Nairobi Zoo, Kenya. Journey to Africa 2018
Despite the fact that Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, completely disappointed me, I still decided to visit the local zoo . On the map, I knew where the zoo was located, but there was no information on how to get to it except for a taxi. I also did not find the information I needed in the reviews of tourists. True, I myself learned a little to find the public transport I needed with help. Google maps, on which, when you open it, when you zoom in, public transport stops appear with the numbers of buses that stop at the object I need. First, I look at which bus numbers stop near my hotel, then which bus numbers stop near the object I need. If the numbers match, then I take the public bus with the number I need and go straight to the object. If they don’t match, then I’ll go with transfers. Anyway, public transport is ten times cheaper than a taxi. I also want to note that on a public bus in backward countries, including Africa, you can suffer from the hands of thieves. I was robbed in Nairobi, but I’ll tell you about this separately, but for now I’m going to the Nairobi Zoo.
On the map, Google found bus number 24, which stops near my hotel and goes past the zoo. Since it was about 10 kilometers to go, I decided to start this trip early in the morning by bus 24. While I was walking to the bus stop, swarthy and flies stuck around me. The bus stop was 500 meters from the hotel. It was not a stop, but some remnants of it. Dust, dirt and lack of pavement. As I stood on this empty street, buses with open doors, if you can still call them buses, and not moving welded scrap metal, rushed past. Passengers were standing on the steps of the buses and shouting loudly. Finally my bus full of locals arrived. I stood almost on one leg, clutching a bag with a camera to my chest. Documents and money were also in it, since there was nowhere to hide them on oneself. I gave the barker five hundred, and he gave me change very dirty and worn hundred, which smelled like a homeless person. The eyes of the local passengers were turned to me. Apparently, white tourists do not often ride with them in the same bus.
Forty minutes later, I was told that I had to leave. The entrance to the zoo turned out to be near the place where I was dropped off. The entrance and grounds were clean and green. It turns out that the zoo and the Nairobi National Park are located on the same territory. True, the zoo at the national park looks like a human appendicitis. Then I immediately asked for a safari in the national park, but they told me that it was possible only on special transport, on my own or a rental car. As I wrote earlier, my opinion is that it is better to drive special jeeps in the national parks of Africa, but not in cars.
I had to take a ticket to the zoo for $22. As a trailer, they gave me a heavily tanned guide, which I did not order. He accompanied me everywhere around the zoo, so that the animals would not bite off something to me, or so that I would not frighten the animals. Immediately struck by the squalor of the zoo, and its content of animals. At that moment, I remembered the mobile menageries in the USSR. Those menageries that I saw, it was the torment of animals, and their terrible content. To transport elephants and lions in iron cages around the country, like many animals, is inhumane. We didn't understand it then. Now I look at all this consciously, understanding that animals should live only in freedom. No menageries, no little zoos. Now, if animals in cages were exchanged for people. People are in cages, and animals run around the cages and growl at people. Maybe after that, people would understand what it is like for free animals to sit in cages. The zoo turned out to be very small, and even fewer animals.
The zoo in Johannesburg is the best I've ever seen. There are good conditions for animals.
At the Nairobi Zoo, I liked the lion, the lioness and the leopard that were kind to people. The guide himself recommended that I stroke these animals through the net. They clung to the net. Through which I reached out and stroked their backs, and they rumbled so nicely. Apparently, they lack real affection, although they are animals. How did I manage to see that the lion is already old, but they gave him a young lioness, and he constantly crouches over her. Everything is like with people when a husband changes his wife to a young one. I sat near the pen of the lion and the lioness for more than an hour. During this time, the lion either made love to the lioness or dozed off. He had no other occupation behind the fence, and in freedom he would have been chasing someone. Fought with other lions, or found a new lioness, and then lay down under a shady tree and dozed quietly, contented with a free life.
I stroked the lion and the lioness through the mesh. They are so kind. I know that the tourists from this site will say that they were given injections so that they would not bite me. What nonsense are these tourists, far from reality.
I managed to pet this leopard too. The kindest animal. No one made kuols for him, as the zookeeper told me.
A lion in a cage is like a man behind bars in prison. Sad.
It's sad for her, and for me.
