'Bus' through northern Kenya

  Nairobi, Kenya
Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Welcome to the Kenya section - if you want to skip to a particular section click the links, otherwise read on below.

~ Bus Moyale - Nairobi, below
~ Kakamega
~ Mt Elgon and the caves
~ Kenya Summary


~~~~~~~~

This is the account of our trip through Northern Kenya, from Moyale to Nairobi. It began the morning of yesterday, 28th June, and ended this morning [29th]. The rest of the events from today [29th], once we got to Nairobi, are continued in the next entry.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Day the Twenty-first - in which we travel A Long Way and garner a strong dislike for Kenya.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's been a while since we played the 'in bed' game. For those un-cool kids who don't know, it's where you add the words 'in bed' to the end of random sentences. For amusement value. We'll see how successful it is, and yes I am a child.



Up at 5.30 - rather unnecessary since we then sat around waiting for Bruik. He was late, so we went straight across the border without breakfast. At the border, there is a sign saying "Entering Kenya, Drive on left", since Ethiopia drives on the right and Kenya on the left. There is no holding area for vehicles - they just drive straight over the border and have to cross over.






We bought tickets, using Kenyan shillings (exchanged yesterday at a bad rate), and got on the bus at 9.
I say bus, but it was basically a truck cab with a tin can stuck on the back. Since the driver couldn't feel the vibrations because of the cabs suspension, he drove at 50kmph on the murram road (undulating gravel/dirt track). Still, not too bad, and a damn sight better than the cattle truck we thought we'd have to get when we left England. We ended up passing quite a few of them en route -- trust me, they do not look comfortable. In bed.

Seats fold down into the aisle, so once we were in, we couldn't really get out. The stupid 'bus official' or whoever he was should have let us all know about the anal Kenyan bus rules before we all packed in. I suppose the Kenyans on the bus knew about it, but the Ethiopians probably didn't and nor did we - apparently, in Kenya, bus tickets have seat numbers and you have to stick to them. Which is incredibly organised for Africa (not to mention rather incongruous in a sandy remote border town).
The dude checking tickets against seats could have just done a 'register' with the list of names he had, but nooo we all had to clamber over each other in a game of 'Confined-space Musical Chairs'.
We had gotten a good seat too - not too near the back - but the seat numbers dictated that we sat one row from the rear. Dammit. With the aisle seat, it makes 5 seats across and, if you count left to right as 1-5 then we were allocated seats 3 and 4. No way was I sitting in the fold-down one for the whole trip - that is always the notoriously uncomfortable one. Fortunately the kind man next to the window, position 5, let us swap. Excellent. Stef got the window seat since he has the camera. In bed. Would you like some fresh air with your face-full of dust?



We finally left at 10, and we hadn't gone far before we hit the first of the checkpoints. There were a number of them all through the desert. Armed men in uniform would get on and check everyone's passports, visas and yellow-fever certificates. We [as the only white people] were left alone, as were any Kenyan passengers, but a number of Ethiopians were ordered off the bus and into a hut. The first time we asked what was going on once we were on our way again. It was explained that there was no reason but that they were made to pay or they couldn't carry on. The next time, an armed guy came on board and after checking everyone's documents took 3 Ethiopian passports and ordered the individuals off the bus. I asked him what was wrong with the documents. The answer was that the yellow-fever certificate was out of date. I looked at one of the certificates - it was stamped for 2003. Considering the immunisation lasts 10 years, I couldn't see a problem with it. In fact, to have more than one injection in less than 5 years is probably bad for you. I told him so, but he tried to tell me that my certificate was different to the Ethiopian mans. I told him no, that they were all the same, issued by the WHO.

It actually worked at that second checkpoint - we were allowed to continue without anyone handing over any money. The third one listened for a while and then walked off -- and since I was boxed into my seat I couldn't get out. Probably just as well, I would have smacked the little shit and gotten into real trouble. It makes me so angry -- at the border the immigration office makes a big deal about not being corrupt and yet not 100km down the road you have Kenyan officers taking money off Ethiopian passengers.

And for that reason Kenya will always be down on my list of places to go. Sorry. We haven't been in the country much longer than a day and already we have decided to sack a safari in Kenya and aim for Tanzania instead. I'm sure it's not the only country around here that has a problem with corruption, and nor is it the worst. In bed. But considering it is one of the more famous African countries, well visited, with lots of tourist revenue.... well, fuck that. I'll take my money elsewhere and until Kenya seriously works at improving the corruption, I'd not recommend it. In bed. Safari? Beaches? Meh, go elsewhere. There's nothing in Kenya that you can't find somewhere else. It's nothing special. In bed.
Rant over.

The last checkpoint was actually in the middle of the night. Stefan got off and went through each of the Ethiopians' passports and yellow-fever certificates with the officials, using his headtorch. They didn't seem to realise what all the information on the passports meant. Initially they were quite hostile, swinging their AK-47s around, but we were calm so they stopped and listened. How much they take on board remains to be seen. Taking bribes when you wield a gun must seem like easy money. Whatever money they *didn't* get off the passengers on our bus; they will just take off the next lot that comes through...
As we were getting back on [after persuading them not to take any money off anyone - hooray] one of the officials asked if Stef was working for the UN. Stef said no, and got on. I fear we only got away with it because they thought we were more than just mere backpackers. Oh well. Job done. By this point the bus passengers were cheering the 'muzungus' [white people] as we pulled away. Even the Kenyan passengers -- though I suppose they must be sick of the corruption in their own country too.

Anyway, the journey itself. In a word - uncomfortable. But in the back of our minds we knew it could be much worse. The track was gravel, rutted not only left-right but also undulating away from us down the road, like a washboard.






The windows rattled and made such a noise that I had to yell at the top of my voice right into his ear for Stef to hear me. In bed.
Everything vibrated - the seats, the roof, the bar at the back of the seat in front - so that your hands ached from gripping the bar, and you could feel your brain rattling in your skull. The vibrations gradually worked the slide window pane open, so it let the red dust in. Turned out later that there was a little catch thing that you can flick down, but we couldn't have reached it anyway as it was beyond the man sat in front. Also turned out [once we got into a shower in Nairobi] that it had fake-tan-oranged our faces.
The bigger bumps threw us all toward the ceiling, especially those of us at the back. Sometimes a series of large ruts would come along, and when I tried to brace my legs for a controlled landing I'd end up coming down and meeting the seat hard as it came back up for the next bump. This tended to make me let out a loud involuntary squeak of surprise/alarm, much to the amusement of our fellow passengers. Fun fun.

It is 550km from Moyale to Isiolo, where the tarmac starts. The road heads west parallel with the Ethiopian border, skirting the top edge of the Sigiso Plain. It then turns south at Turbi, before the Ngaso Plain. This is shifta [bandit] territory and it's a flat, dry, hot nothingness.




Initially it's scrubby nothingness, but soon even that goes, leaving rocks. We passed a local person swathed in dark robes, leading a small train of camels.
We stopped, I think at Turbi, for something to eat. Somewhere between there and Masarbit, we broke down in the Dida Galgalu Desert. When we got out we really appreciated how hard it is to eke a living. It's a dry heat, so not as oppressive as the humid heat of coast, but still... the sun beats down and there is no shade. We stood in the narrow band of shade offered by the truck. We had a burst tyre and it soon got fixed.




It was nice to get out of the truck for a bit though, and it gave us a much better idea of just how empty it is - nothing but dust whirlwinds and the heat haze distorting the distant hills.




After a checkpoint at Masarbit, we set off across the Kaisut Desert. The scenery was pretty much the same but we did pass through some greener hillier areas, where we took this picture of a gof [volcanic crater].




It got dark about 6pm, leaving us to rattle into the dark. The terrain got less flat, with more trees, gullies, luggas [dry river beds] and boulders.




Driving fast when it's dark is pretty scary, especially the part where we left the track completely and went 'off-piste' wending our way between gnarled trees and gullies, large boulders hurtling out of the gloom, with only our pathetic headlights for illumination. In bed.
It got pretty cold during the night, with the dust-laden draft from the window. I tried to get some sleep by resting my forehead in the crook of Stef's arm. Uncomfortable indeed.

At 2am we got to Isiolo, where we were able to grab some poppadom-like things. Or at least that was the plan. I had developed a mild migraine, and when I took a step into the brightly lit hall to the side of the truck stop, it promptly turned vicious. In bed. So I sat outside in the dark, threw up, got a number of random men rather worried about me, and then clambered back to my seat to grab some Ibuprofen. Fortunately since I had an empty stomach it got to work quickly and had almost gone by the time we were on the road again. I was dreading the vibrations, but it only really hurt for the first 10 minutes. Stefan was worried, since I had tears streaming down my face. In bed.

The tarmac allegedly starts at Isiolo, but in some ways having degrading tarmac is worse than not having any, since it gets patchy, more pot-hole than flat bits. Painfully slow going. It's 315km to Nairobi from Isiolo, but it still took us about 6 hours. We crossed the equator and passed Mt Kenya under the cover of dark, getting to Thika at dawn.
We finally got to Nairobi at around 7am. 840km in about 22 hours.
There isn't a bus station as such - instead each bus company has its headquarters. So we got off the bus in a back street somewhere, no idea where we were, new country, new currency, sleep-deprived and feeling a bit lost. Not ideal for a city with a reputation like Nairobi.

Still, we got our bags down and the only crime we were subject to was by the taxi driver who I'm positive committed daylight robbery with the fare. Since we didn't really have a grasp on the currency, nor the energy for an argument, we only put up a half-hearted fight.

It was to get worse. In bed.