Results tagged “Kenya” from Intelligent Travel Blog

High school student Kyle Bullington traveled to Kenya this summer, where he lived and worked in the Nairobi neighborhood of Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, on a unique volunteer project.

Residents of Kibera watch a video created by the Carolina for Kibera team

This summer, high school student Kyle Bullington arrived in Kibera with a unique goal: To enable the youth in the community of one of the world's biggest slums to share their perspectives on life there through short video clips. "Most people around the world are blind to the sufferings of approximately a million people in this community," Kyle wrote in a piece for the Huffington Post. "I felt that the best means to depict the story of Kibera would be through video." Kyle worked to develop the video project with the group Carolina For Kibera, an NGO that works on public health and community development issues in the region. Noting that "the only footage that ever makes it out of Kibera is that which is taken by foreigners," Kyle arranged for Pure Digital and Apple to donate equipment for the project, and brought 10 Flip video cameras and two 24-inch iMacs to the slum. We asked him to give us an update on how the community is recording their stories.

Shortly after arriving in Kibera, I created a YouTube channel for the organization and began recording my story in the slum. I then trained a group of four locals involved in the organization to film and edit video. I posted eight YouTube videos during my two-week stay and then handed the channel over to my trained team to begin making their own posts. 

Since returning home, I have seen the group I trained continue to improve on their moviemaking abilities. They have been making monthly posts about different aspects of life in Kibera. They recently did a video with the Carolina For Kibera founder about morning life in Kibera. I hope that these videos will continue to gain exposure and enable Kiberans to create global awareness about slum life.

Check out one of the videos after the jump.

You've helped plan my Kenya trip and been with me through the paperwork, vaccines, and packing. You were even with me as I blogged my way through the trip itself, sharing my thoughts on designing a trip with teens in mind, the conundrum of the Masai Mara, and the questions raised when visiting the slums.

Now, you can see an online gallery of photos, on National Geographic Traveler's website. Click through to see a couple of my favorite images. Click here to see the whole slideshow.

Senior editor Norie Quintos has been blogging about her recent trip to Kenya with her teen sons. Click here to see her previous posting.

Back in my college days, when I was young and idealistic, I spent two months with an NGO helping to build a school in Kilifi, on the Kenyan coast. We mixed cement by hand, laid bricks, and lived alongside Kenyan students. Twenty-some years later, I came back, this time with my children. Surprisingly, the structure I helped build still exists, as does my youthful scrawl in the cement on the side of the building. Unfortunately, the students still lack books and furniture and access to educational tools such as computers. I made a monetary donation and left, wishing I could do more. Back in the van, the kids and I talked about the disparities of education and opportunity.

On our first day in Nairobi, we visited the community center and school supported by our tour operator, Micato Safaris. The fancy Range Rover pitched and rolled over rutted dirt lanes lined with a random assortment of gummed-together wood, thatch, corrugated metal and cement dwellings that make up Mukuru, an unregulated district of 600,000 squatters about six miles outside the city. (For a bigger discussion on slum tours, check out a piece we ran on the subject.) My sons' eyes grew wide in the face of real poverty, so different was it from the kind they consider themselves victims of whenever I deny them a new pair of Nikes. On the other side of the car window, children's smiles--incomprehensively bright--greeted us. There was no denying the discomfort my sons and I felt. But perhaps comfort wasn't the point. The point was to feel, to question, to think, and then perhaps to act. At the Harambee House, visitors saw what previous safari clients have been moved to accomplish. Here, slum dwellers' children were offered food and education and training, young adults taught skills--a way out and up.

Parents think they should have the answer to everything, but I disagree. Sometimes it's enough to ask the questions.

What are your thoughts?

Photos by Norie Quintos

Senior editor Norie Quintos has been blogging about her recent family trip to Kenya. Her previous posts in this series include on traveling with teens, taking care of paperwork, staying healthy, and packing.

From Laikipia, we flew by prop plane (via Nairobi) to the Masai Mara, the fecund savanna immortalized by many a nature documentary. The area supports some of the greatest concentrations of wildlife, including the so-called Big Five (elephant, rhino, Cape buffalo, lion, leopard). Visitors can't help but have high expectations. Lodges are numerous and run the gamut from basic to luxe. We stayed at the recently overhauled tent suites at the Fairmont Mara Safari Club: lavishly adorned in Africana and boasting typical four-star-hotel accoutrements as bathrobe, slippers, hair dryer, sewing kit, etc. With several wheelchair-accessible rooms, a host of modern conveniences, a highly trained staff, and a prime location overlooking a hippo-filled river, it is one of a few lodges on the Mara suitable for families with very young children and guests with mobility issues. 

One problem with the celeb-status of the Mara is that it is in danger of being loved to extinction. The masses of grass-feeding animals attract predators that feed on them, which in turn lures hordes of tourists, many desirous of the type of close encounters seen on Animal Planet and BBC wildlife programs. Drivers and guides feel the pressure to deliver on unrealistic expectations, putting unsustainable forces on the fragile ecosystem. While off-road driving is not permitted within the Masai Mara reserve, many areas just outside are deeply rutted and pocked. In some cases, the old tracks have become impassable and parallel ones begun.

Senior editor Norie Quintos, just back from an African safari with her teenage sons, filed this report. Previous blogs in this series include taking care of paperwork, staying healthy, and packing.

Norie's teenage sons swim in the Ewaso N'giro River

Teenagers act as if they've seen it all, and in many ways they have--most have been subjected to a 24-hour, hundred-channel television loop; they have viewed every viral YouTube video that titillates, shocks, saddens, tickles, or pulls heartstrings; they've done everything from fly jets to race cars to shoot bad guys in hyper-real videogames; they've seen the wonders of nature in HD-clarity on Planet Earth DVDs.

And yet. Real life trumps virtual reality every single time. And our recent trip to Kenya blew them away like no Playstation, Xbox, Blu-Ray, Imax, surround sound, or new-tech substitute-reality invention ever could. Turns out the travel experience just can't be pixelated.

The trick to traveling with teens is to go beyond the visual and engage all their senses. (I worked with my outfitter, Micato Safaris, to plan such an itinerary.) Thus in the scrubland of Kenya's Laikipia Plateau, Sabuk Lodge was such a hit. Run by Kenyan Verity Williams (that Africans can be white was one preconception busted for the kids), the eight-room ecolodge offers every fun activity and more listed in the popular The Dangerous Book for Boys; in fact the book, as well as its counterpart volume for girls, is displayed prominently on the coffee table.

There's fishing with a stick, string, and bread-dough bait in the Ewaso N'giro River; jumping off boulders into same river; playing outdoor table-tennis with a red-robed Samburu; looking for game on foot and on camel; learning to read scat and animal tracks; and listening to Verity's fireside bush tales (she worked on movie sets, including Out of Africa and The Ghost and the Darkness). Who knows what more we could have done had we stayed for more than a night? While it's hard to say no to all the activity, the languorous lure of the lodge is strong, with its uniquely handcrafted local furniture, open-sided suites overlooking the river, hearty meals served family-style, and quiet library nook.

As National Geographic Traveler senior editor Norie Quintos readies for a family trip to Kenya (with a stopover in London), she shares her packing tips in this posting, the fourth in a series. Click to read posts one, two, and three.

I hate packing so much that I'm procrastinating by writing this post on packing. Putting the necessities of your trip in a suitcase is a tedious chore that at the same time requires Mensa-level mental discernment: Does the camera charger go into the carry-on or the checked bag? Do I pack a separate suitcase for London? Will I be hand-washing clothes during the trip? (which of course affects how much underwear I should bring). And, especially for women, what shoes do I bring? Tough, head-spinning stuff.

But good packing is vital to a good trip, allowing more time for exploration, engagement, discovery, and less time looking for a store that sells bathing suits, tracking down a pharmacy for allergy meds, calling home for a copy of your passport, or nursing blisters because you brought the wrong footwear.

It's less than a week until senior editor Norie Quintos's trip to Kenya with her teen sons. In this posting, the third in a series of blogs on her trip, she covers vaccinations/medicines. Find the first and second posts here.

The glossy catalogs filled with pages of majestic elephants, lions in mid-roar, or huggable baby cheetahs rarely, if ever, mention the vaccinations or medications you'll need for an African safari. The catalogs' job is to romance and seduce, and not until you have fallen hard for Africa do you receive the get-down-to-business, no-more-cute-animal-photos information packet with "optional, recommended" travel health precautions against the scary tropical diseases you could catch.

The list of vaccinations is daunting, and includes Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Meningitis, Typhoid, Rabies, and Yellow Fever. The vaccines are also eye-poppingly expensive and not generally covered by insurance. The good news is you may not need every single one; it depends on your specific itinerary, your length of stay, your planned activities, and your health. To suss this out, you'll need the help of an experienced travel clinician. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website details recommended vaccines and links to an external clearinghouse of travel clinics.

We're always excited when a new National Geographic blog enters the fray, and for the past few weeks Blog Wild editor Ford Cochran has been publishing some seriously great content at a steady clip. Blog Wild covers all of the missions-related news at the society - from the work our explorers are doing out in the field to the programs and events that are happening in the building (Angelina Jolie's recent visit to our offices falls into the latter category, she was here speaking about U.N. World Refugee Day last week). Ford's got a great voice, and he's providing a sneak peek at the inner workings here, including a story about this behind-the-scenes shot (above) taken by Tim Greenleaf of Nat Geo Expeditions during a visit to Kenya's Amboseli National Park:

"Photography rule number one," Tim admonished. "Don't forget to look behind you!"

In fairness, Tim noted that the photographer and videographer above might have been filming, say, Amboseli's deeply endangered lions rather than the elephants. But still.

Congrats to Ford and the Blog Wild crew for a great launch. Bookmark Blog Wild now to keep up with all things National Geographic. 

[Blog Wild]

It's less than a month to senior editor Norie Quintos's trip to Kenya (her third) with her teenage sons (their first). Here's how she's been prepping. This is the second in a series of blogs on the trip. Click here to see the first.

Kenya currently remains under a U.S. State Department travel warning due to "threats of terrorism and the high rate of violent crime." (Many on-the-ground experts say this designation is unfair, undeserved, and politically motivated, but that's another story). I consulted the travel intelligence folks at iJet, who said that if I avoided the northwestern border areas, as all safari itineraries do, and practiced basic personal precautions, there was no reason to stay away. As with any trip to a developing country, or any trip really, I wanted a tour operator that would be able to respond effectively should the unexpected and unlikely happen. There are many established safari companies that fit the bill. The one I selected--New York-based Micato Safaris--maintains deep ties to Kenya; its Kenyan founders still reside in Nairobi. The company also uses the services of a group of aircraft-supported physicians if medical treatment is necessary.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

If you want to know the three most important factors that will likely determine the quality of your experience on an African safari, here they are:

1.    Skilled guides/trackers
2.    Location & time of year
3.    LUCK!

After spending almost two consecutive months touring the southern half of the continent, I actually feel pretty qualified on the subject.  And if you don't want to take my word for it, my wife and sons would be more than happy to offer their insights on African wildlife viewing, having now become quite knowledgeable in their own right.

We landed in Nairobi having notched about 30 game drives in our belts in the six weeks leading up to our arrival. Back when we finalized our plans for this trip, there was some legitimate concern that maybe we were overdoing it with all the back-to-back safaris and that fatigue might become an issue, particularly with the kids. No problem! As it turned out, we were probably even more jazzed about our upcoming final week in the bush then we were when this whole whirlwind began back in South Africa. Sure, a little R&R after two weeks of camping in Tanzania might have been nice, but we were booked on a Micato Safari, considered to be one of the finest tour operators and safari outfitters in the world, so there would be no downtime. Lucky us, indeed!

What also made this week so potentially exciting was the fact that we'd already spotted almost every possible mammal, bird, and reptile one could reasonably expect to find in this part of the world, so everything from here would be gravy. For us, all the natural beauty and drama we had already seen only increased our appetites and we were hungry for more, especially for the one thing that remained elusive: a kill. We watched cheetahs as they stalked gazelle in Tanzania, saw lions chasing zebra in Botswana, and tracked down wild dogs hunting impala in South Africa, but seeing a predator actually take down its prey had remained unseen. This was the challenge we presented to our guide shortly after he picked us up from the airport, an invitation he gladly accepted.

The tanking international economy has led to a tourism downturn throughout the world, with the notable exception of Kenya, where safari operators are reporting brisk bookings following the November election of Barack Obama, whose father hailed from the town of Kogelo in the western part of the country.

"We've seen a 12 percent increase since November over the same period last year and our Web traffic is up 17 percent," says Dennis Pinto of Micato Safaris. "Given the prevailing economic conditions, we can only attribute this to the Obama factor." The Kenya Tourist Board also reports large increases in recent arrivals numbers.