Nairobi for Tourists and Children

Part Two of my adventures started today. AE flew home last night and should be landing around now, and I'm happy and safe in a great hotel in Nairobi called the Fairview. It's on five acres of land, has four restaurants, a big pool nicer than the one in Zanzibar (although with highs of 18 it isn't very inviting) and much appreciated by me, a gym. It's been a lot of eating and sitting, with the result that I've enthusiastically been at the gym three times in the last 24 hours. I'm writing this after enjoying a sushi dinner and sitting in front of a real fire with a latte and listening to a great pianist in the hotel atrium.

Beyond enjoying the hotel, I saw the side of Nairobi today that I venture is reserved for tourists and for local school children, who were at all of the places I visited en masse. I really liked the driver that met me at the airport so I scheduled him in for a day of sightseeing today and for a city tour tomorrow.

We started at Daphne Sheldrick's Elephant Orphanage, located in the Nairobi Game Park which is pretty much inside the city. The orphanage takes in baby elephants from just a week old to two years, who are orphaned because of poachers or because they fell into a well and couldn't get out. Babies need milk until they are two, and so they would otherwise die. They keep them in the orphanage until they are between two and three and then spend several years reintroducing them into the wild, before they are accepted by a wild herd. It's really a cool story and apparently a very successful program.

Visitors are only allowed between 11 and 12, for one of the feeding sessions. The rest of the day the elephants are in the national park accompanied by a handler each, who acts like their family. Handlers even sleep with the elephants every night to provide company and because they have to give them bottles of milk every three hours!! They currently have twelve elephants and they came out six at a time for feeding. As they got close to the feeding area they stampeded to their bottles. Very cute.

They also take in orphaned black rhinos, but the baby they had was too "playful" to bring out, and the other one they have is six years old and blind....I visited him (Maxwell) in his pen.

Our next stop was the giraffe centre which was founded to protect and help foster the development of the endangered Rothschild Giraffe. In 1973, there were only 130 of these giraffes living in all of Africa (and only in one part of Kenya) but this breeding program has expanded the number to only 400. I guess it's hard to get giraffes to mate...it's also an educational center now for all the school children.

The reason I went is that (a) I really like giraffes, and (b) you can get really close to them and feed them from your hand!! I fed one named Jock and he was very nice. Their tongues are super weird. You take a bunch of little dog food pellets and just cup your hand and they bend down and their very long and strong tongue (think like a big snake) wraps around your entire (entire!!) hand and like sucks out the food. I looked it up - their tongues are 18 to 21 inches! They are sticky and leave a long trail of saliva attached between their mouths and your hand when they stand back up. I got to feed Jock from both the ground and the observation deck for maximum picture effectiveness. Unfortunately the pics are all on my camera so will have to wait to be shared! The whole visit was only 20 minutes, and not a must-see unless you're a giraffe fanatic!

My adventures were not yet over! Next stop was a very nice but touristy shopping center in a big house where all the rooms had different themed things. I looked very hard to find a mask or something for Mitch but nothing was quite right. Luckily I have many more weeks to look! I checked out a nice cafe there they had for lunch though.

Next stop after that was at the Kazuri beads factory. I hadn't heard of them but apparently they are well known handmade beads and pottery. They employ disadvantaged people, mostly single mothers, and you could watch them make all stages of the beads and they had a really nice store where I finally found something I liked! After looking it up online I should have bought a lot more...my $16 necklace would cost $80 at home it seems!

But the excursions weren't over yet! The next stop was the Bomas of Kenya, a cultural music and dance show that is put on every day in an amphitheater and celebrates and educates on the heritage of all of Kenya's tribes. I figured if it's good enough to support that kind of audience I should check it out. You'd think I'd have learnt my lesson at the cultural show in Chiang Mai...it was pretty painful and only mildly interesting. Lots of traditional music and instruments and costumes and dancing, but at 90 minutes it was a bit long. 101 six year old boys were in the audience (I had time to count them) and at least 50 thirteen year old girls....they all went nuts when they played this song "jambo rafiki" that we've been hearing everywhere and started to sing along and dance in their seats, so I guess at least the show was authentic!

I got out of there as soon as it was over and was back at the hotel by 5pm to enjoy the evening here! And enjoyable it has been!