Unlike most years, we decided not to travel to the US for the holidays. It’s not an easy decision given that, after almost 29 years as an expatriate, I’ve only missed two Christmas holidays with family in the States. This has been the third. That record has been no easy feat given where I’ve lived, given the expense, given the many weather-related flight cancellations, etc.
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| carols at church |
Other than spending copious amounts of time in airports, driving, packing, unpacking, shopping, etc., I haven’t preserved many traditions over the years. It’s mostly about getting there, loading up my days with family, fighting off jet lag, flying back and dealing with jet lag again.
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| church services and caroling - only in Africa? |
So this year the normal build-up of stress coming towards mid-December was avoided. There was certainly sadness about missing the special time with family (and missing out on skiing), but it just didn’t make sense this year, either financially or logistically. We survived.
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Christmas
We had a rough plan as to how we would spend our time here in Kenya. I worked right up until Christmas Day so I didn’t have much time to think about the holidays prior to them showing up. Having said that, we did more decorating in the apartment than normal and we were more generous with the Christmas music. Both can be a bit too much when you travel to the US. We usually ration holiday stuff until we leave so that we enjoy it more when we get there.
The first event was a dinner that we hosted the day prior to Christmas Eve. A couple of friends were unable to be with their families for the holidays, so we welcomed them to ours. It turned out to be a nice evening, capped off with some cookie decorating, mostly by the grown-ups (the kids had a previous cookie decorating event). Neither of our visitors had done Christmas cookies in many years. Brings out your inner 7-year-old.
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Christmas Eve we just spent at home as a family. It’s the first time we’ve ever done that. We are generally in Indiana with my in-laws. I missed the cold and the Christmas atmosphere. It’s always a great time but, I must admit, it was really nice to spend that time with just the four of us.
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The next morning, Christmas Day, we opened gifts and had a slow morning. In the afternoon, we went to some other friends’ house for dinner, carols in French, swimming and croquet. A very different experience than a rural American Christmas. They are an English-French couple and their respective parents were visiting for the holidays. Super interesting people. No kids, however, which was unfortunate for our girls. But we would (to our surprise) provide them with a few days of kids their own age a few days later.
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After the dust settled on Christmas, we were soon welcomed by my sister-in-law who arranged for a stopover in Kenya on her way back from a short visit to the US (heading to Laos). It prevented us from being completely devoid of family this year.
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Nanyuki
Given that I wasn’t taking much time off (i.e. just one vacation day), we had to organize whatever we were going to do around the long New Year’s weekend. We decided on Nanyuki.
Nanyuki is a town of about 75,000 located three and a half hours north of Nairobi, nearly in the geographical center of Kenya. It also happens to sit almost exactly on the equator. At 6,500 feet/2,000 meters, it is cool all year round. It is wedged between Mt. Kenya and a wildlife conservancy called Ol Pejeta making it a rather obvious tourist destination.
The history of the area is quite interesting. After centuries of being a mixed tribal area, British immigrants began to settle there in the early 1900s (some of their descendants still around). Probably the most prominent of these was a man named Hugh Cholmondeley, better known as Lord Delamere. After obtaining large amounts of land through a grant from the British Crown, he set out to raise livestock and farm. Delamere represented the many contradictions of some of these early settlers. While they made significant contributions to the land and to the conservation of wildlife, they were unabashedly white supremacists and disposed people of their ancestral territory – a legacy that shapes this area of Kenya even today.
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| Mt. Kenya |
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The Christmas/New Year’s holiday is the busiest time of year for Kenyan tourist destinations. Bookings need to be made well in advance. As such, we had made arrangements at a rural B&B outside of town. We were looking for a place that offered horseback riding and offered loads of things to do. This place seemed to be a good fit.
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I had only been to this area once before and that was to attend some work meetings. This would be the first time that we would go as a family. We drove up on the morning of the 28th. We opted to have lunch at a trout farm restaurant near to where we would be staying. An interesting place, it was built in and around a huge, sacred fig tree. Great food, unless you don’t care for fish. Anyway, I think it was a worthwhile stop.
We then drove the short distance to the B&B and settled in. To our surprise, our lodging would be in the same house as those who run the business. It’s close quarters, to be honest, but, thankfully, we all got along very well and it turned out to be perfectly fine. Though we didn’t have a view of Mt. Kenya from our side of the house, it wasn’t a huge issue since it was rarely visible anyway due to persistent clouds. The peak had a tendency to reveal itself around 6am each morning. So we would get up early, trek downstairs to a common space with a view, and briefly catch the clear view before it was subsequently obscured by morning mist.
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One thing that was hard to picture prior to being there was the setting. It was indeed one of the highlights. Sitting on about 5 acres, the property consists of a few houses, shelters and so forth, in addition to a stable and a couple of animal pens. At the foot of Mt. Kenya, it was idyllic, particularly at the lush end of the rainy season.
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| My angels on horseback. |
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| Things got a bit competitive. |
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| Some neighbors joined us for a hike to a waterfall. Fun, but not the intimate hike we expected. |
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| Waterfall behind the gap in the rocks. Icy cold water but yes, I took a dip. |
Given that we were there for a few days, we often in and around the stables. Each of us pitched in here and there, brushing horses, filling water buckets, chasing down escaped horses, etc.
I have to admit, I drew some satisfaction from showing their sons how to hand siphon water. They seemed to only know how to do it by placing their mouths on the end of the hose and sucking. The guy running the stable did it the same way. Drawing from my farming experience, years of using siphon tubes to water fields in Idaho, I showed them how to use his hand to obtain suction more quickly and without sticking your mouth on a muddy hose. It takes practice (which one of the kids impressively committed himself to), but once you get the feel of it, it's a much nicer method.
But the first activity we did was a game drive at Ol Pejeta Conservancy.
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