Trip to Kenya Part 3: Mombasa and Nairobi

The bus back to Mombasa was relatively quick, and I was greeted upon arrival by the local branch manager who took me to the hotel. As I mentioned before, the hotel is pretty nice. It's situated on the beach, and has terrific buffets for the meals. I spent the weekend pretty much entirely at the hotel, taking a windsurfing class (verdict: I'm pretty terrible) and otherwise relaxing. Monday and Tuesday were spent at the office and in the field, where I got to meet some more clients.

Street scene outside the office in Mombasa

Back in Nairobi, I went into the office to wrap up some final business, and then went out to dinner with a former WV director who now lives in the Nairobi area. We went to 'Carnivore' restaurant, famous in its past for serving exotic game meats. Unfortunately, as of 2004, these meats are banned by law. There's a card on each table assuring the guests that the Carnivore management is committed to having these laws changed.

When you sit down, you are not brought a menu. You just get a heated plate, and a lazy susan filled with various sauces (above). The waiters carry around spits of meat, and they continue to pile slices on your plate until you lower your table's flag in surrender. The meats that I had were chicken, beef, pork, lamb, turkey, camel, crocodile, ostrich, and bull testicle. Terrific experience, but I have no desire to ever do this again.

Thursday I checked out of the hotel and went to the airport to meet another WV person, this time the marketing director who's partly in charge of my project. He wanted to see the giraffes, so we went to the Nairobi Giraffe Center.

As you can see by my photos, you can get pretty close to them. We fed them handfuls of pellets, which they would take out of your hand with their tongues. Our guide had a giraffe take food from between her lips, which is gross. I kept it in the hand.

After that, we went to the nearby Mamba Village (Mamba = crocodile in Swahili). Our guide helpfully poked at the crocodiles with a stick to make them hiss and roar and thrash about, which is significantly more entertaining than most crocodile exhibits at zoos.


There were also ostriches:


I'm back in Kigali now, and it looks like I'm here for the near future. I'll post more pictures from my trip on Facebook.