kenya aka heaven

claire, ames, sam and blaine


the four of us overlooking the waterhole in our lodge's backyard


claire, amy and the crocodile




the lioness that walked around our van to stalk the baby elephant


the elephant that side-stepped our van and walked around it, within feet of us




perfect. that is the one word that describes my trip to kenya- it was perfect. it was exactly what i needed.

my last email had me stuck in el geneina until tuesday at the earliest (it was last sunday). that day i begged to go to the airport with gustavo to see if they happened to be in a merciful mood and might let me on the plane- no harm in trying, right? we showed up there and it was a total miracle- they said i could get on the plane (we only know of one other time that they have let someone get on at the last minute). i was so excited i could have cried. now the only problem was whether or not i could get my international flight changed back to that night. i get to khartoum and am told that i am an extremely lucky girl because they hadn't been able to change my ticket yet, and had i missed the flight that night i would have been stuck in khartoum until wednesday's flight (arriving thursday). i mentally fall to my knees and praise God. i spend the evening in khartoum with gustavo and monica and we go for pizza and ice cream and gorge ourselves (showering in el geneina was the first time i have seen myself in a full-length mirror since june and it shocked me to see how much weight i had lost. i never thought i would say this, but it didn't even look good. i can't even imagine what i must have looked like when i was sick and so much thinner than i am now- i have started eating a lot more). that night we say goodbye for good as i leave for kenya and they head to geneva and then ultimately to somalia. i can't believe they're gone- they were my sanity for the last few months. i told them that when i'm done medical school i am going to come find them, in whatever crazy country they are in by then. and i meant it.

i stay up that night and catch my flight at 3:45am. i am far too excited to sleep so i drum my fingers for most of the flight. surprisingly no one kills me for it. i arrive in malindi, grab a taxi and finally, after 6 weeks of eager anticipation, arrive. claire is sitting on the patio of our room and books it out to hug me. there are no words to express how happy i was to see her. claire is one of my favourite people on the planet. she is one of those kindred-spirit old-souls who you can talk to, or not talk to, about anything. she's a fellow canadian, a fellow midwife and a fellow spur-of-the-moment fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants girl. when i told her i was going to new orleans in september she said "should i come with?". moments later i was booking her ticket. when i asked if she wanted to meet me for this vacation she said "not if you're going to egypt you psycho, but i'll come to kenya" (i was unaware of the conflict in the middle east when i suggested cairo, just for the record). she was the perfect person to spend the last week with.
so there we were, in kenya. there was only one problem... our hotel sucked. claire's travel agent had booked it for us and we arrived to find that not only does that hotel not exist anymore, the new one has no reservations for us and the deal we had been quoted was totally out of date. thankfully there were only 2 other guests in the entire hotel, so there was plenty of room for us. oh, and when they say that their hotel is "beachfront", what they mean is that they own a small piece of beachfront land that we have to drive to for lunch. the food sucks and they charge us for everything. and i do mean everything. they charged me when i asked them to call us a cab. so we got into that cab and took off for watanu and a luxury, truly beachfront resort. it was amazing. the food was amazing, the drinks were amazing, the service was amazing, the beach was amazing. all of it. amazing. white sand, turquoise water, palm trees, tropical birds, blue skies, people bringing you cocktails everytime you pause for more than 5 seconds....amazing. the best part of turtle bay was that i got to spend the week with not just one, but three of the best people on the planet. on our first day there i got in the pool to play waterpolo with a big group of people. there was a young british couple on my team and i found myself totally drawn to them. they were so funny that i spent most of the game laughing at them and letting the other team score on us. i got out of the pool and told claire that it was our mission to make friends with them. i moseyed on over to where they were sitting, struck up a conversation and that was it- we became a family of four. blaine and sam, a gorgeous couple who have been together for 7 years, were there on their honeymoon and it became a group deal. that first night we had drinks with them and when they went to have a cigarette i turned to claire and said "i want to marry them". she replies with "maybe they'll adopt us!". by the second day we had already established who sat where at the table for meals, who got made fun of for what, and we had made plans to go on safari together. during the day we lay by the pool, played waterpolo and volleyball, got massages, napped in the air conditioning, drank cocktails and ate our faces off because this resort NEVER stops feeding you and/or bringing you drinks (i kid you not, i'm not even slightly bony anymore). in the evening we would shower off the sand and sunscreen and dress up a bit for dinner. at dinner we would start with the drinks and it just went from there. my one discovery of the vacation, and thank God i discovered it, was that if you drink wine and milk together, you don't get a hangover. ok, hear me out. and yes, this is what i was mercilessly mocked for. i had a sore on the roof of my mouth that wouldn't heal for days. it hurt every single time i took a bite of food or drank anything other than milk, but i was determined to eat and drink regardless. so the first time i drank a glass of wine i had a glass of milk as well. after each sip of wine my sore would sting, so i would take a sip of milk to soothe it. the morning after the first night where we each drank about a bottle and a half of wine, claire was completely hung-over and useless and i was bouncing out of bed, ready to eat breakfast and hit the beach. it was fabulous. consequence-free drinking. right... back to the evenings...after dinner we would sit by the beach to listen to music and have more drinks. sometimes we played cards, more often we just talked, laughed our heads off and danced.

the safari: one of the best experiences of my life. we started out at an unGodly hour and the four of us piled into the van with jeffrey, our safari guide. we drove for a couple of hours on the kind of road that causes brain-damage. by the end of it i'm pretty sure all of my internal organs had torn loose from the viscera that holds them in place and had fallen into my pelvic cavity. aside from that, the ride was fantastic. it was a total glimpse into the real kenya. the people, the huts, the scenery. we reached tsavo national park and began our safari. tsavo national park is 13,000 square kilometers, which i think makes it one of the biggest (if not the biggest) national parks in the world. once we got inside the gate jeffrey lifted up the roof of the van. the roof went straight up and left about a foot and a half of open space, allowing us to stand in the van and look out over the sides, while being protected from the sun (and large leaping animals). we all stood up and braced ourselves to keep from being tossed around. our first up-close and personal moment was with giraffes. they were right beside the road, chomping on the leaves at the top of the trees. they were HUGE, and so weird looking. they walked by us and were so close that we could see their muscles rippling as they started to run. along the entire ride we saw countless animals- zebras, birds of all kinds. antelope, baboons, bush babies, warthogs, dik diks, waterbucks, impalas, gazelle, oryx, and all kinds of african animals whose names i don't remember- but there are 5 animals that are referred to as "the big 5", that are the coolest and rarest to see. of those 5, we saw 4. our next experience (one of the two that made my entire trip) was when we drove right into the path of a wild elephant. it was walking down a path and about to cross the road and we stopped right in front of it. it looked at us, side-stepped us and walked, indifferently, right by our car. i could see his eyelashes and every crevice in his skin- that's how close he was to us. a wild elephant. ENORMOUS. after he walked back into the trees i turned to claire and said "i hope my grandmother saw that". she loved elephants and i have many of her elephant figurines to remember her by. i know she saw it. next we see a lioness by the side of the road, chilling out in the shade of a small tree. we get to the lodge and it is crazy-cool. it is built beside a water-hole and a salt pool, and our rooms overlook them. we sit on our back patio and watch the wild baboons laze around in the field by the water. three of them hop the electric fence that is set up to protect the guests and hang out in our backyard. elephants come at night to bathe themselves in the salt pool and the hotel will knock on your door at any hour of the night to tell you to come see them if you put your name down for the wake-up call, which we did. we have lunch then take off for the afternoon safari. this is the one that kicks ass. most of the time that you're on safari you are driving at a leisurely pace, with everyone looking in different directions, trying to spot a reason to stop. occasionally, however, jeffrey would hear something over his radio then put his pedal to the floor. we, in the back, would be tossed back into our seats, where we would put on our seatbelts and say "i bet it's lions". the safari guides work together and when one of them finds something cool and/or rare, he radioes the rest of them and everyone books it over there. jeffrey never told us what to expect so it was always a surprise. this time we find that there is a lioness to the left of us and a herd of elephants to the right of us. the lioness gets up and starts to walk towards our car. i have developed the habit of yelling to the animals to tell them that i will give them a banana if they come to our car, which no one minds when i am talking to harmless animals, like baboons. the lioness is still coming straight towards us and claire says "am i the only one who is getting scared?". i say "hey lioness!". claire says "shut up amy!". i say "guess what claire said about your mother!". she is coming closer and claire leans down to close the window. she walks RIGHT by our car, then behind it, and comes out on the other side where she proceeds to stalk the newborn elephant. the herd sees her and starts to move away, with the baby sticking very close to its extremely large parent. it was unbelievable. next we see a small group of ostriches, which we hadn't known to expect. we stop and watch 3 males doing a courtship ritual with 2 females. i got it on video and it rules. the sun is starting to set and we are slowly driving through the african wilderness, watching herds of wild elephants walk by, single file, looking like they are moving in slow motion. it feels like a dream. claire and i keep looking at each other and saying, in astonishment, "we're in kenya" "we're on a freaking safari!" "that was a lioness that just walked by us". the sand we're driving through is a deep red and by the end of the day we are all covered in it and our hair is approaching dreadlock status. we head to the lodge where we are so tired from standing and bracing ourselves in the car all day, plus our early morning, plus the hot sun, that we fall into bed at around 9. that night i wake up from a bad dream and can't fall back asleep. i consider sleeping in claire's bed but she's been sick and not sleeping well so i don't want to wake her. instead i head to the back patio where i can watch the animals at the waterhole in the bright moonlight. we are in the middle of nowhere and the sky is a thick blanket of stars. i went back to bed for awhile, then got up to watch the sun rise over tsavo, which was spectacular. after a big breakfast we head back out. this time we aren't out for very long before jeffrey starts booking it towards our next surprise. we get there to discover that we are looking at four RHINOS!!! we had been told all along that we won't get to see rhinos because they have been so poached over the years that there are only 12 left in the entire park (the 13,000 square kilometer park). the guides haven't seen rhinos in over a year and yet, here they are. claire is in awe that we were looking at a 1/3 of their population that morning. it was crazy. we have noticed that each time we say "i really want to see..." we end up seeing it. especially when claire says it. clearly God is on our side so we start saying things like "i really want to see a leopard" (claire), "i really want to see an entire pride of lions" (sam), "i really want to see a million dollars in cold hard cash, lying by the side of the road" (me). sadly i never saw my million dollars, nor did claire see her leopard or her cheetah. we kept driving and saw a van pulled over, which is always a sign that someone has found something cool. we stop and see that they are looking at a herd of zebras, which we have seen a million of and now find unimpressive. then they point to just beyond the zebras where there is a pride of 11 lions lying around. we're watching this and wondering what the hell the zebras are thinking, just hanging out, eating grass, with an entire pride of lions a short distance away. i say that if i was them i would be sloooooooowly walking away, all casual-like, until i was out of sight, then i would run like hell. and this is precisely what they started to do. one at a time, each of the zebras would walk to the right of us, and once they reached a certain spot where they weren't visible to the lions they would totally hoof it into the trees. it wasn't until after they had gone that we saw two lionesses stand up from where they had been lying in the sandpit right beside the zebras, stalking them. 13 lions, not 11. as we drive away we see a van pulled over and people on the side of the road. we ask jeffrey if they are insane, as no one is allowed out of their cars, and he points out that they have a flat tire and all have to lift the van so the guide can change the tire. as we drive by we can see that they are all looking unsettled, so we don't mention that we just went by a pride of lions. we did joke about it though, which probably wasn't very nice of us. i figured that after that we were in store for a flat ourselves, but thankfully we weren't. apparently tsavo used to be really known for lion attacks because it was so desolate that there wasn't enough wildlife to keep the lions fed. the men who were working the railway used to have to walk from nairobi to mombasa and it was very common for them to be eaten by lions along the way. it is now early afternoon and we start to head out of the park. we stop for lunch at a beautiful little restaurant that is perched over a river. some of the men there ask if we want to see the crocodiles so we head down to the river with them. they start to throw rocks in the water, whistling and splashing the water with their hands. and slowly we start to see crocodiles showing up. we are standing on the side of the river and the men toss rotten meat on the ground, encouraging the crocs out of the water. they come out and we are now standing within 6 feet of them. claire and sam start to back up. at one point the crocodile lunges forward and that's it- claire and sam are gone. they were gone before i even had time to turn around to run, so i'm pretty sure they actually levitated up the hill. i have to admit, it scared the crap out of me too. those things are WAY faster than you would think. thankfully the tribal guy stopped him before he got to us. that was one of those experiences that you will never forget. we stood within 3 or 4 feet of a wild crocodile (the one that lunged at us), with no fence between us. awesome. after a beautiful lunch we get back into the van for the bumpy ride home. towards the end of it claire is saying "i think i'm going to have to kill myself if this doesn't end soon. my head is about to fall off". we get back to the resort and shower the centimeter of grime off ourselves. after my shower i am shocked, and thrilled, to discover that i wasn't just filthy, i was tanned! i have never had a tan on my face in my entire life and here i am with a golden hue to my skin. my arms are totally brown but sadly it is only obvious when i put them next to my white, white stomach. still.

on my last night i started to feel sick at the thought of having to go back to darfur. i also made the mistake of getting online and reading geoff's memorial website, which i haven't read since may or june. most of the night was fantastic, but then i felt myself starting to distance myself and feel moody so i went to bed. the next morning i was still in a weird mood and claire was hungover, but we made ourselves join sam and blaine on the beach for a tour with captain john. he took us on a walk through the dead coral (the tide was out) and we had a wicked time. in one tidal pool he coaxed a huge moray eel out of his hole. then one of the men caught him and i got to hold him. slippery little suckers. they showed us all kinds of coral, fish, crabs, starfish, shells. another hole had an aggressive eel in it so they dangled a stick with food on the end of it in front of him and he tossed himself out of the water and up onto the rock that sam, claire and i were standing on. sam jumped back and knocked into claire, who fell into me, who just narrowly avoided falling into another huge tidal pool. then they gave me the stick with the food and i got to entice the eel up out of the water. he was a very unfriendly fellow. not at all like the other big one that i had held. by the end of it we were laughing our heads off and deciding to stay for another week (which we didn't end up doing, sadly :) and that was the end of it. we headed back to the resort and i packed my stuff up. claire was leaving the next day so it was just me going. i said goodbye to everyone, did my best not to cry or throw up, prayed that the flight would be cancelled or bombed or whatever it would take for me to not have to go back, and left. it's a good thing there was no one travelling with me because i was completely uninterested in talking. i hated having to leave them and i hated having to go back to sudan. i half hoped that something would happen at immigration and they wouldn't let me back in the country. no such luck. the one good thing is that i got back to find that rather than spending two days in el geneina i was spending two days in khartoum. rooms with air conditioning, stores with good food and western toilets. luxury. i have spent most of my time here just eating and sleeping in the air conditioning. i fly back to el geneina tomorrow then take the helicopter to habillah on thursday. phil told me that i don't have to go back if i don't feel safe, which i don't really, but i am going back. it's only for 11 days, the au is staying so i feel that the tension will have lessened somewhat (side note: FANTASTIC that the au is staying longer. maybe once they're done we can send in the boy scouts. they are sure to be just as effective. am i the only one who has noticed that the war is back on, even with the au still here? can someone please tell me what they're doing here, besides easing western guilty consciences and assuring khartoum that no one is going to interfere with what they are doing in darfur). i wouldn't go back (and am, in fact, extremely tempted to just fly to geneva from here) except that claire brought a huge care package for my staff and my team, and i owe it to them to say goodbye. i don't think that darfur is safe for caucasians anymore and i'm not going to be very relaxed while i'm in the region. the fact remains that we, the international ngos, are not wanted in darfur by the powers that be, and it is only a matter of time before that is made more obvious. since killing our national staff hasn't worked, we figure it will be an expat who is killed next. i noticed something funny on vacation. when i arrived in khartoum and ate food that required actual chewing (i'm used to soup and rice mostly) my jaw was really sore, likely from me clenching my teeth as i sleep. it hurt for the first couple of days that i was on holidays, then it went away. then when i was on the plane on my way back from kenya, i noticed that i was clenching my teeth again, and by the time i got back to khartoum, it hurt to chew again. it's definitely time to pack it in.

i will be home in less than a month and i can't wait to see all of you who are in van. claire, you are a total rockstar and i absolutely love and adore you. thank you SO much for giving me the best therapy i could have possibly imagined. blaine and sam, the same goes for you. spending a week with 3 people who are so lovely and so pure in heart was the best thing i could have done. this trip was a complete answer to prayer and the three of you are blessings from God. i love you guys.