Nairobi - Our First Full Day - 6/19

Breakfast buffet time! A variation on a British breakfast - I had forgotten how unprocessed the bread was and good the preserves were going to be. We walked a few blocks from the hotel to the Kenyan National Museum so that Dan could say hello to some old friends. Along the way we passed over a bridge that Dan said was the site of many a mugging/passerby bludgeoning. Nice.

At any given time during the summer, it seems that 80% of the world’s biological anthropologists and archaeologists are running around this museum. In the span of an hour I had the chance to meet some nice and fairly famous folks: Randy Sussman, Helen Roche, Andrew Hill etc. Also, we were permitted to enter the vault, which contains many of the most important hominoid remains ever found. Some type specimens, the Turkana boy, the Black Skull. In all seriousness, I almost needed a cold shower after having held the Turkana boy’s skull. Ho-lee crap.

I joined Dan and Adam (Dandam?) and we headed off to rent a car for our trip to the highlands. We did not call the company before arriving and found the place closed for lunch. Blast. So we walked next door to Barclay’s to change some money. Dan asked a representative about a good place to eat nearby and she thought for a second and said “let me check something.” Turns out that Barclay’s has its own eatery of sorts upstairs and she said it would be fine for us to grab lunch in the employee area. That is not something that would happen in the US.

The view from the fifth floor was great and the food (rice, lentils, spinach) was not bad. Dan and I declined the (chicken?) liver, but Adam went ahead and grabbed some. He told us later that he was not paying attention and thought it was some other kind of body part. I think I had read somewhere that eating internal organs of animals in developing countries is not recommended. Hope there are no downstream repercussions – we’re sharing a room this trip.
We rented the car – a junker of a Suzuki 4x4 jeep that was actually a converted pickup truck with a top bolted on – after lunch and Dan drove the route back to the hotel through the insane streets of Nairobi. Folks drive on the left side of the road (sometimes) and all traffic laws are more or less optional. Dan said it would be fine if we were backseat driving because of the car’s poor visibility and the general danger factor. So I kept yelling at Dan “ASSERT YOUR DOMINANCE!” and “THERE ARE NO LAWS!,” which I assume he greatly appreciated.

We arrived alive at the hotel and spent the rest of the daylight hours shopping for some supplies in downtown Nairobi. Adam bought some pants and Bata safari boots which are about $20 but are of fairly good stock. I used that time to pester the saleswoman and catch up on some Swahili. 44, my shoe size, is “arobaini na nne”. I had remembered that “kushoto” was left but could not remember how to say right (“kulia”).

As expected, we were accosted by a ton of people on the street asking us if we wanted to go on a safari or buy some random wares. Nice time to mention that one tends to hear the word “karibu” every five seconds in east Africa. The “I” is stressed and pronounced “ee”, so it does not sound like caribou. It means “welcome” (as in, welcome to Kenya), as well as “you are welcome” (a response to thank you), and “you are welcome” (to come in, to do something, to eat this food).