An African Thanksgiving - Part 1

Missing all the normalcy of family activities, we decided to invite literally everyone linked into the Fogarty East Africa network to a thanksgiving day feast in Lake Naivasha. After all, we somehow have to re-create all the hectic noise that Italian and Polish families can project.

Even though the Fogarties are essentially the premier up-n-coming doctors/researchers in the world, they do have a tendency to get a little rowdy.

We were estimating around 9-10, total, but that figure swelled overnight, as soon as the email was posted, to around 16 partakers. 3 from Nairobi proper, 2 from Kisumu (Kenya), 2 from Eldoret (Kenya), 5 from Kampala (Uganda), 2 from Moshi (Tanzania), 1 from Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), 1 from Garissa (Kenya).

That’s a lot of people, use a map for geographical clarity if you please.

So we rented a house by the name of Twiga (giraffe in Kiswahili). Actually a house and its two bedroom guest house.

It was situated directly on the lake. The property was beautiful. Entry way buffered by a hand built brick wall the length of the property with the front gate and doorman always there to welcome. It was at least 2 hectares in size with an additional hectare from the fence boundary through a washed out, dried out, green pasture that led to the water’s edge. The posted pictures shall suffice for the ground’s descriptions as well as the houses themselves. I will continue on telling…the rest of the story.

Planning for the weekend was a feat, of which I only knew some of. Annzibar was again all over things. Imagine, 14 adults, 2 ugandan youths, a Friday night dinner, sat morning breakfast, Saturday lunch, Saturday evening Thanksgiving feast, Sunday breakfast, Sunday lunch, and snacks to go around. Imagine that, now imagine this, a fridge at home not large enough to hold all the food at once, so food was purchased in two trips. Items like two magnificent, enormous apple pies were prepped in advance. Everything in Kenya for these meals had to be made from scratch. That’s right, using all the proper ingredients available and creating makeshift ones on the fly. Using an unpredictable non- circulating gas oven with stove tops that were sound, but proper cookware was at a loss. And, for each meat dish, a similar vegetarian one was constructed. We filled up a shopping cart the size of our VW bug convertible with the weekend’s food at the local Nakumatt (shopping center). We appeared as supremely gluttonous westerners to all local Kenyans here I’m sure, but kept on trucking, chalking the cart to the overflow point.

On Friday morning we stuffed all groceries, pies, backpacks, and people into a Subaru forester (which Anne drove) and a pink Toyota Platz (which D dog had the reigns to).

It was an hour and a half to Naivasha town from Nairobi, roughly 85 km (barring any stiff traffic). Naivasha town resides on the eastern side of the lake and we were to continue around the southern point of the lake to Twiga house, which wrapped us around to the southwest corner of the lake. About a two hour fifteen minute trip in all.

We left Nairobi at around 2:00 pm and arrived at the house at around 4:15. Guests were to trickle in all evening long as all 16 came rambling from air, dirt paths, goat paths, mountain passes, bus trips, matatus, boda bodas (motorcycle taxis), and one even came via donkey (I believe). The house astounded everyone. And everyone had cameras, and EVERYONE took pictures. Thousands of pictures. It has been said that if you flip through them fast enough, you may be able to create a video of the entire weekend. All but one had arrived by 8 pm through amazingly good planning, lucky twists of fate, and people helping people. A rain came in Friday evening, the weather was cool, just like Thanksgiving back in the states. The rain lasted for only an hour, but eased the heat of the Kenyan sun. It was chilly enough to don sweatshirts and long pants. The house had a groundskeeper and maid. The groundskeeper came in every evening to start the fire in the living room, where all 16 of us could easily lounge and re-hydrate with wine and tusker. In the evening hours (6pm) the giraffe all came out to feed along the treeline near the house. The hippos, water and mud drenched, wandered out onto the washed out plain for some evening grazing. We all had magnificent views from our seemingly ½ hectare deck and lounge chairs, as the sun rested over the mountain peaks and scintillated the calming wave tips. I would call this fairly spectacular. 4-5 giraffe, ~10 hippos in the pod, a herd of zebra.

Dinner for the evening was Mexican. Shredded chicken with mole sauce wrapped up in chapatis (tortilla like African goodness), guacamole as an accompaniment, and chips for fillers. I and a scholar named Todd had embarked upon a side venture to pick up our friend Samar somewhere on a 45 minute long stretch of road. Samar had bused in and then took a motorcycle taxi, who’s headlamp had burned out, and there he sat on the side of the road, somewhere in a small town (13 sheds and 12 lanterns in size). We were to find him and pick him up. We left at 8:30 and returned with Samar at 10:30. Two hours of Kenyan night time adventures, where Todd and I (2 lone mzungus in a forester) actually happened to panic a herd of 20 something’s Kenyan males. After all, we were so out of place that it made them uncomfortable.

Anne was worried at the amount of time it took us, but like the coordinator she is, she kept in constant contact to make sure everything was turning out OK.

The three of us returned to Twiga house. All were finishing up dinner, and we simply joined in. Some had retired to the living room, lounging fireside, talking amongst themselves. All kinds of stories to catch up. Bedrooms to explore, the house to explore.

Noting that we had all traveled, some much longer than others, to reach Twiga, sleepiness was definitely in the cards. Tomorrow would be Thanksgiving Saturday. Tomorrow we would all hike the gorge at Hell’s Gate National Park. We all needed some rest. We sat around laughing hysterically at the general banter and stories, and were intrigued with the anticipation of watching the Nile river rafting video that a scholar called Miriam had brought with here from Uganda. It was an enjoyable, festive evening. Then we all called in quits and turned in for the night.

The night time festivities of the scholars were docile. But those of the hippos and zebras were anything but. The hippos broke through the fence to feed upon the property’s grasses. The zebra did the same. One particular hippo mother and her lil baby, seemed to have a propensity for the twiga house pool. They would find it whenever they wanted to in the dark of night. Needless to say, we did not find it crystal clear.

We woke up in the morning. I walked downstairs to brew some coffee. The breakfast was choice of cereal, fresh pineapple and mangos, choice of yogurt, and toast. Everybody joined in and meandered around the table, the deck, and the yard, taking in the view and the peacefulness of it all while enjoying a cup of hot Kenya AA coffee.

We all ate, talked, and got packed. All of us were leaving to hike the gorge at 9:30 am. Plenty of water and plenty of cameras were packed. Anne and I put on our hiking garb and sunscreen. I found a safari hat in the house and that became my sunshade for the hike.

15 of us, 13 adults, 1 seven month old and 1 three yr old were off to hike the gorge at Hell’s Gate.