A More-Than-Belated Update

As remarkable as it may seem, my days (and more accurately, hours) in Kenya are quickly coming to an end. In fact, I’ll be heading to the Jomo Kenyatta Airport in a few hours to begin the long journey back to North America.

The lack of updates of late has essentially been because I’ve been busy working on shooting video for the documentary and, as such, there haven’t been many adventures to report.

In my previous update, I was getting ready to head to the airport for a side trip to Homa Bay. It was a bit of long travel day even though the flight was only 30 minutes. The day was made long by the two hour drive to get to the airport in Nairobi followed by another two hour drive to Homa Bay once we arrived in Kisumu. The highlight of the latter drive was a spectacular lightning storm along the way.

The trip to Homa Bay was successful and mildly eventful when I inadvertently got locked in a building and left to die. Okay, I wasn’t left to die. I was probably only there for about 20 minutes but it was pretty traumatic. Okay, it wasn’t at all traumatic. It was a bit amusing though.

We were at another location to shoot some of the local women in their weaving/spinning group (aka. cluster). At one point they took us to a separate building to show us some of their looms and spinning wheels. Unbeknownst to me, while I was busy shooting the spinning wheels it would seem everyone else left. And locked the door behind them. After searching the building for other egress options I realized the only way I was GETTING out was if somebody came to LET me out.

It took about about 20 minutes before Gage came looking for me (she was the only one that noticed I was “missing”!). The keeper of the key was located and came to my rescue. As you might expect, when I was eventually freed there was much laughing (and apologizing) for my brief imprisonment.

Other than that, things have gone very well here in Kenya. Well, except for the traffic. I always thought the ONE good thing about Toronto is that it made you feel that traffic was better everywhere else you went. I stand corrected. Traffic in Nairobi is beyond comprehension. It’s bumper to bumper chaos. Constantly. Words can’t express it fully and images don’t do it justice. It’s something that needs to be experienced – then again, it’s also something you really don’t WANT to experience … especially on a daily basis. I certainly won’t miss that aspect. But other than that, Kenya (and our brief visit to Tanzania) was fantastic.

Oh, and yesterday there was a group dinner at Lucy’s sister’s farm in, well … as far as I can tell, it was the middle of nowhere (or maybe slightly east of there). In what has become the norm, it took about two hours to get there even though it was only 60 km away. That said, it was a good time at beautiful location with great food (although, I’m sure the goat we ate would have a different opinion). It probably would’ve been even better to be at the farm a couple of years ago because at that time there were still giraffes patrolling the area.

Oh, and I guess I need to mention the other big “adventure”. An adventure that was more than a little tragic. One might even say devastating. Honestly, I still can’t bring myself to talk about it. The video says it all. It makes me ill to watch it though.

And on that note, it’s almost time to head to the airport. Next stop, Qatar.