COMING HOME   16th January 2009

Tonight, I leave Nairobi, Kenya to fly home. This has been a great trip.

Unfortunately, the journey home to Montreal looks as if it is going to be another epic. Departure from Nairobi is at 11:00 pm and once again, I have a 12+ hour layover in Amsterdam. Now, what shall I plan to do while I am there? You are correct. I will spend my time buying cheese ... and wooden clogs if I can find them.

Since leaving Tanzania and the Serengeti safari, I have come to appreciate more and more what I have been fortunate enough to see in Africa. The whole journey has been such a whirlwind that it is hard hard to take in everything that I have seen and done. Only now am I beginning to reflect and savor all that has happened.

Today I have been going through some of my photographs. As usual, I have taken way too many, and I am looking forward to sharing them when I get home. I can't wait to return to the speed and ease of cable internet. The dial-up internet service here is killing me.

As I flip through my notes and my pictures, I remain astounded at everything I have managed to see. Someone recently asked me which African animal would rank as my favorite. It's a hard question to answer, but I think I would choose the zebra. I am not sure whether this choice is is because I used to have a stuffed zebra I called "White Stripes," or because I somehow relate to these bottom of the grasslands food chain animals. You can read whatever you like into this statement all you Freud scholars, but love these animals. I also found zebras everywhere we went on the sub-Saharan continent , even on the side of the roads. They are everywhere, and so that is why I don't feel so bad when I ate some Zebra meat for dinner one evening. ( this piece of casual chat is of course, for Amy Walsh .... and it is of course, a great white lie.)

The trip back from Tanzania to Nairobi, Kenya, was a long one. It took about 5 hours to arrive back in Arusha. We stopped once to buy some trinkets and were totally swindled. I loved it! The vendors saw me and my mother coming and immediately doubled the prices.

From this brief shopping stop, it was another 6+ hours on a quasi-bus to Nairobi. This portion of the journey was horrific as the Kenyan transport workers were repaving the roads. Our bus "thing" now had to drive along the dirt service path next to the road. This might imply to some that we therefore needed to drive more slowly, but this was not the case. Our driver continued at break neck speed, while text messaging with one hand and changing gears with the other.

The bus occupants quickly donned their seatbelts, not only because we all thought we were going to die, but because we were hitting bumps at such insane speeds that on more than one occasion passengers whacked their heads on the bus roof.

Another amazing part of this suicidal journey was that the driver would not roll up his window. So clouds of dust and grit poured in to choke us as we sat at the back. Anjali and I tried to take protective measures and tied our sweaters over our mouths and noses, but this did little to help. We almost wished we had had the foresight of Raman, because he had brought along his sleeping mask which he tied over his mouth. I am really upset that I missed the chance to take a photo of this. Truly it was a missed opportunity.

Once back in Nairobi, we headed straight for the shower and quickly fell into bed. The trip was a very long day for all, and we have another long haul ahead to Amsterdam tomorrow.