Kenya & Nairobi
Kenya is a country of 224,000 square miles – about the size of Texas – and home to 51 million people – 4.4M of whom live in Nairobi, the capital – located only a few degrees south of the equator.
With much fertile land, the country was colonized by the British East Africa Protectorate in the 19th century and is one of the most successful agricultural production regions on the entire African continent
The language spoken is Swahili (a Bantu tongue with Arabic & Portuguese words) and people are primarily Christian. Hot and humid on the coast; mild in the highlands – most of Kenya consists of hot arid plains; just the way wildlife likes it.
It was really challenging for me to believe that Nairobi did not exist before 1899. It was only with the advent of the railroad from Mombasa to Uganda in 1899 that Nairobi was birthed – at mile marker #327.
Karen Blixen and her influence in the area. If you have not yet read ‘Out of Africa’ I highly recommend it. And do tour her home if you are in Nairobi.
Just a few miles from the city you can view black and white rhino, in Nairobi National Park (NNP) one of the most successful rhino breeding programs in all of Africa so you are pretty much guaranteed to see a rhino…or two. Lion, leopard, cheetah and hyena (always in pairs!), giraffe, waterbuck, zebra, impala, eland – all with the backdrop of the city of Nairobi in the distance. Four of the big five are found here – missing is the elephant
I thought Nairobi was kind a neat city – busy and dusty….and barely over 100 years old. And here, in this park with the city in the background (and the rail line through the park) it is all SO surreal. A taste of the wild without leaving the city – a great way to begin, or end a journey to one of the other parks in the country
