Discs and Ticks

January was a busy month. We returned from Nanyuki the day after New Year’s (Tuesday) and by the following Monday I was back in Mogadishu and our girls were back and school. It was an easier transition than years past given that we stayed in East Africa and there was no jet lag to overcome.

We did find time on a weekend to join some friends for a disk golf birthday party. For starters, I didn’t know it existed in Kenya. Though I know relatively little about the sport, I do have some history with it.

Back in the early 1990s when I was living in Switzerland, some friends of mine and I played what we called frisbee golf, which was, I think, the type of activity that was an origin of the more sophisticated game that people play today. At the time, playing at the University of Lausanne, we identified nine random targets (serving like holes in golf). It was usually a tree or something easily identifiable. One was a one-meter circular hole in the side of a concrete wall.

By the mid- to late-90s, when I was at grad school, disc golf had become a thing and there was a proper course set up at the local university. It’s a nice low-tech activity to do with some friends, though I didn’t do it very often.

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For the birthday, we all met at a wildlife conservancy just outside Nairobi. It took a while to get there, inching along through congested suburbia. There wasn’t much signage so we relied on Google. Eventually the sign appeared and, thankfully, we were clear of the honking horns, exhaust and crowded streets.

I was curious how you combine a conservancy with disc golf. We eventually found the guy whose family (by marriage) owns the property. He’s an American who seems to have settled in Kenya for good. Can’t say I blame him. It’s an amazing property with loads of wildlife (zebras, impalas, giraffes, eland, etc.). Even though it’s not connected to Nairobi National Park, there are apparently animals that make their way between the two. He said that they have had lions a couple of times. They alert the national park and they come, sedate them and haul them back. It would be kind of exciting to stroll out on the patio with your morning coffee and see some lions off in distance. Though I think they might be disruptive to a disc golf game.

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Once we were all there, we had a rather extensive tutorial by our American host. It’s a good thing since I realized how much I didn’t know. I had never learned properly and there’s a bit more to it than I was aware of.

And then there were the local conditions. One good piece of advice was to wrap double-sided tape around your lower calf to catch any potential ticks. He said that when he’s out in the brush for a few hours, he averages about one per day. Some of us had shorts on which increased exposure. I tend to draw insects to me so I was guessing that I might exceed that. 

Even by the end of the tutorial I had captured a tick on my tape. He said there isn’t any evidence of lime disease in the area so I was hoping he was right and they would be just an annoyance. To be safe, I added a second band of tape a bit farther up my calf prior to heading out for our 9-hole round of play. Turned out to be a good call. By the end of the afternoon, I would about a half-dozen ticks stuck to the tape. 

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Would I go again? Maybe. It’s a nice setting, throwing discs around with curious zebras gazing at you in the distance. It’s just the annoying drive there. And the ticks. I’ll give it a maybe.