Hello again and welcome to our next installment. No pics I'm afraid as the connection is too slow.
Last Saturday we travelled by matatu (like a small minibus) up to Mombassa and stayed overnight which allowed for some valuable internet time in the afternoon and allowed me to post and set up the blog. It really is still very strange having no or very little contact after being so used to all day access when I was at work. On the Sunday, we were up at 6am for a bus to Tsavo West at 7am, which is a game park out the South Western end of the country bordering with Tanzania. We were staying in a small village called Kidong near the town of Taveta which is about 40kms from Kilimanjaro which dominates the skyline for miles, rising as a lone mountain from the surrounding bush to a height of 5895 metres. It would’ve been great to use some of the 5 ½ hours on the coach to Taveta to write some updated diary entries but when you’ve driven on the roads here you’d realise why that wasn’t possible.
As we left Mombassa we were on a dual carriageway for a while...well about 5 miles anyway. After that it went to single lane through a trucking stop, large goods areas and very hectic. So some bright spark had come up with the idea of sticking in speed bumps at random intervals to make the lorries etc slow down. Obviously at different intervals on each side of the road rather than all the way across. This meant rather than slow down for speed bumps, truckers simply swerve around them onto the other side of the road into the path of oncoming traffic, in this instance me on the bus! Now, I have been warned before that the driving over here is a little haphazard and after 2 weeks, I have some experience (particularly of driving in downtown Mombassa where, thankfully, due to volume of traffic the speeds are limited to no more than 20 mph). Also, after a week in Zanzibar I had some idea of the laissez-faire adherence to driving laws and, more worryingly, commonsense. But buses and lorries around here take it to a whole new level. I mean, if the lorry in front is going slower than you then by all means overtake....but please try and do it in the absence of oncoming traffic.
As far as Voi, which is about 3 hours from Mombassa, it was single lane traffic on fairly decent roads, which unfortunately meant more traffic, higher speeds and lots of overtaking. I fought the urge to sit bolt upright in my seat uttering panicked screams at every oncoming vehicle as we overtook lorry after lorry ...I thought the other passengers might object to this particularly as it might interrupt their blissful near catatonic ignorance of our impending death. Instead I bravely buried my head in my book and manfully whimpered quietly to myself. At Voi we then pulled onto another tarmac road, although I use the term very loosely because with more than 50% holes making up the surface it’s unfair to claim it’s actually tarmac really. Thankfully this ran out rather quickly and gave way to dirt road which ironically is actually more comfortable given the driver has fewer hard edged holes to swerve towards. No holes, but the road does form into this weird sort of cattle grid type effect which makes the whole bus vibrate. Locally known as the ‘African Massage’ (although don’t ask for this on the streets of Mombassa at night as you’ll get something quite different), this vibrating starts out fairly amusing, feels OK and, as long as you have an iPod, not too noisy, although it does feel like it might make the bus shake apart. After about an hour, however, your feet and bum have gone numb and the seat rubbing against your back starts to make it itch. Still, we were driving through a national park so the stunning scenery (true) and the cornucopia of wild animals (false) made for entertaining watching. We’d thought the journey from Mombassa to Taveta was around 7 hours, but in fact we did it in about 5 ½ hours which was a bonus. Taveta seemed like a pretty nice town, the usual bunch of blokes sitting about under a nearby tree watching the world go by and taking particular interest in the arrival of a bunch of crazy mzungus (means white/European in Ki-swahili), a few “Jambo’s”, all fairly good natured. From the bus we switched to another matatu which drove us out to the village of Kidong, about 12 kms outside of town which was to be home for the next week. Home itself as we pulled up looked to be a fairly substantial large round mud and thatch hut which had quite a nice spacious and solid look to it. Unfortunately that wasn’t where we were staying but was, in fact, the village Cultural Centre. Our home was to be 2 very small crumbling mud huts with holes in the thatch sitting forlornly in the corner of the field (aka small expanse of dust surrounded by prickly hedge). And when I say prickly I don’t mean little pansy thorns like you get in the UK...oh no, these bushes are covered in 3 inch long super sharp skin removal tools that could snag an oiled otter! Kate found this out much to her dismay as she skipped back to the bus from a toilet stop on our way to Voi, a thorn pierced through the bottom of her flip flop and deep into the underside of her foot leaving her with a toe still slightly swollen but thankfully very much on the mend now after a week of limping.
Back to our accommodation, between 8 of us the obvious split was for the two staff on the trip to have one to themselves and the other 6 of us to share one together...cosy! On the plus side the hut was shaped like a circle with a small square attached at the back. The square area was just about big enough for two roll mats and so Kate and I took this bit which was immediately nicknamed the ‘Honeymoon Suite’ by everyone else. It’s quite good fun setting up and making camp, something I don’t think I’ll ever tire of (hopefully), living a camp life is fun as well. Every task needs to be thought out a bit more to minimise waste of movement, effort and resources whilst at the same time with the slower pace of things you make each task that bit more involved and take your time over it. There’s no need to rush, in fact, quite the opposite so you enjoy something simple like hanging your mossie net just right, making your bed or even peeling veg for dinner with no running water and various other little challenges. Speaking of peeling veg Miriam, one of the local women, saw me peeling potatoes the last day we were there, I wasn’t even halfway through the first spud before she’d plucked it out of my hands with a chiding look and reprimanded me for peeling too wastefully. Admittedly, I’d been a bit cavalier about it but we had loads more than we needed for our last meal of the camp and I was short of time to get them done. Nonetheless, I realised that to waste anything like that was really wrong particularly in front of people who wouldn’t ever have enough to know what waste was. Miriam kindly showed me what a proper peel thickness was and so off we both started again. This time Emanuel, one of the local guys chipped in with how much better my peeling was (Awesome!) but painfully slow (Dammit!), you just can’t win. This light-hearted and friendly exchange meant a lot to me. This was the first time I’d felt an easy relaxed and fun conversation with some of the villagers and it felt great. Don’t get me wrong they’d been wonderfully welcoming all week but a bit of banter and a few jokes goes a long way.
Earlier in the week we’d met these guys for the first time and it was difficult at first. Conversation doesn’t flow so easily with English being their second or even third language. Some are much better than others but it will never cease to amaze me just how good many of them are, especially when you see the circumstances they live in and consider how often then get to practice their English. Even when we arrived in Taveta randoms would want to shout “Hello, how are you?”, even if they’re the only English words they know. People certainly like having a good stare at mzungus. We did a market day challenge on the Wednesday morning which involved trying to buy various items all for less than 50 shillings in total (about 50 pence), for example 3 bananas (10sh), a packet of gum (5sh) a chapatti (10sh) etc. Before the market we’d already been to Lake Challa that morning which is a stunning ring of rock, a volcanic crater which rises up from the surrounding ground. As you walk to the top of the slope you are greeted by the most beautiful view of this amazing lake which fills the crater inside. As we walked down the path in the steep wall to the clear water below it felt like exploring something in ‘The Land That Time Forgot’. An abandoned hotel on the crater edge added to this forgotten land feeling. So the story goes, in the mid 80s a guest from the hotel had been swimming in the lake when something attacked and killed him badly mutilating his body. Many locals believe there are crocodiles in the lake but I prefer to think it’s some long lost dinosaur cousin of Nessie living there, munching the odd fisherman when it gets the chance.
In the afternoon, we headed to Njoro Springs where you can see the fresh water bubbling up from the rocks at the edge of the spring. It drains straight from Kili so is amazingly clear and wonderfully cold. Diving into that water was the first time in 3 weeks that we’d felt clean, cool, dirt free and salt free and the picnic on the bank tasted all the better for it. In the evening we headed over to a local safari lodge for dinner and on the way I got my second safari encounter. The first had been on arrival in Kidong, as we exited the matatu someone spotted a few elephants (local pronunciation “elepants”) about 500 metres away shading under a tree. My excitement was slightly dampened by the distance and the vague brown shapes shuffling in the shade, brown because of the dust which gets EVERYWHERE! Never fear, I thought to myself, plenty more opportunities throughout the week to see more. Later that day a herd of about 50 or so were spotted, but again because of the thick green bush (it’s rainy season at present) and the distance they remained a tantalizingly vague blur even at full zoom on my super-smashing new lens. Back to that evening’s trip to the safari lodge and an elepant was spotted about 100 metres into the bush, cue a comedic bout of everyone directing the driver “Forward a bit...no back a bit...no forward a bit” etc, to get a good clear view of the half an ear and a shoulder blade through the trees. 10 minutes later I’d clocked up a bison head, got a great photo which I immediately deleted by accident! The lodge was right by a watering hole so we were promised loads of hippos and crocodiles...we saw one hippo in the rapidly failing light and the odd pair of eyes sneaking above water level. On the way home in the dark a baby elephant ran out in front of the matatu. I got a 5 second flash of its bum and ears before it ran panicked off into the bush.
No more elephants were spotted before we left. On the bus home to Mombassa other people spotted this and that out the sides of the bus until I was shaken from a doze with a cry of ‘giraffes!’ from Kate. What a stunning sight...errr all 3 seconds of it disappearing into a cloud of dust left by the bus as it barrelled past...Safari not so goody!
No doubt you’ll appreciate that due to overwhelming numbers of elephants in close proximity to us it was essential at night that we had a guard of local guys on nightwatch in the form of armed ascaris (lit. ‘Soldier’) to escort us the 100 metres to the toilets in the middle of the night. Quite what a bow and arrow was going to do against a rampaging bull elephant I’m not sure, but I’ve no doubt my blood curdling scream would’ve sent them running for the hills.
We met some great people in Kidong last week, some real characters and some good honest folk wanting to work hard to give up poaching and find other means of sustainable living. We’d all been really pleased with the progress we’d made on products, packaging and logo etc for their new enterprises. The elephant dung paper making was a particular success, boiling it up caused all manner of lame jokes about sh*t-stirring etc. And the local guys, once shown how to do it, became obsessed with outdoing each other to get the best ‘sheets’ fnarr fnarr. I really hope we get a chance to go back and revisit the small village of Kidong. They and the surrounding villages turned their back on poaching 10 years ago as a way of making ends meet and now they struggle everyday to survive. Notwithstanding that they are determined not to return to poaching and to make a success of their alternative means of making a living. Everything we do to help them makes a tangible difference and is a lot more satisfying than sending emails about terms in a lease.
Sorry for the long-winded one this week but I’ve had the time to draft it offline which was been great and other weeks I may not have the luxury so I thought I’d take advantage of it.
Until next week...enjoy the sunny weather I hear you’re having in the UK. It's currently chucking it down here!
Our 'bathroom' and showers...