Kenya was incredible. We spent a few days with my sister in Nairobi, four days on safari on the Maasai Mara and three nights at the coast.

We came back just over a month ago and it feels like it never happened. Just six weeks ago I was in a van looking a lion in the face at a distance of about three metres. Man. With all the photos and the stories it seems almost like I just watched David Attenborough do it one time too many. The photos are great but they’re so static and the memory of the movement and the people and the animals has faded so quickly. Here I am again sat in my flat in London at my laptop pretending not to work when there’s a whole world out there.

Anyway.

Nairobi was a bit of a freakout. My first thought was that it’s very ramshackle. The city is composed very differently from a western city, the foundations of agriculture and hardship still very much exposed, not displaced and disguised like in Europe or America (this was the first non-European, non-US city I’d visited). There are lots of people moving around. We first saw the city in the cab to Kate’s house from the airport. It was dark, but you could see enough. Waking up the next day was like a revelation, we were in a small enclave and outside was a very big and active Africa.

Kate lives in a small house, nice but without mod-cons. The lack of hot water was a bit of a bind, but otherwise it was fine. She lives in a tiny village called Ruaka, just north of Nairobi, just beyond the rich suburb of Gigiri, where the UN and the German School and a number of embassies are. She likes living there because she’s the only mzungu (white person) and she lives with Kenyans. So many of the Europeans who go to Kenya live in isolation and in near-segregation, I have to agree with her.

The next day we went into Nairobi. We took a matatu which is a cut price Nissan mini-van with twenty people in it, cheap though at 20ksh (about 15p). When we got out I have to say I found the city very hard to deal with. I’m not sure why. Full-on culture shock though. I wanted to run away. I felt that I stuck out like a sore thumb and that I was really obvious to everyone else as somebody who knew nothing about the workings of the city. I think I just got a bit of an anxiety incident, but I was relieved when we got home. The city is not remotely western and the difference in wealth is just astounding. There’s a web site (I forget the URL) which tells you where you rank in terms of wealth in the world. I knew I was in the top 5% but on the streets of Nairobi I really felt it.

We explored around a bit over the next few days. We visited the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, a big building that sticks out of the city like a weird alien spaceship. The president has any office there apparently, but you can bribe your way to the top. We also visited Ted, a friend from UEA who is working at an orphanage for children affected by AIDS. The orphanage, Nyumbani, was a lovely place and the children seemed very happy, despite some of them being quite unwell. Ironically being the focus of western donations has made them some of the best cared for children in the city, much better off than “healthy” children forced to live in the slums because of poverty. Nyumbani is a lovely place to be.

One of the interesting things about Kenyan people is that they have much more belief and respect for their government than your average westerner. Despite years of corruption and dodgy dealings - still very much alive today - it’s rare to find a Kenyan who doesn’t fully support their president and believe him to be doing the best he can. Daniel Moi, nothing more than a thief, is falling from grace now, but there are many others who live a seemingly chalmed life. Kate has been involved in the process to try and draft a new constitution for the country. It started out well but increasingly the politicians are attempting to derail the process, with growing success.

Meanwhile on holiday, Louise and I got in a van to be taken to the Maasai Mara on the Monday morning after we arrived. Trucking out of Nairobi was interesting, seeing some slums, if only at a distance. Then we hit the Rift Valley. 7,000 miles long and 20 miles wide, the valley is a great score across the face of the planet, running from Jordan to Mozambique. Driving north from Nairobi, you turn a bend and suddenly there it is, laid out below you, immense and seemingly endless. It was quite breathtaking. We drove down through it for hours, volcanoes either side and little pockmarks of civilisation here and there. The beginnings of Maasai tribesmen, constantly herding cattle. Just on to the valley floor we swapped trucks into a huge GMC A-Team van and joined another group of safari people. We drove until the road ended and then we drove some more. We reached the park just as the light began to change, which is one of the best times to catch the animals. We saw lions, giraffes, zebra, elephants, buffalo and antelopes that evening. It took us about an hour to drive from the gate we entered through to the gate where our camp was located - Talek Gate.

The next four days were just amazing. Again and again we cruised the park and we just saw more and more, hippos, cheetahs, a leopard, many lions and lots of giraffe, zebras, elephants, ostrichs, tortoises, warthogs, vultures, eagles, antelopes and gazelles of various kinds, hyenas, mongoose and maybe some more that I’ve forgotten. We drove in the evening and in the morning, once very early. We had a Maasai guy with us spotting stuff all the time, he was cool. We actually had as many people looking after us as there were of us, which was a bit sad. Our driver, Steve, estimated that tourism is down 60% in the last year, because of the Mombasa attack.

The Mara is beautiful and huge, rolling off as far as the eye can see. It’s verdent and alive, even the mountains are young. It’s just amazing that there should be such a wide range of very large animals in one place. As you cruise around there’s just more and more of them. The van makes it kind of feel a bit like a zoo still, sort of like you have a TV set around everything. At the end of the day you can’t interact with the animals, which is undoubtably a good thing in the case of the large predators, but I would have liked to walk up to a giraffe and stare up. It’s fantasy, they would run a mile, but I’d still like to try.

When we arrived I thought four days was going to be a long time just driving around. When we left I was very sad to go. We’d bonded not only with the other three people in our group, but also with the all the staff at the campsite and in the park. They were really nice guys and they worked very hard to give us a great time. At one point we had a conversation with Joseph, a guide and cook for the trip, about Kenya and it’s place in the world. He supported the president and the constitutional process and said “Sometimes I think it’s hard in a country with no money”. I’ll never forget the feeling of injustice I felt at that moment. The other part of it was that so many people we talked to wanted to know about the UK. One guy even just struck up conversation with Louise on a matatu because he wanted to be an actor and wanted to improve his English. People asked us just for books and magazines to use for reading practice. It would be nice if there was a way to ship all of the expired periodicals out of this country and into places like the Rift Valley. All those copies of the Metro could be used for some good for a change!

The day before we left the Maasai Mara we went to visit a traditional Maasai village. At the gates to the park we’d encountered Maasai women trying to sell jewellery, they were somewhat persistant and we worried that we would arrive at this village only to be attacked by traders. It was actually great. We paid 500ksh to get in. Aside from being nothing, this went to schools and medicine programs for a group of a hundred or so villages in the area (villages are about ten houses). We were given a guided tour of the village and a house and treated to some dancing, which we were invited to join in with. Man, it seems a world away to think that I was dancing with Maasai women. It’s almost like a dream. I’ve experienced the inevitable clouding of memories with every place I’ve been on holiday, but with Kenya it seems more total, something about my familiarity with the place through TV and the net but also the difference between here and there in so many ways. New York was like I expected it to be from TV and movies as well, but it was very western, only really architecturally different from London.

But still I digress. The Maasai live by drinking the blood and milk from their cows. They separate the calves and keep them inside their houses. Their villages are surrounded by deep grass fences to keep out lions. Men have many wives and usually have a house for each wife. They have an interesting set of conventions for wife-getting, involving trades, your sister for my cousin etc. Children aren’t allowed to shake hands, so you touch them on the head. When we first entered the village a small boy of about four or five came and greeted us by offering his head, he wandered through our group one by one until he’d greeted all seven of us.

The guide, Dan, told us about a recent lion attack. It was quite interesting, talking about their process for dealing with lions. Once lions strike they have to go and kill them. These lions took six cows one night and poor Dan was the only guy around - everybody else was off getting drunk. The next day they organised a group and tracked the lions and killed them, apparently they hadn’t gone far at all. It was kind of crazy to be talking to a guy who counted lions as one of the biggest problems he faces. The life equivalent for me would be my laptop breaking I suppose, but that’s rarely fatal.

Alas it all had to end some time and we found ourselves winding back up the valley towards civilisation again. Back in Nairobi we hung around a bit. Went to The Village and Ya Ya Centre, both énclaves for the rich, especially the village, which is the least village like place ever, especially given it’s juxtaposition to so many real villages. Both shopping centres are useful, but there’s something about the guards and the people there, it’s just not comfortable. Sure you can’t really sit and get a beer and just read or go shopping for olives and salad anywhere else in the city, but it’s just not Kenya. Although, as I’ve discussed several times, the walls that keep kenyans out of the Village are no less real than the ones that keep them out of Europe, it’s just that I’m not reminded of that fact whenever I want a pint. It’s that kind of place that would make it too hard for me to live in Kenya I think. It’s a cultural choice that I’m not forced to make at home: the everyday real kenyans, or the rich kids and UN interns. It’s also a strange reminder of imperialism. The Birtish empire was built on money, not really power. Now that there’s open process and a proper market economy, nothing’s really changed. The country is perhaps 95% black (a conservative estimate I would say) yet the rich (from what I’ve seen) are split roughly equally between white, black and asian.

After tripping around Nairobi for a few days we caught a plane to the coast for more treats. The plane was a dinky toy little Cessna. Tiny as you like. It took an hour to fly out, in which time we ate in-flight meals of fresh beef and tomato rolls in a little brown paper bag. It was the best flight ever.

We went to Lamu, a little island community, with a very muslim town and miles of lovely beaches. It’s a beautiful old place with no cars and a labyrinth of hundreds of tiny alleyways to navigate through. Lots of people on donkeys and bars selling fresh juice of any kind. Mmm, my mouthwaters to think about the mixed fruit juice I had. Oh god, I’d forgotten about the fruit. We had mango everyday throughout the holiday and in Lamu we had fruit constantly, tons of it and it was fantastic. As a matter of fact, I should mention, we were worried about the state of the food in Kenya, but we were pleasantly surprised many times by nice meals. Most notably on safari, the food was hearty and good, and in Lamu, where it was just so fresh and simple.

When we first arrived in Lamu we stayed at a small hotel called Stone House, an Escherian building spanning four floors and never quite being complete on any of them, sporting a courtyard with palm trees and some towery bits where the rooms were and finally a rooftop restaurant with a huge thatched roof. This kind of roof was traditional in Lamu and they’re lovely. The sides slope up at about 30 degrees from vertical. Stone House was a good example of Lamu, the furniture was antique and the room was wonderful, like it belonged in an Indiana Jones movie. In fact I heard a rumour that parts of Lamu are actually in one of them. In the room we had a big four-poster bed shrouded in a full mosquito net, a lovely place to lie and read. Which we did, lots.

The next day we walked along the coastline to the beach, round on the south side of Lamu island, we stopped for juice on the way. The beach was a nice walk away and it was long and beautiful. Unfortunately it was also really windy, so we got practically sandblasted out there. We paddled about for a bit, before racing across the hot sand back to Shela, along the coast from Lamu town. Shela is more the touristy bit, Lamu being more a working town, and we met more travellers there, including a girl who asked us if we’d been on a dhow cruise yet, we hadn’t but we planned to and she came along with us the next day. Whilst in Shela we went and sat on the veranda of the Peponi hotel, the more upmarket hotel on the island. Still the bar was very cheap and we had several rounds of sandwiches and I had beer. We sipped and relaxed and read our books and watched the tide come gently in. We also giggled at the drunken conversation at the next table. Nothing quite like overhearing the conversation of fellow tourists in strange places. Some people travel so far to talk about such mundane things like A roads, but these people talked about their activities of the rich and expat. It was funny.

We managed to get a lift in a motor dhow back to Lamu town, handy because it was quite far, and still very very cheap, perhaps 100ksh? I can’t remember now. We dined again at the top of Stone House, by paraffin lamp this time as the power died. The waiter at the hotel was a lovely guy and we chatted much about our day and our plans and lots of other things. He was typical of the locals in celebrating his culture and also being very sceptical of Nairobi. Lamu seemed separate from the rest of Kenya, though it may have been the whole coastline. Tsavo, the plains between the coast and the active interia, is just hundreds of miles of low semi-arid scrubland, it’s quite a barrier, despite the railway laid by the British.

On our second full day in Lamu we went on a dhow ride. And it was fully extreme.

We left early and it was overcast, not rain clouds, just thin grey morning clouds. There was practically no wind and we sailed very, very slowly up to our destination around the curve of the island and across a narrow channel to Manda Toto (“Baby Island”). Half way we let off two of the four crew to start cooking lunch. Finally we arrived at the beach for snorkelling and it was really good. I spent ages paddling around, snorkel in mouth. There were some really beautiful tropical fish and some wonderful coral. I swam around the drop where it went from shallow beach (about two feet deep) and started to get deeper more quickly. At the turning point were lots of coral colonies of six or seven feet across and of differing types. I swam around for far, far too long and ended up very, very burnt. As we sailed back to lunch I started to realise this and spent the rest of the afternoon trying desperately to hide from the sun, which is totally impossible in a boat. The last bit was a bit miserable, it was long and we were fully irradiated hours earlier. Still, I did have a lot of fun paddling and sailing gently around the magroves on the shores of the various islands.

Back at Lamu we had an appointment with a speedboat. For our last night we had decided to relocate to a beach lodge called Kipungani. After the dhow we got much needed cool showers and briefly thought twice about relocating, such was the severity of our burns, but a porter from Kipungani showed up to find us and so we donned long sleeves and marched across town to their office (all of about five minutes :-). After tipping the porter very smoothly, using the palmed note handshake technique, we got into the speedboat and were whisked around the island to paradise.

Kipungani is heaven, it is without doubt the most wonderful place I’ve been. All the buildings are built from driftwood and palm thatch using traditional techniques. You stay in a type of hut called a banda. Hut doesn’t do it justice, it was about twenty metres by six and housed a porch, several hanging beds, a four-poster and several beds for the kids we don’t have, a huge locking chest for valuables, a wardrobe and the best bathroom facilities we saw, with a lovely big shower. Every surface was made from woven palm and every detail was attended to. Tropical location aside, it was really a very nice hotel, even better that it only cost us 10,000ksh for the night, including meals.

When we arrived they came and got our bags and sat us down for a short welcoming. They gave us iced tea which I guzzled thirstily. They introduced us to the barman and the man in charge of the bandas. It was all just heaven.

We spent quite a long time recovering from the radiation burns and applying every type of cream we could find. Bright red and shiny from creams and with my beard long and shaggy and my hair scraped back from my forehead I looked like a British explorer who’d just been found in the desert where he’d been lost for several years. But this didn’t keep me from dinner, or the bar for that matter. When we got to the bar the barman just happened to mention the cocktail of the day. In some pain from the burns, I leapt at the chance. Fittingly, it was bright blue and had lots of vodka. It was actually very very nice indeed, exactly what I needed. Dressed fairly appropriately, we chatted quietly at the bar, talking to the barman and the hotel manager, Stella. It was all very refined and really very enjoyable. I could have stayed there forever, but we were pretty hungry.

Dinner was served on a wooden veranda on stilts above the sea, under a clear sky and a bright full moon. There were three couples and the food was top class. The waiter was personable, even convincing me I wanted beer when I didn’t order one at first. Oh man, why couldn’t I have stayed there forever!? It was the perfect place to write a book or just read lots of books and swim. It was so perfect that Louise and I decided that we would call it our honeymoon, because it just seemed like the kind of place you would have to come to on your honeymoon. We speculated that much of their business would be from newlyweds.

That night, there were bats in the banda. They flitted around the eaves merrily, it was lovely. The spider caused a bit more panic, but hey, these things happen.

The banda was on the beach, looking west across a channel between the island and the mainland. In the morning the sea was just there in front of us, so I couldn’t resist just getting up out of bed and walking straight out for a swim. It was a bit shallow, but I enjoyed a quick loop of the little bay before breakfast. Exercise before breakfast is a lovely experience that I rarely enjoy because I’m so not a morning person. But here it was made ever so easy, I could have swum to breakfast if I’d wanted to.

After a breakfast of lots of delicious fruits, we spent the day hiding from the sun and lounging in hanging beds (and chasing lizards). Again I wish it had gone on forever. But eventually the speedboat came again.

From the flight back we saw Mount Kilimajaro peeking over the clouds on one side and Mount Kenya doing the same on the other.

When we got back to Nairobi we found Kate had fallen into a bookcase and grazed her cheek quite nastily. We looked after her as best we could in the short time we were still there. We enjoyed a last beer with her and Toby and finally we got in the taxi to the airport and prepared ourselves for the twelve hour slog back to London. As we came in across Kent, there was a blanket of snow on the ground and as we got to London we flew low over the centre of the city and saw the snow everywhere. We even flew straight over our flat, much as the first planes of the day are flying over me now.