Introduction to Kenya & Tanzania
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Kenya is a country straddling the equator on the east coast of Africa. Tanzania is a separate country
just to the south of Kenya. Both countries were settled by several major African immigrant groups
coming from different geographical areas and speaking different languages. First came the Cushites
who came from Ethiopia, then around 1000 BC the Bantus originating in West Africa, and later the
Nilotes who came up the Nile from southern Sudan. Starting around 1000 AD Arabs started setting
up trading posts along the coast.
In the late 1800's the British came to occupy what is now Kenya and Zanzibar, while the Germans
took over Tanganyika. During the World War I the British drove the Germans out of Africa and
gained Tanganyika, which was later united with Zanzibar to form Tanzania.
Kenya and Tanzania both gained their independence from Britain in the early 1960's. Shortly after
independence Tanzania with Soviet help tried an extreme form of socialism, with very poor economic
results, and in the late 1980's generally adopted capitalistic economic policies with moderately
better results. Meanwhile Kenya generally followed anti-Soviet policies and benefited from economic
assistance from some non-communist nations.
Society in Kenya and Tanzania to a large extent remains tribal, speaking many different languages.
In Kenya the principal unifying language is English, with Swahili (based on Arabic) second. In
Tanzania Swahili is the official national language, with English secondary. In both countries people in
the tourist business generally are conversant in English.
Large parks and reserves were developed in Kenya and Tanzania while those countries were British
colonies. After independence the system of national parks and reserves were expanded by both
countries and have helped develop a large and growing tourist industry based on viewing a profusion
of wildlife in their natural habitats.
We primarily wanted to visit Kenya and Tanzania to see a large variety of interesting animals in their
natural environment. Also, we had never been to that part of Africa and were eager to learn about
those two countries. Although we usually travel independently we realized that we would have to join
a tour group to get to remote wildlife parks and reserves. For the foreign visitor there is
practically no scheduled public transportation to those remote areas and going about unguided in a
self-drive rented car would be total chaos, if not impossible.
The tour operator we decided on is Overseas Adventure Travel, primarily because their groups are
usually limited to a maximum of sixteen. We wanted to try a group of that small size instead of the
much larger groups with which we had gone on previous tours.
So on 4 October 2005 we took an overnight flight of about seven hours from Newark International
Airport to Amsterdam. We liked KLM's new Airbus 330-200 with its convenient 2-4-2 seating (half
the passengers on the aisle, the rest only one seat away); also individual video screens and a wide
range of interactive on-demand programing. The dinner was good but breakfast seems to have been
made to specifications of KLM's cost accountants. Next morning, after a three hour layover in
Amsterdam we made a flight of over eight hours to Nairobi, Kenya's largest city and capital. On
that flight the seat next to us was occupied by an interesting Scotsman who spends about half his time
as a printer in Scotland and the other half as a SCUBA instructor in Mombasa, on Kenya's coast. One
of his more outrageous stories was the one about a rough flight during which the man in the adjacent
seat vomited all over him; when Virginia asked whether the vomiter apologized our new friend replied
"Of course not, he was German".