The Transformation

28th January - 10th February Days 121-134 Selected short stories from Nairobi, Kenya

Somewhat disorientated after the loss of our truck, we hopped into a taxi which Abdirazak had commandeered for us (whose driver, it turned out, had worked in the same petrol station as our esteemed driver many years ago) and we headed off towards the suburb of Gigiri, where Tom lived. Tom is a colleague of my dad who lives in Nairobi and kindly said he could put us up while we were in Nairobi. “Get yourselves to the Village Market in Gigiri” he'd texted us while we were on the truck. “It's close to where I live, and I'll come to pick you up.” We did as we were told and as we pulled into the carpark, we looked around and realised that we hadn't been this far out of place for many a month.

Our skin, hair, clothes and backpacks were coated in 3 days-worth of Northern Kenyan dust, our eyes were red from lack of sleep, our ragged clothes and flip flops compared sharply with the suits and shiny shoes of just about everyone else was wearing (aside from the kids from the German school over the road – they were discreetly decked out in designer clothes). We got looks (mainly from the Kenyans) that bordered on the incredulous – I started thinking that, given the appearance of the wazungu (for that's what we are these days, having surrendered our faranji status in Moyale) around us, they had maybe never seen (nor probably smelt) any white kids in such a state as we were. M headed straight for the bathroom to clean herself up but fortunately at least one of us had our priorities straight – I headed off to get a pizza and a beer. Meeting the inquisitive look of the girl behind the bar, I gave her a 2-sentence run down of our last 51 hours and, aside from surprise at the length of our trip, the incredulity turned to understanding. Maybe I should have made myself a sandwich board? I sat, feeling slightly conspicuous, waiting for my pizza. M came back in a clean shirt, which at least gave us a veneer of respectability. At least our filth had an advantage – while it gained us a lot of attention in the Village Market's Food Court, it also meant that Tom could just follow his nose and he found us with ease and joined us for a beer. Like any good Belgian, Tom appreciates good beer and we drank and chatted for several hours before heading back to his house for a long-awaited shower. As I waited for the water to warm, I thought back to Dongola where I had had a shower for the first time in many days. The transformation this time would be quite similar, and I spent as much time cleaning the bathtub after I was done as I did cleaning myself.

Indeed my feathered friend - even the windows are clean in this part of Nairobi

Our new surroundings were spectacular – water that became warm when you wanted it to, a TV which had many channels in languages we can understand, an oven (I was a cook in a former life but hadn't cooked anything since September), a washing machine, a garden, clean sheets. Gone were the cockroaches and in their place zipping around on the walls were the rather more charming geckos. Tom's welcome was as warm as his beers were cold, and it was hard not to feel comfortable here.

26th-28th January – Days 119-121 – Moyale to Nairobi, Kenya


Another day, another adventure. In a by now familiar action, we woke up earlier than we really would have wanted and tottered down to the large dusty area where the trucks congregate, got an appalling rate for the Ethiopian Birr that we had left, and ended up being approached by the usual bus station hangers-on. In a new country, somewhere without any buses, we felt more inclined to follow this guy and he wrote us a ticket to Nairobi in exchange for 2000 shillings. He took us to a truck and that was that. Or was it...? He came back a few minutes later. “There's a problem with this one – no more space left in the cab. You'll have to sit on the top.” Normally this would have been alright but we'd hardly slept in 4 nights and “on the top” in this case meant balancing ourselves on small metal bars, tottering above the truck's shipment of longhorn cows headed for Nairobi slaughterhouses. Images of ourselves falling asleep, falling off the bars and impaling ourselves on the horns of angry bovines led us to turn down this ride and ask if there was anything else. “There's this one” the guy said. “It goes through Wajir and Garissa though”. This large empty slab which comprised Northeastern Kenya was one we knew absolutely nothing about aside from that it was absolutely infested with bandits. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe it was a determination not to spend another night in Moyale or maybe it was simply the second manifestation of a magnetic attraction to Somalia, but we agreed, and hopped on.

"Meet the neighbours!"

Smooth, isn't it?

We shared the truck (taking a shipment of 200 sacks of beans) with several interesting and friendly characters – Abdirazak, who didn't speak a word of English but tried to communicate with us anyway, was the driver. He was a skinny, softly spoken guy, the complete opposite of everything you would expect of a trans-African trucker, and hopped into the cab at Moyale with an anti-breast-cancer shirt proclaiming “SUPPORT MY RACK” in bright pink lettering. A good start. In the back of the truck was a guy who always did his running around but whose identity we never managed to determine. A secondary school kid heading to Nairobi, Jabar, shared the cab with us as did another guy who claimed to be South African but also claimed to be the driver's nephew. We never found out which was more accurate or, as we realised afterwards, what his name was. In any case, he was friendly and talkative, spoke near-fluent English and was our main point of communication to translate to the others. Despite communication being slow and occasionally not very smooth it was a fun ride in a friendly atmosphere.

The termite mounds give us the finger

As we set off from Moyale though, we had no idea what was coming to us. We were told by Jabar that the bandits weren't in this area any more, but this was the first time we'd heard that. In any case, by the time we'd started really thinking about it, it was too late – we were going to enjoy this trip! The landscape was greener than I'd expected, the pace was slow but steady, the truck's radio blasted out pop songs in Borana, a Kenyan language related to Oromo in Ethiopia. The truck quickly started feeling like home and we knew we would have to make it that – no one could tell us how long the trip would be, but a quick look at the map, the rugged roads and the rickety truck made it seem obvious that we would be there for more than a few hours. Our Lonely Planet book quickly became hot property as anyone who saw it would grab it and read it – including Abdirazak, who would read it while he was driving. Jabar eventually got hold of it, saw the giraffes on the front cover and told us that we could see some around Wajir. A surprise for us, but our eyes were open for them nonetheless. As the cheery and catchy Borana pop played, the sun went down, and a couple of giraffe silhouettes appeared in the bushes by the road, the first M had seen in the wild and an exciting moment for her.

Is it a Rothschilds? Is it a Maasai? No, it's a Reticulated!

Traffic was pretty light on the road – the odd truck would come the other way at the same snail's pace as us, kicking up dust that would fly in through our windows, caking our clothes and hair with that now familiar feeling. The drivers would beep their horns excitedly, wave out the window and drive on. Around 10pm, our momentum was broken as a truck coming the other way had broken down between two trees, and our path was blocked. The driver's guy in the back hopped off and gesticulated with his torch as we reversed, and then tried to go through the sand and bushes onto an adjacent track. The first attempt led us straight towards a tree and we reversed to try again. M wasn't impressed as she looked out - “look at that sand, it's far too deep... we'll never get through!” and so it proved. The next hour and a half were spent shovelling sand out from under the tyres and ripping branches off trees to use as ladders. After countless unsuccessful efforts and with a big cheer, we finally got out, onto the other path, and continued on our way. A few more giraffes and an aardwolf crossed our path, M and I started being able to sing along to the Borana pop.

Nightlife, northeastern Kenya

Wajir, our first “major” town (meaning our first one with permanent buildings) came into view at around midnight, and we hopped out to buy some welcome cold drinks and snacks. It was a pretty unremarkable town aside from its seemingly high ratio of people who, in most other countries, would be in asylums. They walked around, proclaiming things loudly to no one in particular and muttering to themselves. In the middle of it all, the woman who ran the shop where we picked up some biscuits told us that she was active in UNIFEM and had been to New York for conferences. She wasn't exactly the kind of person I expected to find in Wajir. Having stacked up, we charged on, and sleep came over us. Abdirazak had munched miraa (the Kenyan word for qat) all day although by 3am he decided that it was enough and pulled over in a small village. I was already half asleep and spent the night curled up in the truck's passenger seat as M snoozed on the bed behind me.

Abdirazak checks up which National Park he should visit next

A few hours later we were up and off again – the sun was up but it was a typical winter desert morning, and I shivered against the cold. As the sun rose and the air warmed, I started hoping that we wouldn't arrive in Nairobi that day. Not that I wasn't excited by getting there, but the landscapes were beautiful and stimulating, the atmosphere was good, there were enough animals to keep our eyes scanning the horizon and we felt ever more comfortable on “our” truck.

Red dust!

We stopped at 7am for breakfast in Habasweyne but sleep was a more tempting option for me and I didn't get off, while M was still asleep in her bed. We trundled on again through small villages, making small talk sometimes, joking with Abdirazak about his lack of miraa and trying (and generally succeeding) to joke with the police at checkpoints at each town or village. As time went on it became obvious we would be spending another night on the truck and we settled in and made ourselves comfortable. Sometime mid-afternoon we got to an intersection – to the left was wilderness, Liboi and Mogadishu. To the right, the tarmac road to Garissa. A few jokes went up about taking us to Mogadishu and, after 30 hours rattling along corrugated roads and bouncing through dry mud potholes, the truck hauled itself onto the tarmac. The effect of the new flatness and quietness was quite strange.

From here on the trip wasn't quite as wild as it had been before we hit the tarmac but we finally saw a populated part of Kenya – Garissa was a reasonably big town and we stopped there for lunch, and such features as rivers and bridges suddenly appeared. Truck stops with other trucks in it also appeared and as darkness fell we stopped at one of those, and met some of the other truckers. One of them was spending the night there as he felt there was too much of a threat on the road ahead that his shipment of goats would get hijacked at night. We were invited for a cup of tea and as we stood up to pay, we were told that someone had already paid for us. We never found out who it was. Another 7 hours on the truck, and we pulled over at a petrol station near Thika for 3 hours of sleep. How Abdirazak managed this amazing pace with so little sleep (and miraa only on the first day!) I don't know, but he managed it without any problems. Dawn came and we pulled on into a warehouse in Thika where our shipment of beans was unloaded. After waiting for a few hours for the truck's new instructions, we pushed on to Nairobi where the guys would pick up a new shipment and leave immediately for Mombasa. Amazing...

The cargo is unloaded

After 51 hours of sitting, having a rest is a tempting option

Kenya so far seems a beautiful, dynamic country, and different in many many ways from Ethiopia. It also seems more easy going and relaxed and, despite Nairobi's terrible reputation for crime, it seems as though we're almost anonymous here in Kenya compared with the incessant attention and demands for money in Ethiopia. What is also different is the raging corruption we've seen on the way down – we didn't see anything of the sort in Ethiopia although the police checkpoints after Garissa seemed set up only to collect some cash for those manning it. Some would try to invent reasons for the fines they were dishing out but many also just opened the door and stared at Abdirazak, their demands obvious enough. I asked his nephew why he paid up so easily. “If he doesn't, they will take him to the police station, things will be more difficult and he will have to pay anyway” was the reply. They weren't happy with the situation but seems resigned to the situation and played along with it.

It was long and bumpy but it was also eye opening, beautiful and a great introduction to Kenya and I'd have loved to be back in Moyale to do it all again. There was no time to think about that though – we were now suddenly in one of Africa's big cities, one of the economic centres of the continent and suddenly somewhere very new and different.

Behind bars

24th-25th January – Days 117-118 – Lake Langano, Ethiopia to Moyale, Kenya

We got onto the first bus that drove past us on its way to Awasa via Shashemene, the Rastafari capital of Ethiopia which we had decided to skip but which we had to use as our transport hub like pretty much everyone wanting to move around in Southern Ethiopia does. At Shashemene bus station we swapped onto another bus going to Dila – we also had to skip Arba Minch, Konso and the Omo valley and head straight down south on the map due to time pressure - where we arrived just before sunset. Dila is your classic one street town with no attractions but a nice air to it, especially in the evening light. Sadly no picture though, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

We found a nice pension recommended to us by a professor of something at Dila University who rode on the same bus with us. We trekked down the street for some injera with bozena shiro (chick pea and meat stew) in double portions, as this was possibly the last time in a while that we'd get Ethiopian food. Based on what I'd heard from fellow travellers, I was also intimidated enough about the coffee in Kenya being of the instant, watery variation that I ended my meal with a double espresso at 11pm. I paid the price for this by not sleeping until I got on the bus towards Moyale the next morning at 6am, but I wouldn't say I regretted it one bit. You can take the girl out of Finland, and so on...

Happily the crowded bus bounced on and passed by gradually more arid landscapes, and we reached Moyale on the Ethiopian side around 4pm. We still had enough time to cross the border as the posts closed at 6pm, so we decided to hop onto the Kenyan side straight away, even if advised against by people telling us that the Ethiopian side of the town was nicer. We ignored this advice as we were eager to shake the Ethiopian dust off ourselves and embark on something new as soon as possible, and also to make sure we would catch some form of transport onwards first thing in the morning. Besides, the people advising us were Ethiopian anyway.

The process at both border posts was quick and easy, and we were the new owners of Kenyan visas (US$25 a piece for three months) within half an hour. On the Kenyan side of the border things definitely seemed to roll on at a slower, calmer pace. Buildings looked slightly more shabby and there were fewer signs for hotels and restaurants. There were also fewer people on the streets, and they generally behaved in a more polite and tranquil manner than what we had encountered in Ethiopia. We spotted a sign for a KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service) campsite right after crossing the border and were considering camping again, but were persuaded to go for a hotel instead by a man called Stephen who we met at a street-side shop while having a drink to ponder our options. Stephen hinted that camping might not be very safe unless we asked to put up our tent at the police station. Whether he meant to say this was because of the lions and hyenas that apparently were found at the outskirts of town from time to time (believe it who will) or the local shady characters, we were not too sure, but let him take us to the cheap and less-so cheery Hotel Mediina in any case. We quickly felt the increase in price level compared with Ethiopia as we paid Ksh 400, or the equivalent 100 birr as we didn't have any Kenyan shillings yet, for a room with no lights and a possibility for a bucket shower in the dark. In Ethiopia the price for a similar room with lights would usually be around half the price. The power cut was perhaps timed to show the place in a better light (mind the pun), as the lack of lights meant we couldn't see the cockroaches running around on the floor unless our flashlights brushed by them by accident.

Stephen was an engineer working on a project setting up a new bank branch in Moyale. We met him again a bit later on at the Prison Canteen, what he had titled as the place to be in the evenings in Moyale. This ex-prison converted bar-restaurant turned out to be a rather lively place despite the trouble we had finding it – either it was due to the power cut again or everything in Moyale just is badly lit. The evening stretched onto wee hours as we enjoyed our first taste of ugali (the staple food in Kenya, a porridge like thing usually made of cassava) with some meat sauce and what could be described as very similar to the concept of “green groceries” used in SE Asia, and quite a few rounds of Tuskers while conversing with Stephen about Kenya, wuzungus and Europe. Like so many times before, we ended up having to convince him about life not being all that glorious in Europe. “No, you won't find money lying on the streets everywhere. No, it is not true that there is no unemployment in Europe. Yes, wuzungus get sick too.”

We certainly do, especially if we've had a bit too much to drink and have to get up early the next morning. This time we narrowly escaped with just a mild headache each and a zillion itchy pimples for me from whatever crawled out from the bed at night and had a blood feast on my back. We really have to start carrying one of those big bastard sprays of “KILL-ALL” from now on. Welcome to Kenya – the promised land of wildlife.

The Lakeside Lounge

22nd-24th January - Days 115-117 – Addis Ababa to Lake Langano, Ethiopia

Having already spent one extra week in Hargeisa with no aim or gain because of T's bugs, facing another one of the same old same old in Addis not long after that nearly put me on a permanent hibernation mode. I noticed this while ignorantly spinning the spoon in my coffee cup one grim afternoon in some average Addis restaurant off Bole Rd: I had started developing a case of travel blues of some sort. I was eager to move on but was being held back with the result of feeling frustrated yet indifferent about what would happen next. We both had been wading through our days lately to such extent that it even made me doubt if we still even had it in us to go on, to get on that next bus and take on the fight about the price again, to find that next place to stay for the night or to even decide where to stop next and what to see there.

I should have known better of course – that both me and T would bounce back on track as soon as we actually got on that next bus. It didn't need much more than the loudspeakers blasting out those, by now very familiar, Ethiopian tunes and the guy on the bus shouting “Awasa, Mombasa!!” to lure more passengers in while the bus drove around the same block for about 10 times before being full enough to leave, and we were already smiling wide and shaking our heads at whatever would come next.

On the way down to the Kenyan border we'd decided to make stops at Lake Langano and the town of Dila. At Lake Langano the bus dropped us off at the turn-off to the hotel that we had chosen to crash at. Before we could start the 3km hike to the beach front resort, we had to deal with Mr. Moneybags from the bus who proved to be the most outrageous one of his breed we've met so far. Knowing far well that people don't usually pay for their bags on buses in Ethiopia, these guys play the habesha vs. faranji game every single time, coming up with a various array of reasons why we should dish out cash for our luggage. We then always play the insisting game back at them, as you do, with a various array of explanations as to why we certainly disagree and refuse to pay. All of this interplay is usually decorated with smiles and insinuating gestures from both sides as each wants to keep things within the range of some manners at least. Most times it ends to our benefit but sometimes we also find ourselves paying something nominal to escape the dead-end debate. This time, however, the guy on the bus exceeded all our expectations and just started mouthing at T in what sounded exactly as reads: “GIVE ME THE MONEY!!!!” This was followed by some to-be-taken-as-a-threat lowering of sunglasses to increase the authority effect. Us and the rest of the people on the bus found all this very perplexing yet amusing at the same time, and T casually ignored the guy's demands and kept insisting back in his usual way. The guy was determined enough to start annoying me, though, so after a while I interfered in the money business (usually left for T to handle) in a rather abrupt way and declared: “Listen Mr., you should have thought about that before you gave the bags back to us, shouldn't ya? Now, I happen to be the purse so it's no use you talking to him (T), and I'm not giving you a penny. Sorry...no can do” A smile and a shrug later everyone else around us was laughing out loud, but I had clearly ruined someone's day. Mr. Moneybags stormed back into the bus and urged it off along its way within seconds. We then walked off towards the lake and at half-way got picked up by some local filmmakers who had come here for a party weekend from Addis.

Generic Scenery Picture #2375902543

Lake Langano sure is a suitable place for exactly what the filmmakers had come there for: blasting out music at the picturesque lakeside camping area until 6am while drinking your own booze brought from home. This would have been all fun and games for us as well, if it wasn't for that we were camping at the same said camping area and on a schedule to move on after all our uselessness and extra time spent in Hargeisa and Addis. We had planned to pitch up our new tent (ex-courtesy of Cole, and christened as “St. George” to pay tribute both to Cole's resemblance to George Michael and to the Ethiopian beer called St.Giorgis that we all merrily consumed together on several occasions), just take it easy for a couple of nights, check the nearby Lake Abiata-Shala National Park in between and continue on the next bus down to Dila. The plan, however modest we'd tried to make it this time, yet again didn't hold as we didn't get to sleep until 6am on the first night thanks to the noise - “Tonight's gonna be a good niiight....” indeed.

And then there were three : St. George joins the gang

Upon waking up we found a surprise package at the door of our tent. The day before we had received help from a German gentleman, Werner, while putting up . We later also had a beverage or two with him and some other member of his group and exchanged our travel stories. Now this friendly soul had left us a small towel and a note with some cash wrapped inside, wishing us a good journey onwards and expressing the willingness to help us a bit just as he had been helped by others when he had been young and traveling the world. Needless to say, we were utterly taken aback by his gesture. Even under the threat that this blog turns into a long list of thanks to all the friendly faces we've met along the way, we still want to say thank you very much Werner and if you ever plan to visit Finland again, give us a shout and we'll take you for some of that bad Finnish beer if we happen to be around! :)

Knackered as we were, we weren't capable of much more than lounging on the grass by the lake for the day. Even the cows that grazed at the campsite moved around more per hour than we did. T scouted some more birds to photograph and send to his old man, and I focused on burning my shoulders. How I managed to burn only my shoulders while wearing a bikini is still a mystery. One of the birds turned out to be an endemic rarity (the black-winged lovebird, I was later told), so all in all we did accomplish something on that day. The evening was spent debating over the prospects of the African tourism industry and discussing future plans over some St. Giorgis – should we take on Turkmenistan or the trans-Siberian Express after our Africa leg?

Don't have a cow, man - it's an Ethiopian beach holiday

Another noisy night (I got to sleep at 3am at least!) and another tired morning followed. Around noon we finally packed up St. George and started walking back to the main road to catch a bus down south. My shoulders, burnt and stiff from sleeping on the ground, gave in after 50m so we stopped at the first kiosk down the road to buy some Pepsi. Some guy waved down a van driving past and urged us onto it saying we'd get a lift to the crossing. Once in the van, we fell into a disagreement over the compensation for the 3km (or now 2950m) ride. Opportunistically we had hoped for a freebie and just as opportunistically the guys hoped for 50birr, a sum equal to what we had paid for the 3hr bus ride to the lake from Addis in the first place. “This is the countryside, different price!” After yet another debate we gave the guy a 10birr note more out of sympathy than anything which he then proceeded to rip in half in front of our faces. I started counting the seconds to getting out of Ethiopia.

Just when we were looking forward to a spot of slaughtering...