Bye Bye East Africa

I crossed the equator three times by land and once even by sea, bringing my lifetime total to six, for I crossed it by land twice as a kid traveling with the folks through South America. Oh, and as you can tell, crossing it by air does not count.

And you can only count a river or a lake if you actually went swimming in it, which I did with the Nile River and Lake Victoria. My swim in the river makes it five of the ten longest I’ve splashed around in, while the jump in the lake makes it six of the ten largest I’ve bathed in.

Then, just by touching down in Africa, I’ve now been on six of the seven continents, or, if you’re using Kenyan geography, five of five, for Australia and Antarctica don’t seem to count here.

But this wandering was much more than random facts or figures, it was about people, and the two people who really drew me to this land: Sean and Sabeans.

Sean, my brotherly cousin, his girlfriend, and I, spent two weeks cavorting around the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, watching simba sex and running from buffaloes. Two weeks of the best times any three people can have squished into an old, loud, rough Land Rover. Surprisingly, we didn’t fight once while we were together, only cursing each other in a brotherly way long after the dust of the Landie was washed from our memories.

Sabeans, my good friend from Washington DC, who is now living it up with Mark in their Baroness Blixonesque estate in Kisumu, provided a much-needed break from all that dust, hosting me twice, and giving me the chance to wash every single article of clothing I had in her big, white, American washer and dryer.

Ahhh.. As fox-hunting scientists will tell you, I do so enjoy being clean, even in the Serengeti, going so far as to rigging up a shower for Sean, Christina, and I on the shores of Ndutu Lake, using a bucket, a plastic jug, and only one liter of water per person.

And now I’m going back to the land of the super-clean, where everything is hermetically sealed for freshness and time is measured by the second. There, while I shall be at ‘home’, I’m going to miss the African way of life, the pole-pole speed, and the relaxation it entails.

That is until the next adventure!