Thanksgiving in Cape Town

Kaarli had been traveling nearly non-stop for the previous three weeks to Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia, so we decided to do something special over the four day Thanksgiving holiday and go to Cape Town, South Africa. We had always wanted to go to Cape Town for their famous wine tours that supposedly rivaled Napa Valley in California. Additionally, near Cape Town you can see African penguins and migrating whales. We had also recently heard from friends that you could go in a shark cage with great white sharks. That was all Aaron needed to hear. That sounded like a dream Thanksgiving to Aaron, but while Kaarli was in for the wine and penguins, she was a little skeptical about the shark part.

Cape Town is a six hour flight from Nairobi and you need to stop in Johannesburg to change planes to Cape Town. We flew the first four hours to Jo’burg Wednesday night and then slept at the airport for about 4 hours before boarding a 6am flight to Cape Town. Aaron rented a tiny VW Citi, manual drive from Avis for only $15 a day, which seemed too good to be true. (Renting in a car in Nairobi will set you back $80-$100 per day.) We were filling out the paperwork when the nice woman behind the counter asked Aaron for his driver’s license. It turned out that in preparing for the trip, Aaron had remembered everything except for his international driver’s license which he keeps in the glove compartment. This was especially troubling because Kaarli was fine with getting a manual drive on the condition that she never has to drive. Some of you may remember the traumatic experience for both Aaron and Kaarli when Aaron taught Kaarli to drive a stick in Silver Spring a few years back.

We pulled away from Avis onto the Cape Town super highway (picture a large multilane highway in Chicago) with cars whizzing passed us and death in both of our eyes. Kaarli was very tense and going a little slow, but otherwise was doing fairly well. Aaron then noticed that Cape Town sure smells funny. In fact it smells like a burning clutch. Aaron then realizes what was happening and asks in his most sensitive voice whether Kaarli is releasing the clutch when she shifts. She said that of course she was, but not the entire way. Kaarli was not in any mood for driving advice at this juncture from someone who forgot their driver’s license.

We arrived safely at our hotel after about 30 stressful minutes and had an amazing trip the rest of the time. The first day we drove down to the Cape of Good Hope, which is the furthest point south on the African continent. The drive is rated as one of the most beautiful in the world as the roads wind precariously on the sheer cliffs with the crystal clear blue water below. It is the most beautiful drive either of us has ever taken. On the way down, we stopped to see the endangered African penguins at Simon’s Point. They were really cute and seemingly unafraid and uninterested in humans.


The next day we went to see the great white sharks. It turns out that two hours outside of Cape Town is a place called Gaansbai that has the highest concentration of great white sharks anywhere in the world. We were told that it is one of the few places that you are nearly guaranteed to see a great white every time you go out in their boat year round. Interestingly, Gaansbai is very near some of the best surfing in the world and they told us that from a helicopter you can see great whites very near many of the surfers. Remarkably there are very few attacks despite the thousands of surfers. Having said that, we were not signing up for any surfing lessons. Additionally, this bay is a place that migrating whales stop to recuperate on their long journey. We pulled by the side of the road to see several right whales hanging out and occasionally blowing water into the air or sticking up a flipper to say hi.


We headed out on the shark boat only about twenty minutes off shore, where the team threw in the shark cage. This company was an eco-friendly company that was run by a marine biologist that specialized in great whites and was conducting research. They felt strongly about not feeding or harassing the sharks to get them to “perform” for the tourists. This of course is a good idea, but secretly we thought maybe they could just get them to “perform” a little bit. Anyway, twenty tourists went out on the boat and five went into the cage, which was anchored to the side of the boat, at a time.

Kaarli initially had said that she was not going in the cage, but after seeing others go in and have a good time, she gained the courage and donned her wetsuit. The top of the cage is about two feet out of the water, so when you are inside you are only partially submerged. When the sharks come around, you hold your breath and dip your head under to see the action. It turns out that the sharks are scared of bubbles and don’t come very close, if you use scuba gear.

Our group was one of the most intense as there was around 15 passes of great white sharks that came near. They don’t attack the cage or anything and are extremely graceful. The company puts a fake foam seal decoy into the water and a huge tuna fish head that the sharks go to investigate and then are pulled away just as the sharks go up to chomp them in front of the cage. This seemed like performing a little to us, but that was fine by us, if the marine biologist thought it was OK. It was truly awesome.

Our last day, we went to visit wine country and some of the wineries. This was also amazingly beautiful and the wine was superb. Even better, the wine was really cheap. To taste five glasses of good wine was generally around $3. You could also do cheese tastings with the wine for another $3. We only wished Aaron’s mom could have been there, as she would have loved it. :) We also ran into some friends from Nairobi and went to a few of the wineries and dinner together. After a day in wine country we flew back to Nairobi and Kaarli left the next day to go back to Rwanda. All in all a wonderful Thanksgiving. We hope you had a terrific Thanksgiving as well.

Power of Prayer

By Aaron

Monday morning, I had just finished reading my morning emails and was finishing my Kenyan Java House coffee, when there was a knock at my office door. This was pretty unusual, as I rarely receive visitors that had not checked in at the reception desk. At the door was Alex, one of the waiters at the downstairs Bistro that is connected to the office building that I work in. Alex is always friendly and we always greet each other as I come in and out of the office building. I had not ordered anything, so I was surprised to see Alex. Alex asked if he could sit down and have a meeting with me. I was not really sure what to expect, but I couldn’t really say no and I was curious.

To give you some background on my relationship with Bistro, the restaurant caters to the international companies that are in the office building. Prices are closer to American prices with a lunch salad or entrée around $10. Despite the expense, it is often easier to just get your food from downstairs then to walk 15 minutes into Westlands where the other restaurants are (and you know we are not cooking). While I prefer the 15 minute walk to get some fresh air and better variety of food, I am often short on time and so just order something from downstairs (usually the vegetarian lasagna or chicken ceaser salad, if you were curious) about once per week. Well, Bistro used to give me a plate to take my food back to my office, so I could work, but just a few weeks ago, they said that they would no longer allow the plates to leave the restaurant because too many we getting broken or going missing. They said that if I wanted to take my food back to my office I would need to pay $1 for a take-a-way container for the food, which is standard practice in Nairobi. I told them that I did not want to pay $1 for the containers that I would be throwing away as soon as I got back to my desk for both environmental and financial reasons. I told them that this policy takes away their competitive advantage over the other restaurants nearby and I walked out.

Now back to Alex at my office door. Alex explained that his brother had just passed away. This seemed to expain his visit, as it is common practice to raise money from friends and colleagues to pay for the funeral or outstanding medical bills of the deceased. We regularly get these type of requests from acquaintances that we come in contact with or sometimes have never met before. This is not culturally frowned upon and the needs are most of the time very legitimate. It is actually more frowned upon to have money and not give to someone in need, where in the US it may be seen as offensive to have someone you barely know ask for help with funeral costs for their brother. Anyway, we usually try to help them in a small way.

Alex then asked if we could pray together. Again, this felt a little strange, as I barely know Alex and we had never discussed our faith, but public spontaneous prayer is much more normal in Kenya than back home, so I tried to get over my American sensibilities. Additionally, Alex’s brother had just passed away, so it did seem to make sense that this would be a time for prayer and reflection.

Alex reached for my hands as we sat in my office and he began to pray:

Dear heavenly father, I come before you today with my brother Aaron, who is like a part of the family lord. Lord, I and the other employees at Bistro Restaurant ask for forgiveness , as we have greatly offended our dear brother Aaron. Lord, we did not mean to hurt Aaron in any way. It seems that our disagreement is more of a misunderstanding. Lord, we are not assigning blame to anyone in this situation, but we just ask in your ever loving mercy that you provide wisdom to everyone here to see the situation for what it is. Lord, I would ask that you soften Aaron’s heart, so that he may forgive us at Bistro who meant him no harm. Lord, we ask that Aaron return to the Bistro Restaurant as he so often did in the past, so that we may fellowship together. In your son’s holy name we pray, Amen.

Two days later, I was in a hurry and didn’t have much time for lunch. It appears my heart had indeed been softened and I sat at one of the tables in the restaurant, so that I would not have to take away the containers. Alex greeted me with a big smile and the Bistro family was whole again. Prayer is powerful.

Halloween in Nairobi

Halloween in Nairobi is just catching on. There had always been Halloween house parties among the American expats, but this Halloween was the first time that there were multiple public events. There were actually four parties that we were interested in attending, but decided to start the evening at the Carnivore Restaurant where they were having the Rocktoberfest Halloween concert. The Beathogs were performing, so we went out to show our support. This was followed by a house party of one of our good friends.

We found some scary faceless masks in our storage facility in Silver Spring, that we brought back with matching capes that made up our costume. We walked into the house party with no-one knowing who we were and hovered close to our friends not saying a word, which was pretty scary for them and hilarious for us. The downside was that you cannot drink some of Kenya’s golden goodness through the mask, so to prepare for this we also painted our faces white. This could be a vampire or ghoul or whatever, we left it to the imagination. What Aaron didn’t plan on was that it is still really warm at night in Nairobi and he was sweating bullets with his mask on. What every woman knows, but that Aaron didn’t was that makeup runs and can be sweat off. This led to most of Aaron’s face paint being gone for most of the evening. This is the explanation for the unusual half white-faced pictures of Aaron. As usual, Kaarli remained cool and collected.

Cameo Appearance in Grand Rapids

We could not come back to the US without making at least a brief stop in Grand Rapids. Unfortunately, this time we only had three days in town, so we were not able to see everyone that we had wanted to. We did get to catch up with the newly engaged Amy and Jonathan (who have provided our next excuse for a trip home - August 2010) and all of the little and now bigger kids that our friends keep producing. It is amazing the reproductive skills that our friends have. The state tourism slogan for Virginia is, “Virginia is for lovers", but we would put our West Michigan lovers against any Virginians and feel quite confident we could out-love them. OK, maybe we took that a little too far (actually Aaron did, Kaarli doens't want to be associated with this part of the blog), but you know what I'm saying.

Back to Silver Spring

This was our first time back in the US since the previous Christmas. Our friend Rachel, who has been renting our town house in Silver Spring, was preparing to move out, so we needed to get all of the stuff that we had been storing in the basement out of the house and into our storage facility. Additionally, it was good timing for Aaron to come back to his work’s HQ to plan for 2010 and explain what he had been working on for 2009.

It is funny the things you notice about the US after being away for awhile. Aaron nearly drank himself into a sugar coma at Red Rock Canyon, during one of his first lunches back with colleagues. The waitress just kept swapping out his glass of raspberry iced tea as he was talking and he really had no idea how many he had finished. He had a good indication that he needed to stop when he stood up to go to the bathroom and nearly fell over from the head rush. Free refills and attentive servers are two things in very short supply in Nairobi.

Aaron is now tempted to drive down the wrong side of the road if there is traffic going in his direction and none going the other way. It is so frustrating to pass up the use of a perfectly good road when no one else is using it. That method is par for the course in Nairobi. However, there is always the trouble with what happens when someone does come down the other side. Having been on both the receiving and offending end of that situation, it can sometimes be a little dicey. Aaron hasn’t actually done this in the US yet, thanks to his conservative co-pilot, but he gets closer to doing this every time.

The portions in restaurants must be getting bigger. Neither of us finished an entire entrée the first week we were here. We felt bad throwing it away, but we were not taking it back to the hotel and we just couldn’t eat anymore. It’s not that we did’t eat enough though. Between the buffalo wings, raspberry iced teas, Dairy Queen and Cold Stone, Aaron gains about 3-5 pounds every week he is back in the US.

As always, it was great to see many of our good friends in the DC area. We were able to spend nearly every night with some of the people we have been missing. Thanks to everyone who braved the traffic and either met us out at a restaurant or made us a meal in their home. We can’t wait to see you all again soon.

First hole: left at the giraffe and next to the flamingos

The very next weekend after being in Lake Navaisha for Gilbert’s party, we were invited by a group of friends to head back to Navaisha to spend the weekend in a different house. Lake Navaisha is only an hour out of town, so it is always tough to say no. Why would anyone want to anyway? This group of friends is part of the athletic set that we play softball, ultimate Frisbee, squash, tennis, etc. with. If you can think of the game you can pretty much find someone in this group that is ready to try to beat you at. The game of the weekend turned out to be Frisbee golf through the Navaisha wildlife. Because there are no predators near Lake Navaisha, the giraffe, zebra and flamingos allow you to get much closer than they do in other places, making for wonderful Frizbee golf. The winner of the hole would call out the next hole such as: see the stump next to the zebra, which is halfway in-between the two giraffes?

Party Like a Nairobi Rock Star

Gilbert, our friend and lead guitarist of the Beathogs, is sadly heading back to Switzerland, so of course we could not let him go without a proper send off. For those of you who don’t already know, the Beathogs are hands down our favorite rockabilly, psycho-blues band that plays in western Nairobi. I am not just saying that because most of the band members are friends of ours either. These guys can really rock the house. Anyway, we rented a log cabin on Lake Navaisha with a huge deck that allowed Beathogs and Murphy’s Flaw (another of Nairobi’s best bands) to jam one last time before Gilbert goes back to the land of chocolate. Given that neither of us have any musical talent, Kaarli put on a show on the dance floor and I helped supervise the event to make sure the party did not get out of hand. All in all it was a wonderful night. Gilbert will be missed.