The idea of touring a neighborhood simply for photographing and gawking over a community’s appalling living conditions has never appealed to me. I mean, how would you feel if the top 1% came to your neighborhood, your home, and took pictures of your children playing in local parks or of you preparing meals, knowing that they feel great pity for your lifestyle and plan on showing their photos to their 1% community? It’s…demeaning. Sure, the high costs (roughly $25) of a tour supposedly go toward the local community to help pay for infrastructure, schools, and so on. The intent there…
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Amboseli National Park lies at the Kenya-Tanzania border with grand views of Mount Kilimanjaro looming in the distance. Hoping to witness the iconic Kenyan landscape, I meticulously planned an independent, budget trip to Amboseli for my first ever game drive without considering the current time of year…the rainy season. Naturally I was never able to lay eyes on the magnificent mountain as I discovered it was typically hidden beneath the thick layers of clouds year-round, but it didn’t matter. The journey there itself along with a wonderful stay in a tent house and spectacular game drive equated to a wonderful weekend getaway. Searching…
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Little did I know that I would end up waiting for almost 4 hours for my pick up from the time I stepped out of Nairobi’s international airport…at 2:45am. Sitting on the sidewalk with my bags watching groups of tourists get swept away by representatives holding name cards made me look and feel pretty pathetic. Due to the ungodly hour, there were only a handful of touts attempting to sell safari tours between stifled yawns, and even they pitied me. Fortunately this foreign country has 2 national languages, one of which is English. Whew. Naturally everything worked out in the…