The most amazing aspect of Kenya to me was the nature. I have never seen anything like it in my life. In Europe, we are used to fields, sheep, forest, foxes and cows.... There are no giraffes, no elephants, no antelopes and no lions. Somehow the wild life in Africa seemed more alive, grander than what we were used to in Europe. Or it may just be the fact that it feels exotic to us Europeans, but it certainly does intrigue travellers and is one of the major tourist attractions in Kenya.
Even when one is in one of the cities and not so close to the real wild life, one is somehow in touch with nature. There are tall and magnificent trees everywhere, monkeys jumping from push to push and brightly coloured birds flying high above. When you are walking on the sandy streets or driving along the rocky roads, you can’t help but see at least three different types of monkeys and several different types of birds. The bigger animals, such as lions and giraffes, stay away from the city areas, primarily because they cannot find the type of plants that they eat in those areas.
A wild life park close to Nairobi offered me the first taste of their wild life, although I later learnt that it was only a starter for the main venture. The day my hosts decided to take me to the wild life park proved to be extremely hot. It was April and the sun was so close that it felt like it was burning out skin. We were sitting on a bus that was packed to its limit. The three of us squeezed into two seats.
‘What are these?’ My colleague Chrystel was pointing at my pigment on my skin. I had a tendency of getting darker pigment at places on my skin when exposed to a great deal on sunshine. I explained this to her.
‘Oh I have never seen it before’, Chrystel said in amazement. ‘Our skin is so dark that we don’t get any variations on it.’
‘My hair is also suffering under the sun’, I said and pointed to the blonder stripes in my hair. ‘These are the results of the sun. When I’m in the sun, my hair gets blonder, but also dryer, so I need to moisterize it a lot.’
‘Moisterize it?’ Chrystel looked at me in amazement again. ‘You need to moisterize it?’
‘Yes, like put a lot of conditioner on after I’ve washed it.’
‘Oh... because we don’t really need to wash out hair much. If we wash it, it starts breaking. So we only try to wash the scalp once in a while.’ Chrystel was examining my hair from top to the ends. ‘It must be a job to wash your hair. It looks pretty long.’
‘Yes, it is, but you get used to it.’ I added some spray onto the blonder and dryer bits of it.
‘So how do you do it? I have never washed hair like that proper.’
I explained my hair washing routine to Chrystel. It was funny how such every day things could be such an amazement to others. Like the hair care routine of African women was for me. Instead of washing and brushing their hair, they plated it in many different ways, had hair extensions done and their hair coloured in different ways. The African woman who you met once a week could sport a totally different hair do at each time.
We eventually reached the wildlife safari park. It was a hidden oasis next to a highway. The park had been built with wooden materials, with eucalyptus and acacia trees everywhere, giving shade to people and animals from the beaming sun. The park covered an impressively large area that was divided into sections in order to house different types of animals separately and to avoid unnecessary slaughter.
Although it is not the same as seeing animals out in the wild, the park does provide a good opportunity to see the animals close by. You get a good look at how they really are and how they seem to live their lives. You can see how they adapt to their environment by changing their colour according to their surroundings. I was amazed to see a gazelle change its colour from yellow to dark brow when it jumped from yellow hay to brown mud. The visit to the park made me look forward to our road trip across the Rift Valley.
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For more information on safari parks in Kenya, see:
http://www.go2africa.com/kenya/african-safari-guide/parks-and-reserves
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