African Adventure

By: Luke Hammer
November 16, 2008
My Favorite Place to Go

When I travel, I like to go somewhere I have never been before because the world is an amazing place and I want to learn all about it. I have been to Canada, Europe, Iceland, many US states, and last but not least Kenya and Tanzania. My favorite trip was definitely to Africa. I went to Africa in 2006, my fourth grade year. The trip was not only fun, but it was educational, culturally diverse, and was great for seeing a different biome from the temperate forest.
The trip was for a month in February. To get there we took a 48-hour plane ride, and when we arrived at the Kilimanjaro airport, we had gone from a cold winter to a tropical climate. A friend of my parents’ named Patrick, who started a flying medical service to bring medical services to the Maasai in remote areas, picked us up and took us to his home in the heart of Maasai land. The first people we saw were the Maasai herding their cattle. The next day we met up with some of our friends from California to hike up Mt. Meru. This mountain is about half the height of Mt. Everest. When we were hiking, we stayed at stone huts along the way and each family had their own room. We woke up at five in the morning to hike the final part. We were at a large rocky overlook called Rhino Point just in time for the sunrise. After hiking for a number of hours we were near the summit but had to go back down because it was too cold and getting hard to breathe. Our guide Matoba was with us the whole time to protect us from elephants and cape buffalo.
After our Meru climb, we went on a safari. The safari driver showed us elephants (which weigh a ton), cheetahs (that can run 70 mph), and many other animals. Seeing all these different animals in the wild showed me how diverse different environments could be. My favorite time on the safari was when an elephant charged us. We were sitting in our safari vehicle minding our own business, when part of a large herd of elephants passed in front of our car and part behind our car. I turned the camera on video mode and hit the record button to film the biggest elephant in the herd walking towards us. She had huge tusks, and then her slow walk turned into a faster walk. It was then I realized that she was charging us. The safari driver gunned the engine and drove out of their way just in the nick of time.
After the safari, Ezra, who also was a pilot for the flying medical service, flew us to the Kenyan border. While he flew, he taught me what all the controls did: how pulling the steering wheel out makes the plane go up; how pushing it in makes it go down; how the knobs adjust the balance of the fuel; and how the controls for the GPS worked. During the middle of the flight, he asked if I wanted to try to fly the plane. I said “Yes!” and was amazed that the first motorized vehicle I ever drove was an airplane. It made me think how fun flying over the Serengeti would be as a job.
In Kenya, we went to a clinic that served the Luo tribe where my mom worked 20 years ago for a year and my dad helped build a library. The clinic was built to help people with malaria, AIDS and many other diseases get better. Every day the clinic had more than 100 people come, some of the people walking from as far as 15 miles away. To get a check up and medicine would only cost 30 cents (compared to at least $100 in the US). The clinic’s only source of electricity was the solar panels on the roof to run the microscopes, refrigerators and lights. The clinic also had an orphanage for kids whose parents had died of AIDS. At the orphanage, they ate rice and beans twice a day (and we did too!). The kids had a soccer ball made of duct tape but were still happy, showing me that people do not need a lot of money to be happy
After we spent a week at the clinic, we needed to get to Nairobi to get our flight back to the US. We waited in pouring rain for a Toyota Station wagon taxi that normally holds five people, but after we climbed in it had 14 people, 2 chickens, and a bag of smelly fish. We then boarded a bus only to find that our seats had been booked twice! I had to sit in the front of the bus next to the dashboard on a foldout seat. These experiences made me see how poor Kenya really was; its main highway was equal to a fourth class road in Vermont and cars were a luxury. When we finally got to Nairobi, I was surprised to see a city with skyscrapers, since I had been in small villages with grass huts for almost four weeks. It showed me how big a difference there is between rich and poor in poorer countries.
Now you can see my reasons for why I choose Africa as my favorite place to visit. It was full of fun experiences from the Mt Meru climb to when I flew the plane. It was educational about poverty from the quality of the roads to the fact that most people live in mud huts without electricity. It was culturally diverse to see different tribes and see the orphanage. It was great for seeing different animals and environments when we went on the safari and hiked Mt. Meru. For my next trip, I am planning on going to Belize and Mexico in June with my grandpa. I think it will be very fun and interesting, especially since I am taking Spanish.