Masai Mara

This past weekend eight interns decided to visit Masai Mara – the national park most famous in Kenya. The trip consisted of:

-My bus getting stuck in the mud and slipping off the road because of the rain. I then trekked in the mud all the way to the closest market where I would find a motorcycle to take me into Kakamega Town.
- 2 14-hour bus rides to Masai Mara and back
- 3 –day safari
- Stepping foot into Tanzania
- The viewing of many lions, giraffes, zebra, cheetah, and the migration of the wildebeests


Masai Mara is also known for being home to the Masai tribe. The tribe is famous throughout Kenya for being the more stereotypical and traditional “African tribe.” They live in a very remote and rural village in south Kenya, dress in robes, pierce HUGE holes into their ears, and have dancing ceremonies and traditions, such as killing a lion once a year.

For a small fee, one of the Masai villages near our campsite let us visit them. They performed one of their dances, showed us how to make fire without matches, and took us into their mud huts. Here is the Masai during their jumping competition:

and them teaching me how to make fire using sticks:

The culture of the tribe seems to be dying, though, because many of the children are now being sent to government-run schools in which they are forced to wear uniforms and are not allowed any piercings.

On my way home, I was again stopped by the rain and mud and was unable to use the road back to my village. I therefore stayed at Matthew’s house (a Duke student) for the night. For the first time, I went to the bathroom in a bucket in my room because it was apparently too cold to go outside. Always experiencing something new in Kenya!

I have officially started my project as of Monday. The fundi (carpenter) has already built the partition and doors, and today we began to paint the rooms!

On a sidenote: Last week, Kenya's Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation (with help from USAID) began a national campaign to distribute 11 million mosquito nets to combat malaria. Shibwe was the location to distribute the nets throughout my village, so last week I helped the hospital accomplish this.

One of the workers at Shibwe took pictures of the mass distribution. So here are pictures of me distributing the nets, sitting with the matron (head nurse), and posing with the district officer: