This REALLY isn't Algonquin

We're back from Safari which was, of course, incredible.
Now I have 2 minutes left here at this cafe.

Yesterday we spent 16 hours on bus from Nairobi to Dar Es Salaam.
It wasn't too bad.
The best part is that we found JON!

He's alive and well.

More later (probably from Zanzibar)

From Tanzania

This isn't Algonquin

As planned, we spent shabbat camping on the grounds of the fancy "Tea Hotel" in Kericho. (We overheard one British student comment "This place is more British than Britain").

It did rain on Friday night but our trusty new tarp kept us relatively dryish.

On Saturday afternoon, we ecountered a new problem that we had not yet dealt with...monkeys (who are not afraid of people).

Growing up at Camp Ramah, I was always taught to hang my food from a tree branch while camping to keep it well away from bears.

Question: When bears are not the risk, but monkeys are (who can clearly climb tries and and across ropes) what do you do?

Answer: From what we figured out, not a whole lot.

We didn't know if the campsite had monkeys. We certainly didn't see any when we arrived.

To stay safe, we kept all food out of the tent.
That was, at least a good idea.

However, at around 3PM when Hilllary and I were reading outside of the tent, we were swarmed.
The monkeys stole our bananas (typical) and tried to get more.

We eventually chased them away (there must have been about 20) as the hotel staff laughed at us.

Good times.

Now we're back in Nairobi getting ready to leave on a 3 day safari.

We had drinks / used the bathroom at the Hilton last night.
It was nice and I didn't want to leave.
Then we returned the the office / dorm of our safari company where we slept in a small room with 4 other people and no running water.

Until next time.

My mom is great

Although I'm pretty sure that my mom is one of the only readers of this blog, I still figured it would be appropriate to give her a birthday shout out.

Happy Birthday Ima!

Today my mother turns somewhere between 30 and 70. I'm not exactly sure.

Shabbat the second

We finally had our first somewhat comfortable road journey (from Homa Bay to Kerich0).
Kericho is a tea town. There are plantations everywhere and it pretty much rains everyday like clockwork at 3PM (about an hour and 20 minutes from now).

We decided to try our hand again at Shabbat camping. We again managed to find a fancy hotel that also offers camping. The same type set up as last shabbat (which worked out very well).

This time we have a tarp (well, sort of).
We spent a good 3 hours yesterday searching for some sort of rain protection for our tent.
we bought a plastic sheet of sorts of the side of the road (its very dirty).
All we really needed was to put a few metal rivets in so that we could tie rope through.

Of course, the 6 hardware stores that we visited did not have what we needed (although they were sure that the next place would. (The next place didn't).

Shabbat Shalom!

buses, pick-up trucks, matatus and boda bodas

we've been moving around a lot in the last few days.

Sunday morning we visited an orphanage in Nyaharuru for children with HIV AIDS. Our visit, although short, was a powerful experience. The kids seemed really excited to have visitors.
We made up games and just tried to give some personal attention to each child.
There are clearly way too many orphanages like this one in this region.
Its a sad state of affairs, but it was good to see that the staff there really cared about the children and there are many organizations here trying to make a change.

From Nyaharuru, we went back to Nakuru to catch a matatu to Kisumu on the west of africa (the coast of Lake victoria). The ride was somewhat hellish. There wasn't too much to do in Kisumu.
we walked down to the shore and watched lots of people fry fish in huge vats.
We also found an excellent 100% veggie restaurant.

From Kisumu, we headed north to the town of Kakamega, on the outskirts of The Kakamega Forest - which was our next stop.

Getting the forest was an interesting experience. It involved riding in the back of a converted pick up truck (with a small child plopped in my lap). The truck, of course, stalled a few times on the way.
Then from the truck, we had to get on the back of bicycles (called Boda Bodas) for the remaining 5 km.

The forest was pretty excellent.
Lots of birds, monkeys and butterflies.

From Kakamega, we headed south to Homa Bay (where we are now).

The ride was one of the worst yet.
My little day bag got snatched, but i managed to get it back.

We were on a bus that was crammed with people.
It is illegal in Kenya to overfill busses and there are police all over the roads who stop the busses t0 check.
So, when we got close the police, everyone in the aisle would just duck and hide.
the police clearly know that they are there.
Its all a game.

At one point, an officer kicked a whole bunch of people off.
The bus then drove about 1 km down the road and waited for the people to arrive by foot or boda boda (in view still of the officer).

Somewhat ridiculous.

THats it for now.

Hope all is well.
Chaim

Shabbat camping with no fly

First, thanks to everyone who responded to the mass e-mail. The connection at this place is pretty slow so I apologize for being unable to respond individually (yet).

Anyway, I believe that I left my last entry at Nakuru on Thursday.

Our time on Friday morning was used to get some money from the bank (a little bit tricky) and trying to figure out a way to get cell service here (a little more more tricky)...

Hillary brought here cell phone here from Israel (just to have at the airport when she returned back to Israel).
When we arrived at the airport in Nairobi, we saw ads for a cell company "cellnet" that had service throughout East Africa. We figured that we would try to buy a SIM card and put it into Hillary's phone.
But, when we tested it at the airport, we discovered that Hillary's phone was "locked" (thank you very much "Israel Phones") and it wouldn't accept another SIM card.
So, we figured that we would continue our trip with no cell phone (as was the plan in the first place).
Anyway, a nice man in our Matatu from Nairobi to Nakuru mentioned that we could buy a new phone and SIM card for about 2000 Kenyan Shillings ($30 USD!). So, that's what we decided to do on Friday morning.
We found a shop that had signs for cell phones and we went in.
It was a children's clothing shop that had a lady at the back who had a cell phone stand.

We explained to the owner of the shop what we needed, and mentioned in passing that we have this cell phone that we can't get unlocked.
He immediately sprung into action, took Hillary's phone and said "Do you trust me? I'm going to go and get your phone unlocked". Without waiting for an answer, he was out the door with Hillary's phone, leaving us in his children's clothing shop.
20 anxious minutes passed by until he finally returned, unlocked cell phone in hand.
He then sold us a SIM card and a charger that would work here.
Total cost: 800 Kenyan Shillings ($12).
We realized that we may have been overcharged, but at that point we didn't really care. We went next door to the one of the many many many cellnet shops around and bought credits for the phone.
Easy right?

After our morning errands, we grabbed a matatu to Nyaharuru where we planned to spend shabbat. Our Lonely Planet guide listed a few options of accomodation in and aroud Nyaharuru, but one of them particularly caught our attention - "Thompson's Fall Lodge".
Thompson's Falls is one of Africa's highest (I think) and the Lodge, which is right next to the falls is the fanciest place in town (and certainly out of our price range).
The catch is that in addition to their suites, they also offer a campsite for pretty cheap.
So, we decided that it would be nice to camp there, in the vacinity of fancier people.

We arrived to a beautiful grounds and really lovely staff.
We negotiated an even cheaper rate then what was posted and began to set up our tent (we were the only ones camping).
As we were unrolling the tent (provided by Hillary), Hillary mentioned that it did not have a fly (waterproof roof / protection). That shouldn't be a big deal right? It's Africa and its the supposed dry season so it shouldn't rain right?

Wrong.

Just a couple of hours after we made camp, the rain began.
At first we moved the tent under a hut that was storing coal. We figured that we could leave it there until the rain stopped and then move it back (which is what we did).

We cooked and ate shabbat dinner (rice flavoured with Osem "indian mix", scrammbled eggs and osem ptitim). It was the shortest shabbat meal in history. We finished in about 6 minutes.

We went to bed pretty soon after dinner and prayed that the lighting and thunder that we were hearing wouldn't reach us.

It didn't

Until about 10 PM

Then we started to get wet.

We quickly came up with a plan:
Bring all of our things into the nearby bathroom for shelter, leave the tent where it was, and head into the hotel bar / lounge for refuge.
We hung out inside the bar next to the fireplace until we were kicked out at around 11:30.

Back to the tent.

The rain had stopped but by this point, small puddles had collected inside.

Back to the lounge, this time, sleeping bags in hand.

Although the bar area had been closed, there was still a small group of people sitting in the room next door (with more lounge chairs and another fireplace).
We quietely sat next to the fireplace hoping not to be noticed.
About 5 seconds later, a man approached us and asked if "we had been attended to". We politely responded that we just wanted a warm place to sit for a while and explained our small predicament.
He offered us some whiskey to warm us up. we declined.
He then asked where we were from and we both responded "Canada" (Hillary is American, but decided before that trip that everyone likes Canadians more).

We were right.

Turns out this man (Robert) was a graduate of the Landscape Engineer program from the University of Guelph. (I don't know how he made it from Nairobi to Guelph, but I didn't ask). He spent 7 and a half wonderful years in Canada and he said that he owes all of his success to Canada. He also said that he "had a share" in the lodge and that it would be no problem for us to spend the night inside the lounge.
We thanked him and placed ourselves and our sleeping bags by the fire and tried to sleep.
Robert and his cronies kept us up until about 3 AM.
They were having some kind of crazy political argument in both English and what we think was Swahili.
It sounded like they were planning a coup. Who knows?

Anyway, we got a couple of hours of sleep until a guard from the Lodge came inside in a panic and woke us up.
We didn't really understand what he was saying but the words "gone" and "missing" seem to be repeated.
He had us follow him to the camping area where we expected the worst (keep in mind, all of our things were in the bathroom and our tent was left unattended). Yes, it may sounds stupid now, but we really didn't think that anyone was going to take our stuff, which thankfully, nobody did.

We eventually figured out that the guard came to get us because his night shift was ending and he would no longer be able to watch our things for us. He wanted to make sure that they were well attended to so he came to get us.
Talk about service.

The rest of shabbat passed pretty uneventfully (we hiked down to the bottom of the falls and then walked into town to see the festivities for African Children's Day).

At around 7ish we realized that it was going to rain again that night, but at least this time we were prepared with a better plan: Before we go to bed, leave our stuff in the bathroom (as we now deemed it safe) and if it rained, we would move the tent under the coal shed and book it into the lounge for another night by the fire.

We sat inside until the end of shabbat, chatting with a very interesting man from holland working at a mission in Nyaharuru (subject for another post).
We mentioned to him that we were trying to camp in a non water proof tent. He told us that we could, of course, stay inside if it rained (we knew that already), but he called over the manager of the hotel to see if he could provide us with a tarp.
The manager said "I'll see what I can do".

He returned about an hour later and told us "we have no tarp, but go to the reception and they will give you a room".
So, we did just that.

The receptionist showed us the way to a very decent room in the lodge.
They took serious pity on us.
I kinda freaked out by how nice they were. (really, I did, ask Hillary)
It was over the top.

Ok, this place is closing for the night so I must sign off.

Sorry for the long post.

We're now in the west of Kenya in Kisumu on the shores of Lake victoria.
We nixed the Mt. Kenya idea because we decided that we didn't have appropriate gear (for example, a fly).

Be well

Chaim and Hillary (and Jon) do East Africa

Greetings from Nakuru, Kenya!

This is where I plan to post updates (and maybe pictures) from my trip to Africa.
You can also check out Hillary's blog at
journals.worldnomads.com/hnmenk

We decided to do them seperately for a few reasons, but mainly because we figured that it would take too long to agree on how to word our posts. (We both want them to be clever).

Anyway, you can read both and decide which is better (and funnier).

I've also added the first e-mail that I sent out.

Hope to be in touch!

Kwa heri (goodbye)





Dear Family and friends,

I again have to apologize for sending out a mass e-mail.

Yesterday I began a 2 month trip to East Africa (Keyna, Tanzania, Uganda and maybe Rwanda). I wanted to send a quick e-mail to tell everyone that so far the trip is going great.

This will hopefully be the last mass e-mail as I plan to start up my blog again with updates from the trip.
I'm travelling now with my friend Hillary and we will be meeting another friend, Jon, in Tanzania in 2 weeks (if all goes to plan of course...).

Hillary and I flew yesterday from Tel-Aviv to Nairobi via Addis Ababa on Ethiopian Airlines.
The plane couldn't land at first in Addis so we were diverted to Djibouti. The pilot did not provide very much information and basically said "it's cloudy in Addis so we are going to Djibouti instead".

Anyway, we basically landed there to refuel and then return to better weather at Addis .No information was provided at all when we were sitting on the tarmac in Djibouti. A man sitting next to us said "welcome to Africa"
Luckily we were able to make our connection to Nairobi.

Nairobi is nicknamed in some guidebooks as "Nairobbery" so we tried to be extra vigilant with our stuff on the street. (it is no surprise that we stand out everywhere we go)
We decided to stay at a place on the outskirts of town to avoid trouble. The night went by uneventfully.

There were Israelis staying at our hostel. Big surprise.
They didn't seem to care that we spoke Hebrew. Another Big surprise

Today we made our way to Nakuru which is North West of Nairobi.
The first half of the 3 hour ride was very pleasant.
Then we hit the end of the paved road.
The rest of the ride was less pleasant.
It reminded me of the time that I went luging in lake placid. There the ride was very bumpy and my head got rattled around a lot (same principal on this ride).
The only difference is that at lake placid the ride lasted 60 seconds. Here, it was an hour and a half.
But, I should point out that the lake placid ride cost me (well, cost my father) $30 whereas this ride was $4.50

I left my camera on the bus (well, its more of a minibus called a matatu) and with the help of G-d we were able to find the driver, get back into the bus and retrieve my camera.

After we found a place to stay, we made our way to the top of the Menengai Crater which overlooks a beautiful area of kenya.

The view was amazing (in fact, so was the drive) . At the top, there were a few local merchants selling souvenirs.

I traded my hat (to be fair, it's really my brother's hat - sorry adam -) for a little dolphin.
I really loved that hat ("Tibetian Tea, lose weight the natural way) but I think it was a fair trade (especially because Adam got the hat for free from a drug store in Israel).

Now I'm sitting in a pretty decent internet cafe in town in Nakuru.

Tomorrow we're planning on heading to Nyahururu for shabbat.
We've heard good things and hope to be able to hike to a waterfall there.

After that, we're planning on trekking Mt. Kenya and then return to Nairobi for a 3 day safari.

Of course, plans can change quickly and its not always possible to count on transport / weather.

Hope everyone is doing well.
Stay in touch.
I'll do my best to update the blog as often as possible.

There is so much more to tell and so many things on my mind but that will have to wait for later posts or until I get home. Coffee anyone?

All the best,
Chaim