For our final full day in Kenya, we were to enjoy a day of authentic cultural escapades. After almost a month here, I suppose it's about time I experienced the culture. Apparently even ethnic adventures happen on Africa time. My first authentic experience of the day occurred - you guessed it - in the shower. I never thought that I'd get excited about the shower here at ByGrace, but after four mornings of frigid cup showers in Webuye, a warm trickle struck me as a glorious proposition. I enjoyed the delightfully hot dripping from the shower head for about 45 seconds before it cut off completely.
After breakfast, we headed for the Giraffe Centre, which I have chosen to pronounce all day as "sentry", due to the British R-before-E spelling. The Giraffe Sentry is located in a nearby town called Karen, named after a woman who evangelized and helped to advance the area, which is among the wealthiest districts in the greater Nairobi area. Driving through Karen is a different experience in itself, thanks to the well-organized blocks of well-developed compounds surrounded by well-forested grounds and well-hedged walls. Every street is a corridor of cultivation, giving the feeling of traveling down a road on a tropical island devoid of any development save some manner of military or environmental base here and there. The Giraffe Sentry, like the adjacent estates, hides behind high foliage-covered walls, and while the grounds are quite extensive, the establishment is relatively meager. As it should be, so far as I'm concerned. There are essentially three main buildings, surrounded by a handful of smaller structures like bathrooms and staff offices. The first main structure houses the admissions office, gift shop, and café. The second, and the only one to have two stories, is the educational center and observation area; a round building with a small museum downstairs and in the center of the upper level, with an open porch around the outside allowing for face-to-face interaction with, and hand-feeding of the giraffes. The third large structure we left uninspected, so we weren't quite certain as to its purpose. It looked a bit suspicious, and I decided that it must be the place where they slaughter the giraffes for meat and large ornamental carpets. The remainder of the extensive grounds is left open for the giraffes to run around, although they don't really run. Once, when one was startled, it loped away at a slightly accelerated pace, but that was the fastest any of them moved all day. Up on the second-story observation and feeding deck, visitors can grab some giraffe food out of a bin, and feed the giraffes by hand. A few of them will take it right off of your face if you hold the morsel between your lips. It was Shitemi's birthday, so he got a birthday kiss from a giraffe. I also got an unbirthday kiss from her, and what a very merry unbirthday it was. Though enormous, as tongues go, a giraffe tongue is actually quite dry and coarse, so there's a relatively low slobber-to-tongue ratio. That's not to say that there's no slobber at all. The sensation isn't entirely unlike being sneezed upon by a brachiosaurus while sitting in a giant prehistoric tree. I'm told that giraffe tongues also emit an antiseptic, but that didn't fill me with quite enough confidence not to douse my face with hand sanitizer afterwards. The peculiar adventure of meeting eye-to-eye with a great long-necked beast and being coated with its saliva, coupled with the eerie jungle ambience of the drive and the facility itself filled me with a whim that the place really ought to be called Giraffic Park.
We took lunch back at the Amani Ya Juu headquarters, which boasts a delightful little outdoor cafe. We enjoyed a multi-cultural lunch, several ordering hamburgers, a few ordering salads (salad as we know it is uncommon in Kenya), and I had a very large taco. Most of us opted to hang out on the Amani lawn while Shitemi, Ryan, Dan, and Conrad took off to get haircuts. Evidently they were more intent on keeping their day as full of authentic ethnic experiences as possible. While I might have found another escapade artistically inspiring, and I'm sure I'd have found a haircut in Nairobi to be quite novel, I didn't feel much in need of a haircut, and even if I had, I wouldn't have wanted one from a Kenyan barber. So off they went, while the rest of us enjoyed a cool afternoon in the garden. Almost three hours later, the cool early evening in the garden didn't feel quite as enjoyable as the cool afternoon had been. The four of them came strolling back, freshly buzzed (no, not THAT kind of buzzed), just in time to take us back to ByGrace to prepare for our dinner engagement. It was a bit disappointing to spend several hours of our final day in Kenya waiting around with nothing to do, but it was cultural day, and waiting around for people to show up on Africa time is certainly a foundational part of the culture.
Cultural day ended - appropriately - with cultural night, so dubbed by Stephen. Cultural night is a final night dinner extravaganza he likes to provide for teams that come to visit ByGrace, held at a nearby restaurant. The food provided at the restaurant was admittedly of higher quality than most of the meals I've eaten this month, but it was still nearly the same thing that has been served in nearly every location nearly every night. After a month of tough beef or chicken, rice, cabbage or spinach, ugali (mashed corn meal) or potatoes, and chapati (Kenyan tortillas that I will never get sick of), and after several days of stomach issues, I really wasn't interested in any more traditional food. I entertained the kids at our table by eating spoonfuls of Peptang Chili Sauce, which resembles Tabasco sauce, and while it can be found at any restaurant or café, I have yet to see a Kenyan use it on his food. Once I had illustrated to the child next to me that it can be consumed by the spoonful without the consequence of spontaneous combustion, he worked up the courage to pour it on his rice, and moments later, he worked up the courage to scoop all of the Peptang-contaminated rice off of his plate onto another. Throughout the evening, a group of drummers and dancers put on a spectacular show. After dinner, gifts were exchanged between ByGrace and the various missions teams in attendance. Finally, the night ended with a giant dance party, open to anyone willing to shed his or her inhibitions at the mercy of an exuberant string of music.
