Let me take you on a little tour of Serena Camp:
This is the (long) driveway leading up to camp. We're pretty well hidden in our little thicket.
The first view of camp as you clear the driveway. The green cruiser is Buffy, who we're borrowing temporarily from the other camp while the white cruiser, Mac, is being serviced in Nairobi.
This is my tent :) And yes, I have a bed. Also a desk, some shelves, and the little dwarf mongooses come play right outside the window by my bed in the mornings.
The view outside my window:
The kitchen tent. The camp staff are Philomen, Moses, and Jorgi and they're amazing cooks. Philomen, who's the most senior of the three, used to be assistant chef for Safari Club, one of the lodges in the Mara. I'm definitely not going to go hungry out here.
The lab/solar/dining tent. When we're not out in the field, we're usually working here.
The amazing view from the lab/solar/dining tent:
The shower:
The view while taking a shower :P
The toilet, or in Swahili, the choo (pronounced "cho"):
The long and winding path to get to the choo:
The path from my tent to get to the lab tent, which is kind of visible off in the distance:
And to give you an idea of how spread out things are, here's a picture I took standing in the lab tent, of the other end of camp. Can you spot all three tents? Haha!
As you've probably noticed, there are no walls or anything to keep the wildlife out. We regularly get elephants, hippos, warthogs, mongooses, impala, dikdik, genets, cape buffalo and assorted other wildlife in camp. (Tip: learn what hippos and elephants sound like fast, and if you hear them nearby, just hunker down and wait for them to wander off before you come out of your tent.)
So this is where I'm living for the next year, and I love it! The wildlife usually come visit us at night, but if I see any during the day, expect some pictures!
Wow. Your camp is a lot more primative than I thought it would be. I think I was just thinking it would be Tent-cabins, but no. thats a tent. with a tarp roof over it. But hey, it's a more authentic experience that way! The toilet and the shower look pretty crazy.
ReplyDeleteI hope your tent is warm at night.
Actually, I had a dream the other night that you had crashed your truck into a shanty town in nairobi because you were still getting used to driving manual.
ReplyDeleteDon't do that.
Amazing! What a fantastic experience! I hope you can get a picture of those dwarf mongooses at play!
ReplyDeleteDude. It all looks sooo awesome...okay well except for the choo and shower ~ those are even way sketchier than the ones we had in Jordan (though less concrete and concentration camp-y than ours ;) ) Food sounds amazing! and the animals ~ wowwwwwww!!!!!
ReplyDeletexxx
Wow, that looks amazing. :) Keep the pictures coming! <3
ReplyDeleteIs there some sort of warning system for the choo? Or are things pretty close in your camp? :)
ReplyDeleteHAHAHAHA. The shower and the toilet kill me! What if a hippo comes along while you're taking a dump? That would really suck.
ReplyDeleteAnd lookie lookie. You have a rug in your tent! I think that's pretty awesome. Haha.
I could never do any of that. Just last week, we went on a beach camping trip and that's as far as I go when it comes to roughing it. We had communal bathrooms with running water and electricity and everything and I was already dying. If I were there with you, I just wouldn't shower, as gross as that sounds. It's so sketch, Mille!!
Skype with me!! Can you please email me when to be online? Coz I don't usually open Skype. So we really have to schedule it.
Definately keep you bed as high off the floor as possible. Taking a shower and having wildlife watch much be pretty interesting... LOL!
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