Camp Life

Camp Life and the Trip Back to Nairobi

Philip patrolled the camp at night.

It dawned on me that in all the blog posts, I hadn’t really shown the camp compound where we were staying. The name of the camp is Bogani and there are three semi-separate areas to the camp. The pictures here are of the main areas our group used. The compound is enclosed by an electric fence to keep large animals out. This means mostly cattle, sheep, goats and the occasional zebra. Even with the electric fence, there was some wildlife that ventured into or lived in the camp. Just in case there were any  wildlife problems here was a Maasai Askari (guard) who patrolled the camp at night. His name is Philip.

A bushbaby

One, that we got acquainted with on the first night, were the bushbabies. I never saw them, but, boy, did we hear them. Wilber described their calls as the “sound of a crying baby being strangled” and I’ve read of their noises described as “the screams of a madman” by some British Africa explorer.  Neither of these comparisons are far off and they are not exaggerated. They screamed at us for a few hours the first night of our stay. Luckily after that, it seemed they moved on and didn’t bother us again. 

There was also a family of mongoose, five that I saw, that lives on the grounds of the camp. Other members of our group had seen them several times during our stay. A troop of monkeys wandered around the trees of the compound. They often traverse the trees near the dining area in the morning, around seven am. I saw them there a couple times. One early morning the monkeys had some sort of party seemingly directly above my tent. The staff kept three goats that roamed the camp searching for tender leaves. I also twice saw bats around twilight. The had brownish fur and pinkish/greyish wings.

Our group stayed in tents with usually with two occupants, although I believe the four male students all slept in one tent. The tents are built on stone and concrete platforms with wood porches and roofs. They are large and made of canvas and mesh with zipper and velcro doors and windows. Each tent contains 2 bunk beds. They are large and very solid. The blankets on the bed were possibly the thickest I’ve ever seen. Each room also had a cabinet to store personal items.  There was a bathroom/shower building for each two or three tents.

Tents and goats

The walkway back to the rest of tents

Approaching my tent

The front porch, zippered entrance tent entrance and mesh windows

The bunk bed inside my tent.

The bathroom building

Meetings, meals and general hanging out were mostly done at the dining area. Just behind the dining area was a washroom, bathrooms, and a little further back, the kitchen. A little bit further over was the camp duka (store) that sells art, souvenirs and crafts. All the accommodations and areas are connected by stone and concrete paths.