Adventures in Kakamega

Before anything, let me first say:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHAEL!!!!!!

If you're reading this, you should DEFINITELY call or email Mr. Mike to wish him a Happy 26th, especially since his stinky wife is not in the US to celebrate his birthday.

Ok. Now. About this weekend. It was amazing. In so many ways.

On Friday night, some of the 6th year Kenyan medical students took out the Americans as a sort of welcome to Eldoret type thing. These guys had just recently returned from spending 2 months at IU as part of the exchange between our universities. First we went for dinner at The Klique (the same bar/restaurant where we watched the soccer game last week), which was really fun. It was nice to chat and get to know them better, and hear about their experiences in American and what they thought of our med school. It turns out that they stayed in the same apartments that Mike and I first lived in when we moved to Indy -- the ones that were constantly being set on fire and flooded and whatnot. They've been rennovated recently, and apparently are much nicer now. It was also nice to laugh and joke with them, about how some things in medicine are universal -- such as attendings with egos so big it's amazing they fit through the hospital doors.

Dayna had mentioned that she wanted to hear some live music, so after The Klique, we took some cabs over to a bar called the Wagon Wheel, where there was a live Kenyan band playing. The music was quite good, though I had no idea what they were singing. Most of the other patrons there were in their 30s and 40s, and also quite drunk. There was one guy there (who was two-fisting it the whole night) who became our best friend once he learned that we were from Indiana. Apparently he graduated from IUPUI, but that's all I could understand, as he was slurring his words quite badly. He even decided to buy me a Tusker (local beer) and call me "Miss Indiana! Miss Indiana!" for the rest of the night. He also introduced me to his wife, who apparently is a clinical officer at the hospital, and kept wanting me to come over for dinner to meet his son. Yeah, no thanks. Once I told him I was already quite happily married, he asked who the single girls were and started harrassing them to come over for dinner and matchmaking. He provided quite a few laughs though, and now everyone likes to call me Miss Indiana.

After staying up late on Friday night, Saturday morning came very early. We were supposed to leave for Kakamega from IU house at 7. Well, it was raining in the morning, and we didn't feel like carrying all our bags, bedding etc down the wet and muddy road in the rain. So Priti and I walked to IU house, helped Venus pack up our matatu with food & supplies from IU house, drove to the guesthouse to pick up Lorein, then back to the hostel to pick up Dayna and all of our stuff. So, we didn't really leave until about 7:45.

The ride to Kakamega itself was not to long, but we had to turn off of the main road and drive along a very primitive, bumpy, and muddy road to get to where we were staying. The Rondo, which is a fairly nice & expensive hotel where the IU people usually stay, was full for this weekend, so we had made reservations and booked a tent at a place called the Forest Rest House (or so we thought). We finally find the Forest Rest House, which was quite a bit farther down the road than the Rondo, and they have no idea who we are or why we're there. Great. Apparently they don't rent tents, and have no idea who would have told us that we had a tent reservation. Luckily, one of their bandas was opening at 11am, so we could get that for the weekend. Otherwise it would have been back into the matatu for another hour drive over bad roads to the next closest hotel/camp site. It worked out fine, actually, as the banda house site was beautiful -- smack dab in the middle of the rainforest.

Because of the time it took to figure out our housing fiasco, we got started on our first hike much later than we had wanted. We left about 11:15 for our short hike. This one was just in the forest around the campsite. Our guide, Smith, spent a lot of time telling us about Kakamega rainforest, its various plant and animal species, and the efforts that began in the 1960s to conserve the area and stop deforestation. The rainforest now is massive -- it covers about 24,000 hectares. Before Western colonialization, it used to cover over 350,000 hectares. Yikes. So this was a fun hike. The forest itself was BEAUTIFUL beyond description. So many interesting and massive trees. I probably took 50 pictures just of various trees. Smith was also very good about pointing out various plants that locals use for medicinal purposes. At one point we stepped into a beautiful clearing that contained a massive tea leaf farm. The purpose of the farm is to prevent local villagers from living directly next to the forest, in addition it actually employs most of the local villagers. This was a fun hike too in that we saw quite a lot of monkeys -- Colobo monkeys, blue monkeys, and red tail monkeys. It was so cool to watch them feeding high in the trees and hopping from branch to branch.

We got back from our first hike about 1:30, grabbed a quick lunch, then left with Smith at about 2:30 for our "long" hike. Yeah, marathon was more like it. He told us that if we left at 2:30 and picked up the pace a bit, we would make it back by 5:30 or so -- plenty of time before dark. This hike took us past some local farms before we went into the forest, where we saw some more monkeys, and a lot more interesting plants and birds. We spent some time on the main road that runs through the forest, which was the main area for seeing butterflies, flowers, and a lot more very beautiful birds. I took SO many pictures. We went up through a guava orchard, where Smith picked us a bunch of guavas to eat -- they were very good. The orchard also had some fantastic views of the surrounding mountains. We even saw a baboon in the orchard!

Soon after the orchard, we turned off of the beaten path into the part of the forest that is completely untouched except for the few trained guides in the area who take hikers in there. It was completely astounding. EXACTLY what I have always pictured a rainforest to be like. The trees were much taller and closer together, and the canopy above allowed very little light to shine through. It was just unbelievaby beautiful. We walked through as quietly as we could, just absorbing the scenery and listening to the many, many sounds of the forest. We stayed in this part of the forest for about 90 minutes, then Smith took us down to the river rapids, 'rapid' being a severe understatement of the fact. This was the most violent and powerful display of water I have ever seen. Smith said that anyone who has ever gone in that water has never made it out. It was fantastic. Again, I took a ton of pictures. Because there has been so much rain recently, we had to find a different path away from the river, as the one normally taken was flooded over. By this time it was about 5:30, but Smith tells us we still have a little way to go. This was when the fun really started. We really picked up the pace. Now, I should mention that these trails are incredibly muddy, so we were just slogging through ankle deep mud as fast as we could. Up hills down hills, over trees and branches, across bridges and rivers, all at a rather punishing pace. Despite the fact that I was WORN OUT, it was absoultey FANTASTIC. After about an hour of this, we rest a bit at the top of the hill, and Smith proceeds to tell us that we still have another HOUR left and we need to pick up the pace even MORE. Holy goodness. So, we're pretty much running through the rainforest at this point. And it's raining now. Which I actually didn't mind, as it was getting quite warm, and what's the point of being in a rainforest if there isn't any rain.

So, we're running and running (and slipping and falling quite often, due to the mud and the rain), and we turn off of the path. Smith tells us that as it's now past 6, the park gates are closed, so we can't take the main road back in, but have to take a "shortcut" through the forest. The shortcut actually took us through the roosting grounds of the black and white crested hornbills we had been seeing at a distance all day, so that was quite amazing. We startled them of course, so they would take off from the trees en masse. It was quite the site to see. They are also called helicopter birds, because of the sound their wings make when they're flying. It was just amazing. By the time we made it onto the main forest road, it was definitively dark. I was inexplicably the only one in our party to bring a flashlight, so 6 people were sharing one small flashlight on a pitch black muddy, hole filled road. Not so fun. Smith kept telling us it wasn't much farther, but we must have walked on the road for at least another 30-45 minutes. By the time we FINALLY made it back to the campground, it was almost 8pm, and we were very sore, extremely dirty, tired and hungry. Thankfully, we had ordered dinner from the Forest Rest House canteen before we left on the hike, so we had a lovely meal of chapata and greens waiting for us. Between that and the chips and cookies that we brought, as Dayna said "it was the best random meal I've ever had." After dinner we sat around a fire and had an interesting conversation with 2 people who were there -- a civil engineer who has lived in Kenya most of his life, though his family and culture is Indian and his citizenship and education are from England. The woman he was with was born in Holland, had lived in Kakamega for 2 years some years ago, and now resides in Canada. You never know who you might meet in the middle of a rainforest, eh?

Being exhausted, I slept very soundly that night. We woke up at 5am this morning to go on our sunrise hike. We were kinda bummed when we woke up, as it was raining steadily and had been raining all night. Smith assured us that we would still be able to see a lot from our viewpoint, if not the actual sunrise. We had arranged with our matatu driver Ashley to drive us all to the trail starting point, so we wouldn't have to get up quite so early. So, the 5 girls and Smith pile into the matatu, and we're on our way. Well, as it had been raining all night, the roads are an utter mess at this point. The matatu is basically a big minivan, so of course we get stuck. So the 5 girls and Smith pile OUT of the matatu and push it up the hill. In the dark. In the rain. With mud getting spattered everywhere. We finally made it to the trail starting point, and we being a 30 minute steep uphill climb. We ended up about 250,000 meters above sea level, starting from about 75,000. It was tough, especially as I was quite sore from yesterday. Before we got to the summit of the mountain we were climbing (Smith says it is just a "big hill", but I say it was a mountain), Smith took us into a bat cave. Not my favorite thing. The ceiling was very low and there were bats flying in and out right over our heads. I know that they're harmless, but there's something about shining your flashlight down a deep cave and seeing hundreds of pairs of beady little eyes looking back at you that just gives me the willies. Being 5 girls, we hightailed it out of their pretty quickly.

After the cave came the last 10 minutes of our hike to the top, and they were the hardest. We were going pretty much vertical for this part. It was very strenuous, but more than worth it. What we saw at the top defies description. We were standing on the highest poing of Kakamega rainforest, looking out over miles and MILES of canopy in the early morning light. We could hear thousands of sounds of the forest as well as flocks of birds soaring over the trees, landing, then taking off again. It was AMAZING. We were actually standing above the cloud cover, and we could watch the low-lying clouds move over the canopy, and hear the rain being dumped into the forest. We didn't get to see the sun acually rise, as it was a little too cloudy, but it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen anyway. As I told Mike, if he had been there, it would have been by far the best moment of my life. I took a bunch of pictures, and even a couple videos, but I know this was one of those things that can never be fully justified on film.

After having breakfast at the top of the rainforest (what really felt like the top of the world), we headed back down. Ashley drove us back to the campsite, where we packed up and cleaned up as best we could (all of us being completely caked in mud and soaked through by this time) and packed up. We had a little bit of time to hang out before Ashley came back to pick us up, so we sat out in the sun (which was out by this time) and read. I'm so glad we did, because the group of blue monkeys that lives nearest the Rest House came through. Smith told us they probably would. They were on their morning feed, and the sound they made as they lept from tree to tree overhead was unbelievable. We just sat outside and looked straight up at the monkeys eating. Unbelievable. At one point, the male (he was by far the biggest of any of them) came down and sat on the ground no more than 10 feet away from us. According to the camp staff, they are very acclimated to humans, and will raid banda houses and kitchen if they are not closed securely enough. The male monkey just sat there in front of us for about 30 minutes, not really bothering much with us (of course we were taking pictures like maniacs), surveying all of the females feeding in the trees, eyeing our snacks, before he finally climbed a tree again. It was fantastic!

So, Ashley comes, we pack the matatu, and he says, I'll take you on the other road around Kakamega and show you the crying stone. We say sure, why not, and we're off. Well, this 'other road' was the least road-like of ANY of the roads I've yet been on in Kenya. It was one giant mud pit. It was honestly like driving in the winter in Indiana when there's a thick layer of snow on top of the road with a sheet of ice underneath. The matatu was fishtailing and sliding all over the road. We kept saying "pole pole!" (slower!), but of course the back end fishtailed into a ditch and got soundly stuck in the mud. Us 5 girls jump out -- all wearing flip-flops -- and immidiately sink into ankle-deep mud. Despite our awesome buffness, our pushing of the matatu was if anything, getting it stuck more. So, about 20 of the local villagers come out and help us push, we eventually get unstuck and are on our way again. We drive for a little bit more, swerve around uncontrollably for a bit more, and of course, get stuck again. The back end of the matatu, in a muddy ditch. We were NOT amused. Ashley told us not to get out this time, and again a bunch of local villagers manage to get us pushed out of the ditch. This was not nearly the most fun I've ever had. Soon after the 2nd time of getting stuck, the road improved a great deal (though I can't imagine it getting much worse), and we drove through Kakamega town. It was quite pretty. The sun was very bright, and there were even more people out on the roads than usual, as it was a Sunday and everyone was going to or coming back from church.

Just outside Kakamega town, we stopped at the Crying Stone. It was beautiful. It's a gigantic (and I mean huge -- as wide as 2 skyscrapers and as tall as one) rock formation that looks like a person -- a big broad rock for a body and smaller round rock for the head. It was quite a ways back from the road, so we had to walk through a little village to get to the actualy formation. By the time we climbed up it, we were trailing quite a few of the villagers, most of whom were children helping us up the rock (again, all of us wearing flip flops that recently got a mud bath). The view from the rock was very nice -- we could see the surrounding countryside and villages quite nicely. Ashley told us the story of the Crying Rock: Many years ago, there was a great Kenyan warrior who was the leader of a great tribe. All of the other tribes envied their greatness, and he was constantly being attacked by other tribes. During battle, he was indestructable, as his skin could not be pierced by a spear. The leaders of his rival tribes came up with a plan to have this great warrier fall in love with and marry one of the rival warrior's daughters. This happened. Some years later, the great warrier fell sick, and in order to be healed needed to be pierced on his skin and have medicine injected. He told his wife that the only way to pierce his skin was to pierce his shadow, which she did, and he was healed. His wife went back to her father and told him of the great warrior's weakness. The rival tribes attacked the great warrior, stabbed his shadow, and he died. It is said that when he died, he became a great stone statue that weeps because of his betrayal. Sure enough, there was a steady stream of water flowing from the top of the rock to the bottom. Sort of Africa's version of Samson and Delilah, I think. It was very cool. Again, I took a ton of pictures.

After the Crying Rock, we enjoyed a blessedly uneventful drive back to Eldoret and IU house, where I took quite possibly the most refreshing shower of my life, scrubbing VERY hard to get all of the mud off. Now it's about 20 minutes until my 2nd swahili lesson. (Most of us are taking some basic swahili lessons from Wycliffe, a local tutor. I had my first lesson on Friday, it was fun and went quite well! I won't become fluent by any means, especially not on this visit to Kenya, but I do hope to be able to at least communicate in some way with my patients).

It was a perfectly fantastic weekend. It was only my first real weekend away trip here, but I think that it's going to be hard to beat. We'll see what other adventures Kenya holds.