Wednesday, 16th October,
2013
Day 1. (Ignore automatic blog dates .... I may have to run two days into one, and post it a day late anyway !)
Landed at JKIA at 5.30 local time. The
airport after the fire in arrivals seems to be functioning well; we
had to walk down the plane steps to an awaiting bus which ferried us
to temporary arrivals, which one of the stewardesses had told me was
in a building that had been begun as a new car park, but had hastily
been converted into a temporary arrivals. We saw part of the old
building all fenced around but the burned roof could be glimpsed.
It took very little time to get through
immigration, though the man there poo-pooed the idea that I pay him
in Kenya shillings for my visa – he wanted dollars but I paid in
pounds ! The bags came very quickly, mine almost the first off, and
then we loaded the trolleys and were through in well under half an
hour. Very impressive for temporary arrangements.
We then found a low wall outside to sit
on to wait …. and wait …. and wait for Paul !
Its very good to be back …. familiar
scents, sounds, and the cheerful greetings of people meeting friends,
and the African laughter …. always laughter.
After an hour of waiting, I went back
into the arrivals and found the Safaricom shop, and topped up my
phone, and got a new SIM card, and managed to phone Paul. His reply was 'We are near you, very near!' but he didn't say
whereabouts !! So I bought the local paper to read while we waited .... and found this cartoon ..... fair comment on the Westgate Mall incident.
By about 8.30 Paul and wife Lucy had arrived.
Wild waves and cheerful shouts from across the car park, and then
hugs and greetings when they reached us. Paul had hired a mini-bus,
which considering we each had two bags, totalling 50 kg of luggage
per person, was a good thing.
Within 100 yards of leaving the
airport, we had already seen some giraffe in the National Park ….
and then we hit what Paul called 'Jams'. The year before last, I
didn't believe the traffic could get worse, but it did, and last year
… I thought the same …. but it did. And now …. impossible to
describe … some sort of Dante's inferno of buses, mini-buses,
lorries, vans, private cars, tuk-tuks, bicycles, boda-boda's and
pedestrians all fighting it out together for space to pass. The
exhaust fumes, the thick black smoke from lorries, the hooting and
shouts and gestures as one vehicle tries to fight it out with another
for an extra yard of road …. eeeeee ! (That's a Luo 'word'
which covers all sorts of situations from pleasure, agreement,
amazement, horror …..) I took some photos of the butchery area of
Nairobi and also a street where the tinsmiths and metal workers were
bashing away making everything possible from metal, right there on
the street. Saucepans, sufuria's,
metal
trunks,
storage
bins,
jiko's, washing
tubs,
car
and
bicycle
spare
parts
….
It took us about an hour to get through
Nairobi and out to the Westlands suburb where the traffic thinned a
little …. a distance of maybe four or five miles ? I think Wendy
must have experienced something of this sort when she went to India a
few years back, but this was the African version !
Once clear of Nairobi we got up speed
and headed for the escarpment, where we stopped at the place where
the curio sellers are, on the edge, with the staggering views. I
took lots of photo's …. but to my horror, I find
today I have somehow
wiped them !!!!!!!!!!!! I
just hope Jonathan and Wendy have some I can 'borrow'.
I had an interesting chat to one of the
curio sellers; we were among the very few who had stopped there in
the last three weeks after the Westgate Mall terrorist incident. He
said tourist mini-buses were just racing past the viewing point,
rushing from one hotel to the next safari lodge with no stops
inbetween. They are afraid to stop in case terrorists are waiting in the bushes ! He was grateful we had .... and I had to buy a curio ! I'm a mug for a sob story !
Then down the escarpment to Naivasha, and on to Nakuru, We saw eland and zebra's and impala from the main road. I didn't know whether to wake Wendy up to ooo and ahhh at them, or to let her sleep, but the bumps kept her awake most of the time ! At Nakuru we stopped for the loo, and chips and samosa's. The loo was interesting ... lo-type, but the water tank above it for flushing had a small waterfall of water over-flowing, which when I squatted, flowed down over my backside ! I had four squares of loo roll which were somewhat inadequate to dry myself, so went into the cafe feeling decidedly damp !
Once past Nakuru, I had thought we would turn left towards Kericho (tea estates), but no, we turned towards Londiani. Paul said the road through Kericho was almost impassable so we were using the better road. Dear God ! In all the years I lived here and on subsequent visits, I have NEVER travelled a worse road ! The old tarmac had been removed, or would 'ploughed up' be a better description ? Then the 'new' road had been begun by Chinese engineers with ENORMOUS imported road building machinery. So why did it appear that the workmen were doing stretches of 500 yards new tarmac, and then moving on a few miles to do another 500 yards .... and then another gap. I was wondering if the new bits would actually join up !
So we bumped, swerved and swayed our way down the second escarpment onto the Kano plain, bouncing in our seats (at that point Jonathan pointed out that the oil light in the mini-bus has been on for at least two hours !) ... driving through the sugar cane plantations, and then finally the rice paddies. Wendy wasn't dozing at all on the last 100 miles !!
I had heard that the new road from Kisumu to Kericho was well on the way to completion ... ha ha !! As we entered Kisumu, going through Nyamasaria where the work-shop is, the road still had the appearance of a ploughed field ... and this is the main highway from Kisumu to all points east. It was strange that Paul's driver thought the road from Londiani to the west was a 'good' or 'better' road ! We had noted there were NO other cars on it, and only the occasional motor bike ... they must have been on some other road !! We can't go back to Nairobi on that road ... I'll have to investigate buses and the routes they take.
So we arrived after a gruelling eight hour drive. I was beginning to suspect poor Wendy thought she had been kidnapped by us, or was literally being taken for a ride ! Thank goodness Mill Hill House met with Jonathan and Wendy's approval ... on his last visit Jonathan had stayed at the YMCA, and discovered his room abutted the snake park at the museum, and just through his wall were black mamba's !!
Wendy at Mill Hill House ... she'd quite like her husband to buy her a house like this one !!
No comments:
Post a Comment