July 08, 2005 | Allison Harnish
"All that lied between myself and the lions last night was my sleeping bag, a thin sheet of nylon and about half a mile of Kenyan terrain. "

The group woke up bright and early this morning to eggs, pancakes, sausage, and another beautiful day on the Maasai plains. What a night. Following a delicious spaghetti dinner the students stayed up to converse around the campfire with our two Maasai Moran guardians under a starlit sky, the melodious bellows of lions, hyenas, mongoose and jackals plainly audible in the distance. How thrilling and wonderful—all that lied between myself and the lions last night was my sleeping bag, a thin sheet of nylon and about half a mile of Kenyan terrain; no fences, just Africa.

After breakfast the warriors led us to their village, stopping frequently along the way to point out animal tracks or identify unique plants. As we closed in on the manyatta we stirred up a band of Thompson's gazelle who had been resting in the grass beside us. The galloped swiftly and lightly over the hill before us like feathery white dandelion seeds floating gracefully out of sight after a strong gust of wind.

In the village we were greeted promptly by two older women dressed in traditional Maasai attire: their hair cut short, their necks adorned with multicolored beads, their shoulders wrapped in red wool blankets, their stretched earlobes supporting long strands of colorful plastic beads and their thin wrists wrapped with thick Maasai bracelets. Several children also stumbled out of the mud, stick and cow dung homes as we made our way into the manyatta (village). As is custom, they scurried over to us and bowed their heads so we could say hello in the Maasai way—by placing our hands atop their heads to bless them as we said "Sopa." Within minutes more women had arrived. The men watched from afar, and the children, having been ushered into a clump against a wall sang curiously to us as we took their photos.

As intriguing as the experience was, I couldn't help but feel somewhat awkward. Although everyone appeared excited about having us as guests, I had a sneaking suspicion they were only welcoming us because they felt obligated to do so. After all, we had paid to stay on their land and we made a donation to their community. Many of us also bought some of the jewelry the women had made. However proud and willing the Maasai are to share their culture, they (along with most Africans of other tribes) are all too willing to please outsiders, especially outsiders who give them money. This makes it extremely difficult to assess the peoples' true position on certain issues.

After saying our goodbyes to the Maasia and taking another long bumpy ride, we made it to the Mara for an evening game drive. Along the wavy yellow plains that seemed to melt into the marshmallow clouds, we managed to spot a wide array of wildlife including: Grant's gazelle, Thompson's gazelle, topi, hartibeast, impala, warthog, cape buffalo, secretary bird, vulture, stork, waddled plover, Egyptian geese, lilac breasted roller, tawny eagle, perigreo falcon, lion, jackal, elephant, cheetah, and wildebeest.

Even after all we've done, we still have three weeks left to go and much more to do.

July 05, 2005 | Allison Harnish
"Before coming on this trip, someone told me that Africa would change me forever. I've hardly been in the Dark Continent a week and already I've found that statement to be true."

Today was a travel day. Although the distance between cities is not that great, the drive from Nairobi to Kisumu took somewhere around nine hours, the roads are in that bad of shape. Pothole after pothole, detour after detour, it was a bumpy ride but not an unpleasant one. After three and a half days in Nairobi, it was nice to escape the soot and smog and see a bit of the Kenyan countryside. From museums and skyscrapers to sheet metal houses and straw thatched roofs to open fields and water holes speckled with zebra, impala and pink flamingo, we managed to see a wide variety of African terrain. Between cities we traveled through rice patties and tea plantations and stopped to admire the view of the Kenyan Rift Valley. Along the way we traveled through several small towns and got a better glimpse of what life is like in the developing world. Passing from a village where the locals eat lots of rice and use donkeys as their major mode of transportation to an area where everyone rides bicycles (or bodabodas) and depends on fish for sustenance also gave us students a peek at the cultural diversity that exists in this country.

One consistency I noticed with all the places we've passed through is the number of children. Right now, approximately sixty percent of Kenya's population is under the age of eighteen, and it shows. Girls in school uniforms, boys playing soccer, mothers carrying infants on their backs, kids carrying baskets on their heads, kids swinging from trees, kids herding livestock and pushing bike tires down the dirt sidewalks, children are everywhere here. In just ten years, Kenya's population has doubled. I worry about what another ten years will do. I worry more about how families so poor can afford to feed all these children. One would think the abundant poverty and crowded conditions would irritate the Kenyans making them insensitive and inhospitable. On the contrary, we have encountered no unfriendly faces so far. Observing the people as they interact in the markets or hang out on the roadsides to watch the world go by, they seem to have a very tightly knit community. People smile or wave at us as we drive past, especially children; they go so far as to chase the bus giggling and shouting happy Swahili jibberish. It was worth the long drive just to see the satisfaction on our students' faces as they hang out the bus windows waving back to women and children while gleefully shouting "Jambo!"

It's a strange feeling when as a minority and a foreigner, I am greeted regularly with such sincerity and enthusiasm. Before coming on this trip, someone told me that Africa would change me forever. I've hardly been in the Dark Continent a week and already I've found that statement to be true.