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