Lazy Saturday

Saturday, June 13, 2009

This is the route from my office to my tent. The fence on the right blocks off the workshop area that houses tractors and other big machines. It's an electric fence. This is literally the distance I walk to get to work (as in NOT far!):

Around the tent:

Today I went and spent the day at R’s house. She works in the finance department, and is a most interesting personality!

Her house is hidden behind some trees, and then some other houses, and then some bushes… Altogether an isolated place, but apparently that is the designated house given to her position, so what can you do. In fact, R told me that once a big group of baboons were fighting out in her yard from 10am until 6pm and she couldn't leave home for the whole day!

Anyway the place itself was very nice. I could tell she had decorated it herself, with long light curtains, and pillows; and when she told me she had gone to university in India it made a lot of sense. I was surprised, seeing as I live in my humble tent, to see a TV with music videos playing, a dvd player, a computer hooked up to the internet, an exercise bike, it was quite a big place too!

R poured me a glass of wine (it was early but what else are you going to do when you can’t go for walks because you might get eaten, and everyone but a few leave the conservancy for the weekends?). We sat in her living room and talked all day, as well as polishing off the bottle.

She told me about her life. R worked for humanitarian organizations in the Sudan for several years. Although she was in finance and accounting, she was still living life on the edge, in refugee camps, and looking out for land mines. She told me about this crazy spider bite she got, and she even told me about another woman who got a spider bite and was dead within 24 hours. It was a really tough life. She talked about how close people became because you had to look out for one another so much. That if you didn’t come out of your tent at the same time everyday your friends would check on you to make sure you were, well, ok I guess, alive.

R had many exciting and sad and shocking stories to tell. It made me wonder that she wasn’t actually traumatized by all of it, especially since it is all so current, isn’t it.

But we also talked about other things, life in university in India, with the other Kenyan students from her own tribe trying to look out for her, but really just being overprotective. And the racial and cultural relations and conflicts between the Indian landlords, and a couple of young single Kenyan women staying in their houses. We had a good laugh.

I like R because she is totally herself. You know when you meet someone and they are just genuine, not trying to be anything but themselves. They can teach us a lot about life, I think.


Later on, I went for a game drive with M, his family, and the Spanish women. We all relaxed by the fire in their lux camp that evening, and hablamos en español todo la noche.

Under the Kenyan stars at night: