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Sean Crawford - Kenya Expedition 2006Newsletters » Oct/Nov 2006 » Volunteer Profile: Kenya Expedition 2006
The story of Sean Crawford volunteering on our Kenya Expedition 2006, and on his time with the Samburu people.
Gap years teaching in Botswana including a night with the Kalahari bushmen; rainforest treks with a cultural night in a Sumatran longhouse; coaching orphaned gibbons to sing in some other rainforest, no doubt with a cultural night in a treetop: unusually for me, these exotic sounding offerings at the 2006 Adventure Travel Show in London were leaving me cold. I was way too old for a gap year – and seemingly no longer interested in much else. Someone on the African Impact stand was regaling me with tales about the wonderful work which they organise to rehabilitate lions. It could have been Martian amoebas. I stopped him mid-flow. I really wanted to know about projects to do with ‘people’. Obligingly he stopped and introduced me to his colleague Sarah Conolly. Bubbling with enthusiasm, Sarah described their special volunteer expedition to Kenya this year. A camel trek through Samburuland would take the volunteers to Lodongokwe, an isolated village halfway between Maralal and Wamba. There they would refurbish a building into a base for a camel-based mobile health service, and also do some renovation work on the local village clinic. There would be eighteen places. Perfect – I could indulge my East Africa passion, learn more Swahili, spend time with seventeen undoubtedly fascinating volunteers, and really ‘go bush’ with the Samburu people. These proud red-ochred people had interested me ever since I first met them on Marsabit mountain ten years before – that day they appeared out of the bush, leaning on their spears. They were tall, beautiful, reserved, and captivated – as they intently stared at me as I ate my lunch under a thorn tree. Before Sarah finished expounding what a good trip it would be, I had decided I should go volunteer on this expedition through Kenya.
So on 26 July I arrived in Nairobi. Seventeen other volunteers did not turn up at Nairobi that day. Instead there were just Evan, Kathy, Naomi, Tanja and I, not knowing entirely what to expect of the trip, or each other. We were met by our tour leader Adrian who explained the dangers (or unpleasantries, depending on your perspective) of the bush. Waking before dawn; snakes and scorpions; malaria-bearing mossies; crapping in the bush. And camels, which with their odd temperaments could not be trusted. Ignoring this last, I tentatively asked if we could have time off to attend the Maralal International Camel Derby in August – a dream of mine for years. Amazingly the response was, not impossible, if we work hard enough. I resolved to look hardworking – this in itself would be a minor coup, some of my Cambridge friends would probably argue. And as for actually working hard… At a rude hour next morning we piled into a tough looking green van with a ridiculously yawning hippo painted on the side. Immediately we christened it the Kiboko van (after the Swahili for hippo), and trundled off. We drove for hours, passing through Banana Hill, Thika, Nyeri, and Nanyuki, where we crossed the equator. For a while we were tantalised by maybe seeing Mount Kenya through the clouds (we didn’t). But Kiboko continued its northward lurch. We stopped to collect a slightly portly man who peered over the top of his glasses anywhere – other than at the person he was talking to at that moment. Swahili speaking Charlie Hewitt-Stubbs was to be our guide whilst out in the bush. Charlie piled into Kiboko with the rest of us, and we drove deeper into the bush until we stopped by a river where a horde of rangy camels and their ochred Samburu herders awaited. That evening we ate around the campfire, and bathed together in the river. I started to swim across it in the dark – but swam back when gripped by a sudden irrational fear of crocodiles (there were reputedly none about, but…). We dried off round the campfire as we listened to the mournful songs of the Samburu guides. After sleeping soundly round the campfire that night, we awoke as promised at dawn, and walked into the African bush – with the rangy camels and Samburu guides.
The camels lurched as if drunk, and groaned as if in their death throes. These beasts carried our gear for the next few days, as we walked out into the Kenyan bush. Pre-dawn starts were accompanied by curried chai. This was popular at first, but the appeal waned as the curry content seemed to increase over the days. In the afternoons, we would rest up from the heat of the day, and sometimes play frisbee – to the delight of the Samburu guides, and stringy kids who materialised from the bush. Evenings meant cooking over a campfire, followed by storytelling, or Samburu dancing – and their mournful singing. One night was punctuated by a loud explosion as we lulled into a well-fed silence watching the gently licking flames of the fire. Without hesitation the Samburu guides leapt into the bush. The white volunteers, perhaps displaying less presence of mind in this AK47-ridden country just leapt up. Then waited to see what would happen next. Silence. After a few seconds, Evan exclaimed that it was raining. The gentle patter was cautiously investigated by headtorch, which revealed a million minuscule fragments of what, oddly, appeared to be meat. Uproarious laughter followed as we realised that a can of foul chicken luncheon meat had been left unopened near the fire, and had exploded. A few yards beyond us a steaming spodge was found lying in the dust, the can lid was never found. Hearing our mirth, the Samburu guides returned from hiding. Charlie never failed to enthral with his endless bush lore: “If you’re going to crap in the bush, crap naked man! The last thing you want is to have a warthog ramming you up the arse, and be unable to run away because your pants are round your ankles!”. Other pleasantries included “I can sleep through an uprising man, but if you creep up on me while I’m asleep I’ll bloody flatten you!”. He wasn’t joking – he related how he had once burst naked, arms flailing, out of his mossie net and taken out one of his playful daughters. And to me, “If you snore man, I’ll just clamp a clothes peg on your nose – you’ll be so disoriented you’ll be halfway up a tree before you realise why you can’t breathe!”. Every time Charlie opened his mouth, it was to distribute some such pearl of bush wisdom – which almost always resulted in fits of laughter. These happy days of camel trekking were the ultimate adventure for me – laughing with the Samburu guides, practicing elementary Swahili, wandering without a care through the bush, and adjusting to a new rhythm aligned to the rising and falling of the sun and in time with the steady plod of the camels.
One afternoon we hit a dirt road – this came as quite a shock, as after living ferally for a few days, I had forgotten all about civilisation. We all found ourselves caring very little about it. A truck lurched, spewing diesel fumes and stirring up clouds of dust. The road led to Lodongokwe. This village is described in my Lonely Planet as having 4000 inhabitants. Where these 4000 people live is a mystery – as there are only a few huts. Forty inhabitants would appear more accurate. The murram main street has a wild west feel, and the bare earth football pitch is riven with runnels from erosion. At a couple of unnamed hoteli bars a chai and maandazi could be bought for pennies. The ‘Neighbourhood Retail Shop’ sold us almost its whole stock of sodas when we hit ‘town’. Once I had readjusted to civilisation I loved the village, where crowds of kids would throng around us, and gang up to pit their extreme-football skills against us in heated and usually injury-prone battles. Walking through Lodongokwe, and carrying on for a few more kilometres, we reached the banks of the wide, sandy Seya lugga (river bed), where we established our home for the next couple of weeks by hanging our mosquito nets amongst the bushes. The next day was the big day when we finally started our voluntary work for the Nomadic Communities Trust. The camel health clinic tours the bush, reaching people who would not otherwise be reached by health services. An innovative programme, possibly the first of its kind, it delivers advice on family planning, and undertakes HIV testing and counselling. People come to the clinics for testing on a voluntary basis, and receive counselling before and after their tests. Infection rates in this part of Kenya are relatively low compared to many other parts. We worked over a period of a couple of weeks, in which time a large and motley crew of paying volunteers, non-paying volunteers, and some paid African staff, renovated an old building which was originally built as a water pumping station. The water, however, had proved to be too alkaline for consumption and the building was abandoned. Covered with erotic graffiti, and populated by bats, the building was dirty, dark, insecure. After a couple of weeks work, it was newly painted, bars had been installed in the windows in order that it could be used to securely store drugs and equipment, and was ready to be turned into a base to be used by the mobile camel clinic. We also carried out some work on the clinic up in the village of Lodongokwe – a new lick of paint was provided, and the glass panes were scraped free of old paint and dirt, and some rotten beams and fascia boards replaced. Local children turned up to watch – and ended up helping. This work was fascinating – I learnt that consultations are carried out almost in public – soundproofing being virtually nonexistent, and the waiting room turned out to be a simple bench placed under a shady thorntree. There were no copies of Ideal Home or Vogue to be seen. We were all released one very cold and wet weekend to ‘holiday’ in Maralal for the famous International Camel Derby. Having spent much of the trip bigging-up my ambition to win, and maybe even break the 10km world camel speed record, I felt that there was no real way out now. My dread mounted as I realised the near certainty of a bone breaking fall – on increasingly muddy ground. Giving in to my fate, I hired a camel from the famed Jasper Evans, who assured me he would select a fine racing pedigree for my attempt at the world camel speed record. Jasper is reputed to know everything about camels that is worth knowing. Feeling increasingly uncertain about my future, I went for a try-out jog around a paddock, which confirmed all of my fears about my stability on a hump. There was nothing to hold onto apart from a splintered wooden knob, and I decided the risk was just too high. I am sure this camel would have proven to be a race winner, but I reasoned that African Impact needed me in one piece in order to complete the remaining refurbishment work at Lodongokwe.
So, with that in mind, at the last moment I decided to ditch Jasper’s pedigree beast, and instead chose one from another owner with big low-rider ‘handlebars’. Feeling more secure, we lurched to the starting line, and set off on our 10km race. But nothing seemed to be happening. My camel, unresponsive, surly, proved to be a poor choice. Every one of the biblically giant rain drops which fell from the sky caused my camel to splutter and spit, and worse, shake and then stop. And then shake again. Only after several vociferous calls of ‘haraka, haraka’ and often a severe beating at the hands of the throng of small children gathering alongside, would spur this beast back into action. Clearly I was unlikely to break the land camel speed record. Things were made only worse by my having had to watch Evan sprint into the far distance on his camel – gleefully clinging onto his own low-rider handlebars. One word had entered my mind and it wasn’t polite. Eventually, after jumping off and running and hauling the brute over the last 7km of the race, I crossed the finish line soaked to the skin – but given the temperament of my camel, amazingly in 8th place. Celebrations were shortlived however, after I heard that the uber-competitive Evan had come in second! After our muddy holiday in Maralal, we returned to Lodongokwe to find the lugga had filled with water. It ran for the rest of the time we worked here – which meant that we had a large, if muddy jacuzzi to bathe in. Over the coming days we completed our work in Lodongokwe. It was time to move on – this time for another holiday. It all became a blur to me at this time, and my diary is a bit hasty. We visited some wonderful places – Bobong campsite, which has a resident pet Cheetah, Nakuru National Park, where we saw incredible numbers of flamingos, white rhino, and amazingly, three leopards. We also took a trip to Lake Naivasha – where we didn’t do an awful lot apart from play frisbee, and take a boat across the lake to find hippos. The truth is that for me, I was really missing the bush, the camels, and their Samburu owners – who during the camel trek to Lodongokwe, and afterwards had become good friends to have around, and whom I adored. This readjustment to civilisation didn’t feel quite right to me, and I missed the simplicity of sleeping and cooking by fires, knowing that the Samburu and the odd and quirky camels were nearby. African Impact had organised a brilliant safari into Kenya, and provided the volunteers with a rare opportunity to combine living with wonderful Samburu people with working in a wild and remote part of Kenya. It was about the best experience that we could all have hoped for, with not a moment of boredom – and which hopefully returned a lot to the Samburu community within which we had lived for three weeks. I’ll be back… If you are are interested in volunteering at this project, we encourage you to read more or make an enquiry for the Kenya Expedition 2006.
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