Homeless in Brisbane, by Shannon Murphy
"I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way."
Carl Sandburg
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- : We are five. We are all individually attracted and passionate about the east coast of Africa whether for the people, the environment or the local art. We land in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia on May 9th. We're heading towards Capetown... no rush, all the time in the world... that's the plan!
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Lundi 20 décembre 2010
1
20
/12
/Déc
/2010
12:40
Dugout canoe on Lake Malawi
Since the last update, a bomb has exploded in the group and the remainings are spread out over a few countries. Zimbabwe and South Africa for Tom, Shan and Paul. In Capetown Tom is working for a sweet radio station (http://bushradio.wordpress.com/programme-schedules/) and Paul (www.idonothingallday.com) is meditating on the purpose of life, the prophecies of Marcus Garvey and probably adding more politico-philosophico-activist books on his big existing pile sitting by his Ugandan red vintage electric guitare in Longstreet backpackers. Shanzou is somewhere, between South Africa and Zimbabwe, perhaps already in Bushmans, probably painting an old man sitting under a baobab hiding from the storm. Myself after Zimbabwe, I headed back up North through Malawi into Mozambique.
We often say that photos speak better than words, and when the hungover author is myself, than words are guaranteed not to make any kind of sense. And reading blogs are a pain! So here is the story:
In Zimbabwe,
We went to drink sunset in a place where everything was rock:
Paul and I drank wine in the famous Murphy film studio
Shannon fell in love with another monkey
And a lady zebra was taking a piss
So that was Zimbabwe. A run-down civilized (see above) and highly educated country which was at the time desperately awaiting for the first rains. I left when the rain arrived, for Malawi.
Malawi is not exactly the best place for sobriety - in this backpackers, with a bar called The Joint,
the owner comes down every morning yelling at his staff with a deep Afrikaans accent 'Ey where the fuck is my bong ey?! I need my fuckin bong in the morning!!'
So you leave the crazy bastard behind and go climb a few rocks in the hills
I jump on the Ilala - a 60 year old rusted beast of a ferry which does its best to remain on top of the
water. When the the lady stops you can negotiate a jump from the top deck with immigration officers and the Captain - it costs one coke and a pack of biscuits and it's damn worth the refreshment
after 36hours on board!
Plenty of time to dream away...
And to play Bawo, a local game
And suddenly you land on Likoma Island in the top of Lake Malawi - Golden valleys dotted with thousands of magical and mystical baobabs, and mango trees overflowing with fruits
surrounded by crystal clear waters
Ladies keep busy,
and off to church they go on sunday morning in the family's dugout vehicle
and gorgeous little characters!
So you set up your hamac for the night at another backpackers on the beach
Some day you realize it's november 2010 and not september of some other year and realize you're two weeks late for the job you're headed to in Mozambique! So time to hike back to the other side of the island and catch a ride on a local dhow going to mozambique - my new canine friend is sad to see me leave, hikes back with me and waited until our boat was gone
One day I meet Wesley (below), also been travelling for 7months.
-"Where u goin?"
-"To do some unpaid work for a 5star ecolodge on the moz coast of the lake. Free food and accomodation. You?"
- "Maybe they need a technician?!" and now he's been a technician here at the lodge for three weeks!
Best way to travel: THE PLAN IS NO PLAN!!
The sails are somewhat oldschool, made from sowed up bags of relief food, but we make it akuna matata!
And for those who know swahili, definitely akuna matiti here in the bush!!
Those photos are for the sailors in the family so that they can put things in perspective a bit! Do you
really need a new sail ??
And we finally set foot on the long awaited shores of Mozambique!
The local police station...the only local cop is a drunkard constantly complaining about his government
vehicle, a rusty old piece of sh... of a grinding bycicle!
The damn problem is 'you aint got no damn cash' to pay for a canoe to paddle you to the lodge 15km away... And the closest ATM is a 100km walk away. Sooo... you walk... and you suffer like a dog under 39 degrees in the shade for 5 hours with a 30kg backpacks through the bush!
But... this is all too soon forgotten when, ready to die, you open your sweaty eyes to this, and a
'Welcome guys, we've been expecting you! What would you like to drink? White wine? A fresh beer maybe rather?'
And so this is the place, welcome to Nkwichi lodge:
Every night, it is part of the job to have to join the guests for drinks at sunset around the fire.
And candle-lit dinner is served on the beach under the stars, a few meters from the so-known 'Lake of Stars. And so this is free life! It is cheaper to live like this than having to buy even just a ticket of metro in Paris
to go work your ass off in the Parisian greyish pollution and ocean of stressed and depressed faces!
A week after we landed in paradise, some delicious drops of fresh goodness started pooring on our faces,
storms and lightning on the horizon...
Within 10 days, the metamorphosis happened, everythings turned from yellow, brown and burnt to bright fresh green!! just like this chameleon!!
Now, unspoilt remote pristine African wilderness can be fantastic! Until you start giving swimming/ snorkelling/ rescue lessons to the local staff and soon understand that a 4m croc lives 100meters from your hut by the beach, and one morning you find the footprints on your way to work of mrs fat lady croc who decided it was time to go for a swim in the lake...
- "Alright guys! So today we're gonna learn how to swim fast!! FUCKIN FAST!!!!"
So I gave up swimming lessons and, freaked out, and, as one would do, I shaved my head!
Since then, swimming lessons are only theoretical, goggles on though preferably
Apart from crocs, baboons, snakes and many damn big scorpions in the huts
And here's a few of my local brothers and sisters I spend my days with
Francis
Patson
Jame
Chef Vincent
Sometimes life is a bit tough so we go for a sunset canoe race to the giant baobab
Or take the 4x4 into the bush to camp a few days and learn about the plants and the trees
Sleep in the trees as usual
And sit on branches like the birds we are!
Some kids come every day sell us mangoes and fresh fish and many smiles
And a few randomn photos
I was told the other day by a Malawian guy that 'We are all mango trees, whether ur black or white. Some
mangoes can be ripe yellow, others are ripe green. But they are all the same delicious mangoes!'
One big kiss to everyone
Vendredi 1 octobre 2010
5
01
/10
/Oct
/2010
17:14
A few images stuck in my mind...
Paddling alone at sunset in a dugout canoe on a saltwater lake...no wind, not a wrinkle on the water, red and orange reflections, making my way back to our candle-lit wooden sail boat on which we are all staying for the night.
A man is sitting in the gutter on side of the road covered in plastic bags from head to toe, all day and all night long, whether under the storming rain or during the hottest hours of the day.
Sitting by a small harbour, a local fisherman explains to us that the boat in front of us has recently been seized by kenyan authorities from a group of Somali Pirates who’s motor had broken down 4km from the coast.
Paddling out into a lake and meeting Soule, a 25year old local fisherman sitting in his dugout canoe, a fishing line in one hand, spliff in the other and a homemade mobile soundsystem playing sweet reggae beats.
Sitting in the back of Paul’s motorbike, going down a dust track towards the sea, two colourfully dressed ladies walk passed, one of them with an axe balancing on her head.
A bunch of kids playing soccer in the dust under a baobab tree, not far from ‘Wu-Tang street’!
We’re sitting in a bus at sunrise finally reaching South West Uganda, driving above the clouds. It’s the mistiest of all mornings... The clouds of fog have filled the valleys, leaving just the top of the green hills between the crater lakes to stick out like islands
- Getting lost in the maze of little pathways of a small market in Kilifi, a man is ironing some
clothes...the iron is filled with burning hot red coals...
- A tiny muslim boy dressed in a long white tunic and white hat runs out of the huge door of a mosque as
Paul and I drive past, and seeing us, two Mzungus (white guys) on motorbikes, runs back inside
faster than he came out!
-
In Kalifi, it is night time, most have gone to sleep. Listening to some sort of crazy Romanian ambient
trip-hop music carefully selected by Paul, three candles on a wooden table, a deck of cards, piles of
journals from the 1950’s, and gathered around a Massai is eating Mirra, Paul is reading and I am
writing this, all contemplating this weird and delicious atmosphere in this old run-down window-free
beach shack.
In Uganda, sitting in a rapid of the Nile on a submerged rock eating an apple.
We head off on motorbikes to explore the region of Kilifi. Just a few meters from the beach, a sandy road carries you through a land of quarries. At first, the limestone is extracted with big machinery. White rectangles the size of soccer fields are surrounding you. The further you go, the machines disappear and instead there is a man standing with an axe in hand, hammering it into the ground, slowly shaping a big white brick. Here, if you cannot afford machinery to cut bricks, you use an axe. If you are a fisherman and cannot afford a motorboat, you use a dugout canoe, and if you can not afford a net, you use a fishing line. If you can not afford a taxi or a bycicle, then you walk. If you can not afford to stay and live according to your culture in your Massai homeland with your family, then you become an Askari (security guard) in a hotel or Mzungu’s house. If you have nothing, you eat ugali and only ugali (white maize flour mixed with water). If you’re a lost kid on the beach with not even a coin to buy maize flour for ugali, then you steal corn, eat grasshoppers, and collect some sort of spinach on the roadside. If you are deaf and mute, and a lost kid on the beach, then life sucks. But some village friends might take you under their wing to visit some Mzungus in their run down beach shack.
It’s 6AM, the sun is not up yet. We meet Soule, 25, who has just come back from a long night of fishing. He hopes to get a thousand shillings for his fish. He doesn’t have a phone anymore because there was a long period recently with only very little fish to be caught and so he had to sell his phone to afford food for his wife and daughter. He dreams of a motorboat, because his canoe cannot bring him across the waves of the barrier reef behind which the bigger fish can be found. His night begins at 11pm everyday. When at sea, if it rains, he just pulls over a plastic cover over his head and smokes joints until the rain stops.
Some funny times
A Massai explains to us that he doesn’t eat fish “because fish is snake, because it has no legs”!
Megz goes to the bar of the hotel:
-‘Hi, what would you like?’
-‘Gin and Tonic please’
-‘What are you asking me? Do you want to know if Gin and Tonic are staying here?
Do you want to know what room they are staying in??’
As I am walking out of the ocean after a little swim, I find a man walking down the beach holding a big orange shell on his ear and he is singing to the shell’s music. Back at our little shack, I tell Paul about this funny character and soon enough I find Paul listening to the shell and the man listening to Paul’s Ipod.
A guy insists trying to convince me that he is 19 years old and his parents died in 1961.
Lost in the small coastal mud house village of Takaungu, a woman walks past us with a big log on her head. Tom says “Nice log!!” and she (and I) burst out laughing!
Tonight a Massai’s eyeballs will not get bitten by mosquitoes... Paul is trying to explain to a Massai how to put mosquito repellent on his skin. The man not speaking a word of english, Paul attempts some kind of sign language saying “DO NOT RUB ON YOUR EYES” and points at his eyes. So Massai says ‘ok ok!!!’ and starts rubbing huge amounts of it all over his face and eyes!
Jeudi 30 septembre 2010
4
30
/09
/Sep
/2010
15:16
Well, long time no see the old update on the blog, hey!Everyday I’d put it off to the next day and soon enough it'd been three months without a word! Reality is we've been enjoying life a bit too much to spend time sitting in front of a screen. So what's been happening since the last update in Mombasa??
Well, we had a whole list of places we were dreaming of visiting along the coast of Kenya and... we really only made it to Kalifi, a beautiful small little town less than one hour North of Mombasa. And we ended up spending a month and a half there!
For some reason this place decided to treat us like kings and queens starting from the first day and accepted it... We were looking for any place to pitch our tents for the night and it appeared that there was no where for us to camp until a guy made a call and announces that he found us a place! Somewhat curious, we head off to check it out... it's called Black Marlin, it's a 5star hotel on the beach and it’s all for us coz it’s closed for renovation... and it's $3/night!!!
Fresh cocojuice upon arrival at Black Marlin
Swimming pools, big barbecues, the manager gives us access to all facilities and even opens us a room (usually 150$/night) to put our stuff and even spend the night, he says, if it rains too much. So we survived for some days in our private 5star hotel living off endless coconuts and decided that life was too hard so we went to catch up with a friend of ours who had invited us to stay with her at her friend's beach shack in Kilifi. The shack happened to be 300meters from the hotel down the beach!!
So we moved to our new residence in a few minutes...
Migration from 5star hotel to the little beach shack
The manager and his sister became good friends and we'd hang out together either at the hotel or our new place. Access to the hotel's pools was always available, coconuts delivered by 4WD, and he even offered us a goat before we left so we organized a big barbecue in the garden!
Our sister Cecy from Black marlin
Omari holding hands with the goat
The place was an old run-down beach shack with a rusty corrogated iron roof that looked over the reef and with a garden of grass and coconut trees extending into a beautiful white sanded beach.
Our new house...
And the view from the house...
We all slept in tents and hamacs and cooked everything over the fire. Food wise, once again, life was a bit rough, but that's the price to pay if you want to survive in paradise. Everyday a few of us would come back from town loaded with all the fruits and veg you could dream of and at low tide, (spear)fishermen would come to our door sell us prawns, crayfish, mudcrab, octopus and all sorts of fish... for a dollar or two. And for those who have tasted Tom’s preparations, you must know how much we suffered.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner cooked on the fire
Thats Yoho trying to show us and sell us his friend's octopus
And thats the local style for cooking octopus... quite cool really!
A local spearfisherman who's come for business
Spearfisherman and his 'snake fish'
Thats dedicated to you Jon apparently?! Why? not sure
Once in a while, someone would force you to drink rhum straight out of a coconut before playing with local kids in the waves or snorkelling... Paul would either spend his days reading Shakespeare to his newfound marmaid or play guitare and yell out his songs to the ocean, occasionally giving guitare lessons to the local kids which soon enough felt more at home in our place than us (Paul wrote a song about them called ‘Six year old thieves’)!
Paul and his students
Album cover for Paul's coming up album
Every morning, the three brothers Omari (the naughty 6year old), Ali (10) and the third trouble maker would come with maize stolen from the fields to cook on our fire and chill around all day long, painting with Shannon, opening us coconuts, listening to hip-hop with our ipods, and do their best for us to want to rip them into pieces. In the end, Shannon and Megz fell in love with the three kids and organized everything for us to sponsor them to go to school. Really miss these damn kids!
The three beach gangsters
The very naughty tiny little Omari
We then made our way to Jinja in Uganda via Nairobi – Jinja is by the Nile and it’s the place for all white water sports. So we hung out there for a week, met some of the maddest guys – some had paddled down the Nile from source (Uganda) to sea, for another it was the Congo River solo for 8months, one survived from being attacked by a croc and also sailed the arctic and sank his boat under the ice, two guys riding bikes from South Africa had just been lost in the desert for a week in Tanzania both with malaria and no food no water... It reached a point where nothing would surprise us anymore!
The first Nile Perch, and the craziest of all fishing stories!!
We then heard of Hairy Lemon, a little piece of paradise on an island on the Nile not too far from Jinja, so we went off to check it out as the Nile Perch fishing is meant to be amazing. There we found an archipelago of 9 islands with a small ecotourism business running on it which had just been taken over by Paul, a South African guy with hundreds of hours worth of crazy stories. Amazed by his projects for the place (setting up a permaculture farm, aquaculture farm, hydroelectricity, community conservation projects, kayaker’s island campsite etc...) I offered him to stick around for a month and help out on community conservation projects.
Meeting with neighboring community to set up communal farming project
Working on translantions with Stephen from English to Lugandan
I had a sweet time camping on my own separate island,loved the staff and the place, and hopefully somewhat improved locals’ livelihoods by handing out coffee seedlings and organizing a community farming project on the land of Hairy Lemon. I might head back there in a few months do some more work, we’ll see.
My campsite on my island on the Nile... nice, green and peaceful
My brothers for some weeks, Omaru and Chaga
Pretty effortless task for Omaru to carry a sinking canoe up a river!
Whilst I was there, the others got back on the road and Shannon got malaria! So now Tom is single after 9years and looking for a new wife. No, she did alright apparently and got treated early enough and back on her feet in a few days! A bit scary though! Tom and Shan went to Rwanda and Paul flew to Australia for his sister’s wedding. Since then I’ve been exploring southwest Uganda with a guy I met who’d just cycled 11 000kms from South Africa and we rode motorbikes on goat tracks between crater lakes and chilled on islands on a lake nearby Congo, gorillas, Pygmees and Rwanda without seeing any of those...
Carl riding down goat tracks
Now plans have changed for various reasons, one of which is the old lack of $$ for some of us (donations are welcome by the way!), and so it‘s been decided that we’d fly straight to Zimbabwe from here, leaving Tanzania (and Rwanda for me) to another day. From there, the plan is to roadtrip around Zim (collect wild mushrooms, fish for trout, chill on house boats on Lake Kariba...), south of Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa. Tom and Shan are already in Harare at Shan’s family house and I’m flying down to meet them on Saturday. I appeared to have heard that Paul should be back soon from Australia but the man is not of the most reliable type! If you know him, then you know what I mean! Once we couldn’t find him on the Hairy Lemon island for lunch – he then explained he was just wandering naked in the little streams between the islands; sometimes he’s just stuck with a broken motorbike on top of a volcano... so not quite sure when we’ll see that hairy beast next but damn look forward to it!
A beautiful little girl walking up a hill between two crater lakes carrying sugar cane on her head
So that’s the news ey! Hope uz are all good and smiling and will someday come visit all these countries as they’re well worth it and the people are truly wonderful. One last kiss from Uganda!
Romain
Mercredi 30 juin 2010
3
30
/06
/Juin
/2010
17:55
Too many times there’s been amazing images and stories which the camera wasn’t able to capture…
- Night walk on the streets of the Ethiopian side of Moyale… Barely any electricity around, a few lights here and there in hotels. The streets all look dark, but candles are discretely shining everywhere. It’s a candle-lit street of shops along a dirty and dusty dirt road. A nice image of a pharmacy, with two candles on the counter, and an old man patiently waiting behind.
- In Moyale again, a donkey is walking the streets in hope of coming across some inexistent fresh grass or rather probably realistically for an old rotten leftover fruit. His front legs are attached…each step forward is a huge effort… a bit of a metaphor of the dreams of urban Ethiopians.
- In Northern Kenya, similar story, but it is camels this time, in the bush. One leg is bent and tied back up. The camel only has three legs to walk away on, it makes the job of the herder a lot easier…
In Marsabit, 11pm, I end up in the back of a Landcruiser with Paul to go rescue his motorbike which broke down 15km from town. Once arrived in the full on desert, I ask Sharif, the driver and owner of the car how much he wants for this greatly appreciated service. Sharif is standing up in the back of the 4WD looking down on us, in total darkness, all we can see is his shadow and the amazing star-lit sky in the background and he replies to me and everyone else ‘Friendship is the most important of all things! Friendship will do things that money cannot! Gratitude and friendship is all that matters!’He didn’t charge us a penny for the great favour, and was happy to show his lifelong friend Doti, how much he valued friendship. So thanks Sharif again if you read this, and of course, thanks Doti for introducing us to Sharif and for everything else!
- Shower time in the Samburu bush… Fill a pot with water, a bit of soap, find a nice place in the shade of an acacia tree on the dry riverbed, and naked style ina di bush! Instead of staring at the tiles of your bathroom under neon lights, a desert squirrel walks past you in the sand, with Mount Kenya and other mountains in the cloudy background… just the sound of birds and bees, and a light cool breeze which makes it all delicious!
- In the deep bush of Samburu land, bright green and dusty at the same time, two extremely colourful traditionally dressed Samburu people are walking under the threatening black sky under a rainbow…
- In Baragoi, on Samburu land again, our 4WD stops on the track to pick up three young Morrans (Samburu warriors). They jump in the back of the Landcruiser with me and a scout. Morrans are the only Africans I have seen up to here with such long hair – apart from maybe a few rastas. They wouldn’t stop staring at me and laughing (once again!!). The scout finally translates to me that they love my long hair and found it hilarious, it was like I was ‘Muzungu morran’ (a white warrior!).
- In a small lost small town far out in the bush, the car stops and, as usual, I get surrounded by tens of amazed kids within seconds. They all had looks as if they were observing some sort of creature straight out of a crazy space fiction film walking down the street of their village! They obviously couldn’t believe what they were seeing! David explains to me that these kids have never seen a white man! He laughs and says ‘they don’t even think you’re a human being!!’
- Driving around with David, I explain to him the very western concept of dumpster diving. Amazed, he asks me - ‘So there’s no shortage of food in your country?”,
-‘No, in my country, we have a problem of food waste!”.
- The other day in the news: A Police officer arrested a guy because he had an external hard drive in his bag and put him in jail. The officer thought it was a grenade!!
- Some Kenyans can become quite creative when it comes to making a bit of cash. Sometimes, you’ll find some guys standing along the pot-holed roads with a shovel, filling up holes in the road. When you drive past, they point at the ‘fixed’ hole with their shovel and beg you to stop to hand over a few coins. And it works quite well! Locals pay for the service! The only thing is that these guys don’t really fill up pot-holes all day long really, they just fix one a day, or even every week and then just stand by it…
- Similarly, the Kenyan government recently introduced breathalyzers (which the population apparently found to be scandalous!). So some guys figured out they could make some cash by standing along the road a few hundred meters before police performing breathalyzer tests. They warn people of the police being ahead and offer to replace the drunk drivers. Them are sober, they drive through the police check no problem, and jump out a few hundred meters later asking the drunken owner for a small fee – we never thought of doing that in our countries did we?
- Today… On the way to a new fishing spot, Tom walked out of the minibus realizing his wallet was gone. So we get in the back of a ‘three wheel motorbike’ and tell that guy to race that minibus. Nothing on the bus floor, we would have given up, had almost everyone not tried to convince us to all go together to the police station. The bus is parked full inside the police compound and all searched one by one … quite awkward, and fruitless in the end, but another story for the day!
A selection of photos from Ethiopia and North Kenya have just been freshly posted, just click on the folders in the top right corner. Thanks for your comments! It's good to hear from you all, many kisses and warm smiles from Mombasa!
Vendredi 25 juin 2010
5
25
/06
/Juin
/2010
13:32
As I write, a group of Samburu and Borana women, covered with endless amounts of bead necklaces, bracelets and earings, are having a meeting a few meters away…some cows belonging to the Samburu tribe were stolen by young warriors from the Borana tribe, guns got involved, and Police officer got shot two weeks ago. Hence, elder groups of both tribes are have just started peace talks. North Kenya is truly a crazy place… For the past two weeks, I’ve enjoyed every second of this constant culture shock… a complete clash which I’d been impatiently awaiting for.
So after having hit camels, slaughtered goats, slept on top the Rift Valley, drunk garlic liqueur, eaten fresh raw (still warm) goat stomach (Shanza!), chewed chat, slept in brothels… etc… we crossed from Ethiopia to Kenya, at the infamous border town of Moyale. As Shannon explained, the road was rough and dusty, the 4WD piled up with passengers, but a delicious first cold Kenyan beer on arrival which made it all worth it! Once in Isiolo (maddest town we’ve ever come across… everyone is high as a damn kite all night long everywhere in this place!!), I parted roads with the Australo-Zimbabwean quattro and headed for the bush to meet up with a community conservation NGO called Grevy’s Zebra Trust.
The dusty road after Moyale
Here, accommodation is your tent, the kitchen is three stones around a small fire, the bathroom is a bucket in the bush! We have camped in a different location almost every night, often in beautiful dry flood riverbeds, where you find the fresh footprints of elephants and giraffes. Scouts sometimes spend the night at our campsite with their reassuring AK47 … Scouts are employed by the NGO to survey the bush for Grevy’s zebras, a species classified as endangered by the IUCN (decreasing population of about 2000 individuals). They also survey other wildlife and are meant to intervene if ever they come across poachers. These guys know the bush and they make you feel a lot more comfortable in these wild places.
But last night, no scouts, no AKs… I woke up in the middle of the night, hearing footpaths of an animal very close. Shortly, I could hear the loud breath of the animal probably less than half a meter from my head.... I grabbed a machete type of knife which I had in my tent, held on to it and waited … wondering what the hell this thing could be… A second one joined in… We were camping right into the Kalama Community Conservancy where the objective is to protect the bigger wildlife which includes leopards, lions, cheetahs, hyenas etc… and there were no scouts this time! The loud breathing suddenly stopped, and I never heard the creatures walk away… I fell back asleep a bit worried, especially that a lion had attacked a zebra a few weeks back just near where we were, and I also heard about a French traveler being attacked by a lion in his tent in the middle of the night nearby a few years back (he survived thanks to pepper spray according to one version of the story!). This place is just full of these crazy stories…
Ascout of Grevy's Zebra Trust
The organization basically employs scouts from remote villages throughout the Grevy’s distribution. Once in a while, it’s time for a roadtrip to visit the scouts and communities of the region and I arrive right on time! Just a few days after I turned up, we left for one week, 800km, craziest four wheel driving I ever did, to reach tiny little villages belonging to two belligerent tribes: the Samburu and the Turkana. We loaded the landcruiser with food, water, petrol, camping equipment and headed off with Peter (programme coordinator from Samburu tribe) and David (great cook and driver from the Meru tribe). A good bunch of Mirrra (Chat) was obviously needed to stay awake and focus on the huge rocks and deep mud holes… chewing on these bitter leaves is something I still really can’t get used to, but the locals go crazy for it!
In every town we stopped, a community meeting was rapidly called. The village elders, the chief and us would sit under a big enough tree in the shade. Women stay back behind, listen but never participate. The village elder says a prayer (quite a wild and exciting prayer! I will try to upload a video) thanking the hills and the trees, the birds and the termites etc etc etc…. Then the NGO coordinator starts his speech in Samburu language. All I could understand the first time was ‘Romain’, then ‘France’, then… nothing. Silence. Just a sign asking me to get up and make a speech!! Haha! Shit! Not that I was feeling very comfortable to start with, being the only ‘muzungu’ (white person) in the whole town which everyone constantly stared at… But in front of me were fifty Samburu elders awaiting for my speech! What am I supposed to say??! It actually was a truly amazing feeling to finally be able to freely communicate with these people, no more communication barrier, as if a big transparent wall had fallen all of a sudden! This happened in each and every town we visited, once with even a lot more people!
One of many community meetings
The craziest part about these meetings is that the arrival of a white man in these villages was so exceptional that I soon became the motif of all these gatherings, instead of the actual visit of the NGO! The elder in the first town started the meeting with a prayer saying ‘Today, we are thanking the gods for this white visitor! We should all prey more for more white people to come visit us… Black or white, Turkana or Samburu, there is no difference…’ Throughout the meeting, I shook hands with this elder endless amounts of times, with someone translating our mutual ‘Thank yous!’
In the town of Baragoi, the car is stopped to pick someone up. Within seconds, more than 30 kids are surrounding the car and all yelling ‘Jesu habarri!!!’!! It all becomes so crazy that I don’t even step out of the car, adults then join in… What the hell is going on?? Why are they all going crazy about me, I ask David?? He burst out laughing and explains that they think I am Jesus!! They think Jesus is back and they’re all yelling ‘JESUS!!! HOW ARE YOU!??!??’
In one town, I made friends with the village chief – he was extremely curious about life in France and me about his culture and lifestyle. We spent the night around the fire chatting … and slaughtering a goat which was offered by the elders of the community to thank us for our visit! Local tradition here is to drink the goat’s blood; what I didn’t know is that the goat’s neck would be skinned alive. The goat is held on its back; someone is impatiently waiting on his knees, the knife finally slices, and the hot blood flows from the goat’s veins straight to the mouth of the lucky vampire! The kidneys are then eaten raw and the liver is thrown on the ashes for a little ‘aperitif’ before the ribs and all the rest… even the head is used for stew, and the skin to make a very basic bag sometimes (i.e. just tie up the legs’ skin two by two and you’ve got a backpack! Bush Eastpack!).
Blood drinking...
This gave me some time to have a good laugh with the chief… Here are a few quotes of the funny old chief:
“So there’s something I’ve never been really sure about…The French and the British, why are they different? Is it because they belong two different tribes??”
“What can u do in France with 100 europounds??”
“So China is like France huh? Because they are very close, right?”
“So do you have a chief in your village?”
The next morning, the chief washed himself in the bush with OMO washing powder! Sometimes it was really hard to hide a smile or just even not to burst out laughing!!
Equally sometimes, it was difficult to know how to react when it comes to the way children, but especially women are treated here.
The chief posing for the photo
Samburu people are nomadic pastoralists, they live in wooden huts. You can measure one’s health by the amount of goats, sheep, cows and camels owned, and by the amount of necklaces and other jewelry worn. All men are circumcised and I believe women also, in cycles of about 14 years. Men’s two bottom front teeth are ripped off around the age of 10 and ears pierced with the holes progressively enlarged. At the age of 15-25, boys become ‘Morraans’, warriors – you grow your hair, cover them in red mud/clay, wear all sorts of colourful beaded jewelry, from crowns to crazy earrings and bracelets…, also a big Kifu, traditional knife, similar to a machete. During that period, your family is not allowed to feed you or host you, you must live in the bush with the livesotck. Morraans are actually the cause of most tribal conflicts here, which is why this region is renowned as quite dangerous. The latter steal cows from other tribes and this regularly ends up in gun battles involving the police, which tends to make it even worse. The Morrans then eat the cows in the bush. Apparently, two men can eat one cow, by drinking a bush root- beverage every few kilograms of meat to facilitate digestion. Morrans from other tribes (42 in Kenya) also eat lions, giraffes, elephants etc… But it’s not all pink and beautiful…the same chief also explained to me:
“Us Samburus, we have many wives, and we stay with the one that treats us best! So they all try to be better!!... “
Trying to further understand how limited women’s rights are in this community he explains “Women u know, you are allowed to beat them here [the chief speaking is the one in charge of police/security]. We treat them as if they were children. Even if there is no good excuse, you gotta beat them once in a while to make sure their character doesn’t take over too much”.
Women are sold by there fathers for about 5-10cows (each cow being worth about150euros, a good price for a wife is therefore 1500euros…). Worst of all in all… women can be married from the age of 8years old. Eleven or twelve year old girls are seen walking around pregnant regularly so I hear…Women have only very recently started going to school and getting jobs, but stats are still very low… NGOs are slowly changing these age-old practices… but change is slow to come.
Sorry for the length of this post, but I promise this the short version!
Kisses to all,
Romain
