Last weekend I found another reason to love Kenya; safari!

It’s funny though because while most typical tourists come to Kenya for safari for us volunteers it was a bit of an after-thought. Something we all wanted to do but had to be um-ed and ah-ed about because of the cost. When we did finally commit to a three day journey to Tsavo East and Abeseli national park it was a huge treat and ended up being absolute luxury compared to the life we have come to know here.

It also made me see that there is another side to Kenya though which I have unknowingly avoided until now, that is, the tourist side. For the first time since arriving here I actually felt like a tourist myself which in all honesty I didn’t really like. Don’t get me wrong, the safari was easily one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life. I saw lions and elephant and giraffes (oh my!) zebra and cheetahs and buffalo. I got to wake up at the foot of mount Kilimanjaro with monkeys playing at the entrance to my tent and I visited a Masai village where we were welcome with traditional dances and blessed by witch doctors. It was by all accounts a mind blowingly good trip.

At the same time though there was this strange feeling I wasn’t really the same person I am in Mombasa. Instead of bartering for reasonable prices in the local markets we were expected to pay five times as much as normal in tourists stop offs. Any attempts to speak Swahili were met with raised eyebrows and even at lunch time when we stopped off for a quick bite to eat we found ourselves being charged 700ksh for a meal I pay 50ksh for anywhere else. And don’t think this was a fancy joint – no no, they just assumed we were tourists who didn’t know any better. In fact, the further into the trip I got the more I realized how much tourists get taken for a ride.

Not that I blame the locals, far from it. In fact two of the girls in my own group were a great example of why ‘mozungus’ get treated the way they do. From shouting at the animals on safari to flashing the cash to convince a local man to sell his necklace (a family heir loom he didn’t want to part with but could not say no to when a 2000ksh note was being thrust in his face) these two were quite frankly embarrassing. At one point on our Masai village tour the duo laughed and giggled their way through our guide’s commentary apparently because they found his outfit amusing.

If someone turned up in my neighborhood with such a disregard for the culture or environment I would be inclined to treat them like idiots too.

Speaking to some of the other ‘non-volunteers’ we met on the trip also had me thinking about how little the average tourist knows about the place they are visiting. They see the fancy hotels, the beautiful beaches, the lions on safari, but how many realise what’s hiding beneath these scenes? I’m not accusing every tourist in the world if this of course, I’ll be taking on the title of tourist myself a lot over the next year I’m sure when I head round Asia and Oz, but on the whole, how much gets brushed under the carpet in favour of a more romantic vision?

The carcasses on safari were a prime example of this. In Abeseli national park there were almost as many dead animals as there were alive because of the droughts. To the casual eye maybe this looks like the ‘circle of life’ that old Elton croons about so lovingly, but in stark reality it’s not. The animals are dying and dying rapidly because climate change has brought on some of the worst droughts in history. In turn the people are suffering because as their animals die off eventually so do they.

I’m not sure what to conclude from these thoughts mind as I don’t suppose much can be done about it (unless all tourists are forced to take a ‘reality check‘ class before they travel). It did make me very glad to get back to Likoni though – I might not blend in exactly and I might still get called a ‘mozungu’ everywhere I go but at least I can buy my lunch for 20 bob and feel part of the real scenery rather than part of a fake one.

Oh – for those considering safari by the way – book it when you’re here. Costs a third of price, only unsuspecting tourists should have to pay those ridiculous amounts ;-)

• Kenya
• kilimanjaro
• volunteer teaching abroad
• safari