I must have received the photo above a dozen times from my loyal readers, so thank you! You can easily find a whole gallery of these blokes by simply choosing “images” on your Google search bar, and typing in “Lions Nairobi Road.”

The Nairobi National Park has always been a misplaced natural wonder. The very first thing you see even today when driving out of the Nairobi airport is the national park, pitifully divided from your highway access by a fence that would have a hard time keeping my lab at bay.

It’s always laid beside the city, even in the old days. It’s always touched the airport. Today one of its seven gates is 4½ miles from the center of the giant megalopolis of Nairobi. This is about as far as the main Broadway Theaters are from Central Park.

In the old days, of course, Nairobi was a cow town with lots of grass and trees and not too many people or buildings. The first thing Kathleen and I did after we first arrived Nairobi in the early 1970s was to rent a car and drive into the park.

We paid our fees, drove about 45 or 46 seconds, and stopped in front of a rhino that was not pleased to have been found.

Until four or five years ago the park suffered some serious setbacks, and many of us were pretty sure it wouldn’t last. The city was exploding and today is one of the most congested megalopolis on earth.

City planning lagged building construction, and today’s highways and skyscrapers are turning Nairobi into an architectural nightmare. It reflects the unstoppable growth of Kenya, and this daunting “progress” concerned a lot of local citizens who love Nairobi National Park.

Motivated by a government decision to lay another highway, but this time right through the middle of the park, the concerned citizens formed a foundation.

The Friends of Nairobi National Park has become one of the most proactive local conservation groups. I think we should take pause from time to time and realize that the celebrity foundations that make it onto our TV, like Daphne Sheldrick’s elephant orphanage and the like, are sometimes disconnected from local needs and aspirations.

FONNAP is just the reverse. Its membership, funding and power are all local, and it’s simply because Nairobi citizens want to save the park, the same way New Yorkers want to save Central Park.

Of course there’s a few bigger things in Nairobi than Central Park, and that’s the problem. Like when lions disrupt the morning commute.

That may have been comic relief to some of the mid level executives who missed their breakfast brief that morning because of it, but it is a harbinger of things to come. And in good ways it represents in real, local time the dilemma we understand better from abroad:

People or Animals?

FONNAP is taking a lot of its direction from American conservation organizations. In association with government agencies like the Kenya Wildlife Service as well as supporting NGOs, land on the outskirts of the park on the opposite side of the city is slowly being bought up or leased by the foundation to keep that southeast side unfenced.

This has allowed a good and renewed migration of many animals that continue across wilderness to places like Amboseli National Park.

Local farmers and land owners receive about $4 per hectare per year to keep their land adjacent the park unfenced. For many ranchers this is a no brainer, for they’ve been successfully raising stock among wild animals for generations.

The successful program spearheaded by the African Wildlife Foundation has been a real success story. And together with a great range of other private endeavors, nearly 16,000 hectares of private land has been attached to the park essentially more than doubling its protected size.

So for the time being, anyway, Nairobi National Park survives, and frankly, I’m rather impressed at what the future may hold.

There is hardly anything as anomalous in the wild as Nairobi National Park. Three of its four sides abut some of the highest low-rise human population densities on earth, including some of its most truculent slums. Its main water source, the Athi River, is fickle and destructive and often terribly polluted.

Yet this biggest of Nairobi’s parks still manages to sustain big game like lion, zebra, hartebeest, impala and eland, the biggest antelope on earth.

Imagine taking the narrowest side of New York’s Central Park and extending it over the Hudson, over (or under) I-90 and eventually into the Jersey forests. That’s what Nairobi National Park is like, a narrow southwest side gingerly extending towards the wilderness near Amboseli past concrete factories, giant warehouses and manicured ranches.

I think of eland as a real indicator species, but not in the traditional sense. Normally an indicator species is a fragile one, an animal or bird that is endangered by shifts in its ecosystem. The eland is different. It’s one of the most adaptable on the big game.

In the wild and seemingly endless plains of the southeast Serengeti, somewhere west of the big Lemuta Kopjes, hundreds of eland in family groups that size roam with the greatest timidity. Though each animal approaches 1600 pounds, they are extraordinary shy.

As we approach within a mile, they start running away, and they’re amazing runners. Almost without moving the rest of their bodies an inch, the legs start trotting as if the rest of the body is resting on a railway car. The feet go quicker and quicker moving the giant animal upwards of 30-35 kph.

Then, one – often the leader – leaps! This giant animal can leap 8-10′ into the air, creating this graceful arch over the plains. Soon they’re all leaping that from a distance looks like a line of boiling and popping cooking oil.

Rarely in the wild do we get within a mile or two.

Yet eland can be domesticated easier than any other antelope! In fact there was a period when Kenyans tried to farm them. The problem was that the meat wasn’t very tasty. But like a wild horse, once captured and fenced the eland becomes nearly a pet.

The eland in Nairobi National Park are very tame and according to one observer, now confined to the park, too weary to leave through the narrow corridor southwest. Technically, they haven’t been captured or fenced since the park is fenced on three sides only. But for all practical purposes they have been fenced by a rapidly growing human society.

So instead of leaping away, they are posing for pictures!

The Nairobi National Park is no San Diego Wild Animal Park. It’s much bigger; it has a much greater diversity of wildlife that benefits or suffers from the radical changes in climate, today; and it actually has far fewer visitors.

But it is absolutely the best, and surprisingly so, of the earlier wild. And the fact that we might have lost the eland’s leap for its presence might just not be so bad.

1A: KENYA INVADES SOMALIA
On October 18 Kenya invaded Somalia, where 4-5,000 of its troops remain today. Provoked by several kidnapings and other fighting in and around the rapidly growing refugee camp of Dadaab, the impression given at the time was that Kenyans had “just had enough” of al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda affiliated terrorism group in The Horn which at the time controlled approximately the southern third of Somalia. Later on, however, it became apparent that the invasion had been in the works for some time.

At the beginning of the invasion the Kenyan command announced its objective was the port city of Kismayo. To date that hasn’t happened. Aided by American drones and intelligence, and by French intelligence and naval warships, an assessment was made early on that the battle for Kismayo would be much harder than the Kenyans first assumed, and the strategy was reduced to laying siege.

That continues and remarkably, might be working. Call it what you will, but the Kenyan restraint managed to gain the support of a number of other African nations, and Kenya is now theoretically but a part of the larger African Union peacekeeping force which has been in Somali for 8 years. Moreover, the capital of Mogadishu has been pretty much secured, a task the previous peace keepers had been unable to do for 8 years.

The invasion costs Kenya dearly. The Kenyan shilling has lost about a third of its value, there are food shortages nationwide, about a half dozen terrorist attacks in retribution have occurred killing and wounding scores of people (2 in Nairobi city) and tourism – its principal source of foreign reserves – lingers around a third of what it would otherwise be had there be no invasion.

At first I considered this was just another failed “war against terrorism” albeit in this case the avowed terrorists controlled the country right next door. Moreover, I saw it as basically a proxy war by France and the U.S., which it may indeed be. But the Kenyan military restraint and the near unanimous support for the war at home, as well as the accumulation of individually marginal battle successes and outside support now coming to Kenya in assistance, all makes me wonder if once again Africans have shown us how to do it right.

That’s what makes this such an important story. The possibility that conventional military reaction to guerilla terrorism has learned a way to succeed, essentially displacing the great powers – the U.S. primarily – as the world’s best military strategists. There is as much hope in this statement as evidence, but both exist, and that alone raises this story to the top.

You may also wish to review Top al-Shabaab Leader Killed and Somali Professionals Flee as Refugees.

1B: TWEVOLUTION CHANGES EGYPT
The Egyptian uprising, unlike its Tunisian predecessor, ensured that no African government was immune to revolution, perhaps no government in the world. I called it Twevolution because especially in Egypt the moment-by-moment activities of the mass was definitely managed by Twitter.

And the particular connection to Kenya was fabulous, because the software that powered the Twitter, Facebook and other similar revolution managing tools came originally from Kenya.

Similar of course to Tunisia was the platform for any “software instructions” – the power of the people! And this in the face of the most unimaginable odds if you’re rating the brute physical force of the regime in power.

Egypt fell rather quickly and the aftermath was remarkably peaceful. Compared to the original demonstrations, later civil disobedience whether it was against the Coptics or the military, was actually quite small. So I found it particularly fascinating how world travelers reacted. Whereas tourist murders, kidnapings and muggings were common for the many years that Egypt experienced millions of visitors annually, tourists balked at coming now that such political acts against tourists no longer occurred, because the instigators were now a part of the political process! This despite incredible deals.

We wait with baited breath for the outcome in Syria, but less visible countries like Botswana and Malawi also experienced their own Twevolution. And I listed 11 dictators that I expected would ultimately fall because of the Egyptian revolution.

Like any major revolution, the path has been bumpy, the future not easily predicted. But I’m certain, for example, that the hard and often brutal tactics of the military who currently assumes the reins of state will ultimately be vindicated. And certainly this tumultuous African revolution if not the outright cause was an important factor in our own protests, like Occupy Wall Street.

3: NEW COUNTRY OF SOUTH SUDAN
The free election and emergence of South Sudan as Africa’s 54th country would have been the year’s top story if all that revolution hadn’t started further north! In the making for more than ten years, a remarkably successful diplomatic coup for the United States, this new western ally rich with natural resources was gingerly excised from of the west’s most notorious foes, The Sudan.

Even as Sudan’s president was being indicted for war crimes in Darfur, he ostensibly participated in the creation of this new entity. But because of the drama up north, the final act of the ultimate referendum in the South which set up the new republic produced no more news noise than a snap of the fingers.

Regrettably, with so much of the world’s attention focused elsewhere, the new country was hassled violently by its former parent to the north. We can only hope that this new country will forge a more humane path than its parent, and my greatest concern for Africa right now is that global attention to reigning in the brutal regime of the north will be directed elsewhere.

4: UGANDA FALTERS
Twevolution essentially effected every country in Africa in some way. Uganda’s strongman, Yoweri Museveni, looked in the early part of the last decade like he was in for life. Much was made about his attachment to American politicians on the right, and this right after he was Bill Clinton’s Africa doll child.

But even before Twevolution – or perhaps because of the same dynamics that first erupted in Tunisia and Egypt – Museveni’s opponents grew bold and his vicious suppression of their attempts to legitimately oust him from power ended with the most flawed election seen in East Africa since Independence.

But unlike in neighboring Kenya where a similar 2007 election caused nationwide turmoil and an ultimate power sharing agreement, Museveni simply jailed anyone who opposed him. At first this seemed to work but several months later the opposition resurfaced and it became apparent that the country was at a crossroads. Submit to the strongman or fight him.

Meanwhile, tourism sunk into near oblivion. And by mid-May I was predicting that Museveni was the new Mugabe and had successfully oppressed his country to his regime. But as it turned out it was a hiatus not a surrender and a month later demonstrations began, twice as strong as before. And it was sad, because they went on and on and on, and hundreds if not thousands of people were injured and jailed.

Finally towards the end of August a major demonstration seemed to alter the balance. And if it did so it was because Museveni simply wouldn’t believe what was happening.

I wish I could tell you the story continued to a happy ending, but it hasn’t, at least not yet. There is an uneasy calm in Ugandan society, one buoyed to some extent by a new voice in legislators that dares to criticize Museveni, that has begun a number of inquiries and with media that has even dared to suggest Museveni will be impeached. The U.S. deployment of 100 green berets in the country enroute the Central African Republic in October essentially seems to have actually raised Museveni’s popularity. So Uganda falters, and how it falls – either way – will dramatically alter the East African landscape for decades.

5: GLOBAL WARMING
This is a global phenomena, of course, but it is the developing world like so much of Africa which suffers the most and is least capable of dealing with it. The year began with incessant reporting by western media of droughts, then floods, in a confused misunderstanding of what global warming means.

It means both, just as in temperate climates it means colder and hotter. With statistics that questions the very name “Developed World,” America is reported to still have a third of its citizens disputing that global warming is even happening, and an even greater percentage who accept it is happening but believe man is not responsible either for it occurring or trying to change it. Even as clear and obvious events happen all around them.

Global warming is pretty simple to understand, so doubters’ only recourse is to make it much more confusing than it really is. And the most important reason that we must get everyone to understand and accept global warming, is we then must accept global responsibilities for doing something about it. I was incensed, for example, about how so much of the media described the droughts in Africa as fate when in fact they are a direct result of the developed world’s high carbon emissions.

And the news continued in a depressing way with the very bad (proponents call it “compromised”) outcome of the Durban climate talks. My take was that even the countries most effected, the developed world, were basically bought off from making a bigger stink.

Environmentalists will argue, understandably, that this is really the biggest story and will remain so until we all fry. The problem is that our lives are measured in the nano seconds of video games, and until we can embrace a long view of humanity and that our most fundamental role is to keep the world alive for those who come after us, it won’t even make the top ten for too much longer.

6: COLTAN WARS IMPEDED
This is a remarkable story that so little attention has been given. An obscure part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act essentially halved if not ultimately will end the wars in the eastern Congo which have been going on for decades.

These wars are very much like the fractional wars in Somalia before al-Shabaab began to consolidate its power, there. Numerous militias, certain ones predominant, but a series of fiefdoms up and down the eastern Congo. You can’t survive in this deepest jungle of interior Africa without money, and that money came from the sale of this area’s rich rare earth metals.

Tantalum, coltran more commonly said, is needed by virtually every cell phone, computer and communication device used today. And there are mines in the U.S. and Australia and elsewhere, but the deal came from the warlords in the eastern Congo. And Playbox masters, Sony, and computer wizards, Intel, bought illegally from these warlords because the price was right.

And that price funded guns, rape, pillaging and the destruction of the jungle. The Consumer Protection Agency, set up by the Dodd-Frank Act, now forbids these giants of technology from doing business in the U.S. unless they can prove they aren’t buying Coltran from the warlords. Done. War if not right now, soon over.

7: ELEPHANTS AND CITES
The semi-decade meeting of CITES occurred this March in Doha, Qatar, and the big fight of interest to me was over elephants. The two basic opposing positions on whether to downlist elephants from an endangered species hasn’t changed: those opposed to taking elephants off the list so that their body parts (ivory) could be traded believed that poaching was at bay, and that at least it was at bay in their country. South Africa has led this flank for years and has a compelling argument, since poaching of elephants is controlled in the south and the stockpiling of ivory, incapable of being sold, lessens the funds that might otherwise be available for wider conservation.

The east and most western countries like the U.S. and U.K. argue that while this may be true in the south, it isn’t at all true elsewhere on the continent, and that once a market is legal no matter from where, poaching will increase geometrically especially in the east where it is more difficult to control. I concur with this argument, although it is weakened by the fact that elephants are overpopulated in the east, now, and that there are no good strategic plans to do something about the increasing human/elephant conflicts, there.

But while the arguments didn’t change, the proponents themselves did. In a dramatic retreat from its East African colleagues, Tanzania sided with the south, and that put enormous strain on the negotiations. When evidence emerged that Tanzania was about the worst country in all of Africa to manage its poaching and that officials there were likely involved, the tide returned to normal and the convention voted to continue keeping elephants listed as an endangered species.

8: RHINO POACHING REACHES EXTREME LEVELS
For the first time in history, an animal product (ground rhino horn) became more expensive on illicit markets than gold.

Rhino, unlike elephant, is not doing well in the wild. It’s doing wonderfully in captivity and right next to the wild in many private reserves, but in the wild it’s too easy a take. This year’s elevation of the value of rhino horn resulted in unexpectedly high poaching, and some of it very high profile.

9: SERENGETI HIGHWAY STOPPED
This story isn’t all good, but mostly, because the Serengeti Highway project was shelved and that’s the important part. And to be sure, the success of stopping this untenable project was aided by a group called Serengeti Watch.

But after some extremely good and aggressive work, Serengeti Watch started to behave like Congress, more interested in keeping itself in place than doing the work it was intended to do. The first indication of this came when a Tanzanian government report in February, which on careful reading suggested the government was having second thoughts about the project, was identified but for some reason not carefully analyzed by Watch.

So while the highway is at least for the time being dead, Serengeti Watch which based on its original genesis should be as well, isn’t.

10: KENYAN TRANSFORMATION AND WORLD COURT
The ongoing and now seemingly endless transformation of Kenyan society and politics provoked by the widespread election violence of 2007, and which has led to a marvelous new constitution, is an ongoing top ten story for this year for sure. But more specifically, the acceptance of this new Kenyan society of the validity of the World Court has elevated the power of that controversial institution well beyond anyone’s expectations here in the west.

Following last year’s publication by the court of the principal accused of the crimes against humanity that fired the 2007 violence, it was widely expected that Kenya would simply ignore it. Not so. Politicians and current government officials of the highest profile, including the son of the founder of Kenya, dutifully traveled to The Hague to voluntarily participate in the global judicial process that ultimately has the power to incarcerate them.

The outcome, of course, remains to be seen and no telling what they’ll do if actually convicted. It’s very hard to imagine them all getting on an airplane in Nairobi to walk into a cell in Rotterdam.

But in a real switcheroo this travel to The Hague has even been spun by those accused as something positive and in fact might have boosted their political standing at home. And however it effects the specific accused, or Kenya society’s orientation to them, the main story is how it has validated a global institution’s political authority.

What if the tongue missed the pellet?!!!

After a final dawn game drive in the northern end of the reserve and a fine breakfast at Olonana, we fly back to Nairobi and the family headed to Karen.

Karen is the suburb outside Nairobi named for Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) who wrote Out of Africa. It is today where the rich and powerful live, and where several great attractions are located including the Karen Blixen National Museum.

This is the home that Dinesen used during her failed attempt to grow coffee in Kenya. It is the perfect example of early colonial living. Remarkable for its simplicity and few rooms, it is beautifully furnished with valuable heirlooms that the early colonialists brought from Europe.

They sometimes waited for nearly a year for these trunks to arrive, but in those days there was never a concern that they wouldn’t! “Lost Baggage” hadn’t yet been concocted, I guess.

The Cronans especially enjoyed the Giraffe Centre. This is where the endangered Rothschild giraffe is protected, on display for all guests forking out the hefty entrance fee (that supposedly goes for the conservation of the giraffe). Today the giraffe is only found in Nakuru National Park, Kenya’s entirely fenced-in big game park. It is extinct in its original range (Laikipia).

Emily announced with particular pride that a giraffe picked a pellet with its tongue out of her mouth! This trick has become quite popular, but I’ve often wondered what would happen if that giraffe tongue – approximately 18″ long – missed the mark and continued into your esophagus….

The final attraction was Kazuri Beads. This brilliant “Harambee” (‘self-help’ in Swahili) has really taken off in the last few years, supporting dozens of working women who create outstanding jewelry and cutlery. Kathleen and I have so much Kazuri we’re ready to become an outlet. I particularly like the dinner settings in guinea fowl mode.

The Cronans had to return for an overnight to Nairobi before continuing to Kigali for our gorilla trek. That was an extremely convenient way of starting with the city tour, then going on safari, and returning for these attractions in Karen.

Safaris that don’t need an interlude in Nairobi really should have at least one full day (which normally means two nights) to enjoy these fun and informative attractions. Those who just rush in to see the animals and then rush not only miss the much greater overview of Kenyan society, but will be left in the dark when the increasingly important human/animal conflicts appear in the news.

You can’t have a game park without the support of country and its peoples. And these types of visits in Nairobi seem to me to be the bare essentials for beginning to understand this complex and increasingly tense relationship.

An absolutely beautiful crisp Sunday in Nairobi!

Father John (Cronan) had called my wife, Kathleen, while I was on the Great Migration Safari in March, and the vagaries of my own schedules, his as a very active scientist, and his children and sigoths meant that we had to “Do It!” right now.

I’m really looking forward to a spectacular trip! For one thing we’ll once again debunk one of the Great Myths of Safari Travel that the best time to go is the dry season. East Africa has just come through a torrential rainy season, and every third of fourth day it’s still raining.

That’s good! I’ve spent 30 years of my career trying to explain this, fighting with institutionalized myths about when to go created not from facts, but to assuage client potential. That’s a fancy way of saying that “high season” and “best season” almost everywhere in the world (except for the Arctic and Antarctic) correspond not with the optimum travel opportunities at that time, but strictly when it’s convenient for people to travel. So inevitably the highest season for travel everywhere in the world is the December holiday season.

That’s true even in places like Botswana, where it’s an awful time to go! (Middle of its terribly hot, humid torrential rains.) December is absolutely NOT the time to visit Botswana.

John had been a part of a Great Migration Safari group I guided in 2007. Then we began in Kenya’s south, so this time we’ll tackle Kenya’s north, and as a perfect increment to his safari travel (which has also included Botswana), we’ll end the trip with a gorilla trek in Rwanda!

But today right after their arrival it was lovely in Nairobi! Bright, crisp, cool, and frangipani, bougainvillea and flame trees were brilliant! As we drove out of the airport beside the lush Nairobi National Park we saw giraffe in the distance! Amazing, it isn’t? Wild animals just outside an airport for a metropolis of 6 million people!

We walked through the city center learning something of the history of the area, had tea at the Thorntree Café and then went to the National Museum.

This was a real treat for me. As always, my passion for paleontology draws me like an iron filing to the incredible early man exhibit of the museum. But today was extra special, because John and both his sons are geneticists. We all marveled as I always do inside the special room where the originals of Zinj, Turkana Boy, the Black Skull and several other hominins are displayed.

The originals! What other museum in the world would put its priceless national treasures on display like that?

Early to bed for early to rise. Tomorrow, on to the Aberdare!

Bitter enemies now best buddies!

And normal is good.

There are a lot of sarcastic cliches about hindsight, but in this case it’s a perfect lense for realizing how bad Nairobi and Kenya had been. First the horrible election violence of 2007, and then the “drought” finally ended by flash floods and mud slides.

From December, 2007, through March, 2010, Kenya suffered one of its worst periods in its modern history. In hindsight, its remarkable any of us thought we could just sail through it unscathed. And to top it all of with a global depression…

Today, it’s back to June, 2007. The city is green and growing. Politics is all healthy fisticuffs but sane and masterfully Shakespearean.

The mood on the streets hasn’t been so positive for ages. People talk of going back to work; of increased harvests; of new factories and positive outlooks for their kids. The Nairobi dam is full; there aren’t electrical outages, anymore.

In fact, the cost of electricity has gone down!

The East African Community – a pipedream of the British a half century ago – made its first big play with a new Nile River agreement that has the power to force giant Egypt to the table. In extraordinary deft pan-African politics, Vice President Kilonzo attended the inauguration of southern Sudan’s primary official in Juba, an important diplomatic snub of Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and then attended Bashir’s inauguration in Khartoum, a balancing act that will probably work and rivals the Chinese diplomacy with the Koreas.

And the once venomous rivals, President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga, were practically holding hands at several rallies and today promoting the “Yes” campaign for the constitutional referendum.

And there’s been an unexpectedly large surge in tourism! Most of it is to Kenya’s grand beaches, and never mind that’s probably in large part because of oil spills, earthquakes and drug wars on Caribbean beaches that compete head-to-head with Kenya.

Kenya’s doing everything right, right now, and everything seems to be helping Kenya.

Big Game by a Big City.

Is this positively Green, or is it just a temporary reflection of heavy rains?

This adds to the carnivore resurgence here. An estimated 35-40 lion have been found in the park recently.

The park is diligently surveyed by members of Richard Leakey’s Wildlife Direct organization.

These are environmental activists who live in Nairobi and have as much a stake in the health of the park as we do at home with our county reserves.

The actual park is pretty small, 46 sq. miles and is located only 4 miles from the city center! There are more than 100 species of mammals and 400 species of birds. But before you get too excited about reducing your time on safari, it’s often difficult to find much without a real park advocate/guide.

With little effort you’re likely to see buffalo, giraffe, hartebeest and impala. These are animals which don’t suffer from the bushmeat trade, because buffalo is too aggressive, giraffe is too hard to poach, people don’t like hartebeest, and impala is too quick and nimble and has a strong set of defensive horns.

The park is fenced on three sides and open to the Athi River wilderness, an area that still has a good number of pastoralists. Including this dispersal area, the animal numbers increase substantially and there is hope that one day they will be a regular attraction from the park tracks.

Rhinos are contained a patrolled and fenced area that you will see, and unfortunately, that’s how rhinos are viewed throughout East Africa today. (There are real efforts to nurture the few free-ranging ones in the Mara and the Serengeti, but that’s till an unfilled dream.)

The lion numbers have increased during this last period, first because of the drought and the fact that the wetlands and Langata Dam attracted herbivores. It’s uncertain this number will remain, but it’s a definite opportunity right now.

If you’re a birder, then the park is sure day trip winner. Patrick Lhoir and Brian Finch have been birding the park for years, and they report it better than ever!

I remember Kathleen and my first safari… in Nairobi National Park! I rented a car which promptly died about ten feet from a rhino. Up close and personal.

It is truly a phenomenon this park. The news is good, today. I hope it lasts.

Nairobi’s climate this year has been strange but fortunate. While most of the rest of the country suffers from serious drought, it has rained steadily on the city for nearly 9 months. The last several months have been hardly more than drizzle, but it has brought with it a cold that would normally have been gone by the third week of July.

So it was cold and drizzly. But that didn’t stop anyone from getting right into touring.

After dinner at the excellent Tamarind seafood restaurant, the Wagners and Gilberts were joined by the Chelms and Antonaccis and Cheryl Steris the next morning on an excursion to Karen. It was a Saturday so I figured the traffic would be lighter, but I guess that’s no longer the case.

They did manage to squeeze the three attractions into a long morning: Kazuri Beads, Karen Blixen’s homestead and Giraffe Manor, but a good hunk of that morning was spent driving back and forth from the city.

In the afternoon the Kaspers and Wagners joined us all for my walking tour of Nairobi. The sun came out and we started at the Memorial to the August 7, 1998, bombing of the American embassy. I often start here because of where it’s located, rather than for what it is.

I consider the Memorial a bit too ideological. To begin with, it costs to get into the little park, albeit only Ksh 20/. If you want to use the john, that costs another Ksh 10/. The video, which costs Ksh 100/ to see, is packed with propaganda of how successful America is waging its war against terrorism. That so?

We walk from there down the government street past the Department of Education, Foreign Affairs and finally the Office of the President. This gives me the opportunity to discuss the top-heavy, convoluted and failing Kenyan government, a government which is currently stale-mated by the forced coalition that ended the violence after the last election.

But I don’t blame East Africans or East African culture as much as the failed colonial period. The British thrust a form of government on the East African countries that simply isn’t working; and the world powers entrenched corruption by vapid unaccounted “aid” as they sought favorable alliances during the Cold War.

From there we turn down towards Parliament, past the Kenyatta Memorial and then turn past the Basilica to City Hall. This gives me the opportunity to praise Kenyan youth, who I just wish would somehow own up to the fact that it is they alone who can bring Kenya out of the mess it currently finds itself. This is where the students often rioted.

We enjoyed tea at the Stanley beside the modern version of the Thorn Tree message center, and visited the Exchange Bar with its original 19th Century furnishings. This is the perfect setting to describe the era of White Mischief which defined colonial Kenya as a somewhat renegade somewhat rebel white civilization.

And the few nearby art galleries let me once again praise Kenyan youth, who in places as established as New York and Tokyo are defining contemporary art.

We walked past the city mosque, and I explained how East African societies were becoming more and more Muslim as the western world is perceived to be abandoning them.

I suppose I began my walking tours of Nairobi when it became ridiculously impossible to drive, because of the traffic. But it’s a great way for people adjusting to a new time zone to keep active and learn a lot of new stuff. It’s something I think everyone really enjoyed.

The buffet breakfast was robust as usual: one side table was filled with fresh cut fruits: grapefruit, watermelon, oranges, mangoes, several kinds of passion fruits, placed next to a tub of various kinds of yoghurt with attractive little bowls of almonds, walnuts, and various Indian nuts and spices.

The long 25′ buffet table began with cheeses, smoked salmon, a dozen different kinds of pastries, a dozen different kinds of breads, and cold meats. There was then the cooking station where a friendly chef whipped up any kind of omelette or pancake or waffle, and there were six kinds of syrups and heavy creams for garnish. The rest of the table was laden with hot tubs of bacon, potatoes, mushrooms, tomatoes, several kinds of sausage, eggs benedict, the “chef’s special” and ended with a huge tub of appropriately altered “ugali” or (very delicious) corn porridge.

More than a thousand delegates were attending the World Congress of Agroforestry at the UN Headquarters in Gigiri, during which they predicted widespread famine in Africa. Today, the Kenyan Government announced up to 10,000,000 Kenyans were starving because of the drought.

It was a damn shame that I didn’t bring an umbrella, yesterday, because all morning long it rained in Nairobi. About half of all the Kenyan livestock in the country is dead because of the drought.

Many of us went for a quick swim in the Olympic-sized pool before going to work this morning. The Norfolk is my favorite hotel in Nairobi, and they heat the pool very nicely, wonderful in this cold season.

A third of Kenya’s population must now buy water to survive. Kenyans living in the city slums with a per capita of less than $300 per year must now spend $5/day for enough water to drink and cook. In the residential areas of central Nairobi, every other day is now without water.

Several of Nairobi’s popular discos – thought off limits to foreigners only a few years ago – are now popular with conference goers, tourists and foreign workers. The Simba Saloon is a popular suburban disco and Gypsy’s is very popular in the city. Every night, loud contemporary music, strobes and sometimes floor shows. Throughout most of Nairobi and the country, electricity is now turned off during the day, because of poor hydroelectric power. In many places, night rationing is beginning.

Schools can’t use computers. Refrigerators are useless. No one knows the news, because radios and televisions are quiet.

So goes the paradigm of heart-breaking Africa. Tomorrow, the first of my 22 clients arrive for a fabulous safari.

My second safari of the season, the Howard and Godfrey families, arrived unusually altogether on Saturday night. Like most travelers to East Africa, what they wanted to do was see animals, so I’d been unsuccessful suggesting a two-night stay in Nairobi to begin.

Two nights gives you a full day to see all of the city’s attractions, and they’re really nice: in order of my preference: the museum, walking downtown and visiting contemporary art galleries, the Karen Blixen Homestead, Giraffe Manor and Kazuri Beads. There’s also the elephant feeding at Daphne Sheldrick’s orphanage which is wonderful, but the 11 a.m. schedule in the Langata area often makes any other additional option then difficult.

So I made the decision that on our first day out of Nairobi, hardly 12 hours after everyone arrived, that we would visit the museum and the city, have lunch, and then bee-line it down to Tsavo. After all, it was a Sunday, the quietest day of the week, and I knew traffic would be manageable. I was … sort of right.

But the morning in the museum was a hit. I start with Ahmed, the huge (“hugest” according to Dillon) elephant ever found in Kenya. Guarded until its death a generation ago, it is now fiberglassed for eternity, and provides an excellent place to begin the fascinating discussion of elephants.

We then visit the gourd pyramid, where gourds from ethnic groups around Kenya are beautifully linked together as a demonstration of how varied the people of East Africa are.

But my favorite room is the early man exhibit, including what I really believe is one of the most phenomenally valuable exhibits of any museum in the world.

There are a number of excellent early man exhibits in museums around the world, and South Africa’s Sterkfontein Cradle of Mankind museum is probably the overall best. But what I find so wonderful about Nairobi’s exhibit is that they seem to keep it contemporary. When Michel Brunet published finding Toumai, what may be the earliest hominid ever discovered (6 mya), the display in Nairobi was changed pretty quickly to reflect this possibility.

The long glass display case of casts of early hominids is excellent arranged, with perfect, concise description. And it all begins with a hands-on exhibit of what a fossil is.

But the gem is the smaller, square and often sealed-off room that displays the original skulls of 7 early hominids including both Nutcracker Man and Turkana Boy. These are two of the most important finds ever made, certainly vying with Lucy for the most important ever. I think of the protection that Lucy received during her recent world tour, versus the trust that museum officials in Nairobi accord their visitors who stick their noses up to the glass of these invaluable fossils.

I think everyone was pretty pleased with the tour. We followed it with a walking tour of Nairobi and lunch at the Stanley’s Thorntree café.

I hope they were, anyway. The subsequent drive into Tsavo on the “new” Mombasa road was a nightmare. The truck traffic was unbelievable. More on this in a later blog.