“It is a warthog tooth. It will bring you good luck,” she answers via our translator. I ask if they had hunted and killed the wild boar and she tells me no, that they only eat their own cow and goat meat. “This was from a lion kill,” she informs me. She wants 20KSh (Kenyan Shillings) but I give her more, five U.S. dollars, actually. She is so grateful that she insists on posing for a grand photo to make up the difference. Harrison eventually shows up to collect us, and as we are leaving the game park he pulls over to a vista point and tells us that we can get out of the van.
“It is safe here,” he assures us.
“What’s up with all those bones?” I hesitate, pointing to what looks like a large elk skeleton and a pile of assorted horns.
“Good for photograph!” he urges. “No danger.”
So we leave the safety of the vehicle while still within the boundaries of the wildlife preserve for the only time during the entire safari. Pami and I pose with our arms around each other as we stare off into the savannah. We both pose with Harrison for our only photos of him. Then I get heady with the freedom and begin to strike silly poses with the horns protruding from various places on my body until Pami scolds that I’m embarrassing Harrison. He actually seems amused, but I knock it off anyway. So we load up, bid farewell to Samburu, and take off down the trail where we instantly come upon a pride of satiated lions snoozing in the shade of a roadside tree. They are not twenty-five yards from where I had just been playing with what had probably been last night’s supper for them. “Jeez, Harrison,” I sigh, shaking my head in disbelief. “Duuuude.”
On our way out of Samburu, we detour for two particularly memorable potty breaks. One stop is at a place called Thompson Falls. Situated at a lofty elevation of over 2,300 meters (about 7,550 feet), the air is cool and crisp, invigorating even. The falls are spectacular. Predictably, the hawkers are here in full force. While standing on a dizzying overlook, we are approached by a withered man carrying a stick with a brilliant, multi-colored lizard clinging to it. He makes us hold it and we oblige because we are happy and feel good and the air is so sweet, like Yosemite in the fall. Then he demands that we compensate him, which we do. On our way back down the trail from the falls and the toilets, a couple of lively young women ambush us and herd us into their craft’s duka. They do have interesting jewelry and small soapstone animal figures so we consent to buy some souvenirs to bring to family back home. As Pami and I are browsing, I show her a pretty necklace made from African stones and she says, “Oh, maybe for Katie (our son’s girlfriend)?” We decide against the necklace and when we finish shopping, we thank the ladies and pay. At this point we have to literally tear ourselves away from them. They are barricading the exit and hanging all over us. Firmly but kindly we push our way through and finish the long trek down to the parking lot with the two women hot on our heels, hands full of trinkets, hollering at the top of their lungs, “For ked-dee! For ked-dee!” They have no clue what they are saying but they caught Pami’s hesitation and glommed right onto us. We affectionately refer to our son’s girlfriend as Ked-dee now.
Our final pee break has us sitting square on the equator. I know this because on our way we have to walk past a man waving an upside-down Clorox jug, cut in half and filled with water. He straddles a chalk line scratched in the dirt. As we watch, he takes a matchstick and drops it in the jug. Once he has reached under to unscrew the jug’s cap to allow the water to spill out, we observe as the matchstick swirls down in a clockwise direction. Then, jumping sprightly onto the other side of the line in the sand, our resident instructor refills the jug, replaces the matchstick, and reopens the cap; lo and behold, the matchstick swirls counter-clockwise. Duly impressed, we pay, pee, and return to the van.
Our last stop on the safari is Mount Kenya Safari Club, which is an impressive historical landmark. The hotel was once owned by William Holden and is filled with pictures of famous 1950s movie stars who had visited in years past. Also hung throughout the hotel are the decapitated and mounted heads of Kenya’s once-hunted, now endangered and protected, wild creatures. The rough stone fireplaces and doorways made of rainforest wood are framed with eight-foot-long, hacked-off elephant tusks. The charming brand of safari that resulted in these types of trophies was quite different than the one we’re on and it is distressing, to say the least, to be surrounded by the aftermath of so much senseless carnage. On the expansive grounds, there is also a hedge maze and a nine-hole golf course. Every room (cabin) has its own fireplace that the porter lights each night and another great sunken bathtub that we of course make good use of. As a matter of fact, we try to utilize everything that is offered everywhere we go. We even try to play golf. The club attempts to assign us a caddy but we really do like to do our own thing, which would be fine had I not lost my only ball in the African rough. Thinking that we obviously must have misplaced our caddy, an apprehensive groundskeeper races to fetch the ball for me, unable to accept that a wealthy, white hotel resident would do anything so undignified as to personally burrow into the bushes to retrieve a golf ball. But of course that’s precisely what I do, speeding to cut off the loping landscaper and diving into the shrubs ahead of him. When my wife, consumed by hysterics once again, snaps a picture of me on my hands and knees with only my rear, clad in jaunty, bright, mango-colored Bermuda shorts, protruding from a patch of deep scratchy briar, the mortified groundskeeper visibly deflates. To make him feel better I tip him anyway, and this seems to alleviate his chagrin.
The club grounds are beautiful in a stuffy sort of way, but the vista of Mount Kenya’s snow-capped peak looming in the background is awesome.
There are lofty, broad-leafed trees thick with colobus monkeys, and green rolling hills of manicured lawns covered with homely, four-foot-tall, prickly-whiskered marabou storks, doddering aimlessly. We hang around the club until noon and then head back to Nairobi to spend our last night in Kenya. We have an early flight to London the next morning. Nairobi is notoriously unsafe, so we stay on the gated grounds of our hotel—an actual Holiday Inn, no less—have dinner, call our daughter, check our e-mail, and take our last African bath.
The next morning, Harrison comes to collect us at seven for our ten a.m. flight out of Africa. At the international terminal of Jomo Kenyatta Airport, he drops us off curbside. It doesn’t occur to me that it might be propitious for our guide to accompany us through the security checkpoint—not yet. Harrison humbly accepts a 7,000KSh tip (approximately one hundred U.S. dollars), which is probably more than the salary Sanjay is paying him for the whole weeklong safari, and we load our luggage on the same conveyor belt that Pami slept on almost one week earlier. After we pass through the scanners, presenting our passports and tickets en route, Pami proceeds ahead to the check-in desk. I am gathering our carry-ons as the security officer behind the monitor motions to have one of our bags sent back through. When it emerges the second time, he addresses me personally.
“Is this your bag, sir?” he asks. When I answer yes, he requests that I open it. As I unzip the bag, he turns the monitor towards me and inquires, “What is this?” and points to a crescent-moon-shaped object that stands out clearly in the X-ray.
“Oh, I know! That’s the wild boar tusk,” I broadcast as I rifle around for the trinket and proudly dig it out to show him. He fumbles in broken English something about not understanding, so he calls his friend over, who is wearing what looks like a police uniform. This fellow stares at my tusk and then calls someone else on his radio. A uniformed woman appears at about the same time that my wife is motioning for me to come over to the counter to show my passport to the ticket agent so that I can receive my boarding pass. I don’t respond to Pami’s summons because I am in the midst of a theatrical pantomime—making snorting noises, with my fingers protruding from the sides of my nose in a sorry attempt to amuse the policewoman, while describing the nature of my souvenir.
“I don’t think you are allowed to have this,” she decides, clearly not amused.