Evacuating Kenya (Goodbye for Now)

Goodbye, friendly sidewalk home

I had never imagined that my departure would have come about the way it had - one month early, last-minute, and wearing a face mask. 

I had plans for April, the last month of my time in Kenya, too. I was going to Naivasha for a weekend to meet hippos. I was absolutely hell-bent on finding a dikdik in the Karura Forest. I was contemplating taking the train to Mombasa for another weekend. And I was planning to visit a colleague in Malawi for my final week on the continent. Instead, I didn't really get to say goodbye to any of the friends I had made in Nairobi and escaped the borders closing on me, which would have left me somewhat stranded during the COVID19 pandemic.

Two weeks before I had found out I was going home, I had started self-isolating, anyway. I had previously been in Uganda for a conference and had picked up some sniffles between Kampala and Nairobi, so I was playing it safe. Shortly after, the office decided to implement working from home practices and most of my colleagues started calling me while they, too, started to socially isolate. I had limited my travels to only the grocery store for those two weeks, save one trip to DHL to ship home things, as I had a sinking feeling that I may have to evacuate the country at any given moment and didn't want to leave anything behind.

Kenya at the time had only 7 confirmed cases of COVID19 (while NYC had about 9K, for comparison), and the country was acutely aware of its healthcare limitations and did not want to test the system. Kenya started canceling public events, shutting down schools, encouraging people to us M-PESA money over cash; and airlines started to slow down their services. Rumors were going around that the borders were going to close any minute, but they were just rumors. I had decided to stay put unless I had received some kind of ultimatum from the US or Kenya - I was better off in a warmer climate where my asthma wouldn't get triggered and I could relax on the lawn outside for hours. Not to mention that US was considered the global hot zone for COVID19. 

Sadly, three days after I made that decision, in late March the US government did, in fact, send out an ultimatum to US citizens overseas - either come home now or don't come home, and we're not going to help you get out. Shortly after, Kenya announced they were probably going to close the border soon, so Kenyan residents should probably get out of the country if they can. My decision was made for me.

The morning after, I made my way to the Kenya Airways office to change my departure to "as soon as possible". My Uber drove through traffic on a beautifully sunny day in Nairobi, and the country looked almost as if nothing was happening with the world. Cars were crowding the roads, people were walking around. My Uber driver had casually shared with me that Kenya would probably be fine from COVID19, because the virus wouldn't survive well in warm weather, so no one was particularly worried yet. I ended up hearing that a lot throughout that day as I frantically packed my bags and worked out my logistics, and I was worried that Kenyans didn't seem to be understanding the severity of the virus. To be fair, East Africans typically need to worry more about diseases like Ebola, which is endemic in that region and a very violent way to die. Still, it felt surreal watching the headlines of a world on fire while many Kenyans around me were living as if nothing dangerous was afoot.

I got to the crowded airline office and found out that "as soon as possible" was two days in the future since all of the other flights had been sold out overnight, and the only available seats were Business Class. I gulped down the steep airline fee to upgrade to Business Class and secured my spot on a now-sold-out plane back to NYC, taking off in a little over 48 hours. In those 48 hours, I paced and called Mr. CT Lawyer multiple times to frantically figure out how he'd pick me up at the airport and how we'd arrange me to live with him in quarantine for 2 weeks after I landed. I wasn't able to see any of my colleagues or friends - Kenya was starting to make it hard to meet up in groups, and I had begun to think that maybe I should steer clear of people anyway, so I spent time hanging out with my housemates when I wasn't in planning mode calling the US. I also started to find out that a lot of my other foreign colleagues were frantically packing up and going home, as well - to Canada, Australia, and the US. 

At least my friend who Uber drives in Nairobi (Calvin) agreed to drive me to the airport and see me out of the country. On the day of departure, he picked me up and drove me through the now-deserted city streets (which were full only 2 days prior). We got to the airport in record time, and I was there far too early for my flight, so he agreed to sit with me in an outdoor airport cafe for my final dawa (oh, how I miss those already) before takeoff. While we sat sipping dawas, Kenya announced the border closing would be in three days, and that the number of cases had more than doubled within 24 hours.

The airport was mostly empty, save for whoever was flying to JFK or Jo-burg that night. The airport was tense and silent; you could tell no one wanted to be near each other. Everyone was wearing a face mask, now, and we all looked around with wide eyes and anxiety, quietly hoping that the planes would get into the air and not have a surprise announcement from the arrival country that no more planes would be allowed in. It was a long wait inside the terminal.

I knew my airplane was sold out, but I hadn't realized just how crowded the waiting room would be. Everyone wore masks and darted glances at everyone near them, trying their best to inch away from whoever was nearby in hopes of feeling some kind of safety that wasn't going to come for another 15 hours. You could tell much of the plane's passengers had had no intention of leaving Kenya at any time before the ultimatum, too. Many of the people on the plane were families with infants who probably shouldn't fly 14-hour legs across the globe. Others wheeled around elderly parents who apparently did not want to stay around while the country figured things out. The elderly parents looked jarred - I wondered if some of them were being torn away from homes they had not wanted to leave, with pleading adult children who had secured dual passports for the family two decades earlier for a moment exactly like the one we were suddenly in.

Once we loaded into the airplane, we all pulled out packets of wet wipes and started vigorously cleaning our seats and surroundings. We shared wipes with others, but otherwise, no one wanted to interact, other than sharing bulging eyes, as if trying to convey the thought, "can you BELIEVE what we're going through, right now?!"

I found out soon after take-off how lucky I was to get a business class seat - the flight was much more bearable with anxiety because I could put my feet up and actually sleep. And the bathrooms were clean and big. On one bathroom visit, the stewardesses started to talk with me and shared that they were hoping that the US would ground all planes before they would have to return to Kenya. Apparently, while we were loading into the plane at the Nairobi airport, the Kenyan government had started to enact a new rule which meant that anyone landing in the airport from that moment on would be automatically shuttled to a forced hospital quarantine for 2 weeks....paid by the quarantined. They were hoping that they would, instead, be forced to shack up in a hotel in NYC and wait it out there while on the airline's watch. Unfortunately for them, that didn't happen.

I've never been so scared landing anywhere as I was when I landed into JFK that morning. We all left the airplane with masks on, expecting hours of testing lines and screenings before we could get out of the plane. Instead, we found ourselves walking from the airplane to the luggage belts in about 5 or 10 minutes, with only one stop for us to get quickly stamped by mask-less customs agents. The airport, other than our flight, felt completely abandoned. It only made me want to get out of the airport faster. My family picked me up shortly after to start my voluntary 2-week quarantine as the world blazed around me.

Pimping Out Matatus

(White) Jesus Boda

I noticed something awesome about a month into my visit here that I feel like sharing briefly now.

It started with an early morning work commute when I first noticed a Jesus Boda. This boda was wrapped with numerous pictures of Jesus all over its exterior - on the wheels, on the front, on the side, by the wheels. The boda was pimped out with Jesus! And, more perplexingly, a white Jesus (I could have sworn he was black or Arab?).

I began looking for bodas with fun, elaborate designs while we drove to work in the morning. I was audibly delighted whenever we drove past fun designs, and my driver friend Calvin let me know that this was actually quite common in Kenya, and especially for matatus. 

Sure enough - I started noticing that the matatus have incredible, vibrant designs on them. Many of the matatu designs were flashy and brightly painted - many include Drake, Rihanna, P.Diddy, and other celebrities I don't recall. Some of these matatus blast music that can deafen bystanders while driving past, while others install movie screens on their seatbacks. I wondered why.

Luckily, Calvin could explain it all. There's a culture of pimping out vans here, and for good reason; the fancier your matatu is, the more passengers you get. The more passengers you get, the faster your matatu gets filled up. The faster your van gets filled, the more trips you can run in a day. The more trips you can run in a day, the more money you can make. And when this chain reaction happens, you end up kind of winning at the matatu hustle.

Matatus look for different ways to pimp out their rides. Some install the movie screens in the seatbacks because passengers become willing to pay more for their ride if they are entertained while stuck in traffic. Others blast the music to give the air of a mobile night club (with flashing lights, of course), to entice some passengers to feel like their commute is a fun party.

It all costs a lot of money - Calvin estimated that some people can spend $10,000+ to pimp out their matatus. But, if done well, a matatu can recover the costs of the "pimping out" within a year. And the nicer matatus tend to have better drivers (because they can pay them more), which means even better odds they'll fill up with people willing pay for their services.

And there are even competitions for who has the fanciest, most pimped out matatu, which can get the winning vehicle a nice pot of money. I've seen a few Facebook groups that simply admire the amazing decor of some matatus, and I have to say - I'm always impressed with the flamboyancy of them.

Of course, some matatus are simple vehicles - utilitarian. I guess they have really popular routes, so they may not need to focus on the fancy frills of matatu culture (or they just can't afford to decorate).

Nairobi is brimming with matatus, and I think someone could have a really fun time making a photo album of all of the unique, colorful matatus and bodas here. I don't think that will be me, though (I'm never ready with a camera); I'd be happy to pay for that coffee table book, though!

Note: It took me 2 more months before I found (white) Jesus boda again so I could take a picture of the guy with his bike after grocery shopping. The picture delights more more than I can express.

Kenyan Healthcare

My beautiful birthday cake

Chilling in Zanzibar

Zanzibar really does look like the pictures.

On Boxing Day, Mr. CT Lawyer and I took a 1.5-hour flight in a prop plane from Nairobi to Zanzibar, circling Kilimanjaro en route. When we landed and exited the plane, we found ourselves in a hot and humid tropical environment in Zanzibar, different from the crisp and warm temperature of Nairobi.

We went through customs in a one-room, lo-fi airport – the type of stereotypical developing country airport I used to encounter before they all started upgrading.  Afterward, we drove to our resort at the bottom western coast of the main island, zig-zagging through more potholes along the way.

Our resort was in a quiet southern fishing and beach town called Kizimkazi, and we were floored by how beautiful the beach was there. Everyone talks about how pristine and blue the waters are in Zanzibar, but I wasn’t convinced that it was going to be that impressive. I was wrong. During low tide, the beach seems to go on for a mile, and the shallow depths spot the coast with different blues and greens, depending on where you are. Dhows speckle the beach’s bay and stick to the compacted sand until the tide comes back in.

We later learned that our beach remained somewhat hidden and not quite touristy compared to a lot of the other beaches across the island. For example, we heard the northern beaches are for partying, and the southeast side of the island was riddled with resorts and activities on the beach. Having learned that, I feel that we really lucked out with our quiet and peaceful (if short) beach that was only shared with one other resort.

We lazed around the resort for the first day, relishing the quiet breeze of a small bay with little else but boats and trees along the beach.

On our second day in Zanzibar, we went on a famous spice tour. We drove an hour north and found ourselves in a spice farm called Maganga, which looked more like a forest. We were greeted by a community member who walked us through their spice farm for a few hours, tasting and learning about the different spices they grow in the mess of forest plants – cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, lemongrass, and vanilla. We also got to sample some fresh coconut from a guy who crawled up a coconut tree and dropped us a nut. While we walked around another guy wove for us beautiful, but sorta silly looking (on us) hats and necklaces out of the flowers and palms that we walked by in our tour. We finished the tour with an amazingly spiced pilau.

For our third day, we drove up to the main port on the island and UNESCO World Heritage Site – Stone Town. Our driver got pulled over by a cop along the way for some unknown infraction, which Mr. CT Lawyer was thrilled about because he had a fantasy about getting a driving-related story while in Africa.

Once in Stone Town, we hopped on a small boat that pulled us through choppy waves to get to Chengu Island – aka Prison Island (though the prison was only ever used for yellow fever quarantines). We wanted to get to this island not to view the prison ruins, but to feed tortoises at the island’s tortoise sanctuary. There were dozens of tortoises crawling through the sanctuary, some as old as 190 years…and hundreds of tourists chasing them down, waving cabbage leaves at them. We joined the masses and stepped around tortoise manure to hope a tortoise would accept our meager cabbage offering. They would skeptically eye the cabbage leaves before quickly grabbing and crunching away on them. It was a real treat.

Once through the choppy waters and back to Stone Town, we walked through the labyrinthine streets of the town to get to Emerson’s Tea House for a lunch reservation. We climbed up about 5 flights of stairs, breathlessly, to get to the airy rooftop restaurant. The view of the city below was really awesome, and we enjoyed the soft hum of mosque singing nearby while sitting cross-legged on thick carpets and plush pillows, waiting for our lunch. We ordered the fancy seafood meal and were blown away by it. The seafood was super fresh and perfectly spiced. I’m still thinking about the calamari.

Afterward, we meandered around the town, checking out the spice market, walking past Freddie Mercury’s childhood house, and quietly visiting the sobering Slave Chambers exhibit. We got lost while walking around a lot, appreciating the ornate doors that are quintessential to the town’s identity.
We stuck around Stone Town until sundown. While exhausted, I was keen for us to see the Night Market at the Forodhani Food Stalls by the port. Once we arrived after the sunset, the place was teeming with people – locals and tourists. I got a tasty and local sour soup called urojo, and we both sipped on refreshing sugar cane juice as we contemplated the Zanzibar Pizza (much like a crepe sandwich).

We wanted to see the fuss about other local beaches on our last full day, so we went to Jambiani on the southeast side of the island. There, we saw all of the tourism and hawking that happens on the beaches outside of where we were staying, and we quietly hid from much of the beach hustling in a quiet restaurant.

Our final dinner reservation was at The Rock Restaurant. It was a neat place – the restaurant is perched on top of an outcropping of rock and corral. That meant that when we arrived for dinner when the tide was out, we walked up to the restaurant’s staircase; when we left, the tide was in and we had to take a boat to get back to the beach. The food was fine, but we were really there for the views and the uniqueness of the location.

We decided to leave Zanzibar a few hours earlier than initially planned – it’s a gorgeous place, but we felt we had our fill and wanted to get back to Kenya before it was too late.

After leaving, I reflected on the island and its country a little bit. For one, I was fascinated with the Arabic influences felt in Zanzibar’s world. You can clearly tell – especially in Stone Town – that the culture is at the crossroads of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, and I think it has given it a unique flavor. I’ve heard there are similar vibes on the Kenyan coast. Additionally, if Zanzibar is a fair representative of Tanzania as a country despite its semi-autonomy, then it’s clear that Tanzania is a bit further behind Kenya in terms of development (infrastructure, capacity, etc.). I find it interesting that, despite being such close neighbors, their development rates don’t seem to be in lockstep with each other. But I’m sure I need to see mainland/Tanganyika to make a better assessment of the country.

Kenyan Xmas Adventures

If given the chance, giraffes will headbutt you.

I was so pleased when Mr. CT Lawyer agreed to visit me in East Africa for the Xmas holidays – this meant I would be able to avoid being cold over the holidays as well as introduce him to Africa (as an entire continent, of course), all while exploring some of the extremely beautiful places of the area I hadn’t yet seen.

We ended up having a fancy trip through East Africa, and it was magical and luxurious. We had an absolute blast together.

*We ended up spending time in Kenya and Tanzania. For the sake of organizing my thoughts, I have separated the countries in two blog posts.*

Our Kenya adventures revolved around animal safaris; so, once he arrived, we rented a giant SUV. I was anxious about him driving while here, as I’ve found driving around in Kenya to be frustrating and harrowing – and I’m just an Uber passenger! Drivers here appear to be a bit erratic in their following of road rules, in particular, the matatus (who may be suicidal, based on their crazy driving). What’s more, the roads are covered in potholes! Roads that aren’t riddled with holes probably have random speed bumps every hundred meters or so - roads and highways alike – and may or may not have street lights to illuminate where exactly the roads are at night. This means that there is a lot of swerving, near misses, knuckle-whitening, and ample swearing (from me the passenger). Luckily, though we encountered these things on our road trips, he is a great driver and the car (and humans) came out fine.

But I’m ahead of myself a bit.

Our first adventure included a four-hour drive north to a nature conservancy called Ol Pejeta, known for holding the last two Northern White Rhinos in the world. We fought off matatus and slow-going trucks up and down windy roads until we got there.

On our drive, we noticed that each roadside town seemed to each specializes in particular products that the community would sell at stalls to ongoing traffic. We started to name the towns based on their products: MangoTown, ChairTown, MaizeTown, BananaTown, PotatoTown, FlourTown…you get the point.

Once we registered our vehicle with the conservancy and got our accommodations sorted, we started meandering through the park….and almost immediately started running into animals while we drove around! About a few minutes into the conservancy we had to pause for a herd of zebras to cross the road, and an elephant was munching on a tree 150 meters away from us. It was magical – we didn’t need to look for animals at all; we only had to ride a few minutes past one animal before we approached another group of animals. We didn’t see leopards or cheetahs on our trip, but we saw most the other animals available in the conservancy: buffalo, antelope, gazelle, elephant, giraffe, zebra, bush pig, rhino, baboon, chimpanzee, warthog, and loads of cool birds. Ol Pejeta was quiet, too; we didn’t see many people, which was more than fine for us.

We met a lot of helmeted guineafowl on the park roads who would stupidly panic and stumble in front of our car on the road for a few minutes instead of getting out of our way, causing a lot of abrupt stops on our end. I, stupidly, couldn’t think of the appropriate bird type and started to call them bush turkeys, singing a bastardized version Roy Orbison’s famous song: “Bush turkey, walking down the street….”

We went on a Night Game Drive with the conservancy, where we ran into a bachelor group of lions lounging on our path, and a little way off a pride of female lions who resented their need to share the road. We also ran into some jackals, hyenas, and a herd of elephants with babies.

The next morning, we met the two last Northern White Rhinos one-on-one with a ranger, feeding them while safely stowed in the SUV. The first one (Najin) used our SUV as a scratching post for a few minutes, aggressively rocking the car (and us) back and forth; the second one (Fatu) happily took carrots out of our hands from the car windows.

We also drove around the outskirts of the conservancy and got quite lost (there are no street signs in nature). We eventually hightailed it back to the main area of the conservancy after escaping an angry elephant threatened to trample us if we didn’t leave her family alone.

Our last morning at Ol Pejeta, on Xmas day, started early with a bushwalk. We drove to the starting place right when the sun was coming up. We drove slowly through thick fog and eventually saw a spectacular view of Mount Kenya painted with a rainbow of sorbet colors in the sunrise. Once we met the ranger, we walked through the boggy bush to see some animals up close. We had to silently (and quickly) retreat from our walk once we got too close to a lone buffalo and rhino.

While at Ol Pejeta, we stayed at their Stables. It was simple, friendly, and quiet accommodations for us, and we ended up staying in a roundhouse like a yurt with its own bathroom. The Stables had “lights out” at 11pm quite literally, as the generator shut off until the morning.

We nearly hit a lamb on the road just outside of the conservancy when we were returning to Nairobi. It baa’ed resentfully at us.

The next day we flew to Zanzibar to beach bum for a while, but that’s a different story.

When we returned to Nairobi on New Year’s Eve, at the end of his visit, we continued our animal adventures.

We visited the Sheldrick Trust, where a group rehabilitates baby elephant orphans and releases them back into the wild. They currently have 15 elephant orphans under 5 years old. We went in the morning to watch the little elephants flop around and feed on giant bottles full of baby formula. Unfortunately, it was a cramped spectacle full of tourists and screaming children, and I felt stressed out for the elephants. I proposed we leave early and surprised my Mr. CT Lawyer with his Xmas present – I adopted an elephant orphan for him, who he was to meet more personally in the evening.

We then visited the nearby Giraffe Center. Each visitor got a coconut shell of pellets to feed the goofy giraffes, who greedily stuck out their blue tongues for more food over and over again, headbutting clueless visitors not fast enough with their treats. We also got to feed a few baby giraffes – 3 months old! –timidly sticking out and wiggling their tongues for treats and wobbling their furry head cones between gulps. There were some curious baby warthogs behind the giraffes, as well – they didn’t get very close, but watched while the giraffes poked around tourists for pellets.

In the evening, we went back to the Sheldrick Trust for an hour to meet his adopted elephant, Nabulu. Though there were still quite a few people there who wanted to meet their adopted elephants, it was a much quieter and intimate experience than the morning visit. We got to watch the elephants run past to their pens with dinner waiting there. We also followed the elephants to their rooms to watch them chew on a few leafy tree branches. Nabulu used her trunk to get some water from her trough in front of us and blew bubbles into it before sucking up some water. The water sounded like a toilet flushing when it emptied out of her trunk and into her mouth.  We also met the other elephants there, petting a few and admiring the rest as they went through their evening rituals of eating, farting, and chilling.

We took it easy and spent the rest our Nairobi jaunts included fancy restaurants in the upscale suburb of Karen and malls in the nice eastern parts of the city. In my defense, I couldn’t think of city-specific adventures for us while he visited, and we were tired from the rest of the adventures. Some of the places we went to made us both feel more like we were in Europe than Africa, but we still had a lovely time. Some fast notes about those places (in case you need some ideas for future trips to Kenya).

• Dusit2 is an amazing and fancy 5-star hotel that will pamper you in the heart of Nairobi. But a heads up – it’s a resort, and it’s easy to feel like staying put there forever, with its food and pool and phenomenal service. Also, their PB&J Sundae is really addictive.
• Boho Eatery is an outdoor restaurant in Karen, and we had really tasty bowls of not-regional foods while the restaurant’s cat cuddled with us.
• We had our NYE dinner at Talisman in Karen. We had a really delicious meal with gluten-free bread and divine fish curry. He got a snapper bao bun that he is still talking about.
• We visited Cultiva Farms in Karen for a meal at some point. The ride getting there was wild and bumpy, but the food was really fresh and delightful to eat.