Our Kenyan Christmas

So we finally arrived at my old friend Hollie’s house for Christmas. Was so lovely to see all her family again, they were all so welcoming as ever, though her dad’s lasting impression of me seems to have been my constant eating! Christmas out here in Africa is definitely less of a big deal than it is elsewhere. When we arrived on Christmas Eve we helped to finish off putting up their decorations which Hollie says sometimes they don’t even bother putting up. I made a rather lovely floral display for the table. They had some neighbours over for tea and mince pies on the veranda and we had a lovely roasted ham for supper. Christmas Day itself was pretty quiet too. We had pressies in the morning, Hollie’s parents and bought us some choccie and Hollie had bought me and Paul a kikoi towel each which was very nice of them. There certainly weren’t the piles of expensively wrapped gifts that we get too used to, most of their presents were things specifically asked for (or money) wrapped in paper that has been recycled for years! We also slept for quite a significant part of the day, best thing to do when it’s hot, and I think Paul and I were still recovering from the journey! We were joined in the evening by some friends of theirs for Christmas dinner. We had sailfish for starters which is a bit like smoked salmon but it was rather odd and chewy. Then there was chicken and goose and all the trimmings. We had 6 crackers between the 9 of us, so some people had home made paper hats that we’d made the day before! We played a good funny game after dinner which consisted of balancing as many cardboard bananas as you could on various parts of one’s body whilst trying to carry out forfeits! Lots of ‘silly picture’ opportunities!

The best parts of Christmas were really the non-christmas bits though. On Boxing Day afternoon we went down to rim of the Menegai Crater (an extinct volcano crater, apparently one of the largest on earth) with some friends of Hol’s for sundowners. It was a lovely spot to watch the sun go down over.

We also went and stayed on the Delamere’s private ranch for a night where another friend of Hollie’s has a house (which we won’t go in to cos it really was the biggest dive of a house I have ever seen, an extreme bachelor pad!). It was beautiful. It’s on the banks of lake Elementita, one of the rift valley lakes, so it’s like having your own private national park with none of the car loads of tourists. We walked round the lake (watching out for buffalo!) which was full of flamingos and pelicans and other water birds, went for a night drive where we came upon a small group of hyena in the headlights among other things. We got up before dawn the next morning and had our breakfast down by the lake watching the sun come up. We saw giraffe and buffalo and dozens of antelope. Gorgeous.

We also made a visit to Nakuru National Park so that Paul could see his first rhino! It was a lovely full day, arriving at dawn and leaving at dusk. We saw lots of baboons, who are fascinating to watch, as well as giraffe, hyena, eland and the regular buffalo, impala, zebra, waterbuck warthog etc. We drove the whole way round the lake so we got several lovely views out across the park. It did strike me though just how close this park is to civilisation, the houses are literally built right up to the park fences. It is, like Hollie said, almost like a big open air zoo. It’s funny cos when I was there last I thought it was the ultimate wild place, alive with animals. Maybe as you get older you see things for what they actually are a bit more.