The buffed, the bronzed...and the Bengalis?

For the piece de resistance of my parents' Kenya swing, I took them to Lamu Island, which is partly a 600-year-old Islamic settlement where donkeys share the narrow stone streets with women in full hijab, and partly East Africa's answer to Barbados. Wealthy Americans and Europeans have turned the island into a seaside pleasure dome with massive beachfront houses and catamarans floating in the bay that are worth the GNP of a small African nation. Meanwhile most of the locals live in historic Lamu town, which has some of the best preserved stone houses in the world.

 

I've written earlier about Indian families' aversion to the beach. Still, I thought it would be nice to bring my parents to the island as a way to unwind after the dusty safari - and I wanted to write a story about all the white settlement going on in Lamu town. I booked a room at the Peponi Hotel on Shela Beach, which The New York Times last year described thusly:

It's a 20-car pileup of manicured stereotypes as bronzed Italian men in thin-soled loafers; expat Brits and upcountry Kenyans in rumpled linen; London-based Russian businessmen in monogrammed shirts; and weather-beaten Frenchmen and their former-model wives gather to clink Old Pals, the house cocktail, while their tweens form knowing, bored-looking cliques and the wives show off the Shela uniform: flowing, sequined Indian top, a kikoyi [think sarong] sashed with a chunky beaded leather belt, beaded sandals and layers of ethnic jewelry.

Into this walked my parents, who almost never drink and who don't own any linen whatsoever. Still, The Times's review was a bit harsh - the Peponi does have its Robb Report side, but it's also the perfect place to sit and chill by the beach. The food is excellent, the fish fresh, the water clear as crystal, the service attentive - and lounge-chair-to-guest-ratio is roughly 2:1.

 

Surprisingly, we didn't stick out too badly. My parents busied themselves with non-beach activities - my mom spending most of her time in the hotel gift shop, my dad obsessing over breaking large bills so he'd have enough small ones to leave tips. Dad was always trying to buy 50-shilling (about 70-cent) bottles of water with 1,000-shilling notes. He'd be pissed when they give him change in 200-shilling notes, not the 100s and 50s that are good for tips. So naturally, he'd buy another bottle of water to get the smaller bill. Needless to say, we were very well hydrated.

This is Lamu airport, a thatched-roof hut - easily the coolest arrivals lounge in Africa 

View from the hotel veranda. Needless to say I spent a lot of time here 

Abdillah, our tour guide, guides us through the stone town's narrow streets 

The old stone town 

Donkeys rule the streets in Lamu; there are only two cars, and one is a veterinary ambulance - for donkeys. I'm not making that up 

One of the cool Swahili-style ceilings 

Coral facade of a stone house that's being redone by an American in Lamu 

A view of Lamu's old stone town from Shela Bay 

The circle of life

On New Year's holiday in Istanbul, I thought we honed a very pleasurable form of sightseeing - namely, waking up late, leaving your place after noon, starting with lunch, taking in a tourist site or (at most) two, stopping for a drink/coffee/hookah, then calling it a day and moving on to the evening festivities.

But this week on safari in the Masai Mara - one of Africa's most popular game parks - I found an even lazier style of tourism: the game drive. You climb into a Land Rover, turn on your camera, and at this point your work is basically done. A guide drives you over dirt paths and open fields and comes to a stop about 20 feet from a giraffe, herd of elephants, lion and lioness mating, etc. At which point you lift your camera to your face and click away for a few minutes while your fellow tourists make the requisite 'oohs' and 'aahs,' as well as the odd anthropomorphic joke. Then you are off to the next bit of wildlife, and on and on for the next couple of hours. In between game drives, you eat and sleep - there's nothing else to do in the Mara.

It was a perfect vacation. Mom and Dad enjoyed the experience, right down to the "luxury tent" accommodations. This is the thing to do on safari - you sleep under a canvas tent, only the tent is bigger than a Manhattan studio apartment and has hot water and electricity. Still it felt quite rustic - especially when a eight-inch green slug crawled onto Dad's bed on the first night and I had to escort it outside on a piece of newspaper.

It's the start of the long-awaited rainy season in Kenya, so we got splattered with rain and mud all week while mucking around the park looking for leopards (no dice). The rain fell so hard and fast that tire tracks became rivers of mud that criss-crossed the savannah as far as you could see. Still, the Mara landscape is amazing, and we did get ridiculously close to elephants, cheetahs and - best of all - lions.

If you haven't seen lions mate in the wild, well, let me just say, it's a scene. The lion and lioness spend most of their day lying in the grass. Every so often one of them gets up and does the lion version of a wink at the other. Then they are off. The lion climbs on top of the lioness, he growls, she winces, and it's all over in about 10 seconds.

Then they resume their lying around. The tourists proceed to make every obvious male performance joke in a smattering of languages, everyone laughs, and then it's on to the next African photo op. Authentic, it's not, but for a vacation you can't beat it.

Masai Mara, Wednesday morning 

Big mama elephant and baby 

Elephant and the horizon 

It's amazing to think we were this close to elephants. Mom thought this one might stick out its trunk and grab for her camera 

Lions lounging around 

Just before the mating begins. The look on her face is priceless 

Yada yada yada 

Lionesses and cubs out for a morning walk. Unfortunately, the light never got this good again 

Here's one of a mother and baby cheetah. That yellow flag on the mother's left ear is so that park researchers can track her movement

Me and the folks on a rare step outside the car (driver got a flat). Note Dad sporting the appropriate headgear 

The sun peeking over the horizon in the Mara yesterday 

Mom and Dad in Africa

You'll forgive me for slacking a bit on the blog. I've been eating, nonstop, for the past week. My parents arrived for a visit on Wednesday and my mom immediately set up camp in my kitchen, which is a room I visit only occasionally. Frankly, if I moved the coffee maker into my office, I could sublet the kitchen and make a killing.

 

It's been interesting having them here. For one thing, I'm coming up on the six-month mark of my time here, and hosting family is a watershed moment. I'd say I'm doing pretty well so far. My parents haven't gotten violently ill and their impressions of Africa and Africans have brightened considerably. My mom is impressed at how courteous everyone is (Kenya's tourist industry is alive and well) and my dad is astonished at how much Nairobi looks like the Bombay he grew up in (meaning we're about 40 years behind the times here).

 

My mom has also pumped life into the kitchen. Now, for example, I own salt. It turns out salt is important for cooking. She has brought a half-dozen stainless steel vessels that I can only assume I will use to store carryout menus. She also plans to leave me with a set of prescription-drug cannisters filled with various spices and masalas. Her optimism is her best quality.

 

We're going on safari to the Masai Mara tomorrow for the rest of the week, so I'll try to update over the weekend with pictures.

Dad feeding giraffes at a giraffe sanctuary outside Nairobi today. What you don't see is him racing for the sink to wash his hands about two seconds after this picture was taken. 

Me and mom at the Masai Market, a huge fair held on Fridays in Nairobi and responsible for at least half of the worthless crap sold to tourists in Kenya. We were happy to do our part. 

Evelyn took this very touching photo at a displaced people's camp in Atiak, Uganda. It's of a boy picking up spilled grains from a UN food distribution, one by one, with a used plastic bottle.