We were woken up this morning by Millie in the bedroom next to us screaming. We jumped out and ran to her to find her in bed after a very scary nightmare. She was half awake and had seen her backpack on the floor and thought it was my decapitated head. Yikes. This is the first full blown nightmare she’s ever had. There’s a possibility it’s a side effect to the malaria medication we recently started her on. I’m hoping it was just a one-off thing.

She calmed down quickly and snuggled with us until it was time to get up. We played downstairs in the kid area while Nick figured out how to apply for our Tanzania visa. We cleaned the place up.

Once we were all showered, fed, and caffeinated we headed out to the Giraffe Centre. It was a 30 minute drive and gave us a real taste of Nairobi driving. In a word: chaos.

On our way we saw these Maasai men casually walking down the side of the highway.

They gave us little coconut shells of food pellets. In classic Millie style, she was terrified of them but said “I’m scared but I want to feed them because it looks so fun”. We eased her into it. First she watched us feed them, then she held our wrist, then we held hers, and then she was able to feed them herself. Next thing we knew she was out of food and picking up the pellets other people had dropped so she could feed them all. She started getting to know them by name.

My favorite part was the group of warthogs collecting the food that was dropped.

The scenery was beautiful, overlooking the city while majestic giraffes walked past. We are all enjoying the temperate weather after spending the last couple of weeks in too-hot places.

When we left we attempted to drive to a large park with a cafe. The traffic was terrible and after an hour of stopped traffic and terrifying roundabouts we realized that going there would mean driving home in the dark. Nairobi feels a little sketchy so we decided against it and headed home to our Airbnb. Millie slept through most of the ride. Nick was a champ being just the right amount of aggressive to navigate the roads. I feel like I got a glute workout because my butt was clenched so tight the whole time.

This sign on the overpass made me laugh. Based on the driving style I am the only person to have ever read it.

We got home and I made some simple pasta for dinner. We watched an episode of Planet Earth in preparation for seeing more animals tomorrow.