green
Jul 14 2004, 04:28 AM
Okay, so I stole the Title from Bonga. Thanks, Bonga!
I'm leaving for Kenya. Yes, I am bragging. Just wanted to let those who know, that this is it for a few weeks. I plan on posting at least once while there, but can not promise it. However, I'll post upon my return at some point..... assuming I'm coming back. I plan on falling in love with the place, so who knows....
Thanks to all those who offered suggestions and advice. I am taking it all with me.
Be well.
I'll have fun for you!
green
Kat
Jul 14 2004, 07:15 AM
Hey Green have a wonderful lovely special wedding.. stay safe...
and happy honeymooning stay in touch if you can ......
Sooz
Jul 14 2004, 08:59 AM
All the best Green! Yes do, please have fun for me too
Mambo
Jul 14 2004, 02:39 PM
laters, dude.
Nikki
Jul 14 2004, 03:28 PM
Happy ever after to you green, I hope all goes well!!! And remember...the bride comes before fishing, the bride comes before fishing, the bride comes before fishing....
humdul
Jul 14 2004, 04:29 PM
the bride comes before.... ohh darn it! Fishing here I come!!!

Enjoy!!
bonga
Jul 16 2004, 10:28 AM
Have a lot of fun, and enjoy every moment. See the beauty of Kenya, and breath the air deep into your lungs.
( okay, I'm jealous....

)
Live it!!
greetz Bonga
theadr
Jul 17 2004, 10:30 AM
Green,
Happy Wedding and Honeymoon.
green
Jul 19 2004, 11:26 AM
I am here !!!
So very different. Very good so far.
Have already seen many things in Nairobi. Very cool, as well as this internet cafe I am sitting in Bruce House building.
I do not what to say, but do not have time to say it anyway. Just wanted to pop in.
Be well !!
green
Tusker
Jul 19 2004, 11:31 AM

Good to know you're enjoying it. Have a Tusker for me!
Kat
Jul 19 2004, 11:42 AM
Hey Green HI..........!!
so did you do it yet?
get your minds outta the toilet
get MARRIED?
either way good to know you're safe arrived well and good..!! Couldn't stay away huh...
Mambo
Jul 19 2004, 01:56 PM
green, is this your first time in Kenya?
green
Aug 10 2004, 11:46 AM
I'm back home!
All what I can say is that my first time to Kenya was incredible. I hope to make many returns in future. I fell in love with Kenya. What a great country. I can think of no other place I would change my residence to, than Kenya.
And yes, KAT, I am now a married man! I had such a wonderful time with my beautiful bride. We traveled about and I even did a lot of driving!
To copy a phrase from a post a while back, "Ah, the matatus!"
I am at a loss of words for my experience there. With time, I will post more about it if anyone wants to hear it. What an awesome 3 weeks! A very short 3 weeks, but full of wonder.
smaug42
Aug 10 2004, 12:04 PM
Hey Green, we must have passed in the airports somewhere along the way :-) I arrived in Nairobi on Saturday morning!! Woohoo!!! I'm so happy to be back here. It IS such an awsome place isnt' it?
You are a brave one though.. driving? Wow. I've yet to get up the courage to do so... mainly because I can be lazy and get a friend to drive me around <grin>
Weather here is great, but a bit cool at nights.
Mambo
Aug 10 2004, 01:18 PM
QUOTE (green @ Aug 10 2004, 12:46 PM)
I am at a loss of words for my experience there. With time, I will post more about it if anyone wants to hear it. What an awesome 3 weeks! A very short 3 weeks, but full of wonder.
detailed trip report, please.
Observer
Aug 11 2004, 06:37 AM
Here's and old post of mine for you:
Getting on a Nairobi-bound plane at Heathrow is a process of order. The journey to the airport becomes a series of tube stations each announced in its own monotone on the Piccadilly line. It lasts an age – Hounslow, East, Hounslow Central, Hounslow West, Hatton Cross. Order. You know where to stand, signs point the way, each passenger is allotted an efficient number and row, you proceed in a queue. A machine that can read eats your ticket in a final gesture of goodbye.
Heathrow has become the great gateway between the Western World and Kenya, the portal from modern, organised, systemised, westernised, structured life, hectic pace, social conformity, detailed fashion, clever advertising, real TV, corporate governance, smooth roads, signposts, warning lights. Heathrow holds the promise of faraway places, its varied and hectic crowds offer glimpses into lives of wild beauty, endless potential, present emotion. A distillation of all humanity paces the waxy floors. One feels transient in airports, as if the rest of the world is proceeding without you. You stand in front of a board in a vortex of destinations – Hong Kong, Taipei, Vancouver, Santiago, Anchorage, Manila, Nairobi. The secret smile when you know what Nairobi means, and that rush of excitement when you spot a safari boot, a kikoi, a copper bracelet, a kikapu, an accent in the queue or the quintessential Harrods bag on the arm of the fat politician’s wife in the business class queue.
In a western airport en route to Kenya, one feels the joy of one returning to a secret world that has been progressing in your absence. When leaving Heathrow one feels excitement about rejoining the place that shelters the secret ache in your heart. On the plane you read in-flight magazines that advertise yachts and international banks, gold watches. How random. How irrelevant. For tomorrow you will be drinking Tusker in a bar with no fridge.
A red-eyed awakening over Turkana starts the day of reconciliation. High above the desert, the sunrise appears like the first dawn over Eden, deep colours, equatorial intensity. You imagine the pastoral herders far below, waking to the first lo of cattle, spotting the flashing light in the night high above that holds you, and your western clothes, your soapy aroma, your clean flush Western guise. For your Western habits so undetectable the day before are already out of place before your arrival, they seem more noticeable, alien.
An hour later you strain out of the window between early morning clouds. Your heart surges at a glimpse of the knuckles of the Ngong Hills, red murram earth on trails in the National Park, and then a silhouette of the Yaya Centre, Kenyatta Hospital and Nairobi city skyline, before a thump and you’re on the ground. Someone claps. You spot a giraffe on the plains towards Machakos as the plain taxis to the airport. JKA looks so small compared to the Heathrow you departed only eight hours before.
Between the air-bridge and the plane is a small gap through which pours highland African air. You gulp and it smells sweet. No London murk, just fresh sun-baked, savannah blown highland air. You realise that this joy is going to be short-lived, since you have already observed the diesel fume cloud above the city over the plain, but it matters not. Familiar accents fill the air. You march down the ramp to a disorganised chaos of form filling, pen-hunting. The queue is a morass of baggage and unkempt hair. Nobody knows what its all about and random signs deliver useless information to anyone. You separate the confused tourists from the returning locals in a flash and join the returning locals queue.
Not that it matters; the baggage will not arrive for at least another hour. In the baggage hall screeching trolleys with three wheels and rusty brakes rattle about. The conveyor belts bear stickers of countless journeys and carries impossibly stuffed cardboard boxes from flights that landed days ago. Your bag is the last to arrive, and you spend an impatient hour observing the baggage handlers systematically destroying any baggage with a fragile sticker. Just as you get your luggage and approach the waiting throng outside, a customs inspector asks you myriad irrelevant questions about your life and luggage before menacingly scribbling nothing on a piece of card and allowing you to proceed. ‘Karibu tena Kenya’ he calls as you pass through into the real world and the calls of a dozen taxi touts.
Your friends car is not half as smart as you remembered it. There are half a dozen dents, the wheel wobbles furiously, the petrol gauge shows empty and the speedometer drifts about the dash board unconnected to the vehicle’s velocity. Once clear of the airport, you marvel at the new factories, mushrooming like voles out of sodden ground. A matatu, scarcely vertical, hogs both lanes, and belches smoke. You smile as you breathe in a lungful of carcinogenic black.
Later, your friend stops for petrol and you recall that there is no need to get out of the car. ‘Mia Tano Super’ is sufficient to get you going again “and checki mafuta” – Kenyan cars seem to eat oil in equal amounts as petrol. Before long you hit a traffic jam at Haile Sellassie roundabout, during which you scan the Nation headlines as the paper drifts past your window. You feel strangely overdressed, hot, stuffy in these Western airline clothes. They even smell strange.
The askari opens the gate. There is something so astonishing about driving up to a gate and simply hooting to get it open. Such a thing seemed inconceivable to you only a day before yet it is the most natural thing in the world. You smile at familiar plants in the garden, the flowers seem more lush, the greens deeper, the leaves broader, as if more closely connected to life itself. Crickets hum and birds abound. Red Nairobi earth seems to harbour the essence of primordial creation. The sun burns strong on your paled flesh, stark, yet somehow natural and beautiful.
You have returned.
Tusker
Aug 11 2004, 07:39 AM
Observer, you have made me even more impatient than I was to get back. That was written brilliantly.
Tusker
Aug 11 2004, 07:41 AM
QUOTE (green @ Aug 10 2004, 09:46 PM)
I'm back home!
All what I can say is that my first time to Kenya was incredible. I hope to make many returns in future. I fell in love with Kenya. What a great country. I can think of no other place I would change my residence to, than Kenya.
And yes, KAT, I am now a married man! I had such a wonderful time with my beautiful bride. We traveled about and I even did a lot of driving!
To copy a phrase from a post a while back, "Ah, the matatus!"
I am at a loss of words for my experience there. With time, I will post more about it if anyone wants to hear it. What an awesome 3 weeks! A very short 3 weeks, but full of wonder.
All that is beside the point. The main thing is....how was the fishing?
Good to know you enjoyed it, and congratulations on getting married.
bonga
Aug 11 2004, 08:29 PM
congrats on your marriage green!!
I can see you had a great time.
for me 3 weeks to go....and I'm 'home 'again...
...and I sold my first trip to Kenya!! more details in a while!
green
Aug 21 2004, 06:38 PM
Hope everyone is doing okay. I have not been here much since I returned from Kenya. Been super busy. I have a little spare time today, so I thought I would post something here and check in on all you old geezers.
Here is where I went (in condensed form) while in Kenya. This does not include all the sights I saw, people I met, how much Tusker I drank (thought I was floating in it!), etc. However, no fishing took place. It just didn't work out that way. I was kept occupied by my lovely wife, and other things anyway, so I didn't miss it. On the other hand, the driving was fantastic. I loved driving there. I had a left hand drive Subaru and the wife kept having to remind me to "Keep left!!"
Travel Log - kinda
Home
U.S.
London
Nairobi
Zoo - orphaned animals
Bruce House
Sheria House
Nyayo House
Nakumat
Yaya
Stayed at Ngong Hills Hotel
Nairobi - airport
Mombasa (via air from Nairobi)
Akamba
Tusks
Spice Market
Fort Jesus
Nakumat (twice! I liked it)
The beach, several times
Stayed at Travelers Lodge
Nairobi (airport)
Kisumu (via air)
Lake Victoria (had dinner)
Tach Asis
Nandi Hills
Nandi Hills Bears Club
Aldai
Tach Asis
- I drove to the following -
Kericho
Bomet (watched games)
Narok
Ewaso Ngiro
Keekarok Lodge - Masai Mara
Narok - via Mao Narok Road
Nakuru
Kunste Hotel
Shopping
Lessos
Eldoret
Kapsabet
Tach Asis
- -
Eldoret (got on bus)
Nakuru (via bus)
Nairobi (via bus)
Machakos
Nairobi
Nairobi - airport
London
U.S.
Home
Mambo
Aug 21 2004, 11:05 PM
not bad
Toryboy83
Aug 26 2004, 08:23 AM
Finally another Nandi. What did you think of the Bears Club, play any golf?
bonga
Aug 27 2004, 03:26 PM
Now I'm taking my line back: I'm off again! I'm busy now, but on thursday I'll be back home again in the greatest country in the world. The weather in the Netherlands sucks bigtime, long time that we had such a terrible summer.
Can't wait to get back and just go pole pole. Peace and quiet. I plan to see Fort Jesus this time. I've been in Mombasa a lot, but never to the fort.
Kwaheri, talk to you when I get back!
And i can proudly say that we sold our very first trip to kenya, more about that when I get back!
Mambo
Aug 28 2004, 10:03 AM
you've done a few trips this year eh? and now you're selling tours!
green
Sep 1 2004, 02:31 PM
ToryBoy,
The club was cool. Didn't do the golf thing (can't play but the Tusker was flowing. I was real tense from thing earlier that day, so it was good to sit and relax with a COLD Tusker.
By the way, I'm not Nandi, but just about everyone I hung out with is. And, the Nandi Hills area is beautiful. I loved it. Seeing the sun rise above those hills in the mornings was wonderful. Hot tea, bread, the sun over the hills, and my beautiful bride next to me. It doesn't get any better than that.
Toryboy83
Sep 1 2004, 03:36 PM
You sound like a very happily married man green and I agree, the Nandi Hills are an extremely romantic part of Kenya. I'm not a Nandi either, more of an honorary member (I wish). I taught at Samoei Secondary School just up from the Bears Club for a term last year and have many friends there and in the Town. It's a very special place to me as well and nice to hear someone else appreciating it too.
bonga
Sep 19 2004, 12:30 PM
Hi folks, I'm back again, and hope to return very soon. Had a great time. I'm very busy now, but if you'd like you can visit my website, and let me now what you think about it. If you see anything that is not right, even spelling-mistakes, let me know. I gladly accept everyones honesty.
Oh yes, kiss 100 fm in Nairobi is live online , starting tomorrow. ( livestream through internet )
Greetz to all of you! My website: ( not totally ready, but getting there, made a lot of pics this holiday)
www.african-adventures.com
Mambo
Sep 19 2004, 02:21 PM
nice site, bonga
its 'askari' by the way.. and 'compound' - in the private villa section
bonga
Sep 20 2004, 12:33 PM
thanks, I totally overlooked the Askari's.
How should compound be?
Mambo
Sep 20 2004, 04:01 PM
compound - i think you spelt it compount
bonga
Sep 23 2004, 09:47 PM
ah yes, the word was in there twice, already changed. Thanks for your comment. I put it at the other topic so others visit, not much comments over here.....
green
May 25 2005, 04:09 AM
Has it been this long already?
I'm off AGAIN.
Will be in the wonderful country of Kenya in about a month from now.
Of course, my time there will never be long enuf, but I'll take what I can get.
I can't wait.
There is a "party in the planning" i've been told.
Certain individuals must remember how much Tusker was consumed the last time I was there and have told others.
I sure don't want to disapoint anyone.......
Maybe i'll post pics or words again, who knows.
At any rate, just wanted to brag a little.
I love that place and wish i could stay.
I'm going 'home.'
DaraKenya
May 25 2005, 02:30 PM
And where are you going to stay in Kenya?
North or South Coast, Rift, Lake area, Turkana Desert ???
And for you to know the prices of pombe & soda became a little higher as for the daily food :-(
green
May 25 2005, 02:55 PM
Rift. South Coast. Nairobi. Etc.
Even if the drink prices double, it's cheaper than it is here, but I don't plan on drinking the same amount of mass quantaties as I did last time.
bonga
May 27 2005, 04:47 PM
I'll be happy to be back there in september...we went one week in april, but one week is like nothing...
I tried some new places in diani, but went to my friends in Sundowner a lot. Good food. Nice folks.
In september we go for 2 weeks. Luckily the summer is coming in holland, otherwise...
SHIKU
May 27 2005, 09:38 PM
Any dudes in Nairobi from the 1st of June...The Vice Chair of KMDJ bw Ochola and i will be in Jamhuri..hola if you are around, and we can catch some cold ones in Madaraka west
green
May 29 2005, 04:47 PM
you buyin ?
Kat
May 29 2005, 09:11 PM
cheepskate...............

(hehe)
green
May 31 2005, 03:04 AM
QUOTE (KAT @ May 29 2005, 03:11 PM)
cheepskate...............

(hehe)
muzungu
Jun 6 2005, 05:47 AM
Damn dude! I wish I could just up and go to Kenya as many times in any given year as you seem to go! Have a great time! Flirt with the ladies for me!
green
Jun 17 2005, 03:46 AM
QUOTE (muzungu @ Jun 5 2005, 11:47 PM)
Damn dude! I wish I could just up and go to Kenya as many times in any given year as you seem to go! Have a great time! Flirt with the ladies for me!
What?!?! Flirt?!? Me?!?
Those days are over! And gladly, I might add.
I married a Kenyan too, and she is a beautiful woman who captivates me.
(wonder if she is reading this....)
bonga
Sep 16 2005, 05:33 PM
Yeaaaaah, tuesday I will arrive in Mombasa. We stay in Kenya again for 2 weeks. I really can't wait. I wasn't here for a long while, sorry, I've been working my ass off....but that's okay, I have anough ass left ;-)
I need the sukuma wiki, the kenya cane, the passion fruits, the mango's, papaya, but most of all the beauty of Kenya!
Anybody else there while I'm there??
Greetz,
Bonga
Guest
Sep 18 2005, 04:21 PM
Well bonga, if you have time i'm down in malindi. i'll be happy to see you Dude. Just pay me a call or mail me
info(at)afrodream(dot)com
Afrodream 'n' beaded sandals
Kat
Sep 19 2005, 12:05 AM
QUOTE (Guest @ Sep 18 2005, 12:21 PM)
Well bonga, if you have time i'm down in malindi. i'll be happy to see you Dude. Just pay me a call or mail me
info(at)afrodream(dot)com
Afrodream 'n' beaded sandals 
Dude is a Dudette.......
bonga
Sep 19 2005, 06:31 PM
QUOTE (KAT @ Sep 19 2005, 12:05 AM)
QUOTE (Guest @ Sep 18 2005, 12:21 PM)
Well bonga, if you have time i'm down in malindi. i'll be happy to see you Dude. Just pay me a call or mail me
info(at)afrodream(dot)com
Afrodream 'n' beaded sandals 
Dude is a Dudette.......

True, I'm a dudette!
If we find the time I'll mail, we stay in Diani. I wrote down your emailadress!
Abracadabra
Sep 20 2005, 06:29 AM
QUOTE
True, I'm a dudette!
If we find the time I'll mail, we stay in Diani. I wrote down your emailadress!
It will be glad to meet you Dude. You are always welcome at Malindi.
Afrodream 'n' beaded sandals
bonga
Oct 5 2005, 03:36 PM
Kenyan food is the best! I had a great time as usual. Sorry Kat, I did not even reach Malindi, actually I did not even go to Mombasa city... The first week I had the flu, super no?? The second week I went to leisure in Diani and got my golflicense. It was great to see all the kenyan rafiki again, and the food, thank you sundowner restaurant, was great. Sukuma wiki every day, can't get enough of it. We had a kind of lazy holiday, but we needed the rest. Spend a lot of time on the beach, ( 40 thieves, nomads) beach boys were not as much present as usual, but I heard they did something about that.
One thing I hope, the road direction Galu needs to be prepared. It's getting really unsafe... I saw it getting worse and worse in the last 3 years, and more accidents happen.
Abracadabra
Oct 7 2005, 05:12 PM
There is always nxt time Dude.
Afrodream 'n' beaded sandals
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