Tuesday, August 30, 2022
Day 2 - Amboseli National Park
let's not think too much, there ain't no problems
so long as we keep this low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low-key
Lowkey - NIKI
There will be many pictures in this post, brace yourself. This was when the whole day was spent in Amboseli National Park. The day before K told me, meet at 7 AM if I'm not mistaken and my head was like, what?!? I'm not a morning person at all, but I'm glad I was never late for him or anyone else throughout this trip. The thing that concerned me the most about this full day game drive was how's the toilet situation, like no I don't want to go to the bushes. K assured me there will be a stop at a lodge for me to to use the washroom and I promised him, I'd try to only go one time, which I did. I just took little sips of water that whole day :D So that morning on the way out of the camp, still very near to the camp compound, I saw an elephant which is very common because there are many elephants in Amboseli. K wasn't even impressed. I guess for the people there, seeing animals like this up close is so normal. It was quite a cloudy day, like the clouds were kinda low in the sky which if I'm being honest made me a bit gloomy. Pictures here are in sequence of being taken. So among the first we saw were a group of warthogs. K pointed out that when they eat, they sometime kneel on their 2 front legs. They run funny which I love but couldn't figure out why. K said their tails go up when they run and I guess that's it :D Then there's zebras of course. They, the wildebeests, and gazelles are very common that I don't think much about them.
Then K got us to this spot where there were many vultures. Some of them were eating a dead baby zebra. They were scary because they were very fierce and they would fight each other. K said only the strong will eat so there were many others who didn't eat and it was interesting that the rest would just stand nearby with their backs turned. The bigger birds are the marabou storks and even them could only stand and watch. Thinking back about it now, I was so excited to see a vulture in the wild back in Paracas, Peru, and then in this trip seeing this group of vultures in their community doing what vultures do, well it's quite an experience.
Then there's more elephants. Seeing baby elephant will always be a happy moment and it's really a happy thing to see a number of baby elephants there. Then there's also giraffes, I don't know why I didn't have many giraffes pictures from here. The other animals in the giraffe picture are the Thomson's gazelle. Then there's also baboons, also nice seeing them in their community with their babies as well.
Oh, the local Maasai villagers are allowed to bring their cows to graze in the park, so yes there were cows as well. I asked K if they would travel around the park for days with their cows and K said no, they would return back later. Considering that there are so many animals eating the grass or plants there, it's amazing how somehow nature provides.
Then K heard there's a cheetah sighting and we went there. There were 2 cheetahs actually, but this cheetahs were so far off that I couldn't seem the clearly, like I couldn't see their spots from where I was. This is a picture of one of them after I cropped the picture to just focus on it. It's pretty.
Back at the swamp, the one lion from yesterday was still there. The dark brown animal below with the interesting horn is a waterbuck and the one below it, I think they are gazelles, I don't know, maybe they're young impalas? I feel embarrassed that I cannot differentiate them. Anyways, that morning there's also buffalo in the swamp.
Then there's like this body of water, like a lake where there's a hippopotamus. We saw it eat awhile and it ate like a machine, like gosh it looks tiring :D Part of the lake looked so still and I love how still it looked and there's flamingoes in there too. Okay the hippo and the flamingoes might be in a different body of water, I couldn't remember now. Side note: somehow the only memory I had when I was on a field trip to the zoo when I was in kindergarten was of seeing a hippopotamus. I couldn't remember any other animal, only the hippo and I remember seeing its feet because its pool had glass around it. I remember what we wore, the uniform with the pink hat. I don't know if this memory is real. If only there's a way I can be sure. Other side note: one time in Singapore zoo, my dad asked if we're going to see flamingoes next. I said no because we're not at the bird park, but actually in the end we did see some flamingoes in the zoo. In this trip, I knew I would have the opportunity to see flamingoes. I just didn't expect to see them in Amboseli. Before the trip, I wondered if my dad (in spirit) would see it with me, but I didn't feel him each time I did see flamingoes. I don't know what happen when we die. Last side note: sometime when I travel alone, I imagine all my dead grandparents, aunts, and uncles were with me in spirit because it's nice to travel to see new places that they had never been and it makes feel like I'm being watched over by many and now I imagine they bring my dad along too :D
By mid-afternoon, the sun is out and it was quite hot. For lunch, K has collected the packed lunch from the camp and he sent me off with that up a path to a viewing point in a hill while he hung out with his other friends. I guess it's kinda weird funny because it's like off you go, but I think it's kinda nice to have that alone time. There were a number of people there but I managed to get a bench and table after I saw a South Asian looking family was about done with their lunch. So in this viewing point, there's a lot of chirpy birds. Then you have this wide open view of Amboseli, with elephants and other animals in the distance. It's pretty arid. In fact one of the things that I found fascinating are the sand-spouts (I think that's what they're called). They're in the first picture below. I love seeing them; sometime they move really fast, sometime they just dissipate. The sand and dust are really on you in Amboseli. After that full day in the park, I realized I was dusted with sand.
This last picture is an interesting one for me. It's taken on the way down the hill after lunch. I saw these 2 elephants some distance away from each other and I just had so many questions. Do they know each other? Was the one behind following the one in the front? It was perhaps one of the most interesting thing I saw all day. I just marvelled seeing them.
I thought Amboseli was great. I know I started perhaps not feeling all that great but I love the place and I really won't mind coming back - can I? Will I have another chance? By the way, after each dinner the 2 nights there, I stood outside my tent a bit and just looked at the stars. There were so many of them visible and I just wondered. More so because I've been going through lectures on Practical Astronomy. I don't absorb much of it, but I do learn that no we can't really see north star from this part of the world, like from Jakarta where I'm from, it's a definite no. Anyways, I do wonder if the lecturer teaching it would be excited to stargaze in a place like Amboseli. I also think it must be nice to observe the stars with someone who can give you explanation about it. Okay, so that's Amboseli. For pictures from there, you can go here.
:) eKa @ 10:15:00 PM • 0 comments
Saturday, August 27, 2022
tell me that I haven't reached the end
tell me that there's more around the bend
tell me that I have the strength to go on
Treading Water - Emawk
Day 1 in Kenya, gosh, it's happening, I was going to do this safari. It was going to be 7 days spent with someone I didn't know. I won't write about which company I booked with, where I stayed in, even though I think they would love the publicity. It's just, I don't know, I want to keep things private as much as possible. I did write them, dare I say, a glowing review in Tripadvisor (my first one ever) after being asked more than once by my driver / guide, who I will just initial as K here. The person playing this role was one of my worry about this trip and a subject of my many prayers. I have never done anything like this before where I entrusted the whole entire trip that I did alone to a single person. In fact I recalled a conversation with my parents in Taiwan when we saw many other people were renting the cab for the whole day for sightseeing and I told them I would never be able to do that on my own because it would be scary and yet now I was doing it because there's no other choice. Well I could have joined one of those group trips but I am way too anti-social for that. So in my prayers, I prayed for someone whom I could get along and communicate well and I think God delivered :) I also prayed so that God would help me watch my own behaviour :D
Anyways, the sleep the night before was good and I woke up pretty okay in the morning. I have pretty much separated what I was going to bring and what I would have the hotel keep in their storage until my return. Breakfast was okay. I was nervous all around. The anxiety never leaves. Oh one thing that surprised me, all the places I visited in Kenya was chilly in the morning and evening and I found it so unexpected. I googled for information to make sense of this and I think it's just their season and also I think if we take Nairobi for example, it's on a much higher elevation than Jakarta or even Bandung, so I think that's why they get to be cooler. Anyways, so pick up was 07:30 AM, I was there first before K and I was just glad he's there. First impression was that he's tall and giggles easily. I can't really say much about how I felt because it's really like, we're doing this, so let's go. Among the first thing I asked him was that if I needed to wear mask in the car and he was like anything you like and in the end I didn't wear mask at all throughout my time there except for places where somehow the lodge requires you to wear one before taking food in the buffet. Sometime the rule are weird, The staff mostly wore masks but they didn't insist guests to wear one. In my Nairobi hotel, they gave you glove to take food but didn't insist you wear mask. It only occured to me much later that my mask-less time there was what life was like before. A thought did occur to me a few times that perhaps my mom would be concerned about my lax attitude regarding mask, but I also think that wearing a mask in mask-less environment can kinda carry more meaning, like will people think you're sickly, or will people think you think they're not clean and hence you're wearing a mask? Yeah, I think too much. Anyways, K came bearing gift, aawww how nice, the tour agency gave me some goodies. It was really nice. Then off we went. First leg was to Amboseli. Amboseli is where you can see Mount Kilimanjaro, but I didn't see it when I was there because it was covered by cloud, haze, dust.
I forgot if it's within these few conversations that we established that K was younger. It was expected actually. Everyone I meet these days even though they look my age, they're generally younger. He's 9 years younger and the thing about me is, anyone who is my brother's age or younger, I straight away see them as younger from an older sibling point of view. It's like my brother's age is the line, so there's only a small window for people who's born 1 year younger than me in which I won't look at them as so young. I wouldn't say I talked much with K in the first few days, because we're still like strangers and like this is awkward right, but by the end I know some things about him and I do trust him completely and I do look at him as a little brother :D Okay, the drive out of Nairobi was kinda interesting, saw ostrich, zebras in the field by the side of the road. It's funny that they have all this wildlife that in this trip I only saw around 5-7 dogs and 1 cat :D I asked K as we were driving in the highway why at the sides it's just wide open field because comparing this to Indonesia, there would be farms and farms and he said it's too dry to plant things and that was like mind-opening. Amboseli was a bit far, there's one stop at like souvenir / curio shop to use the toilet and the first of my many experience having to fend from people offering me to look at or buy stuff. It's always awkward anywhere and you know you just repeat no thank you and keep it moving. The drive in the highway was like any same highway in other parts of the world, but then to get to my first place, K had to drive on unpaved roads. I seriously do not know how he knew where to go, there's no sign or anything. I wonder how long it will take me to learn it. It was not the most comfortable drive, but this is common in these places I think.
My first accomodation was a camp. Okay let me explain a bit, there's like 2 types of accomodation that I used in this trip, camp and lodge. The one I used in Amboseli is a tented camp where instead of proper walls all around the room, it's more like a sturdy tarp and it's self-enclosed. The neighbour tent is like 3-4 metres away. The lodges I used in this trip on the other hand have proper walls like in a house. In fact all the lodges I stayed in are like little houses which normally house 2 separate rooms. In both these places, there's a mosquito net (kelambu in Indonesian) around the bed that the staff will set up for you when you go for dinner. So this camp in Amboseli has a good review actually, but upon entering I was like what, this is good?!? I just can find fault in anything, I'm sorry. Ask the people who have travelled with me, they will confirm this. They're like it's fine, you're just being difficult. I guess, the darkness is what got me most. I cannot deal with a room that feel dark to me, but once I steeled myself to get used to it, it was actually okay. It would tie to second place of all the places I stayed in in this trip. Toilet and shower were good and I so love the water dispenser in the room. We arrived by lunch and then K said we'd meet at 4 pm. Okay a few things to unpack here. I ate like 3 times a day in this trip which sounds normal but in my daily life, I do not eat that much so I normally came to these meals not eating much. I always made room for desserts though which I know it's bad, but I couldn't let go desserts. Then when K said 4 pm, my head was like what?!?! What was I going to do? It's perhaps the most difficult part about this trip, ceding control to someone else. I wasn't in control and for someone who plan everything, there's a sense of feeling lost about what to do. There's no TV in the room and the Wi-Fi doesn't reach the room. I should be thankful enough there's electricty all the time because some places don't have electricity during the day, but still :( I did prepare for this by bringing a book. Rarely do I bring a book in trips because normally I always have things to do, but this time I brought Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart so I tried to read. Things were running all over my brain that it was hard to focus but it's a good thing that I had the book. I knocked off a few chapters in this trip.
Then it was 4 pm, time for my first game drive. Bumpy ride to the entrance gate and when we arrived, there were many people also waiting to get in and it was quite some time for K and everyone else to sort out our entries. I don't know how the processess are like. I noticed in Kenya, some places still do things very manually like they have an actual book in which they write the visitors' information. Anyways we got in and remember my mood was already kinda down and as we went along, I wasn't feeling it that I did wonder if I was actually making the wrong decision about this trip, I'm not exactly that crazy about animals so I might be way over my head here. You could see animals quite immediately, there were gazelle, zebra, ostrich, giraffe, wildebeest, impala, baboon, but I was like ... okay. Then there's was this swampy area and that was pretty cool, there were some elephants in it which was really cool. There were also hippopotamuses inside the swamp in the distance and my photos also show there's some flamingoes. There was a also a lion by the bank, but it was just sleeping at that time.
I am showing this death hippo here too because it's like a part of life and the part of life that we do not see in a zoo, that animals die too.
On the other side of the swamp, there were elephants too and some zebras. At this point, with the elephants in the swamp and all it was kinda exciting, but what happened next was beyond.
K drove a bit away from the swamp and almost suddenly we saw a group of elephants crossing the road and I was like oh my God, this is amazing! It's one of the thing I wanted to see, perhaps the main thing actually. Someone asked me why elephants, you can see them in the zoo, but seeing baby elephants would be so cool and seeing like a herd, I counted there were 13, it was just beyond. It's like I achieved the one thing that I wanted to see in my first day, almost like we can go home now. Also almost like God is saying, take it easy girl, there are wonderful things to be seen here. It turned the whole day around for me. I'm glad I was there. Truthfully though, sometime when you zoom in and you take a picture of the animal, you may not be able to differentiate if it's taken in the zoo or actual habitat, but things like this group of elephants, you can't see this in a zoo.
Okay, these pictures of mine do not show the whole group, so see below my tweet from that day, picture taken from the phone. It was really something, I was just in awe watching them walk in a single file. K said they're always led by a female.
saw this today and I thought it was just amazing pic.twitter.com/aIE4VsG6dR
— Eka (@ekabuntoro) August 15, 2022
After that we made our way back. Passing the swamp again, the lion was awake now and was eating the dead warthog he seemed to be saving for dinner near it. Looking at my photos, I then realized we saw sleepy hyenas too on that first day. Totally forgot about it.
:) eKa @ 5:39:00 PM • 0 comments
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
I still wake up in the morning with the vision of a better life
you see, the option of defeat is just not written in my story
people say I'm foolish, people say I'm blinded by faith
but if I run out of air, if I crash, I don't care, I'm gonna do it my way
I can make it through this, you can throw the world in my face
but the fear gives me life and I swear 'til I die, I'm gonna do it my way
My Way - Aloe Blacc
That song started my Kenya playlist. It has more conviction than what I have actually. I operate in a pessimistic state and I lack faith but I chose to start with that song because I wish I could be that brave in that same conviction and I need it to hype me out. So last week I was in Kenya. Nairobi is the capital city for those of you who are challenged in geography. I myself couldn't point where Kenya is in a map before this, hopefully I can now. It was an alone trip again and you know me, no matter how many times I have done it, I am very fearful which turns me to be very prayerful. Why did I choose Kenya? All the answers will be very pretentious and sound arrogant. First is because I have written before about not many things amuse me anymore, so I needed to go somewhere completely different, a place so unknown and unfamiliar. Then there was COVID and I spend all these years in a city so I feel like I need to go to big open spaces, to nature. Then I just kinda want to tick off my checklist; I don't have such bold ambition to visit every country in the world (because money and time), but stepping into every continent is achievable and going to Africa would complete that. Okay, I actually haven't been to Australia and I have no desire to do so in any near future, but I have been to New Zealand - it's not same different, but I consider that as completed. Then the last reason is because I turned 40 this year and though I hope being alone at this age doesn't signify it will be like that for the rest of my life, at this point it is looking like my reality, so I feel like I need to be braver at this age and it sounds really cool, marking the start of this decade of life by doing something extraordinary. Extraordinary for me, because I was so scared. I have written before I could manufacture crisis for myself and so I had a lot of fear. This is despite of knowing that God has been there for all my trips and there hasn't been any trip I did that I hate, but there's just so much anxiety. This is something that I really need to work on, to not let my thoughts run all over the place, but they control me instead of the other way around. I wonder if God gets bored hearing my prayers, maybe He would like to say, "chill girl, I've got you". Now that I'm back, it's all okay really. Of course there were moments of awkwardness, well at least I thought it was awkward, but I guess I was cool enough to keep it cool and acted like it's fine, and it's really fine. I had a really good trip and I don't mind going back. Of course I have many people to thank to, especially my driver / guide which I will talk more about in the next posts, but really I thank God for not abandoning me despite my lack of faith.
Anyways, I took Qatar airways to Nairobi. Transit was in Doha, my first time being there. I don't know, maybe I'm getting old but I found myself feeling very tired during that transit time that I had to make a real effort to stay alert. I dozed off a few times on my flight to Nairobi and I was really tired that I refused the meal. By the way, applying online visa to Kenya was easy peasy, it doesn't cost as much as Schengen or US visa but the stingy me still found it a bit much. Then you need to use Global Haven platform to self-report your COVID vaccination status and this confuses me a lot, because I don't know who maintains this platform, which countries are using it, and there doesn't seem to be a verification process to really verify if people are reporting truthful information. You get the QR code acknowledgment right away. At least in Indonesia, they really do verification on the paperworks that we submitted. Anyways, I shouldn't complain since it made my life easier. So, landed in Nairobi airport, first step was showing that QR code proof of vaccination which the staff didn't even check / scan, so you and your friends can kinda show the same print-out and it will be fine. Seriously, I find it easier to see Kenya through Indonesian eyes :D If you really want to see rules and processess being done professionally and properly, then you will get disappointed with how things are run. Anyways, after that we could enter the building for immigration check. Suddenly the guy behind me asked if I'm Indonesian. He said he looked at my passport and I'm so glad that he said Hi because just like that there's comfort, maybe too much that when we said good bye, the anxiety grew again. The fact that he said Hi made me think yeah that is what Indonesians do, you should be friendly to each other. I wondered if the immigration officer thought rarely do I see Indonesians and yet today it's two in a row. The guy was there for work for a week and he worked for a non-profit which I thought was noble. I googled him afterwards and his background is illustrious. It's something that I realized after this trip that it's bad enough when you see your peers achieving a lot more as compared to you, but then you see younger people doing and achieving so much more and it makes you question your life, like what have you been doing. I say God has different paths for everyone and yet it's easier to say than to internalize. Anyways before I got my luggage, I exchanged some money. First concern was if the person who was supposed to pick me was there and he was. So that's one worry done. I arrived in the morning and the reception had to call her manager to get the okay to let me check in early and they did - praise God!!!
It was kinda too early to be holed up in the hotel room, so I decided to just go to the National Gallery nearby. I've googled the way there but then I kinda lost my orientation exiting the hotel that I asked the hotel security guard on the direction to walk. He then told me to be careful, like don't be holding up my phone. He also kinda looked at me up and down to make sure I'm not flashy. It's kinda discouraging to hear this, but I know he's being kind and he understands the reality of the city. The hotel itself is in CBD area and on a Sunday it was quite quiet. At one point I saw the building, but I wasn't sure where the entrance is and I walked away from it. A guy walking some distance in front of me kinda read my mind and turned and told me where the entrance is, so that was nice. The female security guard at the entrance was kinda unfriendly, but oh well. Was a bit confused because the ticketing counter was empty but then a lady came. Then I found out payment must be made using M-Pesa, which was like what?!?! How about the old people who don't use phone or smart phone? Then the lady said, "Okay pay me and I'll transfer it". So at least that was solved. I was the only person visiting and the gallery was small and for a ticket price of 1000 KSH for foreigner (around 10 SGD ++), it's kinda not value for money. I didn't stay very long, but there were some interesting things in there. The first picture below is an artwork made by students.
After that I made my way back to the hotel, stopping at the cafe / restaurant nearby to have a meal. I went there for all my meals in Nairobi. I also got a cake to go, it was okay. Tried my best to stay awake so that I could sleep most of the night. I did doze off while watching The Circle but I caught the ending. I think I decided to really sleep at 7 PM something. I was awoken a few times and in those small windows of consciousness, I told myself that this time for a long sleep was not just for the long tiring trip but also for the lack of sleep daily in my real life :D
:) eKa @ 9:28:00 PM • 0 comments
Tuesday, August 02, 2022
Book 2 - A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth
I finished reading my second book this year, A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth by Daniel Mason. It's a collection of 9 short stories and I really like it. Maybe as usual, I am looking or finding signs in things which are not there, but in a number of the stories, I feel there's a sense of alone-ness that I know too well. That feeling of being in your thoughts all alone, feeling like others not getting it or thinking it's crazy or strange the way you think or do things, but you just somehow know that that is just you and you cannot be anything else. I may not be able to completely explain the reason why the characters in this book do what they do, but I get it and I understand that feeling of that is what I need to do no matter how crazy it may seem. I guess there's comfort in reading about these characters who feel to me so alone though at the same time I do feel sad about their alone-ness because I know how lonely it is to be this way.
Not long ago, someone told me but you can change right? I told her, you sounded like my mother. My mother perhaps for my whole life has wished I could change many things about me, but I think we're built differently that she will just not get it. I mean there will always be people who won't get the intensity in which some people do some thing that doesn't make sense to them but makes perfect sense to the person doing it or why people would just go alone set off to the unknown or choose to live in a remote place alone away from other human. For me, I get that completely. I have done things alone in a way that people don't understand. Some have dismissed what I do as not worthwhile or just perhaps see me as sad, but I did all that and those experiences are mine and they don't have that. The more I write this post, it's like more negativity is coming out of me :D My low point period (from the last post) hasn't ended. Just the other day I was thinking how hard it is to hang on and I wonder why hang on if hanging on means that all this is what is waiting for you day after day. I have become hopeless and faithless and there's just a lot of questions in my head. It is a sad feeling to be very lonely in all these thoughts and yet it is very weird that at the same time, I still don't want to be around other human.
If I have to think about what a registry of my passage upon the Earth so far, I think it's a passage that has been very alone. I realized early on as a child how actually alone we are, that our thoughts are our own and that can be completely different than others and others may not understand what you think or why you think the way you think. Then it's been almost half of my life now that has been spent alone and trying to survive on my own. It's being my own protector and caretaker and it's never easy. There were many paths travelled alone and as said outsiders looking at it may look at it as sad, but I've been to places and I took myself there (with God watching over me) and I think there's something admirable in that. I rely on myself because I only have myself. Do I wish someone can come and just save me? Of course, but unfortunately I only have me. The life has been quite plain, I agree. Not long ago I finished watching Pachinko and sometime before that I finished watching Station Eleven, 2 completely different stories which I am totally recommending, but they have the same underlying message that as Station Eleven puts it, survival is insufficient. I see it as it's not enough just to survive and be alive, you then need to flourish and make your life on Earth worthwhile. It's been in my head for quite some time now that my life hasn't been that, it's just been surviving all the time for me and I do think it's quite a waste but I don't know how else I can go to make it worthwhile.
:) eKa @ 8:08:00 PM • 0 comments
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