Hakuna haraka [no hurries]

I have officially survived an entire day in Kenya without being eaten by lions! Which is saying a lot, because Amy and I were actually watching lions at feeding time. It's a bummer that I left my fanny pack full of steak at home...Otherwise I would have been able to get you some closer pictures!

Our driver Daniel picked us up this morning to take us on errands around Nairobi (cell phones, internet connecty thingies, etc.). It was great having a local to show us around the city and help us get good deals on things.

This is Nairobi.

Notice the lovely grey sky. 

And this is a billboard for Simba Cement…the only cement worth buying, obviously.

After our errands, he brought us to the animal orphanage. This place was really neat - there were all the animals you could expect to see in any given scene of The Lion King… warthogs, baboons, ostriches, hyenas, and lions galore! And look! There was even a baby giraffe, only 3 weeks old! 
 

I named him Walter, of course.

We finished seeing all the animals a couple hours before feeding time, so we decided to hang out for a bit until all the excitement started. We went by the Swahili saying of “hakuna haraka.” (“No hurry“….please don’t try to look that up in a translation dictionary because I probably butchered the spelling) . Like Daniel was telling us yesterday, “here in Kenya, we have watches but we don’t have time.” So we hung out and talked to Daniel about his business ideas (Akeda Tours...I'll post the link when I'm not being lazy as a snaaaail) for a very long time, until it was time to watch the feeeeeast.

All in all it was a fantastic first day in Africa. Saw lots of neat things, met lots of great people, especially other people staying here at the Wildebeest Camp. This one guy, Jerry, has been travelling around Africa for three years now, just for kicks. He somehow wound up renting a national park in Malawi for a year. Then tonight we met this lady who is starting a social business about menstruation....interesting, eh? But I bet none of them stick out like a sore thumb as badly as I do here in Kenya...boy do I scream foreigner. Even Amy said she can spot me from all the way across the supermarket. But hey, at least I'm not as odd as this guy:

But I'm probably not as awesome either.

I also wanted to add in some info about the 24 hours of travel from Montreal, like how AWESOME airplane food is (despite all those people who say otherwise, and how sick it made me feel), and the man in Brussels Airport who convinced me to take a picture of him, and then was confused when I told him I was living in the 21st century with neither an email address nor a telephone number.  (He's this following mysterious creature.  Maybe if we all work together, we can turn him into an internet sensation!)

Oh, and I also wanted to tell you about how I surrupticiously managed to acquire not one, but TWO ice cream bars on the plane from Brussels to Nairobi!!! (but then I felt guilty and gave one back)

Off to bed now!  Gotta wake up at 6 tomorrow to start the journey to Bungoma!  Later Gators!