nikki leigh mckean photography: Samburu Safari

So, here is our entry for our journey to Samburu. I have to thank Wendy again for the wonderful, detailed entry! Gotta love traveling with a teacher that takes notes the entire time... and me the photographer to press click and capture the moment!

nikki xo

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We are back in Nairobi once again and we are covered in dust and dirt from the safaris.

We left Nairobi on Sunday July 26th to head out on these treacherous roads once again to head north. The traffic in Nairobi is usually pretty crazy but being a Sunday it was quite easy to get out of the city. Along the way we drove through the country's agricultural land, Del Monte has acres of pineapple plantations that are heavily guarded. None of the good pineapples stay here; they are immediately packaged and sent to the airports to be shipped to the UK. Just past plantation, you will see the roads lined with road side fruit and veggie stands. The roads coming up here were much smoother, mostly freshly paved. It took us about 5 hours to reach Buffalo Springs and Samburu National Game Reserve. The environment in this area of Kenya (we are north of Nairobi, actually north of the equator) is very different from where we were in the Mara (which is on the South West side of Kenya on the Tanzania border). The land is very dry, hot and extremely dusty. The dust getting into everything, we need to make sure we are keeping our cameras covered as much as well can as I am sure the dust is not doing good things for them. When I open or close the lens on my video camera you can hear the sand crunching.

Huge sand hills made by ants that are up to 6ft tall.

A local matatu (bus) crash as a result of crazy, crazy driving skills!
Did I mention crazy!!!!!!

Upon entering the reserve I noticed right away how different it was, we did not see any game, where as the moment we entered the Mara the game was everywhere. Here you need to do some work to carefully spot the animals, so we immediately pop open the rooftop of our Land Cruiser and pull out the binoculars and begin looking for animals. We spot one lone Elephant, a baby. He seemed to have been lost from the herd, which is really upsetting because another herd may not pick him up and then he might not survive. We then came to the main river that separates Buffalo Springs and Samburu and it was completely dry! I have always know about droughts in countries and the massive water crisis in Africa but have not witnessed it first hand, I cant even explain how incredibly upsetting it is to see a completely dry river with thirsty animals around. Deep underneath the sandy river bed there is water, so the locals will come and dig deep to create watering holes for the animals.

Elephants walking away from the water hole.

Von der Decken's Hornbill

Zebra's in love.

A result of Zebras' in love. :)

After a short game drive we arrive at the Intrepids Samburu Tented Camp, this place is beautiful. They came and greeted us with a white cold facecloth and some freshly squeezed juice. After wiping the dust off my face my facecloth became a reddish brown.

Most of the dirt here is more of a reddish brown color. They brief us on the camp and explained that it is extremely important that we secure our tent the way they show us, so that no monkeys get in the tent. The next day, I secure the tent, pulled down the first set of zippers, tied all the zippers together in a double knot, then pulled the out zippers down and tied them, then leaned a floor mat against the tent then pushed a table up against it. It was so secure, it was like Fort Knox! So we went out, we arrived back to the tent later that day the table had been moved slightly, the cords I had double knotted were undone, and there were no monkeys, but there were monkey foot prints all over the beds, I can’t believe that they actually jump on the bed! The old song is completely true! They also tried to eat my malaria pills, lucky for me, they didn’t like them! (see picture to the right for the evidence!)

When we awoke in the mornings at this camp, there was an elephant who would feed from the tree beside our tent. There were also a lot of Ververt Monkeys at this camp (these are the same monkeys that jumped on my bed) they can be a really pest, so the camp has hired a Samburu Warrior who job is to chase off the monkeys from the restaurant. When he is not chasing the monkeys, he sits on the patio and plays his flute.

Wendy reading her book in her mosquito net bed.

We had asked Teeku if we could go and see a school in one of the villages, he has a friend who has been working with this school to raise money, it is in an area called Westgate which is on the west side of Samburu. We bought pens in town to give to the school children, it was a small item but they need anything they can get their hands on. Talis one of Samburu guys from the camp came with us so he could visit his brother and sister. The school was great, the students are extremely well behaved and are very excited to see Nikki and I. Right away they wanted to touch our hair and skin, even pinch us and they all sang songs for us, I wanted to cry they have mostly nothing and they are the happiest kids. Teeku's friend who has been raising money has done a great job but there is still more that needs to be done we are going to see what we can do to get involved, so if anyone has any spare change let us know.

Westgate Primary School
Samburu, Kenya

(Love this photo... so many of the kids wanted to touch the lens of the camera and this photo captures it. These are the kids that kept pinching me and loved counting my freckles. My camera lens was soo grubby after this visit... just hilarious! Love it!!!! )

Grade 1 - Kids with nothing begging to learn.

Another one of my favs, I love the motion in this pic and her blue dress!

Wendy in the nursery with all the kids.

So our mission up here was to find the leopard! We looked everywhere for it in the Mara, but no luck. So this is our last few days to catch a glimpse of this beautiful animal. On the first day, we would see signs of the leopard, but no leopard. We decided to drive to the top of the hill to have a look and decided to sit up top of the land cruiser, crack a Tusker beer and watch the sunset. On the second day we finally spotted the leopard, wow it was awesome! At first she was chillin in a tree then decided to walk past our car and begin to stalk a Gerenuk (which is sort of an antelope) we watched as she moved carefully towards the animal and then all of a sudden the Gerenuk began to move towards her, what was the Gerenuk doing! Just as she was ready to pounce the Gerenuk spotted her and took off.

Female leopard chillin.

On the hunt for food.

Wendy & I in Africa. That simple.

The next day we left Samburu and Buffalo Springs and headed down to Ol Pejeta Conservancy, which is privately operated, where we stayed at Sweetwaters Tented Camp. On our way we needed some car repairs, so we stopped to see a mechanic in a town called Isiolo which is a frontier trading town. This isn’t a town most tourists stop in so we had our car swarmed with people trying to sell us, I think I have become pretty good at the bartering, I was even trading pens from Canada!

The boys selling us things out the car window in Isiola.

Ol Pejeta is south of the equator, so we stopped on the equator and there was a guy selling souvenirs and demonstrating the how the water flows down the drain in the different hemispheres, so we checked it out. In the northern hemisphere is goes down clockwise in the southern hemisphere it goes down counterclockwise. It was crazy how you could move 5 feet one way or the other and it was different.

A local riding into town to sell his vegetables in the local market.

Sweetwaters is awesome! The tents surround a watering hole there were giraffes, zebra and warthogs all around to take a drink. Our mission here is to find the white and black rhinos. (I must first mention that white rhinos are not indigenous to Kenya, they were brought here) Out on our game drive we spotted many animals we had not seen before (reedbuck, waterbuck, Jackson’s hartebeest, and bushbucks). We then spotted our white and black rhinos; the rhino population has drastically declined over the years due to poaching. In the 70s there were 30,000 in Kenya and in the 90s there were 300 now they population is up to 500. Mission accomplished!

Game Warden, Ol Pejeta

Ol Pejeta also has a Chimpanzee sanctuary where they bring in chimps that have been tortured and rehabilitate them; I would go into details about what has happened to some of these chimps but I can’t bare to think about it again right now.