ireland it just rains all the time, so why should anyone care?

By the time I arrived at St. Al’s my shoes were caked in mud and the cuffs of my jeans were also filthy. I was cursing my decision on Sunday not to buy a cheap pair of boots for the safari. I made sure to arrive earlier than usual to be able to take part in the field trip, but of course no one was around to tell me what was going on. Around 9, after I had read the entire paper, Kiambi came in to tell me the trip was still on and should be leaving shortly, and soon enough after that the bus did arrive.

It turned out I was the chaperone for 24 essentially randomly selected students from all forms going on a wildlife trip sponsored by the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife. We had a good young tour guide named John and a small bus. Evidently the AFEW runs these trips every day of the week at no cost to the schools in the area, and they are trying to get every kid from St. Al’s to go at least once.

The bus took us first to the Safari Walk of Nairobi National Park, a nicely organized boardwalk/zoo that gets you up close and personal with zebras, wildebeests, antelopes, ostriches, white rhinos, pygmy hippos, leopards (pronounced lee-o-pards to my amusement), lions, cheetahs, and monkeys. We learned a little about each animal and also about the dangers to their habitats. The place was almost entirely empty, but I thought it was nicer than the National Zoo in DC and well worth a trip as a primer for the big game drives.

Next stop was the David Sheldrick Trust, an elephant/rhino orphanage where they bring out the baby elephants for a public show at the mud bath daily from 11-12. This spot was chock full of American and European tourists, and you could see why. The elephants are incredibly playful and funny at that age. Apparently the trust has been very successful at finding orphaned elephants and raising them, then returning them to the wild at Tsavo East National Park. I was impressed by the process and amused by their behavior, and I wish we had been there longer.

We moved from there to Mamba Village Crocodile Farm for lunch and then a view of the crocodiles. There were over 50 crocs sitting around and in the pools, and they are some of the laziest animals on earth. Because of the relatively cold temperatures in Nairobi, their metabolism is very slow, and they only eat on Sundays. It being Monday, they were well-fed and boring, but the kids still seemed to enjoy learning about them.

Our final stop of the day was the AFEW Giraffe Center at Langata. The folks at AFEW are doing their best to help out the endangered Rothschild Giraffe, and they have also been successful in raising that population. The center was pretty cool, with a raised feeding platform where the kids literally had giraffes eating out of their hands. The center also included warthogs and tortoises, who for some reason fascinated the kids as much as the giraffes.

For me the most interesting part of the trip was the way that John tried to pitch environmental conservation to the students. Some of the appeal was as I was used to- basically a line about the lands belonging to animals and appealing to a basic idea of doing what is right. But it went beyond that, trying also to sell the kids on the importance of wild animals to Kenya’s economy and the possibility of them someday earning their livelihood in the tourism industry. It is an argument that makes sense, and particularly when you are trying to convince kids with hungry families why they shouldn’t keep cutting down trees for firewood, or eating all the antelopes, or even killing elephants and rhinos for lucrative ivory trade.

I had hoped the trip would take long enough that we would return to school too late for me to give my planned “Education for Life” lecture, I was feeling ill prepared and uneasy about me giving any meaningful life advice to the boys of St. Al’s. As mentioned, I had been given almost no guidance on the subject matter I should undertake, save for a book about manners from before color television in the US.

It was suggested that I talk about how to behave as a gentleman, and that was also fraught with peril in my mind. While I think I am basically a gentleman, I do not consider myself to have any particular expertise on the subject. I also had grave concerns about imposing my own beliefs on a foreign culture. So I tried to keep it general, with mostly broad platitudes about respect for women, trying in particular to emphasize that violence toward women is never appropriate, that no means no, and that women should be encouraged to pursue careers.

What followed was an awkward but still hopefully productive 90 minutes. The boys asked Socratic questions to me, and gave all kinds of hypotheticals, showing an earnestness that would never have happened in a roomful of cynical American teenagers. Some of these guys are 18 and 19 years old, clearly smart, and some have mothers who are prostitutes, and yet their questions were often painfully naive. I don’t really know what they have learned before, and I did my best to keep things on the path I would imagine their administrators would have wanted at a Catholic school, but it made me wonder.

Finally I ran out of things to talk about, and we somehow ended up with me describing the US Electoral College, which we all agreed is due for an overhaul, when the bell mercifully rang and my one and only experience with Education for Life at St. Al’s came to a close. I did get lost trying to find the least muddy road home, but I made it by dark, and it was far from the biggest adventure of the day.