My second week in Kenya was spent with my friend Danielle, who has been living in the Middle East in Bahrain the entire time I've been in med school. I've only had the chance to see her twice during that time, and both visits were very short. As such, I was very excited that I was able to meet up with her in Kenya and thankful that my program was flexible enough to allow me to take my second week here off. Taking time off after only one week on service isn't ideal, given that it takes some time to fully acclimate to the Kenyan medical system, and so to start working, then stop for a week really can interrupt the acclimatization process. But this was the only time Danielle had, and thankfully it all worked out!
Danielle arrived on Saturday evening, and her flight had been delayed for 2 hours in Nairobi. So when I took the taxi out to the airport, we ended up waiting for a while. I bought the driver, who was a good sport, a dinner while we waited. We ended up spending the night at IU House, but then journeying out to two places I'd heard about through other Brown friends who had been to Kenya last fall: Kruger Farm and Kerio View Restaurant.
On the way to the farm we happened upon a long-distance road race. This area of Kenya, and especially the town of Iten, is called "Home of Champions," since it has produced many of the world-champion Kenyan long-distance runners.
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| Kenyan road race |
Kruger is a 1000+ acre farm whose South African owner imported a herd of giraffes there >20 years ago. We took a beautiful morning hike for about an hour. Along the way we saw many antelopes and dik-diks, which are really small and ran away from us whenever we got close, so we couldn't get a good photo.
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| Antelopes |
After walking for about 45minutes, we finally saw the giraffes!
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| This guy was the biggest! |
After our walk we got back into the car for a short trip up to Kerio View Restaurant. This is a beautiful place which sits right on the edge of a relatively narrow part of the Great Rift Valley. It offers really breathtaking views. We had a yummy lunch then took a brief walk around the grounds.
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| Dani after lunch |
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| Overlooking the Rift Valley |
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| Overlook |
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| Dani being eaten by a crocodile |
After looking around a bit we headed back to Eldoret and had an afternoon at the Boma Inn, where I continued to work on "getting strong," and Dani (much more reasonably) got a massage. Successful day!
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