It’s been exactly a week since we landed, and I know the memories that feel fresh now, will eventually dissolve as new ones take over. I’m back from Kenya and feeling the “can’t stop thinking about it, can’t stop talking about it, will never be the same” kind of way, and doing my best to 1. go easy on myself and 2. do something productive with the energy. Big trips are good for things like this - they shake up what you think you knew and cause you to step back and reassess how. you. are. living.
When Emma brought the idea of this trip to me a couple weeks before we decided to take it, Kenya had not been on my radar. Emma was born there, so it would be a homecoming for her, a totally different tone - the crux of the trip being what was likely a final trip to her ayah, Susan, who is 93. This was not expected to be a glamorous, restful vacation, nor one riddled with stories of drinking and late night escapades. This was going to be a heart trip - travel that takes you where it wants you to go. Fast paced, no sleep, lots of tears. Keep in mind, Emma and I had not yet traveled together. Having been friends for nearly ten years, we knew each other’s hearts and ways, but were certainly taking a gamble on the rest of it.
We planned it quickly with help of Rose Muya, Emma’s godmother and Nairobi native and owner of Timeless Travels agency - a powerhouse of a woman who chooses words carefully and prefers to question rules. She speaks slowly, surely, beautifully and I have taken on her “Mm”s that she folds into conversation that encourage you to continue talking, as well as a sort of auditory tag committing the new information to your memory. She smells of Joe Malone Orange Blossom and Nectarine, is beautiful, wraps scarves in her hair, wears a red lip and nail, and has a house built in 1952 lined with books. She was our guiding light in this adventure, a home base literally and figuratively, who told us we had nothing to worry about at every point of this travel to take on the burden of worry herself. When Rose came into the picture, it became painfully evident that this trip was written in the stars. Everything was all too easy.
Before I start, know this. In Africa you cry a lot. I cry a lot generally, but I was banking a cry, in some capacity, about once a day. Things are raw, you feel safe to cry, you have chosen to be awake over sleep, and everything is so new and foreign that your brain is on overdrive. So you cry. You cry every day. The hardest I cried was leaving our first guides at Ol Donyo; James and Jeremiah. The second hardest I cried was leaving Rose Muya’s house. Body heave cries, something escaping your body cries. You are SO TIRED after these cries. But you are in Africa so you carry on.
We leave SF with a goodbye to our ride, the ever selfless Kenny Feezor, a commemorative picture, some Gott’s burgers and grey hounds and call to Rose Gallagher (”if you keep throwing around ‘Nakupenda” like that you’re going to come back with Kenyan husbands” “….cool” ), and sleep through our 10 hour flight to Amsterdam. We barely make our connecting flight, but do, and around 10pm the next day, we land in Nairobi. I cry on the landing. We are now in Africa, but not exactly day 1, so I will start my story here, at day 0:
Day 0
There are animal decals all over this airport. The paper in customs feels different than ours - thinner and like wax paper. There are lots of Euro/ African couples with beautiful children. I will try and convince Emma that “these visas are a scam” (not true), Emma will console my customs fear with a pep talk and a kiss on the cheek, which will cause the lesbian couple behind us in line to think we are also gay and start talking to us about Amsterdam’s Pride Parade. We don’t have the energy, post 24 hours of flying, to correct them. We start using “Nakupenda” right away with our driver Joshua (arranged, of course, by Rose), learn some baseline Swahili, and arrive at the house, neighboring the Muthaiga Country Club (yes, that one) and the world’s embassies. Rose greets us. She feeds us passion fruit, shows us to our mosquito netted rooms, we take a quick handheld shower, and tuck in.
Day 1
Kendwa, Rose’s daughter, is up. She is under the impression we landed this morning (a LIE to get her to fall asleep the night before) and has enough eggs and toast on her plate to feed a collegiate linebacker. When I experience firsthand the energy this child outputs, I see where it all goes. Kendwa dances, she does impressions, she asks a lot of questions. Emma and I follow suit with scrambled eggs on toast, which we will have nearly every day for the next two weeks (a meal that will never be the same for me), fresh coffee and passion fruit over watermelon. Passion fruit will be the one thread tying this entire African adventure together as well - more to come on that. We learn this morning that monkeys don’t take women seriously - if one comes in the house, you have to fetch a male security guard to scare it off. We walk to the market, say hi to everyone and see someone cutting their lawn with a MACHETE, use the ATM, and head to the Karura Forest Cafe (”Oh my god, it’s Maxi!”) where we have a passion fruit patio cocktail and experience the rains down in Africa during our hike. We blare “Africa” by Toto and own the situation. Dinner at Muthaiga Club.
Day 2
Driver Sam picks us up from home around 11 for the babysitting experience of his lifetime. He has the luck of still teaching us about Nairobi, explaining to us nuances like “mother tongue” - where babies are taught the mother’s language, driving us through Karen-end (pronounced “Karende!”) explaining to us why there are speed bumps in the middle of the highway, and pointing out “very smart gates!” with some roadside vendors. He drives us to the Giraffe Center, which shares a space with the Giraffe Manor, but we are unable to secure a scam to get through the entrance. I rationalize that “this is okay’ as while at the center, I do not see any giraffes, at that particular time of the day. The giraffes are wild and still allowed to come and go as they please, with specific feeding times for photo ops I am sure they have learned over time. We snag our pictures, have Sam take us to a roadside market for kikois and the best bottle opener you have ever seen, and to the Karen Blixen house for tourism (”WE HATE TOURISTS!” -us, everywhere) and the garden cafe for lunch and coffee. I am exhausted but we are just getting started. It’s now time for us to head to meet Susan, at which point Emma gets quiet. It’s been 20 years since they’ve left each other, surfacing doubts you might expect - Will Susan remember me? Will she like me? But as we know, that is just not how these things go. We enter into parts of town where people look surprised to see mzungus (white people), and Susan’s granddaughter Knight comes out to meet us. Going on your own, even with a driver as good as Sam, makes getting lost incredibly easy. We are so thankful for Sam and the “way more than driving” job he signed up for. We see Susan, small and frail at nearly a century of life, but beautiful and incredibly stable. It’s so unusual to be around people who have lived that much life. We share pictures and stories and Susan prays for us, Sam translating the emotional exchange all the while. We Facetime Rose (”those were the best years of my life…”) and Ian (”What a beautiful man…!”). We venture down to the beautiful waterfall in the backyard of the slum, over a creek and through leaves as big as a person - where I will cry again when I realize how far from home I am and wondering how the hell I got here. We say a heartfelt goodbye to Susan, and a promise to return before we leave (a promise kept), before venturing to our next part of the evening - Emma’s father’s cousin’s house in Karen. Past 3 land cruisers and armed guards, Sam leaves us at a beautiful, private estate tucked beneath vines and overgrown vegetation, a gigantic backyard for entertaining, and horse stables. We have Indian food and gooseberry reduction with ice cream and share stories of the family, ending the evening with a proper migration picture-painting and discovering that there are two “Emma Louise’s” in the family. One of the guards drives us home at 1am, and after 3 hours of sleep, we get on a plane to meet our destiny at Ol Donyo.