After a great week at Jungle Junction in Nairobi (“JJ’s”, 5 USD pn to camp, 3 meals a day avail on request) and a fantastic servicing for the LR by Ben, one of the on-site motorcycle mechanics who started out at a local LR shop and will grab any chance to work on one again, I finally point us westwards and get underway. I find it’s all-too-easy to get lulled senseless in the calm of a well-run campsite, with a truck full of supplies, little in the way of daily expense and revolving door of new residents to share tales of the road and lies about life, but once the decision to make way is made I cannot express the thrill of settling into the driver’s seat, firing the engine (and responding with pride and a pat to the door side for the immediate, strong response and quality of the exhaust - clean start, well done!) and locking in of the coordinates for the upcoming leg ... Nothing I’ve ever been involved in makes me grin more than these actions, even months into it and their having become a daily occurrence ... Praise be, I am on the road again!
Once clear of Nairobi’s sprawl and crawl it’s clear sailing and smooth tar climbing up and along the crest of the Rift Valley, with vistas for miles that from this height appear to be as unchanged as when man first walked upon this ground a few million years ago (or a few thousand should you be a staunch Creationist ...). Approaching the Equator I am greeted by a hammering hail storm that not only cuts visibility to mere feet but looks to be aiming to strip the paint right off my truck but which stops just in time for the requisite photo op but where, just shortly thereafter, at around the Burnt Forest mark, the road reverts to African Standard and is marred by broken tar, potholes etc until I can take shelter for the night in Eldoret, east of the Uganda border, at New Naiberi River Campsite.
Truly, nobody – not even in Hollywood’s best imagination, nobody – can rock a mullet quite like Raj, the owner and confident Man-About-Town who on introduction quickly reels off a long list of local businesses he owns or is involved in and declares a willingness to supply anything I may possibly require. Very personable, and certainly a good resource if the vehicle’s not performing as expected on leaving the safety of Nairobi’s many mechanics and shops (or your tailors, as he is especially proud of his textile enterprises ...) Raj is definitely a great resource to have to hand. Nice site, well-guarded by a noisy flock of attack geese (and, as I later meet to both our surprises, a pack of dogs as well who run free about the site at night and when in full pack-mentality as I witnessed I’d not be wanting to be meeting in the dark, on my way to the loos ...).
Cleophas is the laconic middle-aged security guard who shows me to my spot (in the parking lot – there are camping spots at the bottom of the site by a lovely little river but with my being the only person staying there it would be an unnecessarily long ways away from anything) but he soon, as per script, launches into a sadly-told tale of financial woe, draining school fees and disabled children ... I hear you Cleophas (and the hundreds of similar tales heard across the continent – I will later, in Kigali, be ... insinuated ... towards covering a security guards university tuition ‘so he may get a good job and get married’ ... ) but, sorry, that is what your government is for; and, if not, any number of overly-earnest NGO’s and church groups. Harsh as it must come across, just because I’m white really just cannot make me, or allow me to be seen as, an open and willing wallet; and I find I have grown very world-weary of the spiel ...
When I can distract him from his tale of woe I quiz Cleophas on the route ahead and he perks up immediately as the other side is his home region and he “knows it very well, very well.” But I do love an African’s version of time and space: so (though I know the specifics already), how far to the border from here? “Oh, just 20 minutes at most!” Really, 20 minutes ...? “Ok, maybe 2 hours it could be.” And from the border to Jinja? “Oh, that is so near my home, just 20 minutes at most!” Really, 20 minutes? I am sure it must be longer than that. “Ok, maybe 2 hours it could be.” Ok, so, really, you have no idea - but it has been a most entertaining chat ... (and 6 hour drive the next day all told ...).
Nor is he so sure of the weather either apparently, for as we speak a massive clap of thunder reverberates across the sky in the middle distance and flash of lightening illuminates the horizon. Going to rain tonight I say. No, no rain Cleophas assures me (cue first, heavy drops of rain). Hopefully the lightening will stop, and not come too close to here tonight I say. No, no lightening will be here (cue massive bolt that electrifies the air around us, turns the darkness into high noon and makes me jump 3 feet in the air to beat a hasty retreat under the better-than-nowt security provided by the flimsy wood shelter next to my truck - Cleophas, oblivious, remains rooted in place, I guess wondering why our convo’s closed off so unexpectedly ...). The rain comes as only it can in tropical countries, absolutely hammering down with an awesome intensity, accompanied by drum rolls of thunder and crashing lightening for a full display of nature’s powers and I make a quick run to the back of my truck to fix a strong G&T before, soaked from just the few seconds I am exposed, taking refuge at my driver’s seat (the dogs by now aggressively roaming about and I have twice chased them off with mock charges, but fear they will grow emboldened soon and I’ve no interest in pausing my travels for a 5-day course of anti-rabies injections) so, for the next 3 hours, sit inside the cab in silence to watch the storm play itself out ...
As I sat there, watching the shadow-puppet show of the trees as the storm crashed around me, I am reminded of a favourite scene from The English Patient, when Ralph Feinnes character tells of having been driven in complete silence for a day, far out into the desert, to “see fire.” At dusk, as the sun flares in expiration on the horizon, his driver points and says: “Fire.” As he states: “That was a good day.” For me, that was a very good night ...
Departing early the next day I am met with miles on miles of some of the weirdest driving conditions I’ve met yet ... The road, all the way to the border, has been grooved into rails of tarmac, forcing you to drive with one wheel on one side and one of the other like some children’s ‘play-driving’ ride at an amusement fair but which does not allow any independent movement one side or the other in order to avoid the usual cast of dangers on the roads (small children darting out, insane truckers without regard to any reasonable rules of the road, sun-stunned/suicidal cattle/dogs/goats, wobbling bicyclists loaded down with people, produce, firewood or bales of grasses, etc). Try and get over a rail, or hit one wrong, and as one motorcyclist I met at JJ’s experienced you are quickly directed straight off the road without any manner of recourse. Absolute, barely-in-control, insanity.
And so, with those thrill-laden, profanity-spewing, white-knuckling miles done, ends Kenya ...
No comments:
Post a Comment