Nairobi

 

Dear Everyone,

We (Andy, Gail, Cindy, me) returned from Kenya Sunday May 17.  Looking at this trip, I plan on dividing this diary in four separate parts: Nairobi; Tsavo; Lakes and Mt Kenya; and Maasai Mara.

Why Africa?  This trip started off 15 months ago, when we got a flyer announcing a Field Museum sponsored trip to Kenya with Bruce Patterson.  You may recall that Bruce is (now) the curator emeritus of Mammalogy at the Field.  He was Barbara’s ‘boss’ after the retirement/death of Phil Herskowitz. Sometime in the 90s, Bruce spent a lot of time in Tsavo researching the mane-less lions there.  He even did some Earthwatch trips with volunteers.  I never had a lot of interest in going to Africa (I’ll state here that I was dumb), except if it was something involving Bruce.  So, when we saw the flyer, I immediately told Cindy to pack bags. Cindy actually had some resistance when she tried to get some information about the trip, since we are not “Founder’s Council” at the museum.  She was tempted to play the Barbara card when speaking to a development officer.  But it all worked out fine (the theme for this trip).

This trip ended up being delayed for around eight months. It was originally planned for August of 2025, during the Great Migration.  However, there was some diminished interest in the trip (some people pulled out), and when the head of the trip planning company, Jim Friedlander of Arrangements Abroad (PEA class of 1978 [Cindy and I have been of another AA planned trip four years ago; a canal trip in the Netherlands and Brussels on the Magnifique 3]) tested out the itinerary, he did not like it.  The trip went back to the planning stage, and was offered in May, the ‘off season’ (end of the rainy season) with a better itinerary.

We never got completely reimbursed for the original plan, and ended up locked in to the current trip - - something that we became especially aware of when Bruce had to drop out just 4 weeks before we left (for a non-emergent medical issue)!  As you will see, this was not the only personnel issue that came up on this tour.  Bruce was replaced by Anderson Feijo,  a new mammologist at the Field.  Anderson is fun and enthusiastic, but pretty young, and an expert in Brazil and Tibet, not Africa.

Anyway, after many vaccinations, a supply of Malarone and Z-paks (a three-day course of azithromycin), binoculars, etc., we were ready to go.  We met Andy and Gail at O’Hare terminal 5 early Sunday morning on May 3.

Sunday May 3

We went up to the Lot international lounge for some extra breakfast, and then boarded our Air Ethiopia flight.  The seats were not the most comfortable ever, but a highlight of the trip was my introduction to kolo, a snack food made primarily of roasted barley grains.  I liked it so much that the flight attendant gave me an eight-ounce bag of it, that I shared later with our tour group.  I’m looking forward to visiting an Ethiopian market some time in Chicago to see if I can buy some. I also saw Marty Supreme on the plane, and had a long conversation with a Kenyan-American locum tenens ER doctor who practices in Kentucky

Never in my life did I think I would be here!

We landed in Addis Ababa after 12 hours, and had a 3-hour layover before our flight to Nairobi.  It’s a nice enough airport, with a lot of coffee for sale.  There were many people wearing traditional clothing.  Andy especially liked the thawbs.  Then onto our 2 hour flight to Nairobi, where we were met by airport staff, booked by AA, who hustled us right through customs and into a taxi to our hotel 30 minutes away, the Fairmont Norfolk.

Part of the new downtown

Nairobi is a city created by the British as a rail depot for the “lunatic express”, a train line that runs from coastal Mombasa to Lake Victoria and the upper Nile.  The infamous Tsavo lions halted construction for some months while they stalked and ate about thirty railway workers (There was speculation that they ate more, but recent DNA evidence from their teeth (still at the Field) showed that they preferred Indian railway workers). This 1-meter gauge railway still exists and runs freight, but it has been superseded by a Chinese "belt and road" railway built (for $3 billion) parallel to it in 2017.  Nairobi city now has a population of about 5 million, and no obvious zoning.  We passed the Kibera slum  (population up to 1 million) several times driving along the southern edge of the city - - but we also passed by the huge Nairobi National Park.

Monday May 4

The Norfolk is one of the oldest hotels in Nairobi, and hosted such luminaries as Carl Akeley (the Field and American Museum of Natural History’s chief taxidermist, and theme of this trip), Lord Delamere, Karen Blixen, and Theodore Roosevelt, as well as a variety of entertainment celebrities. The hotel survived a big bomb attack in 1980, and like many venues in throughout Kenya has a ton of security. Kenya has up to 50% unemployment in the 20-50 years old age range, so lots of people to create mischief, and lots of people to stop it.

The hotel is well kept up despite its age, and has some modern wings.  There was a lot of sprucing up going on, some of which was surely due to off-season repair, but also, we found out later (see below), that it was prepping up for a visit from French President Macron a couple of days after we left. Somehow Cindy and I scored the Blixen suite (!), but overall the rooms were nice enough.  We had dinner and sampled Tusker cider and beer.

Tuesday May 5

After breakfast I did some tai chi (the one and only time we had time for this) poolside with Andy, and then had lunch at the bar with Jim Friedlander.  

Electrified barbed wire on top of the wall that separates the pool from the outside world

Jim was the only employee from Arrangements Abroad [AA} on the trip - - his wife (their general consul) was also supposed to come, but she had to stay behind because her father had been diagnosed with heart failure and was in hospital. Jim told us a long story of taking Beyonce and Jay-Z to Cuba (AA has done over 60 Cuba trips over the years), and how it was impossible to keep her celebrity a secret, even in Cuba.  AA got into some hot water over this, especially with past and present Secretary of State Little Marco Rubio. 

After lunch we met most of the other participants, and took a trip to a shopping center, a leather goods cooperative, and finally a giraffe center where you could feed the giraffes. Watch out for head butting, though! Apparently, they get mad when you approach without food offerings. Then we had a cocktail meet-up at the hotel and dinner.  The food at the hotel is quite good, and we noticed that at least a third of the dishes were Indian food.  This was the case at almost every place we ate at. Kenya actually recognizes Indian Kenyans as an official tribe.  Kenya, what with being composed of 44 different tribes (including Indians) with different languages and cultures purports a culture of religious tolerance.

Leather goods

Rundown on non-Brown participants:

Susan, Steve and their daughter Lucy Baird.  Steve is the CEO of Baird and Warner, a big Chicago real estate company.  Lucy, their daughter, is a professional artist.

Roger and Sandy Deromedi. Roger is the former CEO of Kraft foods.  Sandy is on the Board of Trustees of the Field.  They do a lot of Chicago based philanthropy.

Libby O’Connell  Chief historian for the History channel.  A food history expert. Emmy winner. Now retired. Super funny.  She lives in New York. Niece and temporary caregiver of Adele Simmons

Adele Simmons.  She is the aunt of Libby O’Connell. Former president of Hampshire College.  Second president of MacArthur Foundation.  She is in the early stages of dementia. Her mother was Ellen Thorne Smith, who was sort of like the Barbara Brown of the mid-20^th century.  Thorne Smith started out as a volunteer in the Ornithology division, and eventually became an assistant curator.  She also founded the Field’s Women’s Board, and became a trustee.  The Thorne rooms at the Art Institute are from the same family.

Robert and Charlene Shaw.  He was a nuclear submarine engineer, started a medical device company, and became an angel investor. Charlene did a lot of behind the scenes work.  He reminds me a bit of Alison Rempel’s dad.

Marge Spears. Her first job was at A G Becker for six years, just after Roger left.  Becker paid for her business school tuition.  She went on to work at Dimensional Fund Advisors under David Booth for a couple of years and then onto other financial services jobs.  She is an avid gardener. She lives in SW Michigan.

Jim Friedlander CEO of AA, replaced mid-week by Kate Otter (see below)

Anderson Feijo Field curator of Mammals

Katie Baltensperger Director of Individual Philanthropy at the Field

Albert  Mitcho: A very experienced consultant travel guide for anywhere in Africa – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, Morocco.  He knows everything and everyone.

Wednesday May 6

After breakfast we all boarded a bus and drove to a suburb southwest of Nairobi called Karen.  This is actually on land owned by Baron and Karen Blixen, and allegedly named after her (I don’t know why it is not called Blixen).  This is a leafy ex-urban to suburban enclave with large estates hidden behind walls and armed security about.  Our first stop is the Karen Blixen Museum.  Karen married late (she was 28, an old maid at the time). The Blixens lived here from 1913-1931, encouraged by Lord Delamere to try to grow coffee (unsuccessful).  Within a year of marriage, Karen was diagnosed with syphilis, purportedly from exposure to her husband, Baron Blixen, who was a great safari hunter, but apparently of low moral character.  They became somewhat estranged, and separated in 1921. Karen remained in the house for another ten years before returning to Denmark and the fame of authorship. 

The home became one of Kenya’s national museums after the success of the Out of Africa movie in 1985 (it was donated to the Kenyan government by the Danish government which somehow had the property rights).  Our home in Hinsdale is about the same age, and although our house is substantially smaller, I think it is in better condition.  Anyway, after a briefing, we walk through rooms with of furniture and old household appliances.  The grounds are lovely, though.  After the house tour, we take a quick nature walk through the surrounding woods, and come upon an old coffee roaster that is now the home of some tree hyraxes.  In the meanwhile, I realize that the Merlin birding app is completely worthless in identifying any bird songs.  Luckily, I also downloaded (for free) a pretty comprehensive guide to the birds of Eastern Africa, and it becomes especially useful after a couple of days when I finally figure out where the search function is and how to use it.

Karen Blixen's home

100 year old kitchen appliances

coffee roaster

tree hyraxes

After our tour of the mansion, we go to a nearby restaurant for lunch, a ceramic bead cooperative, and then onto the Sheldrick Wildlife trust for an encounter with orphaned baby elephants.  We arrive a bit late, which makes the keepers a little testy - - they had been waiting for us to arrive to feed the elephants their afternoon snack.  The elephants eat every couple of hours. (Mature elephants eat up to 600 pounds of food daily; they have only one stomach, so they are not very efficient digesters.  Hence, they poop a lot, and a lot of animals eat the only partially digested feces).  We arrange ourselves around an open lecture space, and the elephants come trotting in.  They use their trunks to eagerly reach for the giant baby bottles of milk the keepers give them, and drink so vigorously that they spill a lot onto the ground.  They have 18-24 jugs of milk daily. After the initial excitement is over, we are allowed to mingle in the pen and pet them.  Their skin is very thick (pachydermia!), and surprisingly bristly.  You have to be aware of what is around you.  One nudged me slightly from behind, if being accidently pushed on by a several hundred-pound animal is a nudge - - I went flying forward a few feet.  Afterwards, out came a baby rhino (Tytan) and a baby zebra (Notty) who are pair bonded.  Then we visited a mature blind rhino.  You could see areas in his palisade where he had tried to escape over the years.  We also saw some ticks - - one very large that attacks ruminants, and one smaller one.  Sheldrick has been pretty successful in rewilding the orphan elephants.  They take care of them in the shelter until they are 5-6 years old, and then take them to one of three rewilding sites (two in Tsavo), where their reintroduction to wild herd can take up to another five years.

beads galore

ready for firing

Vervet

Our first impala

our first warthog

Tytan the rhino and Notty the zebra

Trimezia

look how large Tsavo (bottom right) is, and how small Mara (bottom left) is 

Big tick (Amblyomma hebraeum, or bont tick), as large as your thumbnail

fuchsia

After our visit at the shelter, we drove back to Nairobi to the Nairobi national museum, where we had a quick tour given to us by Bernard Agwanda, the curator of mammals.  He and Anderson had some bonding moments.  We spent some time looking at replicas of proto-hominids, and the taxidermized remains of Sudan, the last male Northern white rhino.  We also got a peak into the skin, and bone rooms of the museum, and Dr. Agwanda told us about some of the museum’s conservation projects.  Unfortunately, we were running late, so we didn’t really have any time to see the museum.

Sudan

Spectacled mousebird

Black kites

The Norfolk hotel was practically across the street from the museum, and we went back for a dinner with the special guest of Susan M Burns, who is the charge d’affaires for the US in Kenya.  She is actually acting as the ambassador here, because our current administration hasn’t appointed one yet.  She is a career foreign service diplomat, and her last posting was in Viet Nam.  Cindy and I sat at a table with her husband, Nick.  He is retired and used to work for educational book companies like Houghton Mifflin. They have an old home in Baltimore and Cindy and Nick bonded over the trials of caring for old plaster walls and ceilings.

Kenya is one of US’s most stalwart allies in this part of the world.  The embassy is pretty large, and we have a large military presence here.  There is a lot of trouble to the northeast (Somalia), and the Northwest (the Sahel). It also helps that the Kenyan’s have a (relatively) stable government, and a ‘British’ military tradition.