First of all: a heartfelt apology to those who rely on See Colon Backslash for daily support.  I cannot lay the blame on work for the lack of updating on the site - I've been re-adjusting to South Africa after what was a very, very enjoyable Christmas holiday to Kenya, which makes today's content.

All Aboard To The Dark Continent
The night before leaving to Kenya, the air was charged as I anticipated returning to the country that played host to me for a period of my childhood.  I had - in true Stuart fashion - packed all my clothes in a rather haphazard manner, and was in the process of trying to hunt down my elusive razor kit, and checking that I still was in posession of my tickets and passport for the ninth time that evening.

Aquiring the passport is definitely chalked up to being the hitherto unknown Thirteenth Task of Hercules.  As my original passport was lost in the annals of time, I had to make hasty plans to get a new one from the Johannesburg Home Affairs Office - five days before my intended departure date.  There was an overpowering smell of humanity, unwashed bodies and impatience (which does have a smell, much like snakes can apparently smell fear) as I waited in the queue that coiled inside the stuffy unventilated government office and snaked outside, where harassed mothers were vainly trying to restrain noisy children from bashing themselves over the head with toy plastic guns, and people stood with the resigned, vacant expression that overcomes anyone who has to wait in long lines.
Two hours passed as the crowd of people inched along.  Evidently, the people manning the desks were in no great hurry to add turbo to the whole apply-and-collect process.  To pass time, I started chatting to a young bloke in front of me, who, to my horror, told me that passport application (even using Emergency Application Form D-twelve slash four A which costs a lot more) would take, on average, two weeks - due to it being the Festive Season.
I was feeling distinctively un-Festive as I walked out of the queue that had sucked two-and-a-half hours of my life away, and started calling around.  Eventually, I managed to get hold of one of those places that are basically the Remora Fish of government offices: they apply and collect all your official documents, and charge a princely sum to do so, as they pull some serious rank and strings to get things done faster than the time-honoured method of taking things at a sedate pace.
Two hundred kilometres and seven hundred rand later, I was in business.  Ready to conquer deepest, darkest Africa.

Curiously, most of Africa do not consider South Africa to be a legitimate "African Country".  Real Africa's summary is that a little bit of Western civilisation somehow got wedged at the bottom of the continent, and as such, is a total idiosyncrasy when compared to the rest of it all.  With one of the most advanced transport and communication infrastructures in the world, South Africa is truly apart.  One only really enters Africa once you have left the borders of South Africa.
As this was Charmaine's first excursion out of the country, a little briefing was required to inform her of the potential state of the roads in and around Nairobi and Mombasa.  As my memory served me, the roads were generally unpainted tar strips that were cratered with enormous potholes that could hide an entire car and cause some serious chassis and suspension damage to any foolhardy driver that decided to abandon cautious safety for speed.

First Class and No Class
The holiday kicked off to an excellent start: as the pilot of the British Airways Boeing 737 taking us to Nairobi was a family friend, Charmaine and myself were bumped up into First Class, where the flight attendants waited upon us with ludicrous efficiency, and would not attend to your requests with that contemptuous sneer they reserve for the common cattle travelling in Economy.  The pilot also kindly offered to provide us with a ride from Jomo Kenyatta International to the house we were to be staying in with the rest of the family, who had travelled up a few days ahead of us.

As the plane bumped on to the tarmac four-and-a-half hours later, and eventually came to a standstill after taxiing (please note that all passengers must remained seated whilst the aircraft is still moving) I felt that I had, in a way, come home.  Contrary to the stereotyping, there were no elephant or giraffe grazing near the runway's edge, but I did note - with no uncertain amount of smug pride - that I could still translate the notice signs that were in Swahili.

To counter the euphoria provided by travelling in First, we were abandoned at the airport: clearly, the pilot after having kept his piece of metal safely in the air, was tired and probably a little irked that the cute blonde stewardess wasn't returning his flirtatious overtures, and had driven off home, forgetting about the two equally tired travellers, who were sitting on their luggage and waiting for the ride that didn't materialise.  One expensive cellphone call later, and my parents picked me up, two or three hours after arriving.

Day One - Paradise Misplaced
The house the family was staying in was kindly loaned to us by friends, and is situated in Karen Langata, the better address for Nairobi residents.  For any of those who watched the movie Out of Africa , the house is about three kilometres from Karen Blixen's house.  Out toward the hazy horizon, the fist-shaped Ngong hills punctuated the otherwise flat landscape that the city of Nairobi lazily sprawls upon.

As renting any sort of vehicle in Kenya is likely to bankrupt you and cause your bank manager to suffer many sleepless nights, the family had the use of a friend's rather battered Nissan Sentra to get around with.
Rattling around Nairobi, skirting and driving through craterous potholes, and watching the general populace milling around and trying to sell you wooden curios, fruit and pirated DVD's (that come with Chinese subtitles, free my friend, for special price - special price for you, bwana) was my re-integration into Kenyan culture.  Juakali workers - craftsmen who set up shanties on the side of the road, and ply their trade - had their offerings on show: amazing sculptures of local fauna, delicate-looking chairs and tables and bicycle and puncture repair workshops added noise, colour and bustle.  Matatu drivers (who clearly have suicidal lemming blood in them) weaved effortlessly in and out of traffic, hooting and gesturing to friends on the roadside, adding an extra degree of pandemonium to the already-hazardous streets.

More importantly, walking around the Karen Shopping Centre allowed me to flex my creaky Swahili muscles, and I attempted to engage people in conversation about mundane things that wouldn't force me to use the big, complicated words I had long since forgotten.  The most-used Swahili word by visiting tourists is sitaki, which literally means, 'I don't want it', the standard response to the less-than-subtle selling techniques employed by the juakalis:

Mandazis, the Kenyan version of fast-food.  Made by deep-frying dough in oil, this treat is loaded with calories and fat.  A must for those who have shunned the evils of the Atkins diet.

"Hey bwana, I have very special fruit, very special!  Fresh, fresh, fresh, like this mango, very sweet.  Special price, eh? For you, fifty shillings, special price.  You want bananas?  Mandazi?  Come, you look what I have, very special!"
Day One also allowed me to indulge in a personal favourite, mandazis, the deep-fried, slightly sweet doughy treat enjoyed by both locals and tourists.

The day ended off by visiting the Sheldrick Animal Orphanage, where baby animals such as rhino and elephant that have been abandoned or orphaned are brought for rehabilitation back into the wild.  [Clicking on any images will expand them]

Baby elephants enjoying a mudbath at the Sheldrick Animal Orphanage.  The caretakers often have to follow the elephants around with umbrellas to shield them from the harsh African sun which can quickly dry out their young skin, which can lead to dehydration and eventually, death.	...Splish splash I was takin' a bath....

Giraffes Head Revisited
The few days that were spent in Nairobi proved to be not enough time to see all that I had hoped we would, but I did manage to get myself to the Giraffe Centre, a few hundred metres away from the house I had lived in when I first came to Nairobi.
The Giraffe Centre is home to a small herd of perfectly tame giraffe that enjoy the attention given to them by visitors, who in turn are given two handfuls of pellets to feed them with.  A giraffe has a very long blue tongue, that is primarily used to wrap around and pull down leaves from acacia and similar trees in the savannah.  Having the wet, warm tongue curl around your hand is an experience, and in most cases, prompts people to hunt down a tap to rinse off the saliva.

Giraffes at the Giraffe Centre, in Langata, Nairobi.	Sign outside the Giraffe Centre.  Often, on the way back from school as a child, we would have to idle the car as the herd of giraffes crossed from the sanctuary on the one side of the road to the enclosed forest on the other.	Feeding a giraffe makes for memorable photographic moments.  A favourite feeding method is to hold the food pellet lightly between your lips, and allowing the giraffe to give you a big, wet, sloppy kiss, similar to the one a visiting aunt would give you when you were six.

The Great Rift
When the continents heaved apart millions of years ago, intense tectonic plate and volcanic activity ripped a gash in the relatively flat countryside, a rip in the continent that now spreads from Syria right down to Mozambique.  (Note: For those that believe in the theory of Creationism, and that don't believe the earth is millions of years old, God tore asunder the countryside as the locals were getting far too intimate with each other for his liking, bringing forth fear, damnation and plenty of brimstone to boot.  This is why the Great Rift Valley has the Hell's Gate National Game Park.)

This tear in the fabric of the continent pockmarked the land with a now-dormant volcano system, and peppered the country with a series of freshwater and soda lakes.
In Kenya, the valley is deepest to the north of Nairobi. As the valley has no outlet to the sea, its lakes tend to be shallow and have a high mineral content as the evaporation of water leaves the salts behind. For example, Lake Magadi is almost solid soda, and Lake Elmentaita, Lake Baringo, Lake Bongoria, and Lake Naivasha are all strongly alkaline, while Lake Naivasha needs to be supplied by freshwater springs to support its biological variety. (End of David Attenborrough-style narration.)

In a split-moment decision, the family decided to take a trip further north into the Great Rift Valley, and further onwards to Lake Naivasha.  The trip itself, in a safari-kitted Toyota minivan, proved to be hair-raising as we dodged the ever-present suicidal traffic.  Halfway through, we stopped on the cusp of the Rift, but unfortunately, poor visibility did not allow me to see through to the other side of the valley.  My sister Jenny took the opportunity to wrestle the prices down of the trinkets on sale, emerging triumphant from the throng of sellers with assorted bracelets, carved wood bits and a bead necklace.  As I was walking along admiring the view, a young African girl came up to me.

View from the cusp of the Great Rift Valley.  Poor visibility and haze prevented me from being able to see the other side of the Rift.	Kodak moments: viewpoint of the Rift Valley.  Note the cigarette in my right hand: my resolve to stop smoking was shot dead in its tracks when I discovered that a pack of cigarettes in Nairobi cost one-third of the price of those in South Africa.  My cool, analytical mind would have screamed heresy if I had passed up such a golden opportunity.

"Unakaa Afrika ya Kusini?", she asked me (Do you live in South Africa?)
"Ndiyo," I replied affirmatively.
"Two months ago wageni from South Africa gave me this, but I cannot spend it here".  She held out her hand, and had a shiny South African five-rand piece in it.
"Do you think you can give me shillings for this?", she asked hopefully.  I looked inside my wallet, and in a roadside Forex deal, exchanged her money for the approximate worth in the local currency, which was about fifty shillings.  In a country where extreme poverty is a way of life, it felt good to help a little bit, even if it was only fifty bob's worth of charity.

Upon arrival, Lake Naivasha itself was beautiful.  The first evening was spent sitting at the water's edge, watching the sun set whilst sipping our drinks, as nocturnal Africa and its associated noises unfolded around us.

Sunset at Lake Naivasha	View of Lake Naivasha, taken from atop a hill on the other side of the lake.

The view from Sand Island Beach.  As the cottages were only a few metres away from the sea, this allowed me to tumble out of bed into the morning and straight into the warm, still, Indian Ocean.

The Sand Bank near Diani Beach.  If you zoom the image and look to the top left, you can see a man sitting on the bank with his surfboard and coolerbox.  His niche in the market is to swim out to the island on his board, and wait for anybody who walks or swims out the kilometre or two to sell them beer and Coke.	View of Sand Island Beach whilst standing on shallow coral in the sea.	To show the incredible stillness of the water, this shot was taken looking down into the water: you can clearly see the flat coral formation.
2005 was ushered in with a beach party and bonfire on the beach, complete with a fireworks display provided by myself and a few of the other visitors.  The evening was only slightly marred when I succumbed to a nasty stocmach bug that had me thinking I was relapsing into malaria.	Morning on Sand Island as the sun breaks throught the horizon's haze	Reflections on the ocean, early morning.
Evening descends on Paradise.	Towering palm trees challenge the incredible blue domed African sky.	The Lonely Palm.  Early morning shot.

Snorkelling around the massive brain coral structures allowed me to watch many types of colourful fish, including the potentially lethal striped Scorpion Fish, whose tiger-striped barbed fins will inject a neurotoxin if antagonized.  The white seabed was littered with purple and black sea urchins, and incredibly neon-colourful starfish hung tightly to rocks as they lived life to the ebb and flow of the warm Indian Ocean.

Zooming in on this image will show the Arab dhow sailing as it catches lunch for the residents.	Charmaine and younger sister Catherine enjoy the hot shallow waters that are typical of the area.

After a few days, I lost track of time, and the days melted into each other like butter in a hot pan.  An irregular routine of resting, sleeping, reading, snorkelling and eating was adhered to, and seemed all too short when the time came to catch the dreaded Msafiri bus back to Nairobi to connect to the flight that would take us back to the metropolitan bustle of Johannesburg.

It was with a certain whistful sadness that I boarded the rather archaic Boeing 737 (this time without the decadent luxury of first class) and watched the dotted landscape fall from under me, eventually to be obscured by the towering cumulonimbus clouds that persevered until touchdown in a wet and rainy South Africa.

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