May 27 – New apartment so old issues stop
Since our return from Uganda when the plumbing work supposed to be completed in 3 days was not completed in 10, our apartment issues have continued. We had slept in another apartment for a night, dealt with no water two or three times when we moved back in, and showered ourselves and the entire bathroom for the rest of the time. The “fix” for the plumbing forced us to escalate the shower water flow to fire-hose pressure unless we wanted to listen to loud clanging in the pipes. Meanwhile, all of our clothes are still in a second bedroom. Supposedly our apartment will be painted (to hide all the stains, nails in walls, etc.) so we don’t want to move our clothes back in until our bedroom is painted, dried, and the drawers filed to open (most are warped from previous moisture leaks). Our rent, paid by TechnoServe, continues to be held hostage until all of this is fixed. Our apartment complex manager has told us that our bedroom will be painted Friday (despite my request for Wednesday) next week, but meanwhile, if we wanted to move into the apartment upstairs permanently, we could. This apartment also had suffered from lack of water and leakage issues, but according to the manager, fewer than ours. I wonder why the tenant moved out in the last week or two…
So instead, on June 4th, we will move into a brand new 2-bedroom apartment in a new building. It is walking distance—at least in the morning—from work and shopping! However, we must hold our breath the whole walk so we don’t inhale the nasty fumes from all the cars passing by!
May 25 – Musings on lizards and other creatures
After our visit to Tsavo and the Lizard Talent Show (see below), I have a definite respect for the role of lizards in keeping down the bug population. I was vegging and watching crappy TV when I saw a gecko-like lizard appear for what I thought was the first time in our apartment. Rick had kept his previous gecko meetings to himself, but I was now prepared for mutual respect. Also I was grateful for minimal bugs (except mosquitoes which bomb-dive me only during the night). The lizard emerged and skittered across one living room wall for 2 nights in a row. It’s now gone back to its hiding place to do its much-appreciated business quietly.
May 20 – Potholes, crazy drivers, potholes, giraffes, potholes, camels
To look at the glass half-full, there are stretches of Kenyan roads that are very nice 2-lane highways and even some of the roads inside Tsavo West National Park are smoother than we anticipated. From the half-empty perspective, the road from between Nairobi and the main port for East Africa, Mombasa, is an embarrassment to Kenya. The potholes are sometimes so large that it is safer to drive on the wrong side of the road than chance breaking an axle. However, due to trucks overloaded with cargo which leave Mombasa for Nairobi that cause the ruts to be significantly deeper than the lead heading to Mombasa. Getting behind several stinky, smoky trucks going 20 Km per hour up hill is so frustrating that you almost understand the crazy drivers who are obsessed with passing even as they crest a steep hill, just to get a bit ahead of these trucks. One bus driver was so irresponsibly passing everyone that we cheered as we drove by him pulled over at a police stop. Did I mention the potholes? The last two hours of road to Nairobi was so riddled with holes, it made our excursions on Tsavo Park’s dirt roads seem like a picnic.
Back to the brighter side of our trip back to Nairobi, our 2.5 days in Tsavo had been so totally tuned to sighting animals that it took us at least an hour not to scream out “buffalo” or “dik-dik” every time we passed cows and goats. However, our keen vision proved helpful because we saw 6 giraffe about 100 feet off the road on the far outskirts of the city, as well as about 25 camels grazing in a nearby field. Though there was a very high likelihood that the camels were being raised to supply Carnivore Restaurant, at least they were feeding on green pastures. Maybe they were content with their short lives? Our final animal sighting was at the major traffic circle connecting Nairobi with the Mombasa Road. There were several Maribou Storks feeding on the well-stocked, landscape in the circle. And there were many of these two to three feet tall birds hovering on the trees right above the highway. The Maribou totally ignored the busy fuming vehicles, seemingly content to have become city birds.
May 18 to 20th – Private Wildlife Viewing from our Guest House in Tsavo National Park West
Anna, Greg, 4 of their friends, Rick and me were caravanning in two cars. We had seen a few animals on the road into Tsavo as we approached the Kamboyo Guest House around sunset. We pulled into the driveway, unloaded enough food for a week not just three days and chose our rooms for the weekend. Anna and Greg had stayed at this place previously so told us to climb up to the 2nd floor viewing deck to await the animals that would visit the water hole in our backyard. With our gin-and-tonic “sundowners” in hand, we all watched as a couple warthogs and Cape Buffalo ambled up to the water hole followed by a family of elephants. The magnificent pre-dinner show was followed by a magnificent dinner of steaks, salad, wasabi mashed potatoes, garlic bread and homemade tiramisu for desert. This was far superior to Treetops—at about 10% of the cost-- with much more to come. From Friday night through Sunday afternoon, we saw a delightful assortment of animals, including tens of buffalo who deferred the “executive” waterhole to 2 elephants.
Lizard Talent Show: When we were not entertained by large animals or our gourmet dinners, we also treated to a gecko-like lizard talent show on the brick wall above our outdoor dining table. 5 of these clever, slightly creepy creatures (naked tails swishing around…mmm) were hovering around the veranda light. The light of course attracted moths and other bugs. The lizards would eye them beadily, chase and toy with them, then consume the bugs with the flourish of wings beating against their sticky mouths. During this joint party, they left our food alone and we left theirs alone… We clearly had too much alcohol because both nights we cheered as the lizards captured then swallowed whole their frantically flapping prey.
We observed (to be loosely sung as “Partridge in a Pear Tree” verses):
Lots of Golden Weavers
Many water-and bushbucks
12 Dik-Diks darting
11 Buffalo roaming
10 Impala leaping
9 Bushbucks hiding
8 vervets begging
7 Warthogs trotting
6 Hornbills flapping
5 Elephants...
4 Gamma Lizards
3 Bats a-swooping
2 Hippos chuckling AND
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ENDING:
1 Verreaux Owl in a tree
OR 1 Leopard skulking
OR 1 giant spider in our bathroom (definitely see the website)
Kilimanjaro Uncovered: Both Saturday and Sunday mornings, Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania appeared above the ring of Kenyan mountains about 50 km. away. Though generally covered by clouds during the day, the mountain was clearly visible 100 km. away because the house was surrounded by fresh, clean air, a huge, flat savannah then a ledge of low hills. We were happy to see glaciers still intact. We’re also sad that they are shrinking.
Close Encounters of a Disgusting Kind: During Friday evening dinner, one fellow used the bathroom off our bedroom. Shortly after emerging, he stated that there was a “monster in our bathroom sink.” Rick went in to check and his “Oh my Gods” echoed out to the veranda where we were eating. One by one, everyone except for me went into the bathroom and left exclaimed loudly about the monster’s dimensions, number of legs, long antennae, folded pincers, etc. Rick digitally documented the beast (see our Tsavo webpage) then was going to kill it when one brave but kind-hearted woman in our group swept it between a placemat and plastic container, carried it outside, and set it free. I refused to witness any of this or even look at the picture, fearing nightmares and insomnia for my two nights in the house. I really did only look at the picture Sunday afternoon.
Only during the evenings, the other 2 bathrooms in the house were visited by multiple little frogs. They were quiet, hiding in corners, shower stalls, edges of floors AND in the toilets. The poor fellow who had discovered the creature in our sink the night before, was doing his business in a bathroom with a frog-fest, when apparently a frog leaped out at him when he flushed the toilet. We don’t know who was more frightened… 
