Posted by: Helen
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| He's the one on the left |
We half expected Jake to be stared at everywhere we went, due to him being a) white, b) 4 foot 2 and c) still clinging to the colonial moustache he'd grown in honour of his 'Movember' fundraising efforts. But we were delighted to discover that Kenyans welcomed Jake with as much energy as everyone else. Yes, it’s probably due to his easy charm and extensive knowledge of the English Premier League, but I think it’s also because:
- Tourist money is tourist money, and a guy with ready dollars in search of food and souvenirs is everyone’s friend; and
- There’s a lot more disability in Kenya. With poverty and disability having a complex relationship, people with disabilities make up a higher percentage of the population here. Whilst I’m guessing it was a sight to see a short white guy on crutches, nowhere did we make the stir we might have expected.
We've all been friends for 10 years but had never really holidayed together - so how would it go? Answer: brilliantly. Nice to know that even on a different continent, nothing stops the long chats, long card games and even longer rounds of 'The Movie Game' that are an inevitable part of us all hanging out. Although discovering that Jake couldn’t recall my birthday, degree subject or full name led to a small diplomatic incident that we’ll say no more about.
In honour of Jake, who needed a little more accessibility
than our average visitor, we swallowed our snobby ‘we are volunteers – we are
better than mere tourists’ mentality and for one week entered the very
different world of ‘Tourist Kenya’.
Tourist Kenya
Tourist Kenya
Whilst we’ve travelled around Kenya, and been to some of the touristy areas, we’d not been proper tourists in Kenya. It's the world most of us inhabit when we come on holiday to Kenya. It’s a truly lovely place to be, but initially, Dan and I found it very strange for the following reasons:
1.
There is no public transport in this world. Instead of matatus
and buses there are safari vans and lots of taxis. There are no journeys crushed against a
stranger in Tourist Kenya, no deafening music and no odour of stale male sweat
(except Dan and Jake’s). There’s still
traffic and the occasional breakdown, but it’s a lot more comfortable
2.
You are greeted with ‘Jambo’... Apparently
true to coastal Swahili but mostly wheeled out just for the tourists, this
greeting is easy to master since the response is also ‘Jambo’. I never hear it in the Kenya we normally live
in, but we were greeted in this way every time in Tourist Kenya. Unable to let go of my volunteer credentials and
Swahili training so easily, I generally replied ‘Mzuri sana’ (I am very fine)
in a sarcastic tone.
3.
...and The Jambo Song is sung a lot. I’m
telling you, this song only plays in Tourist Kenya. After being here for 4 months, a UK friend
who’d holidayed here assumed You must’ve
heard The Jambo Song so much by now!
We asked What’s The Jambo Song? We found out once we’d entered Tourist Kenya:
it was sung and played all the time. Generally AT us, or towards us, and sometimes
followed by requests for money.
4.
No coins are needed. The lowest note denomination here in Kenya is
50 shillings (35p), but in our everyday lives there’s a LOT of things that
costs less than that. In a normal week
in Nairobi, Dan and I hoard coins like gold (exact change for buses, matatus
and lunch means a lot less faff, and less chance of being ripped off), but during
our week in Tourist Kenya, we didn’t even touch a coin. Nothing is less than 50 shillings and
contrary to normal Kenyan life, any small change is expected to be left as a tip.
5.
You meet Americans. Well,
more precisely, you meet other tourists, but the Americans stick in my
mind. Whether on an organised tour or
backpacking through the country, these folks are here in Kenya to see the
wildlife and soak up the sun. They were
interested that we were living here, and shocked that we live in Nairobi (and how do you find the crime?), but mostly
they were nice to be around. An
exception to that was a nameless woman from Florida who greeted the waiters
with ‘Jumbo’ and asked her companions where the ‘pointy peak’ of Kilimanjaro
was, was it hidden by clouds? When she learned that she was looking at it’s
full, flat shape, she grumbled that back in the US there are ‘proper’
mountains.
6.
There’s a lot more flesh.
Most Kenyan women dress more modestly
than those in the west. To work here
and be accepted, my day-to-day wardrobe quickly reduced to anything with
sleeves; vest tops, shorter skirts and all shorts were out. Dan wears shorts in the house but never
outside, otherwise he looks like a tourist and gets ten times the street
hassle. Occasionally I see white female tourists in Nairobi wearing
<gasp> shorts or <gasp> strapless tops. Whilst I don’t condemn these holidaymakers
(I’m no different when I go holiday), after a few months it actually shocks me
to see so much flesh on women not touting for business. In Tourist Kenya, everyone looks like a prostitute. Or so it seemed to me at first. White women in tiny hotpants wandering down
the supermarket aisles, and standing in the car park in a bikini top!! Plus all of them wear shorts, everyone one of
them, and sometimes strapless/backless/side-less tops. Society is generally fine with it, and
coastal Kenyans are used to it or join in, but at first I found it very
shocking to see that much flesh after months of living in Kenya. But, ever adaptable, and when in Rome, I
flashed some leg on the beach (get me).
After a few days living in this new world of Tourist Kenya, we got used to how it all worked and had a truly wonderful time. Highlights included,
- watching the horizon in Amboseli National Park, and seeing it simply litteredwith elephants, maybe 100 in all,
- waking at dawn and looking towards Tanzania to see the snow-topped summit of Mount Kilimanjaro
- snogging a Giraffe in Nairobi,
- chatting about the latest Manchester United news with a Kenyan guy called George, in the dining carriage on the overnight train to Mombasa, as we all lurched and lurched with the train movements, trying to keep our soup in the bowl, and tea in the cup,
- arriving at our enormous beach-front cottage and seeing the view,
- Dan buying live crabs from the beach and cooking them in a big pot,
- sailing on the Indian ocean in a warm breeze on a little wooden boat crewed by Omar and Pepe, to arrive at a beach bar where dozen oysters cost 2 quid and the white wine was ice cold...
A massive thank you to Jake for taking the plunge, trusting
us to plan you a trip and giving us the excuse to live in Tourist Kenya for
week. It was fantastic to see you and
we’re so glad you had a good time.
Hopefully not even your horrendous journey home will dint your view of
this country. It’s great to know that regardless
of whether you’re in Kenya, or Tourist Kenya, the welcome is just as warm.
Pause the slideshow to go at your own pace, or click through to see bigger pictures in Picassa online....enjoy!
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