Kiva Stories from the Field

Last week I had the pleasure of taking a few days off from my duties as a Kiva Fellow to go on safaris in Tanzania. I joined my uncle and cousin who were on vacation from the US; they travelled with a group of about 15 other people.

I left Nakuru early Friday morning for Nairobi. I had beat my uncle and his group there, so I checked into a room and explored a bit – the hotel, the shopping mall across the street, etc. I also checked to see if the bookstore would have Harry Potter 7 – to my delight, they did and I ordered a copy for myself and for my cousin. (We were a  bit disappointed the next morning when we picked up the books though – we expected crazy lines and tons of kids dressed as wizards, but no dice. I guess that mania is only in the US and UK.)

The group arrived – we all had lunch at Sarit Center, the shopping mall. We ate in the food court. It was unlike any food court in the US – the food was actually really good in terms of quality. Also, after you order your food at the counter, you sit down and have your food brought to you – waiter service at a food court! We had a mixture of Indian food and pizza – after weeks of having the same combination of beef stew, rice and other Kenyan dishes, it was a welcome change.

Friday night all the kids (I use that word just to distinguish from adults; I was the youngest of the kids) went to this club Gipsy’s a block or two away from our hotel. Apparently it’s really popular in Nairobi, but mostly with the local Indian crowd. There were some foreigners/tourists and local Africans, but it was a lot of Indians. Indians in Kenya have always been part of the upper class and it was no more obvious than it was here. All of the Indian 20-something-year-olds at Gipsy’s were driven there in chauffeured cars, studied abroad in England or the US and only came home in the summer where all they did was party and spend their parent’s money. Most of them lived in huge houses with servants, servants who were invariably Kenyan Africans. After spending the past month meeting and interacting with people at the bottom of Kenyan socioeconomic ladder, being in the lap of luxury made me a bit uncomfortable.

On Saturday afternoon, those of us who were interested went to Carnivore. Carnivore has been named one of the world’s 50 best restaurants and is a huge tourist attraction. The restaurant is really more of an all-encompassing experience. It is one of the few places that has a license to sell game meat. Years ago, before so many animals were endangered, you could go there and eat lion, zebra, buffalo, giraffe, etc. Unfortunately, poaching and hunting have threatened so many species. The only exotic thing we got to eat was ostrich meatballs. Still, it was a great experience and the rest of the meat – chicken, pork, beef, and lamb – was extremely succulent and tasty.

We left Nairobi early Sunday morning, around 8 am. Our week’s travels had been booked through Sunny Safaris. All 18 of us got into this big green bus and started our drive South. We drove until we hit the Kenya-Tanzania border, where we had to stop to fill out paperwork and get our Tanzania visas. There were a bunch of safari groups there trying to get in the country and the office was obviously understaffed and overwhelmed.

It was here that I realized fully one of the biggest things that I’ve learned in Africa. It’s kind of similar to the acceptance and understanding that Leonardo DiCaprio’s character has when he sighs “TIA mate, this is Africa” in Blood Diamond. We ended up waiting at the border for over an hour. About 15 minutes in to that wait, most of the people in our group (and the other groups) were complaining. They were used to American/Western standards of efficiency, but also the fast pace of American life. I just sat quietly on the steps outside the office and people-watched and relaxed. Talking to a good friend of mine who is spending the summer in Cairo, we have both realized that while the slow pace of life here in Africa can sometimes be infuriating and inefficient, it is also a welcome change from the breakneck speed of life in America. It’s a good thing to not always be on the run, to not always be trying to meet the next deadline or living life as a slave to your watch. I’ve learned that if I can’t check my email 5 times a day, I’ll survive. And the time that I waste on Gmail and Facebook, I can use instead to read a book or just enjoy a lazy and relaxed Sunday afternoon.

Something that I also realized as the week went on was how how culturally insensitive and spoiled those of us in the developed world can be. I was already uncomfortable riding through towns very similar to those I visited Kiva clients in (mud “roads”, tin-roof shacks, children dressed in rags running barefoot through the street) in our luxurious Land Rover jeeps with plenty of food and water at our fingertips. It just didn’t feel right on some level. At every slight bump in the road – both the literal and figurative road – along our journey, I could hear people in our group complaining. Heaven forbid that one night you didn’t get perfectly warm water. And how can you possibly complain at the quality of food you are having in luxury lodges every night – buffets complete with salad bars, desserts, a variety of entrees, breads, soups, etc – when the towns you drove past earlier in the day were filled with people who are struggling to make ends meet and get enough food to make it through each day? How can you be rude to and annoyed by the Maasai women who try to sell you their painstakingly hand-crafted curios and goods? Don’t you realize that selling those necklaces is their sole source of livelihood? It’s fine if you don’t want to buy one, but you don’t have to be rude and talk down about the women when you are back in the comfort and luxury of your Land Rover

Okay, I’m done ranting.

Once we passed the border, we drover further south to the town of Arusha. (This is where we transferred from the big bus to three Land Rovers.) Along the way we drove through the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro. From Arusha, we set out after lunch for Ngorongoro Crater – a huge crater created 1.2 million years ago when a volcano exploded. The crater is about 19 kilometers in diameter and from the floor to the rim rises the same height as a 70-story building. On our drive up to the lodge (several lodges are built around the crater’s rim) we stopped at an observation point. The view was breathtaking. No matter how many pictures I took, they were severely inadequate. My words cannot describe how gorgeous it was and when I look at the pictures, they really don’t capture the whole scene.

All I can do is urge you to find time in your life to visit this place and see for yourself. A bit farther along the drive up, there was a full-grown male lion just chilling on the side of the road. We drove up like 10 feet away from it and took a bunch of pictures.

He was so majestic and regal – when you’re that close, you understand why lions are the kings of the jungle. It’s also then that you realize just how sad and pathetic lions and other animals that are held in captivity (in zoos for instance) are compared to an animal in the wild.

The next morning we woke before the sun so that we could watch the sunrise over the crater.

Watching that sunrise, I realized a few things. First, I think this was the first time in my life I had ever watched the sunrise. Second, and much more profound, I felt completely at peace. No thoughts stirred in my head and no emotions beat in my heart. I just stood. I was. That’s it. And it was unbelievably and indescribably serene and soothing. Looking back on that moment later in the day, and even now, I realize how special it was. It’s very rare to find a moment in time where you can just be. At every such similar moment in the nineteen years of my life, and I’m talking about moments where you can feel right there in the moment that it is special and should be cherished and appreciated – well, at every one of those moments up until that sunrise, I had always tried to match the profound nature of the moment with some kind of profound thought or decision or emotion. I thought it necessary to try and come to some life-changing decision or realization about my life – about what I was doing, where I was going, etc. Of course, whatever I would think or resolve in the moment was hollow and contrived and frankly, unnecessary. It was only watching this sunrise at Ngorongoro that I understood that you don’t need to match the beauty of the moment with a beautiful thought. You can just sit and enjoy it and be better for it. Don’t get me wrong – I did try to come up with something as I stood on that lodge balcony. And I’ll admit that I was spurred on by thoughts of grandeur inspired by reading Harry 7, in which Harry makes so many big decisions and realizations and what not. But after a few fruitless minutes, I quieted my head and just basked in the growing warmth of the sunlight on my face.

As I stood, I was joined by Paavan, one of the guys on the trip. We struck up a conversation about how beautiful the landscape around us was. I admitted that I have never really been religious in my life and have never really bought the idea of a supreme being creating earth, but rather subscribe to the scientific theories of the Big Bang and planet creation that I learned in my Science-B core last semester. Still, in that moment, I came the closest I ever have to believing in the power of a divine hand shaping the world around me.

The rest of the day was spent on a game drive through the crater floor and then a several hour drive to the Serengeti. We saw another lion, a herd of zebras, wildebeests, a lioness and two of her cubs, hyenas battling vultures for a carcass, elephants, tons of different birds, and hippos.

To see a sampling of all the pictures of the landscape and animals, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/tanuj.parikh/Tanzania

As we drove to through the Serengeti to that night’s lodge (we stayed in a different one every night), the landscape kept changing. Sometimes there were a lot of trees and a river or two, or rolling hills, and other times it was just flat and completely empty plains. When we hit a stretch of vast nothingness for as far as the eye could see, I opened my laptop and tried to connect to the internet via the GPRS network I could access on my cell phone. Lo and behold – it worked. I was able to send a quick few emails to family and close friends. I couldn’t help but smile at how modern technology has shrunk the world – riding in a jeep surrounded by absolutely nothing except open land I could still connect to people half a world away.

Along the drive, we stopped at a Maasai village. We were all taken to see the inside of the huts they live in and were treated to some traditional dances. I even joined in on the dancing a bit, which is more of a jumping to a beat created by the humming and cat-calling of the rest of the group which is assembled in a semi-circle around you. Apparently, that village was also located near the spot where the oldest human skeletal remains were found. At least I think that’s what one of our driver-guides was trying to tell us.

The next two days were relatively uneventful. We went on a bunch of game drives, but didn’t get to see too many exciting things. One of the other jeeps saw a lion kill a zebra. We all got to see a cheetah. We also saw the last bits of the annual wildebeest migration. It’s one of the last great animal migrations on earth. Every year, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of wildebeests migrate from the Serengeti across the Tanzania-Kenya border to Maasai Mara, and then come back a few months later.

Thursday morning we returned to Arusha and after lunch headed back to the Kilimanjaro foothils for the Capricorn Hotel, supposedly the oldest hotel still in operation in East Africa or something. Unfortunately because it was so cloudy we couldn’t see the actual peak of Kilimanjaro. After stopping at the hotel to drop off our bags, we took a short drive to a nearby waterfall. After climbing down (steps had been carved in to the rocks) to the base, we took pictures and stuff. Then a few of the guys and I got the brilliant idea to go for a swim. I don’t know why, but I’m glad we did. The few of us who swam definitely enjoyed that waterfall infinitely more than the people in our group who just took pictures.

This week I’ve been back at Eb-F’s head office in Nakuru, meeting clients. I depart for Mombasa, a city on the Kenyan coast this weekend. Then in the middle of next week I’m off to Nairobi again. Eb-F has branch offices in both of those locations.