Nairobi (and this time I mean it)

Without further ado – on to Nairobi. Cordelia and I arrived Friday afternoon at the Wildebeest Camp, which markets itself as the only tented camp in Nairobi. I was excited for this, as I think tented camps are pretty much the best type of accommodation on the planet. Unfortunately, we didn’t stay in a tent as such on this trip, instead renting out the dorm room, but it was still a pretty fantastic place, one I’d recommend.

Shortly after Cordelia and I arrived Theresa came from Nanyuki, and the two of us headed out to get lunch. On this trip, two interesting things happened.

1-We discovered FunBalls! A FunBall is a ball that is filled with ice cream. The idea is that you can eat the ice cream, and then have the ball to play with afterwards. In theory, its a brilliant concept. In practice, it falls short in two areas. A) The ball doesn’t bounce, and B) if you try to bounce the ball the top always flies off. So to the engineers working at FunBall Inc – You’re onto a good thing here and you’ve almost got it, but don’t call it a day quite yet. Still, one has to applaud any innovation in the field of ice cream delivery.

2-We saw President Kibaki! Or, more correctly, we saw lots of cars with tinted windows driving very fast through town, one of which most likely contained President Kibaki. Theresa was the first to notice that the street, oddly enough, had no cars on it. Unheard of in Nairobi, especially on a Friday afternoon. I should have realized something was up after I chased my FunBall into the street and lived, but I was too absorbed with trying to get that damn top to stay on to take any notice of my surroundings.
Shortly thereafter, a police car came flying down the street followed by the entire presidential motorcade – LandRovers with armed guards, Mercedes with tinted windows and signs on the bumper saying “President’s Escort”, the works. In the center was a cluster of black Mercedes, driving very fast and all bunched together, one of which probably contained Kibaki. Unless that’s what they wanted me to think, and he was really in one of the cars in front or behind. And that’s probably as close to the President of Kenya as I’m even going to get.
When we returned to the hostel Tony had arrived, followed shortly thereafter by Helina, Allie, and Victoria. We went out for Mexican food that night (which was awesome), and generally got mentally prepared for our adventures the next day.

Team PiAF (from left to right) - Tony, Victoria, Theresa, Me, Helina, and Allie

Serious mental preperation

On Saturday morning we went to the David Sheldrick elephant orphanage, which raises orphaned elephants until they can be released back into the wild. Elephant babies apparently need round-the-clock attention or they won’t survive, so the staff of the orphanage actually lives with the elephants, taking on the role of their now-deceased mothers. Its really something – I don’t know that I could sleep in the same room as an elephant, no matter how cute. And they were pretty cute. How cute, you might be asking? Well, let’s examine that scientifically. (You can also examine the pictures following the next paragraph).
As I’m wont to do, especially now that I’m camera-less, I stole pictures from Cordelia, Theresa, Allie, and Helina at the end of the weekend. As a result, I’m now the proud owner of 408 pictures of baby elephants. That’s an average of 102 pictures/person. We were only allowed to see the elephants for an hour, so that works out to 1.7 pictures/minute. And Cordelia only took 19 pictures, so as an outlier she really should be ignored in this analysis (I think – I didn’t really like stats), which brings the average up to 2.16 pictures/person/minute. Numbers like that don’t lie – these animals were, statistically speaking, “adorable”.

The elephants with some of their "Mothers"

Feeding time - 2 big bottles of milk/meal

Jr.

After a while of watching this I started to feel a strong urge to go roll around in some mud

Elephant pile!

After a nice lunch, we went to the giraffe center, which houses eight giraffes that are an endangered type and victims of loss of habitat. As some may suspect, I really enjoyed the giraffe center.

You can feed the giraffes!

And kiss giraffes

I’d make a joke about that being the second-sloppiest kiss I’ve ever received but for goodness sakes my mom reads this blog.

You might be interested to know that, based on my new picture collection, giraffes are only 1/3 as cute as elephants – 137 pictures. Interestingly enough, I also have six pictures of condoms, which makes them 50% cuter than the rhino at the elephant orphanage. Or which makes this analysis ridiculous. Or both.

Saturday night we went back to my favorite restaurant, Carnivore. I’ve written enough about that in the past, so here’s some pictures.

We're ready

The menu - and yes ox balls is what you're thinking

This picture (note both Allie and Tony)is a pretty good representation of how my soul feels whenever I go to Carnivore

This was my 4th trip to this restaurant – it gets better every time.

Sunday we went the Masai Market, and then to the water park! Despite the drought in the country, the water park is going full steam ahead. When I first heard that there was a water park I really wanted to go, but then when we arrived I had some second thoughts because it was filled entirely with small children. Entirely. And then we went into the water park and it was awesome, as waterparks generally are. My only complaint was with the lazy river which was neither lazy nor built to accommodate someone of my height. I got stuck and one of the park workers yelled at me. Otherwise, I’d totally recommend it.

It was way fun

All in all, a great weekend in Nairobi. Thanks very much to Helina, Allie, Theresa, and Cordelia for the pictures. And Cordelia generously lent me her camera so in the near future I may actually take some of my own!

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