Exactly 231 years after John Hancock and company signed their John Hancocks and company, I made my own declaration of independence- "Uhuru in Nakuru!". Uhuru, in addition to being the very, very cool name of Jomo Kenyatta's son, is Swahili for "freedom", and freedom is exactly what Vivien and I needed. As much as I like Nanyuki and Dol Dol, they're the smallest, most stifling places I've ever been. We set foot in Dol Dol, and we're mobbed by our Dol Dol friends, as well as the Dol Dol drunks and the Dol Dol beggars. As soon as we get back to Nanyuki, our cell phones start ringing: someone's spotted us getting off the matatu, word has spread, and everyone we know in town is calling us. Even strangers track our movements: when I talk to someone in Nanyuki for the first time, he or she can rattle off eight or nine places I've been and what I was doing at each one. Apparently, there's no anonymity for the token white people in a small Kenyan town.
So we went someplace bigger. After seven weeks in Dol Dol and Nanyuki, Nakuru felt huge. When I walked into one of the big, modern supermarkets, my jaw actually dropped (so I guess my reintegration into North American society may be rougher than I predicted). It was nice to be someplace bustling, however, and to be in streets filled with all kinds of people: Kikuyus and Maasai, yes, but also Luhyas, Luos, Kalenjins, Somalis, South Asians and wazungu. More than that, it was nice that all of these people brought their cuisines with them to Nakuru. After seven weeks of variations on corn, beans and goat, I can't describe the pleasure with which I consumed Chinese food, real Indian food (my God, cooked in a tandoor!) and a tall, frosty milkshake.
Of course, Nakuru's fame doesn't come from its supermarkets or its cuisine. It owes its fame to the national park, Lake Nakuru, in the outskirts of town. At 15 square km, Lake Nakuru is usually home to several million flamingos. Seen from up on the Baboon Cliffs, it looks like there's a pink band running around the whole circumference of the lake, with several other agglomerations of pink in the middle marking the sites of highest crustacean density. The mud flats around the lake play host to lions, leopards, warthogs, rhinos, giraffes, gazelles, kudu, and so many zebras and buffaloes that after a few hours you wish they'd go away so you could get a better view of the other animals. Or at least I did- I have several pictures where zebras jumped in front of whatever I was trying to photograph. It was a good time despite the zebras, however. We went around with two Nakuruites who couldn't tell the difference between a buffalo and a rhino, but they made up for their lack of animal knowledge with a willingness to take their old Toyota Celica everywhere the safari Land Rovers were going: on mud tracks, across rivers, over the grass. Their ignorance of wildlife was only really a problem when Wes decided to throw banana peels at the baboons and we found ourselves surrounded by two dozen very hungry monkeys.
Nakuru also has a bit of infamy attached to it, at least by the Maasai, because of Menengai Crater. The crater, towering 1500 feet above town, is supposedly the site of a nineteenth century battle that the Laikipiak Maasai lost to another Maasai band, with hundreds of the losers tossed over the rim to the smoky bottom. The Maasai identify it as a site of evil and refuse to get near the rim. They're really missing out. The view is amazing. There's an almost sheer drop to the bottom, 1000 feet below, and as you look across the crater, 15 kilometers wide, you can see the path the lava took, the ripples it left on the crater floor. Just like the Gilani supermarket, it was a breathtaking thing to see.
Well, now I'm back in Nanyuki, and in a few hours we're off to Dol Dol. The HIV workshop starts tomorrow, and we still need to iron out the logistics. The biggest issue is that we bought seven goats for the lunches, and now we have to find someone to slaughter and butcher them. That's what it comes down when you run a workshop in Laikipia- finding someone to kill a goat. Ah, it's good to be home.
