Kenya 2019: Nairobi
Nairobi skyline on a rainy day.
Saturday, June 8th
Saturday was our contingency day, scheduled in the event that flights were delayed or missed and to allow for acclimation to the time. We didn’t want to have to try to catch up to our safari.
With breakfast out of the way, and a bit of trying out the big lens, we requested a cab to the Maasai Market. Our driver, John, recommended we avoid the market and took us to a number of locales that sell the kinds of trinkets we were interested in. We weaved through morning traffic, off the main routes, and into some smaller side streets. We suspect John may get some kind of kickback for bringing tourists to some of these places.
Major construction projects are ongoing in the city.
At the first stop, I traded a carabiner from my backpack for a reduced price on a little statue, but otherwise didn’t see anything and felt the rest of the merchandise was overpriced.
Hand-carved statues line shelves at one of the markets.
The second stop was better with lots of options, all in a nice store. We purchased a number of things there and then insisted we head into the center city to the Maasai Market. Before John could pull up to the curb, we were swarmed by hawkers. Two of them introduced themselves as Alex and Jacob, who each had several people in tow as part of a large entourage. These hawkers guided us through the market, showing us the wares of each vendor. There are dozens of vendors there, many of them selling the same things. The group that works the market splits the earnings amongst themselves. There were many stalls with jewelry and statues (the same as we had seen in the other stops). One vendor had a pre-colonial map of Africa printed on baobab bark, which I purchased. Greg found a nice shirt and a handkerchief of the Kenyan flag, among other things. The market itself felt crowded by the close proximity of the stalls, but there weren’t necessarily a lot of other tourists there. Scattered trees provide shade from the warm equatorial sun that shone down that morning.
Alex (blue shirt) shows off wares at the Maasai Market.
As we neared the end of our market tour, Greg and I were separated by our handlers so the negotiations and the haggling could begin. The exchange rate is about 100 Kenyan Shillings (KeSh) to the dollar. I had a t-shirt, a scarf, the map, and a necklace. The negotiations take place on paper. He would start with his price, I would counter with mine, and if we could not come to an agreement, we would still walk away as friends. Alex started at 45,000 KeSh ($450). I almost fell off the bench. I told him he was out of his mind and negotiated down to 5,000 shilling (~$50), which still felt high for the items I wanted.
“You are below sea-level, my friend”, he informed me and brought it to 30,000 KeSh.
“And you are still out of the atmosphere” I replied and pushed for $10,000 Kesh.
After some back and forth, we settled. It was higher than I wanted it to be, but it wasn’t really all about the price, it was about the experience too. The Kenyan Hustle is strong! However, I needed more money from an ATM. I could not see Greg or our driver John and (perhaps a bit foolishly) followed Alex to the nearest ATM outside the market. It was at that point that all of my faculties were in full-power mode. I started mapping in my head where I was and where the car was. I tightened the straps on the backpack and kept my head on a swivel as we went down about a block from the market.
Greg: I had a similar experience to Ed after we were separated, as my hawker gouged the prices for the few items I had picked out. Having spent a lot of time in New York City, I knew he was trying to capitalize on my being a tourist and having American dollars. I was being hustled. I quickly told him I wasn't going to be swindled like the tourists he usually rips off and we negotiated more reasonable (yet still high) prices. He still wanted $80 for a shirt and I told him to keep it. Although Ed and I were separated, I could see where he and his handler were sitting negotiating. I looked up a few minutes later and found that Ed and his hawker had disappeared from the market. My mind quickly shifted gears from the frustrating yet amusing negotiations to self-defense, worst-case scenario. I asked my hawker where Ed was and he said he wasn't sure but that I shouldn't worry about it. I demanded that he find my brother and that I would not buy anything at all unless I was told where he was. He informed me that they probably went to the ATM outside the market. I demanded he take me immediately. As we left the market, I was following my hawker and three more men joined us, one on each side of me and one walking behind me. I was in full fight or flight mode. My eyes were wide. I was listening to the tones of the conversations being held in Swahili on either side of me listening for potential threats. I asked the man in front of me where we were going and he casually said “It’s just around the corner.” My mind raced and I quickly determined this was a bad situation. I was being led away from the tourist area. I truly thought i was about to be kidnapped. I rolled my shoulders and balled my hands into fists, ready to fight. While we were walking, the men closed the gap between us and I took a breath. Here we go. As we turned the corner, I breathed a huge sigh of relief as there was Ed and our driver from the hotel standing there trying to get cash from the ATM. I strung together a torrent of profanities and hurled them at Ed in a loud whisper for having left me alone in the market in a foreign city. As Ed finished his transaction, one of the other hawkers had grabbed the shirt I had declined and dropped the price from $80 all the way down to $20. I figured that was a really fair price and stopped on the street before getting back to our car and paid the man. My original handler was visibly mad that I had made a deal with his competitor, but that’s the Kenyan Hustle and this is Africa. We returned to the car and narrowly escaped the crazy traffic of downtown Nairobi.
Ed: The rest of the afternoon was spent packing gear, drinking beer in the courtyard, and making a video call with the family back home. Aside from some intermittent coughing, I was back to normal. We had dinner on the rooftop. Greg had a Maasai Beef and I had nyama choma. Nyama choma is a Kenyan dish of a grilled meat (beef or goat usually) and served with greens or vegetables. Both were delicious and we washed it all down with some Aero Pils beer. We turned in just before midnight, eager to start our safari the next day.
Greg shelling out cash on the streets of Nairobi. Our driver, John, is decked out in a suit on the right.
Graffiti on the top deck of the hotel.
GEAR
On our previous trip to Yellowstone together, we each brought our own cameras and similar lenses and got similar pictures. With a limit on weight and space with the flights, we opted to work in unison, as a single team, and own all of the images equally.
So what did we bring?
Greg and I both shoot with Nikon cameras, so we had five bodies: a D750, a D7200, a D7000, a D5300, and a D5000. The D750 and the D7000-series cameras all have camera grips that hold an extra battery for prolonged shooting. The battery grips also help balance our larger lenses.
Lenses were a mixed bag to capitalize on wide-angle landscapes and tight wildlife shots. We had with us a:
Sigma 18-250 mm
Sigma 17-50 mm f/2.8
Sigma 70-200 mm f/2.8
Sigma 150-600 mm
and that beast of a Nikon 600 mm f/4.
We also had a Nikon 35 mm f/1.8 and a Sigma 18-200 mm, but we didn't use those while on safari.The former was meant for astrophotography, the latter was one that I used while in the Congo.
In addition, we had a 1.4x teleconverter (TC) for extra reach. We outfitted each camera with a single lens. The higher end cameras got the higher end lenses. The 1.4x converter was initially on the 600 mm lens, but it proved to be an absurd amount of reach and dropped our minimum aperture from f/4 to an f/5.6. Instead, we put the TC on the 150-600 lens to provide a greater reach without impeding the aperture size as much.
Our auxiliary gear included two Lenscoat LensSacks for balancing cameras on the frame of the truck, our Peak Design clips and camera straps, a Vanguard tripod (which we only used once), and a handful of GND and polarizer filters. We also had a GoPro Hero4 for short videos. In all, we carried about a half a terrabyte’s worth of high-speed memory cards, but really stuck with just a handful of the bigger cards, as we were downloading and backing up photos each night on computers and external hard-drives.
Tetris Challenge: Safari Gear.
Our camera loadout: D750 with 600 mm, D7200 with 150-600 mm, D7000 with 70-200 mm, D5200 with 17-50 mm, and D5000 with 18-250 mm.
I need to talk about the 600 mm lens. It’s truly pro gear: it weighs more than 8 pounds and with the lens hood on it’s as long as….well… it’s long. It’s an absolute head-turner. While we were in the Mara, we were regularly asked what professional magazine we worked for (and maybe someday will). When we would break that thing out, other people would put their cameras away out of respect. No lie. We were known in camp as “the camera guys”. But seriously, this thing is a monster and if I had $13,000, I’d go and buy one myself, but alas, here we are... (if anyone from Nikon is reading this and wants to donate one to a good cause, we’d put it to work for you and Greg would get a Nikon tattoo. :-D).
Greg packing our heavy artillery at Sunbird Lodge.
Our goal was to provide seamless shooting on every lens, and provide each of us the opportunity to try out all of the lenses and bodies. This would almost guarantee success and quality images in situations where we didn’t want to be swapping lenses (like when you’re watching lions take down a wildebeest). We wanted to work as a team: trading cameras, keeping an eye out for unique shots, and ensuring that we came away with the very best pictures possible.
The final critical piece of gear was a small field book that I carried, documenting our day, the species that we saw, and other things that came to mind that would allow us to tie back to what we shot. I learned this mantra as an undergraduate geologist: Know where you are, know what you’re looking at, and WRITE IT ALL DOWN. And that’s what we’ll do in the following installments. We're going to take you on our trip with us, talk about cameras and tips for wildlife shooting, and show you a side of Africa you may have never seen.
We're looking forward to having you along!
-Ed & Greg