Birthday Adventures

I am sitting in the dark with four children who are screaming at the tops of their lungs. The power has gone out, shortly after I finished charging my battery for my laptop. So now I have the evening to blog – which I haven’t done in a few days – while a crowd of children watch me type under the bright light of the laptop.

As you know if you’ve been following my blog, Spencer and I went out for a three-day safari in the Maasai Mara. It was a great old time, aside from the fact that I knew our time together was growing shorter by the day. We saw lots of animals on our safari, getting up with the morning sun to see the elusive leopard and many packs of lions. But, the biggest adventure of the trip was when our truck broke down in front of a very upset male lion, which growled at us while our driver was crawling in back to fix the car battery. We sped away very quickly after a few tries of starting up the vehicle.

We returned to Nairobi on Saturday to celebrate my 26^th birthday with a dinner of momentous proportions. While in Kenya, many tourists visit a restaurant called Carnivore, which is known for serving game meat in a buffet style. I had never been there and thought a birthday dinner would be perfect at the best-known Nairobi restaurant. So over the course of two hours, Spencer and I tried ostrich, crocodile, some sort of animal testicle and various amounts of beef and chicken.  And, in true tourist style, the restaurant’s roaming African drum band sang me happy birthday along with the song “Jambo Bwana.”

Next on the birthday/tourist list was going to the Giraffe Center in Nairobi. So on Sunday, which was also Spencer’s departure date, we headed to the Center to hand-feed giraffes and sip on some local coffee.  All in all, the Center was very fun, but both of us promised that it would be the last time we would spend $35 to feed animals.

But, as all fun things come to an end, so did Spencer’s trip to Kenya. He left on Sunday with his very sad, crying girlfriend saying her goodbyes at the airport. The excessive rain that evening made things even more morose as I walked back to my taxi alone, wet and teary eyed.

Now I am back in Bungoma with several stories that surely merit another blog post. But as for now, this is going to be it.  

I hope all is well back home. I miss you all terribly.

Much love,

- k