loiyangalani - the cultural festival

its 11am when we arrive at loiyangalani. but the programme doens't start until 3pm after the planes have arrived and the arrivals have had their lunch.

we set up our tents and lounge by the pool and watch the planes land and the arrivals saunter in with their heavy american or german accents.

and then we walk to the end of the "high street" where the festival is supposed to happen.

the rendille, samburu, turkana, gabbra and el molo are arranged in a semi-circle facing the crowd. they are decked in "traditional" wear and ready to sing and dance.

the MC introduces each song and dance. most of them as love songs however so i begin to wonder how much of that is true.

the rendille begin. followed by the gabbra, samburu, el molo and then turkana. a lot of it is jumping and so i wonder how related they are in customs.

one german afterwards at the pool says he prefers this melange of old and new, socks and spears, beads and skins. says it's more authentic than enforcing on them something seemingly more "traditional" because it has nothing "western" about it. he has a point and i wish i knew more about their history.

we retire to the camp and fill the pool with talk of politics and bodies that are more interested in staying out of the pool after dipping for the refreshing feel of evaporation than in it for actual swimming.

it's 37C.

come 7pm dinner is served and i reheat my goat from lunch.

day 2 of the festival begins with a trip to the rock art sites. and i am keen to hear if there are any differences between rock art in east africa and rock art in south africa since i had read up about san rock art and continued to read up about it when i realised it was all shamanistic. but the guide from the national museum alternates between them being 2,000 and 20,000 years old. he also says that no studies have been done to which his colleague encouragingly suggests that now they can be done with advancements in DNA analysis.

DNA analysis?? on rocks?? very disappointing.

we return to the hotel for lunch and are out again at 12pm for the boat racing and museum tour. the boat race is short and one traveller comments on it being culturally insensitive. so you tell them to race for the mzungus?

there is prize money i try to compensate. there is always prize money, he says. indeed it was 15,000/-

the swimming competition was more interesting :p since the water was so shallow and perhaps because they couldn't swim as well, the swimming contestants ended up throwing themselves into the water and then just running to shore! lol.

by the end of sunday i'm glad that i drove. the trip was worth a thousand times more because of the journey and i think i would have felt short-changed if i had flown in only to see two rock art sites and the boat and swimming race (on top of the festival) .

it feels both long and short this trip. long because i have travelled 320kms away and short because it will only be 6 days. 2 of which are spent driving there and 2 driving back.

it'll probably be my last safari in kenya. and i'm glad i went so far in tribute of a place i might not see again for a long time.

on saturday i exchange photos with erhard on the occasion of a leaving dinner for him too as he heads to cape town.