We've Arrived!

Jambo!

We arrived in Nairobi late last night after a full 36 hours of travelling, drove along a bumpy road for an hour to the Masai lodge, and fell asleep immediately once we set up our mosquito nets. Five hours later, still trying to fight ten hours of jet lag (having personally come from the West Coast), our alarms shocked us awake. Still half asleep, we trudged to the dining room to find immaculately set tables with origami napkins and a custom omelet bar—our first substantial meal in a few days, and very much appreciated by eight hungry teenagers.

                Laurie prefaced our breakfast conversation with a question: “So, who here is afraid of heights?” I was slightly worried, having never truly recovered from my childhood acrophobia, but seeing her cheerful, excited expression, I tentatively raised my hand. “Okay, well, you may have to test your limits today.”

                After breakfast, after taking several group photos on the first of many picturesque bridges of the trip, we headed to an Elephant Orphanage, where we saw a group of about twenty elephants, all three to eight months old, feeding and playing in front of a group of enthusiastic, Safari gear-clad tourists, eagerly snapping pictures. Our group may or may not be included in this description.

                One particularly lively elephant, captivated by all the attention he was getting from the enthralled visitors, decided to run straight into a row of American and European Safari-goers, while absolutely caked in wet mud from all the dirt and water they had been throwing around. He missed most of the crowd, but succeeded in getting my shirt as well as Charlotte’s backpack. Oh well. I signed up for this trip knowing I would get muddy.

                After another beautiful meal, this time by the pool, our group set out on foot for the glass factory across the street. We walked for a few minutes on flat grass, wading through herds of goats, then descended into a gorge, at which point my “mild childhood acrophobia” turned into a full-fledged terror of heights when I saw the bridge we were expected to walk over. Two cables, about two feet apart and suspended 150 feet above a narrow, muddy, and probably shallow, river, supported what looked like a weaved mess of wires.  Steeling ourselves with the truthful cliché that we had come to Kenya to test our limits and push ourselves, we stepped across, one foot at a time, hanging on to the thick cables.

                As terrifying as the bridge was, the glass factory was absolutely worth it.  We could have spent hours exploring the endless maze of small buildings, decorated intricately with patterns and designs made, of course, from glass. We saw the process of creating a glass bowl, a tiled mosaic of a pool complete with a sea serpent statue spitting water from its mouth, a territorial ostrich, and a bridge with a stained glass floor leading to the roof of a house. A sign said “beware of dog,” but personally I felt a lot more threatened by their geese than their friendly little dachshund. Charlotte and I (who are roommates at school) had trouble deciding between an ornate chandelier, a comfortable hammock, and our own personal swing chair for our room at school. However, we soon realized that each of these presented problems with transportation.

We tore ourselves away from the glass factory and completed the same journey back to the Masai Lodge for dinner. After such an exciting first day of our trip, I look forward to the next few weeks.

Asante sana (thank you)for reading, and enjoy the pictures!

Jessie