Intro

A year or so after writing the original intro to this blog I find myself in somewhat different circumstances. Having finished my studies in 2011, procrastination is no longer the driving factor behind my pieces. As it turns out, I have joined 3 friends from varsity, two of which left London last July, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for a trip home of a slightly different kind. A trip that allows me the luxury of not giving a continental about the fuel price but more about the direction of the wind and the gradient of the road as we endeavour to cycle back home to the city we all met, Cape Town . When time, money and UN's most recently added human right, internet access, is available I will be spending my time turning random notes, scribbles and possibly illustrations fit only for display in the age 5-7 category at the Bathurst Show in my leather-bound journal into readable content of varying natures. I'll do this to satisfy my own need to write crap as well as to ensure that memories made are never forgotten, much like the memories never remembered every weekend in my undergrad stint at UCT. If it turns out people read this and enjoy it...epic! My fellow adventurers can be followed on TomAndMattCycle.com and Along4TheCycle.blogspot.com.



Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Kenya to Kigali: Part 1


Kenya... a few unproductive weeks back

Keeping my diary up to date on a daily basis is a mission, kind of like how taking my malaria pills every night is a mission except that swallowing a pink pill takes all of two seconds and if I don’t do it there’s a slight chance I might die, or have a shitty headache. Fortunately, if I don’t write in my diary, nothing really happens.

It is, however, a supremely handy thing to have with me when I turn the ink into tiny little mini-bytes of computer storage stuff in the form of Word documents written on what I’m pretty sure is a pirated version of Microsoft Office due to the fact that there’s a panel on the right hand side of the screen that won’t piss off and insists on flashing a picture of some chap with a receding hairline that is annoyingly similar to mine. Add to that the fact that it’s a very cool leather-bound booklet that will make for a killer memento when I’m old and gray and one that my grandchildren can boast about on Grandparents Day when they are in the prep department at Kingswood Junior School – because they will be at Kingswood.
It’s a tight list of pro’s and con’s, almost too close to choose between (mainly due to the fact that keeping count never really occurred to me) but in the end, the diary will prevail. I hope.

Having not been particularly habitual about keeping the diary up-to-date since leaving Nakuru in Kenya, and becoming increasingly worse (or better) at finding excuses to persuade myself not to transfer the day to day happenings into some sort of readable computerized format I figured that it didn’t really matter when things happened and in what order, and if it did I could just make it up. I also realized that anyone reading my hard-to-follow-because-this-oke-can’t-keep-a-steady-train-of-thought writings wouldn’t really care whether I cycled 60km on Tuesday or 105km on Thursday, nor what I ate or where I ate it.

A month or so of being generally useless on the writing front later I find myself in the Rwandan capital of Kigali having left Kenya and cycled clean through Uganda without yet putting anything up on my website that has been made to look completely unremarkable in the shadow of the expertly done piece of work that is TomAndMattCycle.com (note that I tried to spruce mine up with a new background that magically doesn’t disappear when you scroll down. That took me a good half hour to figure out!). During this time I’ve also almost completely thrown in the towel as far as picture taking and video capturing is concerned, partly due to the fact I couldn’t be bothered to source new AA batteries for my camera that is so shit that it actually uses AA batteries, but more because I have at my disposal the photographic genius of Tom Perkins and his up-and-coming apprentice Matt ‘Hippy Jesus’ Chennells, whose documentation of the trip is sufficiently thorough and can be watched and re-watched in a quality that does not resemble a black and white broadcast of an SABC show received through a bunny-ears aerial in the valleys of the Transkei. Go on the point and shoot Kodak!

We left what had become and was referred to as another home with typical hesitance and a high degree of procrastination. After Kizzy’s home in Addis, the Mount Kenya retreat and the Blake’s house in Nairobi, our stay with the Robinson’s in Nakuru was another case of the four of us taking the throw-away line of: “make yourselves at home” far too literally. What increased the sluggishness of our departure was the long hiatus we’d had from the bike, something that is never easy to recover from. Having gone to Nairobi for the primary purpose of getting our hands on some Ugandan visas, we couldn’t help ourselves from staying more than double our intended length of time thanks to the amazing hospitality of Robert and Melanie Blake who fed us meals of roast beef and gammon, always followed by desserts and accompanied by a steady supply of South African wine to boot in their beautiful home in which Matt and I were fortunate enough to each have our own bedroom with a double bed and en-suite bathroom. I made a point of spreading myself diagonally across the bed in full knowledge that such luxuries would be few and far between in the coming months. After creating excuses and hangovers at will to delay our departure, we did eventually head back north toward Nakuru but not before stopping off for a couple of heavily discounted nights at the famous Fisherman’s Camp on Lake Naivasha, owned by a friend of a family friend of Jim’s.

Eventually though, set off we did. As sad as heading out of Kenya was, the cycle was absolutely exquisite in almost every aspect; serving up multitudes of different landscapes, each as breathtaking as the last and introducing us to a range of extraordinary characters amongst the masses of smiling, waving and laughing Kenyan people.
It wasn’t long after we set off on an extended gradual downward slope that we were met by the mountains we had been promised by our hosts from Nakuru and Naivasha. The hills became an afterthought amongst the long ranging views of green grazing land and some special interactions along the road. The standard stop-and-ask-for-distances-to-see-how-wrong-the-last-chap-was turned into a fantastic little gathering in God-knows-what village as two proficient English speakers took charge of conversing with us while keeping the rest of the 20-strong Swahili-only crew in the loop. In these situations, more so than any other, it was an absolute blessing that so many Kenyans (and later Ugandans) were able to speak good English. The standard send-off line of “safe journey” is said with such sincerity and kindness that your mind is instantly filled with thoughts of how you will go about visiting the country again sometime in the future, because there is no way that you cannot return to a country that offers as much as Kenya does amongst people as welcoming and appreciative as the Kenyan people are. “You are welcome”, and “Thank You” were both phrases uttered by the non-English speaking villagers as we cycled off up another hill in awe of where we were and how grateful people were to have us visiting their country.

Hill after hill in intense sun with Nelson’s chain slipping got the better of me as I started to hold up the team a bit in a perfect example of how a day on the bike can toy with ones emotions, oscillating between the extremes of ecstasy and anger. With no town anywhere near us, we found a police compound in which we were welcomed to sleep on the concrete floor of a foyer to a building that contained old jail cells. What was lacking in comfort was more than made up by the kindness and enthusiasm of the police officers that culminated in our departure the next morning being delayed by one of the officers who had gotten himself into serious story-telling mode. On our prompt as to the upcoming Kenyan elections (which have recently been delayed for a year), the officer launched into a personal narrative on his experience the previous time around. With finesse and gusto that can surely only be matched within the African story-telling culture, we were told how our story-teller was surrounded by angry, nominally armed protesters on the day that it was announced that incumbent president Kibaki was to serve a second term. He had wound up in the situation while transporting an injured election violence victim to a hospital, only to have two breakdowns and instructed to stay with the empty second broken-down vehicle. Bit by bit the story became more and more intense, the speaker’s tempo and volume rising and falling for maximum impact as he told how the mob turned on him as a symbol of the government and closed in angrily on the lone officer who possessed enough ammunition to harm but a third of the crowd. The story was told with a modesty that inadvertently served to heighten the heroics of the officer who placed all the acclaim on his faith rather than the cool and calm presence of mind he showed to lower his weapon and relate to the angry mass despite one particularly appalled individual ready to bring a brick down on his head.

The tough hills and frustratingly poor roads did not take long to dampen the morning’s inspiration, even though the beautiful views of tea country did their utmost to curb the frustrations of the road that eventually (in good partnership with my own thuggish stupidity) led to me snapping the hook on my pannier bag, forcing a make-do replacement of rope that would somehow hold out all the way to Kigali. The detour that we had embarked on at the advice of our three different Kenyan hosts soon expelled any negative sentiment toward the road and terrain to the very back of our minds as we entered the Kakamega Forest, a small patch of unique tropical rainforest in the west of Kenya. The incredible sights and sounds of the forest gave me flashbacks of running through the Knysna Forest with trees towering higher than my neck could stretch to see. While the shade was immensely welcomed, it served the rather unfortunate purpose of not alerting me to the fact that I was not wearing the sunglasses that I had set off in earlier that day. After all but punching myself in the head in frustration, I realized that I had left them at the turn off into the forest where I had waited at a little stall amongst boda-boda drivers (motorbike taxis) for Matt and Jim to realize that they had cycled clean past the turn off and down a hill I was less than eager to cycle back up.

With Frank unable to make it up the downhill that I had realized my somewhat inevitable idiocy, we resolved to keep going until I could find a boda-boda to head back with. 10km and almost 45 minutes later, we exited the forest and I negotiated a return ride with a driver called Smith, who had learned English from his uneducated father who had picked it up while working as a cook for a white Kenyan of British descent. Smith was subsequently named after his father’s boss and put his English to good use by offering guided tours of the exquisite forest as well as running his own dirt cheap campsite on the edge of the forest. The pursuit of my sunglasses proved to be a fascinating experience of the Kenyan psyche. Having arrived at the stall (which was no more than a wooden bus shelter used by taxi drivers waiting on a fare) we found it completely empty. I had mentioned to Smith that I would increase his pay from 400 to 500 Kenyan Shillings should I be lucky enough to locate the rather expensive sunglasses (unfortunately branded as ‘Dirty Dogs’ – thank the pope ‘Dogs’ is not spelt with a ‘z’) that my folks bought me for Christmas. Thanks to Smith’s patience and ability to act as a translator, as well as the obvious kicker of a 500 Shilling reward, some chap who had walked past us earlier and claimed to have no idea as to the location of my glasses came running up a small hill from a little house with my sunglasses held aloft, shouting: “money, give me the money” with a huge smile on his face.

Overcome by the combination of happiness and relief I was finally free to enjoy the full splendour of the forest as Smith sped me back to the other end so that we could resume the cycling that would take us through the tea plantations and into the sugar cane plantations of the western regions. The torrid dirt road and race to beat the imminent rainstorm was easily shrugged off on the back of recovering my sunglasses, although the high of emotion was brought to a crashing halt later that evening. It will be a day that will most certainly go down as one of the most dramatic in sporting history. People will know exactly where they were watching the moment Sergio Aguero somehow snatched back the Premiership title with the last kick of the season just as it seemed that Manchester City had gifted it to their fiercest rivals and my team of choice, Manchester United. The three United fans in our camp; Tom, Matt and myself, managed to quickly shrug off the loss so as best to appreciate the drama and local reactions along with the supreme effort Jim (an Arsenal fan) was making to hide his ecstasy and claim neutrality.

The next morning, our final one in Kenya, got off to a delayed start of extreme frustration with a hint of rage as I had to switch tyres. Having swopped the bulky tyres I had left South Africa with in Nakuru for an extra tyre that Tom was lugging around and Matt’s spare because of the super-human effort needed to change the originals in the event of a flat (I’d already had two flats), Matt needed his spare as one of his tyres had worn through after a good hall of 10 000km. Because I had brought along tubeless tyres even though I had tubes (yes, this sounds retarded, but I was advised to do as much by my uncle who is the clean-shaven Jesus of cycling in the Eastern Cape), I had to use screwdrivers rather than tyre levers to change them, which I found out that morning was actually puncturing the replacement tube. So, basically, cycling jargon crap aside, my tyres were shit and I was not a happy chappy. Nonetheless, Matt came to the rescue with a spare tube (I had now stabbed my way through my supply) and another tyre that had a slight tear. The tear has left us hoping and praying (to a mythical figure that is not the afore-mentioned clean-shaven Jesus) that it will make it to Tanzania where a decent replacement will be brought up by the ballies.

Arriving at the border with Uganda in 40 degree heat after the morning I had had was not exactly ideal, but neither was the fact that we were leaving the beautiful country of Kenya that had been so good to us during our time there. Life was not all doom and gloom though, as the ‘Pearl of Africa’ (as labeled by Winston Churchill) lay ahead in its full glory. Our journey through Kenya was poles apart to that in Ethiopia on almost every level. What stands out as the biggest difference as far as life on the bike is concerned is the extraordinary luck we had to be put in contact with so many people, all of which were immeasurably kind and hospitable as home after home was opened up to us. Ethiopia was an experience that I enjoyed thoroughly, but it was the experience itself that made Ethiopia; the experience of cycling through a country so phenomenally different to anything I had come across before. Kenya was different as we left it knowing that we had made the most of our stay there, yet had still left so much undone. There were mountains to climb, lakes to visit, cultures to experience, cities to explore, game to view, roads to [motor]cycle and beaches on which to do bugger all.

When we left Ethiopia, I crossed the border and said goodbye. To Kenya it was a case of: “’till we meet again”.

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