Kenyan Christmas

My balcony door is wide open as it’s so hot, the sky is a brilliant blue, and we’re just 4 days from Christmas. Even after 8 years, this is not exactly the weather that I associate with this festive season. Much more the freezing snowy conditions being experienced in the UK – not that I’ve actually experienced that very much! We had our home group Christmas party just over a week ago, opting for brunch rather than dinner. The location was the pool area of the house of one of our families. It was beautiful. After a glass of Bucks Fizz, sausages, tomatoes, bacon and eggs (30 of them being fried together in a large paella pan!) were cooked outside over gas stoves or on a large barbecue. We rounded off with a gift exchange, gifts being randomly selected with options of stealing those already unwrapped. It was fun! Having had a number of gifts pass through my hands, and done my fair share of stealing (and being stolen from), I wound up with a piece of wood that opens out to reveal a nativity scene within.

There’s not the mad rush in the shops around Christmas time that you get in the UK. I remember standing in a queue to pay at a supermarket in Newark, Nottinghamshire last Christmas Eve with my parents for what must have been about 45 minutes. Today, I popped into the supermarket down the road and queued for all of, oh, 3 minutes!

However, Christmas is getting more commercialized with billboards advertising special Christmas deals. The singing Santas are present at the doors of the supermarkets again, though they’re new ones this year – Santa’s gone completely bald! Elsewhere, there are tall inflatable Santas outside, which vibrate, duck and dive rather alarmingly in the wind! There are nowhere near the number of Christmas lights that you get in the West, though shopping centres are strewn with white lights, and with an increasing number of shopping centres, that’s an increasing number of lights! One nearby has opted for something more Kenyan this year rather than the traditional fir trees, and has quite a number of tastefully decorated baobab trees made out of banana leaves – including some in the parking area.

My own apartment is decked out with quite a number of lights, candles, a tree, and a vase of red and gold baubles. It all looks very nice. I’m leaving that behind tomorrow as I’m off on safari for a few days, and will be in the bush on Christmas Day. I’m interested to find out what will be provided for us of a festive nature – taking some crackers, Christmas music and cookies just in case!

Monkey Capers

Yesterday morning, I was sitting down to breakfast when I heard a commotion outside. On investigating, I was first just aware of a silhouetted largish figure sitting on the trellis at the side of my balcony. This turned out to be a vervet monkey demolishing a peanut bird feeder that I’d had hanging there for months, and helping itself to the goodies within. He was clearly unperturbed by my presence at the window (and occasional opening and closing of the balcony door to try to scare it off), as on finishing the peanuts (there weren’t that many left), it moved on to the dish of millet and sunflower seeds. All the while this was taking place, two pied crows were making quite a ruckus. They clearly weren’t at all impressed by this behavior (or perhaps just his presence), and made that even more clear by effectively dive-bombing the monkey. Between the flash on my camera and the crows, the monkey realized that this wasn't perhaps such a good place to be after all (or maybe he preferred a quieter breakfast environment?), and eventually leapt off the balcony into the tree. Not that the crows gave him any respite there. He eventually leapt on to the apartment roof. Needless to say, I’ve now removed all bird food from the balcony for the time being at least. There’s a big deal made in the UK (where I bought the peanut bird feeder) about bird feeders being squirrel-proof, but I've not seen one yet that makes any mention of monkeys!!!!

A Juxtaposition of Cultures

The aim of the walk with the dung beetle episode was to get to the main lake from our separate small lake. We’d gone that way before, so knew the way, although in the interim various fences seemed to have been put up. Anyway, we made it and found a scene very different to the one 18 months ago. Then, the water was a long way from where we were. This time, we happened upon a water bird paradise, with a swampy section, papyrus, water hyacinth, and a host of birds (as well as some fishermen). After a while of taking in the scene, the peace was broken by the jangling of bells as a flock of about 200 goats came hurtling down to the water’s edge, some of them leaping into the water. They were evidently quite excited to be there. Behind them came a young boy, with a very long stick – the goatherd. He was very interested in my camera and binoculars. Evidently he’d come across such things before as he had an inkling of what they did, though using them proved rather tricky. It struck me as being a real juxtaposition: His usual life is probably a world away from the modern life that we know in Nairobi (and the West), and yet here he was with a decent digital camera in hand, trying to use technology. He reminded me a bit of my nephew when he was three, pressing every single button in sight! I have to confess that I was a little anxious that he’d inadvertently delete all the photos on my memory card! The fruit of his efforts weren’t that great – photos of grass when the subjects were a dog, a man on a motorbike and the lake!!! However, it’d give him a few stories to tell when he’d finished his work with the goats that day.

Along for the Ride

A few weekends ago, I was near Lake Naivasha with some friends, staying in one of my favourite spots. Wildlife abounds there, and this time as well as the usual giraffe, zebra, gazelle and hippo, we saw buffalo and jackal down at the lake front. I wasn’t so keen on the buffalo sighting when on foot, though they were a fair way off at least. On a walk on the Sunday, Jill and I came across a round piece of dung being moved along the path by 2 quite large dung beetles. There was no other dung in sight, so goodness knows how far these rather determined beetles had come already. We weren’t sure if it was our presence that did it, but the beetles’ course changed on getting closer to us, and they veered off the path onto the grass. This must have been much harder for them, as they were now having to get the ball over stems of grass and hummocks. It was then we noticed that it was actually just one of them doing all the work, planting its back legs on the ball, and using its front legs to push it along, while all the time, its companion was sitting on top of the ball, and seemed to just be along for the ride! According to Wikipedia, this is normal: “The "rollers" roll and bury a dung ball either for food storage or for making a brooding ball. In the latter case, two beetles, one male and one female, will be seen around the dung ball during the rolling process. Usually it is the male that rolls the ball, with the female hitch-hiking or simply following behind. In some cases the male and the female roll together. When a spot with soft soil is found, they stop and bury the dung ball. They will then mate underground. After the mating, both or one of them will prepare the brooding ball. When the ball is finished, the female lays eggs inside it.” It seems that once the larvae hatch, they make use of this food source at hand, and feed on the dung, Very clever, and wonderful to have witnessed part of the journey – but I can't say that I’d fancy starting life that way!

"My" Space

Personal space is something that varies very much from one country to another. This was perfectly illustrated to me last April when I was in the US. In a grocery store, with large aisles, I was accosted by a rather bolshie lady for blocking the aisle with my shopping cart. There was in fact plenty of room around it, but I wasn’t going to argue! Similarly, there were a couple of times when people would apologise profusely for being in the way, when I hadn’t noticed that they were, given the ample space around them, and the distance of several metres between me and them. Contrast that to my return to Kenya. Standing in line at the Customer Service desk in a supermarket here to return empty bottles, I was somewhat surprised when someone stood in the 6 inch gap that was between me and the desk!!!

On a public holiday in October, I joined some friends on a trip down to Magadi, which is a soda lake about 90 minutes to 2 hours from Nairobi. It’s a beautiful drive, with the ascent to the shoulder of the Ngong Hills, and then continuing downwards from then on into the Rift Valley. The landscape i

s pretty dramatic with hills and volcanic plugs, and very little in the way of noticeable buildings. Instead, Masai manyattas blend into the scrub land. Once at Magadi, we looked for somewhere with a little bit of shade to have our picnic (it being 37C there), and eventually found a large acacia. So, we set up our table and chairs. Not long after our arrival, a Masai young man pulled up on his bike, greeted us, and then remained, leaning against the tree trunk, watching this strange bunch of people produce sandwiches, sausages, fruit and drinks from the bags we'd brought with us. He was within feet of us, but that certainly didn’t seem to bother him, and we just found the whole thing rather amusing! After about half an hour, he received a phone call on his mobile that caused him to wander off to some bushes. Not sure if he was concerned that we might listen into his conversation in Masai (!), or whether he was taking the opportunity for a call of a different nature. Eventually, he continued on his way. Soon after, we were joined by 3 youngsters, who stood and observed for some time, while talking with each other. One refused a drink of water poured into a Tusker (beer) bottle, but another accepted - and was possibly disappointed to find that it was indeed water as we’d said.

So, space is relative. Maybe all of those people had decided ahead of time to stop at the tree, and our presence was in no way going to stop them. Or maybe, they just wanted to have a good look at our strange behavior. Certainly, there was no concern about impinging on someone else’s space and privacy!