On The Road In Kenya: Hills And Flats

On the morning of our departure from the lodge at the foothills of Mount Kenya in which we had lazed away the last 8 days, we got up and ready to leave with the speed and enthusiasm of an eight year old child being forced to go to an evening communion service – one of those drawn out ones where you drink cheap grape juice and attempt to digest a circular wafer of polystyrene – that coincided with the Sunday night movie, Shrek 6.

It was 10:30 by the time we got going, stomachs full and bikes loaded. Despite a bunch of gravel roads heading west, our new general direction en-route to the Ugandan capital of Kampala, we headed directly south on the tarred highway toward Nairobi before an acute turn at a T-junction lead us back in almost the same direction we came. The reason for our detour and sharp turn was not because of our lack of geometry skills but rather an attempt to avoid the unknown quantities that were the gravel roads that most of the locals pointed us down when asked for directions as any momentum garnered by our heavy homes-on-wheels would be rendered all but null-and-void and only cause damage to our bikes who – they have feelings – will need all the respite we can afford them on our long way down. As it stands Chen's bike, Joseph, is squeaking along with broken but usable front and rear pannier racks while Nelson and Sebastian, Jim’s bike, are largely intact.

Hills and more hills were the order of the day – the next three days in fact -, probably an appropriate punishment for our prolonged period of doing nothing, something that we have perfected into an art form. Thanks to the recent onset of the long rains, the Kenyan countryside has been an experience in itself. Forests and farmlands have been nothing but green, surrounding quaint towns and an impressive amount of schools, almost all of which offer boarding facilities. The frequency of schools, both in and out of town, is apparently largely due to an American programme that made finance available to builders of schools, many of which have been left half-built or consist of little more than the roadside sign itself and the lenders out of sight and mind. As interesting as the schools were themselves, the names were arguably more so. Prime examples displaying a disastrous lack of imagination are: ‘Shining Stars Academy’ and ‘Bright Future High School’.

As we ventured off the highway where white-driven vehicles – all 4x4s of course – passed us regularly, we were met with friendly and excited shouts of, “How are you!?” that evolved into a rhythmical chorus of kids chanting the line repeatedly in unison, obviously not as accustomed to our fairer complexions as the people around the tourist-friendly Nanyuki. The general reception was impressively positive with amazement being directed more at our heavily-laden bicycles than the weirdly clothed mzungu riders with a strange variety of hairstyles and, at best, inconsistent facial hair.

The third and final day of our trek to Nakuru was without doubt my favourite of the trip thus far. Having made our way to over two thousand metres above sea level, we came out on top of a mountain that overlooked an immense valley, part of the Great Rift Valley that runs 9600km’s from Israel to Mozambique, or so read the signs outside little curios shops. We did begin to question the accuracy and authenticity of the tourism signs, which, if all were to be believed, would mean we crossed the equator at least seven times on the day, sometimes crossing from north to south and back in less than fifty metres. Having undoubtedly being dealt the better hand with the downhill into the valley being twice the size of the uphill out of it and followed by a lengthy, gradual decline, we passed through more immaculate, arable land on which tea and banana trees seemed to be thriving amongst pastures of cows, sheep and goats operated by small-scale farmers.

In an attempt to become slightly more politically aware and, more importantly, better at 30 Seconds, I am currently reading: ‘The State of Africa’, from which one can gather an understanding –in my case a vague one at best - about the varying effects that colonialism had on African countries. No doubt a standout positive from my point of view is the introduction of ‘TNT’ into the road building process. In un-colonised Ethiopia, apart from a disgraceful lack of cricket and rugby, the roads rolled up over the peaks of hills and down through the troughs of the valleys. Terrain which would have tormented our leg muscles has all of a sudden become far more navigable as roads have been blasted out of the side of mountains avoiding the necessity of ‘cresting’ the hills – when you spend five hours a day on a bicycle you’re allowed to make up your own jargon: fact – and starting climbs from the lowest point possible.

Going back to the first night of the trip to Nakuru, we set up camp for the first time since I joined Team TomAndMattAndJimAndBusterCycleWithTomActuallyOnAMotorbike.com. Having heard from a girl called Brenner, who we met in Addis and was cycling solo up Africa, that Catholic Church gardens were the poor man’s Hilton Hotel equivalent campsites – except a lot freer – we ventured out in search of one in a small town called Mweiga. After a Titanic-scale failure of an attempt to communicate with the Church cleaner in English we knocked on the ‘Office’ door which, in a very unscriptural-like fashion, was not opened unto us. Everyone is allowed one bad and one cynical joke a day. I realise I have just used up both.

We resorted to parroting words out of a Swahili dictionary and eventually were pointed around the back of the church to a double story house with a garage of a couple smart-looking Rav 4’s. Daniel, who I can only assume was the minister’s domestic, phoned up his boss to come suss out our trio of vagabond cyclists. As we waited for the blessing or what would be a terribly awkward and un-Jesus like refusal of shelter from Father John we were scrutinised in pure fascination by a bunch students from a girls prep school situated within the confines of the Church property. Thankfully, Father John, a man who didn’t look like he went hungry too often, happily granted us permission to spend the night on the church grounds and went as far as calling us a blessing. Imagine that.

As we set up camp and cooked up a vegetarian storm – so more of a gentle drizzle I guess – we were keenly crept out by two girls of about ten who asked us to come to the church service in which they were dancing the next day. Between meeting the catechist, Samuel - whose role in the church I knew nothing about but found out that he gets his own office, cool robes and has the task of holding the microphone up to the mouth of the minister during the sermon and who was at best asexual -,the repeated use of the line: “Come to my house if you need anything. Anything” from Daniel and a decent dose of generalisation, I figured that it was probably a good thing that the school next door only catered for little girls. 

Having been woken up by - and therefore missed - the early morning English service the next day, we attended the first twenty minutes of the Kikuyu service (Kikuyu being a large Kenyan tribe that were displaced from the greater Nairobi area by British colonisers) after we had packed up. Despite the fact that pretty much everyone went through a ritual of bending a knee to the ground and using water from Dumbledore’s pensieve to do the crucifix sign that all the Brazilians do when they score a goal, one man sporting an Aston Villa shirt skipping the ritual was enough for us to feel ok about entering the church without doing the jig. We chose a seat on a bench right at the back on what turned out to be the side of the church designated for females so that we could make a stealthy exit after the dancing. Once the little dance routine had been performed with the cohesion of a Tin Roof dance floor bobbing to a dub-step track and in between a few lines by the minister that we pretended to understand, we snuck out the back door as unnoticed as three white okes wearing spandex can possibly be.

Having clocked up 1000km’s on the second day of the journey, a day after Chen passed ten times that distance, Nelson decided he wasn’t getting enough attention and ran a slow puncture on what had become a torrid stretch of tarmac which the 15-seater taxis with a capacity of thirty-three were neglecting in favour of the gravel tracks bordering the road, often on the wrong side – Kenyan driving licenses are rumoured to be the third highest selling commodity behind Tusker beer and goat meat. Despite a series of stops to blow up the tube, the slow puncture got less slow and forced us to pull over 15 kilometres short of our destination in the afternoon rain having made cycling as difficult as running in mud while piggy-backing your grandmother.

My rear tyre was as impossibly difficult to remove from the wheel as the front one had been a few weeks before. With the help of - slash thanks to the sole effort of – Jim, the tyre was stripped off and the tube replaced with the tube that was the victim of my first flat and which I had repaired in Karichota. Both back at home and when I arrived I was questioned and ridiculed for my lack of preparation; rightly so it seems as my first ever attempt at repairing a tube turned out to be a miserable failure. To pile on the misery, we only realised my ineptitude once Jim had put the bastard wheel back on, forcing us – well, Jim – to repeat the entire exhausting and frustrating process while Chen filmed the agony and I put on my best face of concern. After eventually getting Nelson on the road, an effort that has left me insurmountably indebted to Jim, we reached a small town 6km short of our intended destination where we had to pull over in imminent darkness and find the only hotel available so as to avoid setting up camp and cooking in the dark and the rain.

After an extensive breakfast consisting of a glorious mixed fry-up of tomato, onion, banana and baked beans on chipati cooked in full view of the thundering Thompson Falls, we headed off on our final days ride into Nakuru where we were to be kindly hosted by Bella, a friend of mine from Kingswood - good school. After a short stint on a highway bypassing the busy centre of Nakuru, we pushed our bikes up the dirt road that ran along Bella’s boundary fence with all seven of their dogs barking wildly at us until we reached the gate with a sign reading: “Beware. Puppies loose”.

Writing this on the stoep – it feels good to use a South African word – of a guest cottage on Bella’s tranquil and picturesque estate just outside Nakuru, home to an assortment of geese, guinea fowls, chickens, cats and dogs, we once again find ourselves surrounded by the unconditional kindness that this trip has thrived on since Tom and Matt set off from England. On the topic of kindness, a dream I had on the second night of our Nakuru leg reminded me about something I had not yet mentioned in my seemingly endless pages of bullshit. In my rather absurd dream I somehow managed to meet Eminem – it goes without saying that I played it cool and called him Marshall. We got along famously – obviously - and in conversation I subtly slipped in the fact that there was a charity based in Cape Town which we hoped would benefit from any exposure our trip created – almost as discreetly as I have just mentioned it here. Marshall ever so kindly donated a million US Dollars to the cause.

Although I don’t want to discourage a donation of that magnitude, it is by no means expected. Even if you decide to pass on the unbelievable opportunity of donating money, a quick look at the cause on Tom and Matt’s website and maybe a mention to the folks will – might – go a long way to helping the cause. The donation page can be found on the aptly named ‘Sponsor our Saddle Sores’ page (http://tomandmattcycle.com/sponsor-our-saddle-sores/) with more information on the cause itself on http://tomandmattcycle.com/the-cause/ .

The Yoga Experiment

What exactly it was that possessed me to embark on a run still escapes me. Maybe it’s the stomach that is shrinking at a frustratingly slow rate even after 860km’s in the saddle. To add to the stupidity, I was running with Jim, a fitness freak of nature who casually decided to run up a mountain in Addis, and I wasn’t fully recovered from a bout of some sickness that started as a throat irritation before proceeding to all but shut down the sinuses before landing me with a phlegm-ridden cough. My chest was tight and nose running faster than my legs when I turned into the driveway of our mountain retreat, adding to which I had a good dual stitch going on and my calf was one optimistic movement away from cramping. Unfortunately, the latter duo couldn’t be blamed on the illness, rather from the naivety that led me to believe that a week of playing cricket during the day and drinking at night would somehow have a positive effect on my fitness levels. At least life amongst Eastern Cape farmers offered the consolation that I wasn’t the only one to be misled in such a fashion.

Breathing heavily, I stumbled into the lounge only to find a little yoga session on the go, spearheaded by an outrageously flexible Roby, whose every move was being attempted, all less successfully, by Tom, Matt, Daddy and Roby’s boyfriend, Michael. Near the end of their session of breathing and stretching in relative silence, Tom was showing how inflexible he had become since his knee injury while I noted to myself that the gap between his fingers and toes in full stretch was half that of mine when I - at-most annually - did the identical stretch.

Foolishly – it seems it was my day to play the village idiot – I sat down next to Tom attempting to replicate his stretch. I failed dismally. By this time the rest of the yoga class had retired from their session for a good chuckle, leaving Daddy behind with the enormous challenge of trying to get my fingers closer to my toes than to my knees. Considering he spent Friday through Sunday teaching drama and music to disabled children in a nearby town, I can only imagine Daddy thought the challenge an easy one in comparison. How wrong he was.

Within the first minutes of my debut Yoga class – something I had avoided at all costs after being put to shame a few years back in a Taebo class full of Kenton pensioners who could kick their feet up twice the height I managed – I gathered that breathing had an integral part to play in what I always considered a series of stretching exercises designed for earth-loving hippies. With my inability to achieve any notable breathing through my ailing nose, the impetus on breathing was all but lost on me.

Add to the fact that I was breathing like a Kudu shot in the neck – not by me, I’m a horrible shot – that I am not supple by any stretch of the imagination and any spectator has a show on their hands worthy of a circus in the days when it was still OK to parade blue-painted midgets around with Christmas hats and diapers. I can’t cross my legs – my knees are so high when I try that they act as a chin rest -, I can’t touch my toes unless my knees are bent at 90 degrees and when I was told to lie down with the back of my hands against the floor, my fingers curled up like a 90 year old with severe arthritis – think cricket umpire, Billy Bowden signalling a six. Maybe the fact that I was English speaking in my Afrikaans pre-primary wasn’t the only reason I was picked on.

While Daddy was talking in quiet, calm tones as I struggled to keep my eyes closed amongst the odd snigger here and there, my mind raced and gladly accepted the hypothesis that the reason my disgraceful lack of athletic ability that saw me running neck-to-neck alongside the 1^st team props in the 100 metre trials in matric – we were all doing it as a joke although the hilarity wore off a bit when I heard my groin snap – despite my mother being awarded honours for her feats on the athletics track was simply because I had not unlocked the potential of my rusty old muscles on an eternal sabbatical. Wishful thinking.

Daddy muttered a number of things to me in an attempt to relax my body and mind, one of which was: “Think about what you’re going to do today”. Despite my struggles to synchronize my breathing in the hope that it might ease the pins and needles developing along my calf it wasn’t difficult to fit in the probable program for the day. Our days in the retreat have already become a blur of relaxation achieved through reading, writing and delving in a bit of Canasta and Scrabble with the last hours of the evening, after the days supply of solar power and the generators fuel has run out, spent staring into the blue and orange flickering flames keeping us warm on the patio of our forest hideout.

Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry, Broken Lorry

Whereas last time I wrote what could probably be considered a short story about Ethiopia in the restaurant of a hotel that was so ridden with bed bugs that I am still scratching 4 days after leaving, in a town that had one computer with access to the internet that could only be used if you successfully coaxed the owners nephew from his umpteenth consecutive FIFA 98 game, I find myself writing this piece in a rather different setting: On the couch of a lodge tucked away in a forest at the foothills of Mount Kenya, a mere 10km south of the equator – which we crossed yesterday - after a breakfast of scrambled eggs and potato fritters made for us by the Lodge manager, Roby.

Having cooked up a storm including chipati – the Kenyan starch staple which is essentially a savoury pancake – and beef stew the night before, we negotiated our way through the awkwardness of not knowing if the meal she was cooking was for us or herself and her two friends, Daddy and Alacoque, who all work in various forms of theatre with the owner of the lodge, Keith Pearson. Supper was followed by a read on the outside porch in front of a roaring fire, keeping us warm from the crisp evening air. All the initial luxuries of our indefinite stay in Karichota Lodge, 15km south of Nanyuki, may seem somewhat out of character with the adventure we’re on and may even raise some eyebrows of those thinking of our trip as a year of roughing it, but I couldn’t care less, particularly in the light of the circumstances that landed us here from the Ethio-Kenya border town of Moyale.

Having crossed the border not long before the closing time of 6pm, Frank Alice Adams continued a little ritual of refusing to budge an inch every time he touched down on a new country’s soil. With Tom forced to push Frank with the help of ten locals at a time all laying a finger on Frank in an effort to claim a reward that Tom made perfectly clear he was not dishing out having not asked for nor needed the help, we found our way to a cheap hotel on the battered and excessively eroded dirt roads with the guidance of our self-appointed fixer, Alex – whose help we had also not requested let alone hinted at.

On the Ethiopian side of the border, prior to our in-the-nick-of-time crossing, we met Alex, a German cyclist a year out of high school who was cycling from Egypt to South Africa via a layover in Malawi to visit his girlfriend working on a school aid project (www.AidAndTravel.de). The five of us checked into a cheap hotel compound costing 300 shillings a person – a shilling having one-tenth the value of a rand -, rinsed ourselves off in a bucket shower and headed out in search of Kenya’s famous Tusker beer after warding off the mandatory attempt to rip us off by charging us for the unused bed in a 3 man room that we got placed into, despite the availability of a 2 man room a few rooms down. When it comes to dealings with the white man – Mzungu in Swahili as opposed to the previously loathed Ferengi in Amharic – locals are predictable in their attempts to wring us like a soaked towel of every last cent.

The next day we rose early, having to commandeer ourselves a truck after yet another failed attempt to grant us one at extortionate prices on the Ethiopian side the evening before to take us to the town of Isiolo, 560km south of Moyale, as the roads were all but impassable by bicycle and even more so by the fragile, beaten-to-shit Frank who was as mobile and useful as an 80-year-old man post heart-attack, stroke and triple bypass and one bout of flu away from being wheelchair bound for the rest of his existence. Add to the dilapidated roads the threat of bandits –shifters – fabled to patrol the roads, we decided it prudent to jump on the back of the lorry that parked outside our hotel just after 6 the next morning thanks to the fixer Alex, whose services we had dismissed the night before and his co-fixer, DJ Lia Lia dot com who we had chatted to the previous night, albeit somewhat circumspectly after we discovered a swastika scar that had been engraved into his skin on his upper arm – “young, stupid and drunk” was his excuse. The Lorry was already packed 6 bags of 90kg red kidney beans high and covered with a tarpaulin protecting it from the rain that had been coming down all morning.

We loaded our bicycle, bags and, with great effort, Frank onto the pile of beans hastily so as to allow the truck to negotiate the horrendous side-roads leading to our hotel in what had turned into driving rain. Having done so successfully, we were dropped off at a little café and treated ourselves to baked beans and chipati for breakfast as well as a cup of tea and coffee, both drinks severely lacking in quality compared to their Ethiopian counterparts. We had negotiated a price of 1500KES per person for the trip south, the same price for each bike and somewhat of a premium for Frank, who had to make the trip all the way to Nairobi for a standard patch up job.

Being the first ones on the back of the lorry, getting on an hour before our 10:30am departure, we found ourselves the most comfortable spots we could muster before locals started climbing the ladder and entering our little tarpaulin-covered cabin. The rain ceased as we took off in what we expected was a convoy of trucks, with the company of about 8 other people under the tarpaulin, 6 or so on top of it and about 5 crammed into the front of the lorry.
Although the border town of Moyale had a significant Ethiopian influence, the first two noticeable differences we encountered with the Kenyan people were the rounder cheeks and English proficiency, two traits that are in all likelihood after-effects of Kenya’s years as a British colony. Our fellow cabin-dwellers, mostly women, took to us somewhat after we started bouncing off Swahili words we had been learning. Despite the attempts at learning, picking up anything from conversations was futile as they were either too fast or not actually in Swahili but rather the language of the north, something starting with a ‘b’ – I’m no encyclopaedia, look it up yourself.

After a few bumps that gave us all a bit of airtime, no more so than Matt, Tom and Frank who were all placed directly above the rear axle of the 6-wheeler, and a moment where it seemed the truck was a touch away from toppling over onto its side, one particularly aggressive bump that would have led you to swear the driver had a career in motocross brought the truck to a halt as masses of dust entered the tarpaulin and settled amongst us, our bags and the bikes. Not surprisingly, the suspension had taken a serious knock, but seemingly not enough that the driver and his crew of 3 couldn’t beat back into working order after a delay of nearly an hour. Having peered above the tarpaulin for the first time in the trip we discovered that we were not, as previously suspected, in a convoy at all. We were just a lone, old, suspension-less truck trudging along barely recognisable roads at what couldn’t have been more than 30km/hour.

Not too long after we set off again – although time was somewhat of a mystery in the back of the truck that gave off the aura of a cargo hold in an old pirate ship with frayed ropes bearing a stark resemblance to Chen’s dreadlocks hanging down from metal beams – we heard the loud bang of the tyre bursting. The reactions of Tom and Alex were too much for the locals, who packed out laughing seemingly unperturbed by the fact that another delay was on the cards. The process of changing the tyre and tube was not a simple matter of chucking on the spares as it turned out that every spare tube was far from puncture-free and none in current working condition. Having tried, failed and tried again at fixing a number of the spare tubes with glue and pieces of rubber cut from the most unsalvageable of tubes we were once again mobile… some 3 hours later.

Day turned to night and our hopes of being in Isiolo on the evening of our departure had long since faded. It was midnight by the time we got to our halfway stop of Marsabit, where most of our fellow travellers jumped out. Without warning, the driver and his crew took off to a hotel for the night and left us trying desperately to find comfort and warmth amongst the bags of beans, bodies of travellers and accumulation of dust. The dust had gathered as much on our bodies and in our hair as it did on the bags and bikes and our filth was hardly a consideration amongst the largely failed attempts at coaxing ourselves into a slumber.

After repeated stops at checkpoints where friendly army and police officials requested the ID’s of passengers and the passports of Mzungu’s – unless you put on a sad face and said your passport was buried in the pile of bags under the cover – we clocked up our 24th hour in the back of the truck, documenting the moment in mock achievement in between two more breakdowns, one involving some form of engine failure and the other a broken bearing in the drive shaft that condemned us to the use of only the first 3 gears for the rest of the trip.

Having decided to write off the prospect of cycling the 100km distance between our initial destination of Isiolo and Karichota Lodge, near Nanyuki, we managed to get the driver – who happened not to be the man who had claimed to be the owner and driver in Moyale and with whom we had negotiated our journey – to agree to drop us off later on in his journey to Nairobi through a mixture of hand signals, broken English and the offering of a lukewarm Coke.

After dropping off the rest of the passengers in Isiolo, we were joined in our cabin by the 3 chaps forming the crew of the lorry and a 19 year old fellow on his way to work with his brother in Nairobi who had a relatively good grasp of the English language and explained how he had worked for his brother-in-law’s wholesaler for 3 years but didn’t receive a cent for his efforts after he had asked his sister’s husband to accumulate the money for him and pay him out at a later date. A camaraderie of sorts developed between the 9 of us as we shared the food we had been eating along the way – plain rolls, mini-vetkoeks, biscuits and a few bit-sized pieces of fudge. Our tarpaulins, spare jackets and a mat that I had used as a mattress the night before all became makeshift blankets for our new friends as our second truck-bound evening brought with it a chilly breeze.

Come 9 o’clock that evening, we finally pulled over on the side of the road in Nanyuki, the town which represented the end of our dusty, uncomfortable and most definitely unforgettable 36 hour experience having covered a mere 650km – a trip that would normally take a 6th of the time under normal circumstances back home. Jim, Alex and I said a temporary farewell to Tom and Matt - who had decided to leave his bike with us and go on to Nairobi to offer Tom some company and moral support – and pushed the four bicycles off into the crisp night air to find ourselves a bed for the night. After asking a few locals who were at an initial loss for words as to why the 3 of us were pushing around 4 bikes after 9 at night we were pointed in the direction of a hotel that allowed us to crash in a two man room at the standard price - 900KES for the room. Unbelievably, the hotel had a hot shower - which I flatly refused to believe after being told as much by one of the staff – as well as a little restaurant with four televisions showing DSTV.
The next morning, after a fantastic nights rest and an even better shower, we ventured into the city for a walk which included a visit to an internet café – the first one with a functioning connection since Addis – and a Spar-sized supermarket situated in amongst quaint and colourful shops offering a variety of goods and services, clean streets and overlooked by the snow-capped peak of Mount Kenya. With a week – give or take – at a mountainside retreat, I am in absolutely no rush to leave Kenya!