Sightseeing around Nairobi

After a week of living the Peace Corps dream in the mountains of Kenya, I traveled down to Nairobi for what is probably best described as the exact opposite of Peace Corps life. Through a friend-of-a-friend, I was warmly, and extremely generously, invited to stay with some U.S. Foreign Service Officers living in the capital.

I’ve already described Kigali as clean and quiet (perhaps too much so), and Kampala as real and raw (which you can also interpret as dirty). Nairobi is cosmopolitan, and adds a whole new flavor to my experience in African cities. The streets of Kenya’s capital are busy and lead out into various suburbs where you can find a little bit of everything. From luxury malls to dirt cheap (and delicious) Indian food, Nairobi really does have it all.

My first full day in Nairobi I spent exploring the southwestern suburb of Karen. If you find yourself in Nairobi, I recommend taking a day to explore this neighborhood, as you’ll find all sorts of fun (and very touristy) activities. 

The suburb is named after the Danish Baroness Karen Blixen, also known as Isak Dinesen, author of the famous memoir, Out of Africa, about running a coffee farm in Kenya in the early 20^th century. Since I had read the book and seen the Meryl Street and Robert Redford movie, I felt compelled to visit the home-turned-museum, and the restaurant next to it, which were interesting, although if you’re not a must see. 

Famous view of the Ngong Hills, so often mentioned in the book from the Blixen home. "Ngong"  means knuckles in Massai. The four hills stand alone in the plains around Nairobi and do in fact look like knuckles. 

Finding True Love in Nairobi

My first stop in Karen was to the Giraffe Center, where I fell in love with a giraffe named Daisy. Luckily for me, she reciprocated my feelings and showed me by landing me a kiss! The African Fund for Endangered Wildlife Kenya, which runs the operation, does a lot of great work educating visitors, and youth around Kenya, about wildlife, and giraffes in particular. While visiting the center, I learned a lot. Fun fact: a giraffe’s tongue grows to be almost one and a half feet long! In addition to several giraffes, the center is also home to many warthogs.  Giraffes and warthogs enjoy each other’s company, providing one another with extra security, since giraffes have excellent vision, while warthogs have excellent hearing. 

Because giraffes and warthogs alone don’t fulfill my daily wild life quota, from the Giraffe Center I headed to the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage, where I watched elephants as young as three months get bottle fed (their bottles were only slightly larger than the bottles of my three month old Rwandan neighbors). The Trust running the operation is doing really wonderful conservation work, rescuing baby elephants who are found abandoned in the wild, their mothers often victims of poaching, which continues to be a problem acrossthe African continent.

Orphan Elephant being fed by a caretaker at the David Sheldrick Center 

Nairobi National Museum

My favorite tourist activity in Nairobi was the Nairobi National Museum, which I can confidently say is the best museum I have visited on the continent. The museum holds the greatest collection of early human fossils in the world, many of them discovered by the Leakey Family. If this doesn’t excite the paleontologist in you, know that the bird collection includes hundreds (if not thousands) of specimens from across East Africa. I’ll stop here and pretend like I haven’t just outted myself as the world’s biggest nerd.

Nairobi is a huge city with lots to see and tons to do. The nickname “Nairoberry” has stuck, in my opinion, more for its catchiness than truth. Like any other city in the world, there are security issues. As a young, clearly foreign, solo female traveler (and recent victim of a robbery), I took extra precautions, particularly in the way of not being out at night downtown. Still, I was able to enjoy the bustling city, in no small part thanks to the incredible generosity of various friends of friends and relatives of friends, who took me out to delicious meals, and so generously hosted me.