By accident on a safari

Our plate of good old Dutch ‘hutspot and wurst’ should lead to our departure but, typical ThreeLeftHands, laziness caused us to stay another few nights at Frank and Mark’s way to luxurious villa. During these days we find out that it isn’t too special that we’ve encountered Dutch people in Nairobi; the entire city is loaded with ex-pats and especially people from the Netherlands seem to favor Kenya as the country to do business. Happily they provide the greater part of Europe with roses that you buy just too late on your mothers birthday and thus promote Holland as a flower country instead of the ever continuing ‘Amsterdam! Coffeeshop! Marijuana!’ praising we get. As true Dutch people they stick together, with the result that we meet different Dutchies every night. One of these people is simply named ‘the neighbor’, and surprisingly lives next door. The man invites us to come and watch the soccer game at his house, where we meet his wife Bianca. Upon hearing our goal here in Africa, she bluntly fills our car with goodies that’ll last us to at least to the next border. Or, considering Marten’s unstoppable appetite, till the next morning.

In this week of testing one’s hospitality, Noflik is being taught some social skills. It happens that Frank and Mark posses two young Rottweilers, that fiercely show Noflik her place in this new formed pack. The Rottweilers are big and show even bigger teeth, but that doesn’t keep our dog from testing and challenging. Of course, that’s to be expected from a woman in her first period. The bleeding bitch drips wherever she wants, causing our car to slowly turn from orange to red.

We sense that Frank and Mark are about to trow us out, so just before that can happen, we jump in the car and head for a Masai village that’s supposed to be just outside the gate of the National game park Masai Mara. Outside, indeed. As Dutch budget travelers/volunteers/saints/legends/Jesus look-a-likes we will never pay 120 Dollar to spot some animals that we’ve seen on T.V. already, but checking an authentic village for free is worth the trouble of covering some days of sand and gravel that lead us to the west. We start to like it when halfway the road the sheep and cows make way for giraffes and zebra’s; a good place to camp for the night, we figure. This great idea results in our first trouble with a Masai. The elephant-shit infested patch of grass that we choose ends up to be some herder’s property and he immediately decides to declare it a camping. And for a camping, dear reader, one must pay. ‘Not much..’ is the answer as usual when we ask for the price and we translate that in ‘Way too much for the ThreeLeftHands.’, and half an hour later of refusing and arguing that becomes so normal to us, the sight of a spear, a couple hunters and a kettle that could fit three grown man and a dog makes us retreat cool but cautious from the after all not that pleasant piece of land.

As we drive on, its the middle of the night now, we decide we might as well drive to the place of destiny, as we’re driving anyway. When we get there, we get welcomed by the sight of exactly zero Masai villages, cottages or buildings. Again, typical and not surprisingly, your heroes took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up at the gate a few miles from the place where we anted to be. The gate’s heavily armed ranger tells us not to cry, what Minne is actually doing, cause there is a rough but doable way to the next gate and we get directed to a small road that after a few miles seems really rough, especially in the dark, so we stop and make camp for the night. After a short night, that is mostly filled with waking up, because Minne insisted on sleeping outside and attracted various noisy wildlife, we wake up with a pair with a pair of binoculars pointed at us, belonging to a tourist standing in a jeep. That’s odd, isn’t it? We know we’re interesting, but you only use binoculars if you want to spot wildlife, right…? We get a sneaky suspicion and a few minutes driving confirm this thought as Henk and Minne suddenly get chased by a raging elephant and we hear something roaring, just as we get out of the car. Boys, we are in the park. Well, that’s too bad, but not our mistake so we enjoy our free ride through the impressing Lion King scenery and arrive at the proper gate at the end of the day. One problem, we’re on the wrong side of it and the guards don’t seem to understand how innocent and sincere we are when telling we got there by accident, and they insist on us paying the park-fees anyway, since we were in the park. We insist on paying not however, and after hurling some words over and back, Henk decides its getting late and simply opens the gate so that Marten can drive our car to the right side of the gate. The people at the gate slowly begin to comprehend that looking really angry at us and threaten to beat us does not make us pay a cent, so out of desperation they enchant us with some East African voodoo curse, that will prevent us from ever reaching Nairobi. That’s okay with us, we want to go to Mombasa.

We reach Mombasa after a small detour that leads us to Naivasha, where for the first time in nine months we stay at a camping. For free of course and we enjoy grazing hippo’s and a hot shower in the morning. The journey gets more pleasant as we receive message that Leeuwarden’s High College collected a pleasant amount of money, that will allow us to continue our quest for a little bit. Mombasa is nice, but not more than that and after a few days in the paradise they call Diani, we drive a few miles further to Masambweni, the place where we are to help out in the local schools a bit for Twiga. It’s going to be a hard month as the village is peaceful, the beaches are white, the coconuts are free and there is hardly a tourist to be seen.

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Tags: english, kenya, masaai mara, mombassa, safari