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 NairobiOur 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.
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