Tapdancing rats

  Kakamega, Kenya
Thursday, June 30, 2005

Day the Twenty-third - in which Stef gets The Rage, we travel in comfort by bus and rodents provide the evening entertainment.

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

Predictably, woke up at the crack of dawn.  Stef discovered that his bag had been rootled through, and on reflection we reckoned it must have been on the Moyale bus as opposed to at the Youth Hostel.  During the whole trip there was a man sat on the roof, so he would have had plenty of time to help himself.  Fortunately my bag was fine and all they took of Stef's was his raincoat and medkit.  I have a medkit too, and a raincoat ought not to be too difficult to replace.  Still, Stef was livid for a while, not least of all because we had to sort it before catching the bus to Kakamega.


He got a taxi to the police station, where he had to give them the illusion that he wasn't actually in a rush to catch a bus at 9.30, since police tend to take longer when they realise you need them to hurry up.


He got back and we piled into a taxi and told the driver to step on it, offering a tip if he could get us through the traffic in time.  We just made it, though the advantage of arriving last is that you don't have to figure out the seating, just aim for the empty ones.  It was the nicest bus we have been on yet, a company called Akamba.  As in, we have separate seats [oooh!] and there is no-one in the aisle.  This equals bum-room, elbow-room, and [mostly] knee-room, all at the same time!  We even had enough space between the two of us to store a bottle of water and a packet of Marie biscuits [our staple journey foodstuff].  Doesn't get any better than that, folks!


The route took us via Naivasha, Nakuru, Kericho and Kisumu. 

Near Naivasha we passed Mt Longonot, and some road-side photogenic zebras.  Bit odd.






At Nakuru we were able to see the lake, edged by pink flamingos.

 

And a bar [note: I come from Chester]



Across the Rift Valley it got lusher and lusher, nice after the dry of the north and the gloom of Nairobi.  Around Kericho we saw tea plantations. 




Then we got glimpses of the mighty Lake Victoria when we got to Kisumu.  We'll be pretty much circumnavigating the lake - going through Uganda, Rwanda and then back round the bottom in Tanzania.  We won't actually see it again until Mwanza, Tanzania.  Hopefully anyway - depends if we can get through the north-west of Tanzania.
Saw billboards advertising the bug-spray Raid.  The slogan for it in the US is "Raid: Kills Bugs Dead!" but the one here is much better -- "Raid: Kills Dudus Dead!"  [Dudus being the Swahili word for bugs.]  Made us giggle.

 
At one of the stops there were vendors selling bags of peas, and so in a fit of stupidity I bought some. They looked so sweet and tasty, and anyone who knows me can attest to my pea-addiction. Cooking at home, Stef has to confiscate the frozen peas or else I eat them before they get to the microwave. These peas were no petit-pois though.

Got to Kakamega in the afternoon. It's got a run-down sort of air, but it's nice enough. Found a hostel, ordered dinner [Stef's first taste of ugali - not impressed!] which was interesting to say the least. We asked for two dishes to go with the ugali since the stuff is vile and plain so you gotta eat it with something. One dish was ok, some stew thing, but the other turned out to be circles of intestine in watered down gravy. Nice. Oh for some injera! Note to self: buy some spices.

Our room at the hostel is ok, the water pressure is crap but the water is warm. Considering we are literally smack-bang on the equator it's not that hot - probably due to the elevation. Stef is sick with a cold. So it's just as well it's not hot or he'd be miserable.

We have been filtering water since it saves on money for bottled water and also reduces our environmental impact since all the plastic ends up strewn across the town verges and countryside. To do this we needed a container to hold the water as we pumped it, so I went down to ask for something. A guy from the hostel emerged from the back with a large bucket, I said that it was rather big but it'd do. He gave me an odd look, I assured him I'd bring it back in about 10 minutes.

Stef went to bed, sneezing a lot before he went to sleep; I stayed up learning some Swahili and listening to the rats in the ceiling. They sounded like they were tapdancing or something. When it sounded like they were getting close to the hole in the ceiling I'd clap my hands and they'd all run skittering off. Little buggers. I'm not bothered by them particularly, but I have no desire for a repeat of my Mozambique adventure 2 years ago when I woke up nose-to-whisker with a rat. The git ate my bananas too, so I made sure our food [namely the leftover Marie biscuits and those damn peas] was safely concealed this time.