Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton

One of the last places I went before I left Nairobi was a longer visit to the Karen Blixen Museum and the Denys Finch Hatton grave site.  I find it interesting that Blixen's house has been given the full treatment, and turned into a beautiful museum, donated by the government of Denmark to Kenya, and Kenya has done a wonderful job keeping it up.  Finch Hatton, on the other hand, has not fared quite as well.  Still, visiting the two sites on the same day made their love come alive, despite the problems that they had as a couple, which are well documented.  It was a gray sort of day, typical in Nairobi in late May, at the end of the rainy season.  Sammy drove me around, and it was a long, tiring day.

What can you say... a classic movie that helped inspire me to go to East Africa.

A shot of the front of the house.  Apparently they shot the exterior shots for the movie at the house, and the interior shots at another house nearby.  I'm not sure why that was the case, but there it is.  The verandahs are quite nice on the house, which would have really helped during the warm dry season.

A young coffee plant, the plant that was to be the savior for Karen's project in Kenya, but ultimately proved her undoing, which was pretty accurately portrayed in the movie.

Not the best of my shots, because what I am trying to show is not just the beautiful lawn surrounding the house, but in the distance you can see the blue of the Ngong Hills.  Her house is really on the edge of the hills, not exactly in the hills.

Some of the beautiful landscaping around the house.

Some more of the landscaping.  I am not sure if it looked like this when Karen lived here.  I really don't think it was quite this way, but it gives you an idea of the extent of the grounds.  Apparently this was a farm of a couple of thousand acres.  Keep in mind that today most Africans are farming small plots of 1-2 acres, so this thing was huge.

That's me at the side of the house.  This is a door leading into Karen's bedroom, where she and Finch Hatton apparently spent a good bit of time.

A shot of the verandah on the side of the house.  It's a pretty impressive place.  Bror Blixen didn't build it, apparently they bought it from someone (I can't remember the whole story now), unfinished.

A view of the front of the house.  Very lovely place.

One thing about the museum is that you cannot take pictures inside.  I have taken these from other sources, to give an idea of the furnishings inside.  This is the living area.

This is Karen's bedroom, pretty much the way she had it when she lived there.

Anotther interior room.  These shots really don't do the place justice, and I couldn't find a good shot of the main room where Karen used to read stories to the children.

The coffee roaster used on the farm, part of the project that doomed Karen's stay in Africa when coffee production did not work.

As I noted above, Finch Hatton has not gotten the treatment or recognition of Karen.  Perhaps because he was a philandering big game hunter, but he probably deserves a bit better.  Here is the only marker directing visitors to the grave site.  And if you don't know where it is, there is no way you could find this on your own.  Sammy knew where it was, and he even seemed to have some problems.  And the road is terrible.  When Denys was buried here by Karen after he died in the plane crash, there was nothing in the surrounding area.  And the grave is truly in the Ngong Hills.  Today there is a good bit of development, particularly small shambas in the hills, but the site is maintained by a Kenya family, who do a wonderful job maintaining the grave.  One last note, the grave is a long way from Karen's house, and when she and the others went to bury Denys, they really had to want to go, because I am sure that when this was done there were hardly any roads to speak of in the hills.  Also, please note that the scene depicted in the movie depicting Denys' burial is not where he is buried.  That is way out in the Masai Mara.  More picturesque, and may have been what the site looked like then, but not now.

The obelisk demarcating Denys grave.  The woman in the foreground is the one who takes care of the site.  She charges a small fee, but because the site is so difficult to find, there aren't a lot of visitors.  It's a beautiful and thought provoking site, though.

There used to be a lovely brass plaque on the obelisk, but it was stolen.  Now there is just the blue plaque.

A view from the base of the obelisk of the grave site.

The four posts are where the actual body is buried.  Notice the scraped earth of the grave site, with no grass growing.  That is not unusual in an African burial site.

A view looking out onto the hills from the grave site. 

A view of the site.

Another view of the obelisk.

Me at the obelisk.  Sammy took this, he has a definite problem taking pictures.

A view of the hills surrounding Denys' grave.  The neatly cultivated fields were not there when he was buried here.

Another view of the hills.

Perhaps Denys Finch Hatton hasn't gotten the attention that Karen Blixen has gotten, but visiting his grave site is a moving experience, if you are interested in the story.  It's a challenge to get there, but one that is well worth it.

Farewell to Moi University and to Kenya

This will be my last blog posting for a while.  I leave Moi University and Eldoret this evening, and Kenya on Wednesday evening.  It has been quite a ride.  I was sitting in my empty bedroom this morning, thinking about the first time Evan and I saw the house that we have been staying in, and thinking "there is no way I can do this."  But, it got easier, and then normal, and finally it became okay.  The stay here in Kenya has been amazing on so many levels.  The people, the places, the challenges.  Just incredible.  Leaving here will be bittersweet, and I am completely convinced that my relationship to this country and east Africa is not at an end.

I decided to end with some shots of a place we visited briefly in Nairobi.  It was after closing, and we had to convince the guard to let us in, but we did.  Karen Blixen's house, which I plan on returning to this week, has a special meaning for me because of Out of Africa, both the movie and the book.  I realize that this movie really made me think of the possibilities of traveling to east Africa.  And to read the opening words of the book, and hear them spoken by Meryl Streep, "I had a farm in Africa, in the Ngong Hills," still makes my eyes well up, as they are doing now.  Simple and beautiful, and simply beautiful, as has been so much of my stay here in Kenya.

The front entrance to her house.

A view of the veranda, where Blixen used to sit.

A side view of the house.  It isn't huge, by any stretch, but beautiful.

A view of the grounds.

Another part of the grounds.  By this point, its getting dark, and time to leave.

That's me, in front of the house, as night begins to fall.  A farewell, at least for now, to Kenya.

Mombasa

The final stop on our journey was in Mombasa.  It is a very interesting city, though to be honest we really didn't see much of it.  I had spent some time in Mombasa prior to this, and had stayed in the downtown area, so had walked much of the city.  When Leslie and Joel decided to come, Leslie worked out that we would stay at a resort north of the city, in Nyali.  I had not stayed anywhere like this, so it was a bit of a surprise.  The Voyager is a very nice resort, though the experience was different than I had imagined.  We were a long way from the city, and the resort is definitely more interested in the visitor spending time (and thus money) at the resort.  So, getting away and doing things away from the resort was difficult.  This was made even more difficult because of Joel's injured foot, which a doctor had looked at in Nairobi.  He was on crutches at the resort, which irritated him no end, and couldn't get in the pool at all.  He certainly couldn't go on the beach, which is pretty polluted, I think, off the coast of Mombasa.  It's a big city, the second largest in Kenya, and generates a good bit of pollution.  Still, the Indian Ocean is beautiful, and the resort was very, very nice.

This is me, with the beach in the background.

The grounds at the resort were beautiful.

This is the building we were staying in, first floor, on the right hand side.  The resort is much like a cruise ship, with activities planned throughout the day.  We didn't really take advantage of everything, though Leslie and I had a few beverages.

Sunrise over the Indian Ocean.  Lovely.

I got away one of the days and visited an historic site on the coast called Jumba La Mtwana, which means "house of the slaves" in Swahili.  It is an old Swahili town found on the coast.  I had been to Gedi, which is a bit more famous and farther north, and had wanted to visit this site.  Very interesting place.  The walls and houses are made out of coral rock.  The guide was very nice and showed me around the site.

One of the typical structures.  The arches are very neat at the site.

Much of the site is uncleared, and I really don't think any archaeology has been done here in recent years, which is too bad.

A typical scene at Jumba.

Me looking a little frazzled in the heat.

One of the differences between here and Gedi is that Jumba is still right on the beach.  These settlements were involved in trade with the Arabian Peninsula for slaves and wood, using the monsoonal winds to take them back and forth.  We think mainly of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, but at one time the Indian Ocean represented a huge trading basin.  It still does to an extent, but it was this trade that cemented the connection between Arabia and East Africa, and resulted in sites like Jumba.

There are some massive baobab trees on the site, probably dating back around 600 years.

Eventually, it was getting to be time to leave.  Here are Evan and Joel with the ocean in the background.

It is very beautiful, and I plan on coming back, since there are a lot of things that I haven't seen on the coast.

We flew that afternoon back to Nairobi, where we spent the night, because the plan that Joel, and Evan were taking to London left at around 8:00 in the morning.  They couldn't make that flight any other way.  So we got up at five that morning, and our driver Sammy came and got us at 5:30, and we were at the airport by 6:00.  And then, like that, they were gone.

I think they had a good time in Kenya.  I know Evan enjoyed his time here.  I will be joining them very shortly, leaving this fascinating and lovely country.  There are problems here, as anywhere else, but this was a great experience.  I may post up a few last entries after I return to the United States, but this is pretty much the end of my journey here in Kenya as well. 

Masai Mara-Lions and a few other animals

The trip to Masai Mara was not without complications.  Max Mugo, our tour guide, had car trouble on the way to the Mara.  The car completely died.  He had to call his taxi guys to pick us up in Kericho, a small city famous for tea.  We got there by hitching a ride with a local after being stuck on the side of the road.  The taxis took us from Kericho to Narok, where a friend of Max's had brought his safari vehicle for us to go on in.  The drivers name was Museti, and a very nice guy he was.  We finally made it, several hours late to our campsite outside the gate.  It was very strange, because I was at the camp and asked the people if all of these camps were the same.  Everyone assured me they were not.  As I looked around, I KNEW this place was familiar.  Come to find out, this is where I stayed on my very first trip to east Africa, in 2005, when I went on a camping safari.  Very strange sense of deja vu.  We had a bit of a problem when Joel stepped on an acacia thorn the first day there, and it got infected.  Good thing we didn't hike much.  He was not a happy camper (literally)!

In the Mara, one of the major animals is the lion.  It is one of the so-called Big Five-lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino, and leopard.  We would see the first three, but no rhinos or leopards.  That was okay, I am really not that big on trophies, etc.  It was just great to be there.  We saw lots of lions, and I thought I would share some pictures here.

Here are a couple of lions passing in front of another safari vehicle.

They are amazing animals, big, powerful, scary...

Its interesting how unconcerned they are with other creatures, knowing that nothing can really bother them here.

Of course, everyone knows that the female actually does the hunting, and the male may come in for the final kill.  What's impressive about the female is her legs and the size of her paws.  And these are young lions, not even fully grown.  But the paws are huge and I can only imagine what it would feel like to get clubbed by one.

One of these videos may show the lions mating, I'm just not sure which one.  It was interesting, since they engage in activity for just a few seconds, then he gets off, the rest for a while, and then do it all over again.  He may be the king of the jungle, but in terms of stamina, well....

This is another young male lion, actually seen on day 2, along with a whole bunch of lions just hanging out under some scrub bushes, sleeping.  They hunt at night.

 We also saw cheetahs, which have to be the most blase animals in the Mara.  They KNOW that nothing will mess with them.  Here these two were surrounded by probably ten safari vehicles, and these cats were completely uninterested.  I really think they are my favorites.

One good thing about Max, is he would let us sit there for as long as we wanted, just watching the animals.  We spent a long while here, as well as with the cheetahs.  They didn't do much, but are just fun to watch in their sublime boredom.

Another animal we saw a lot of in the park are giraffes, which are just very cool as well.  They also seemed very unconcerned that we were around.  We didn't see as many as I thought we would, though it may have been because they like trees, and many of the forested areas were too wet to get into.  That was also the problem with the notoriously shy rhino, who likes scrub brush, and the leopard, who spends all day in a tree and comes down at night.

I'm not even sure if he is doing anything in this video, but they are really cool animals.

Here I am in our vehicle, I just can't say how cool it is to be at a place like the Mara.  I know it's expensive and difficult to do, but everyone should travel to east Africa to see this at least once.

Here I am at the entrance to our campsite.  Everyone we talked to later asked "which lodge/hotel did you stay at?"  Uh, they don't know me very well.  What, stay at a lodge when a perfectly good tent is available!!  It was very nice, and cool to be out camping like from "Out of Africa."

And here is what our tent looked like.  We had one for the boys and one for us.  We slept very well, it didn't rain, and was cool but not cold.  A really great experience.