journey day 7,8,9

Day 7

I am eating crepes and drinking chai, Somali style. Today I will rest. I look out my open door onto the dirt courtyard. There is a white hen that thinks this is her room. She waits at the door impatiently, she wants to enter but I deter her attempts, ‘shoo shoo’ over and over. A beautiful rooster still crows now and again even though it is well into the morning. He started long before dawn, about the same time the Mosque called out with its amplified voice for all the good people to begin their prayers.
The courtyard is big about 50’X85’. Rooms line two sides in an L shape, a gated wall and the back of the neighbor’s complex squares it off. In the center is a serrated metal structure, which houses the eskari and his family. Along one side is a five wire clothesline and in the corner is a large cement water tank, strategically placed to catch most of the runoff water from the roof. Buckets stand in the walkway where the gutter leaks.
This hen is persistent, she is getting more and more agitated with me, now she is bok bok boking very loudly in the doorway.
I am content with four yummy crepes in my belly. My chai is super sweet. Sugar cane is grown here… I have seen boys selling fresh stalks for chewing, in Narok. Kenya’s main agricultural export is tea and coffee and perhaps cotton, but many small farms grow maize, wheat, beans, onions and tomato for the populous consumption. That is what I am surviving on, chapattis (wheat) eggs with onions and tomatoes and sometimes beans with potatoes and goat meat….oh, and rice when I can get it.
Last night I slept soundly on grandma’s bed. The bedroom is 12’ x15’. There are two twin sized wooden beds painted black. Blue gingham covers the window and the pale yellow cement walls reveal the previous turquoise paint. Clothing filled suitcases are stacked on two small tables and a cabinet stands in the corner… a beaten old wooden armoire with some glass panels missing. It is empty so I put my stuff in it.
The door has a simple lock, we can slide the bolt shut from the inside. A Maasai guard kept an all night vigil from the courtyard. Three young girls slept in the bed next to me. When I fell asleep I thought there were two, but this morning I realize there are three. They slept head to foot, head to foot. They are sweet hard working Maasai girls that have been adopted by the Somali family. They practice their English with me and I learn a little Maasai. We giggle as one lifts the white hen out of its hiding place near the foot of their bed.
The Somalis do not use sur names like we do. They have a first name and use the father’s first name as their last name. Mohamed Jonis is father to Yosef Mohamed who is father to Daniel Yosef, etc.
I am stuffed on sumptuous food. Lunch is potatoes mixed in rice with goat meat and herbs, accompanied by chipattis and chai. For desert…. mandazis, the grease polishes my fingernails and makes them shine just from holding them.
I walk with Mustafa to the source of the village water. It is an amazing spring that bubbles out of the ground as a full-on river, the Kanunka River. There is a massive water conservation project happening here, to preserve the quality of the water and improve the way it is used. One of the many non-profit organizations in Kenya has ear tagged ten million Ksch to help fence the cows out, pipe clean water to the center and build long irrigation ditches along both sides of the river. A rock wall partially fences out the cows, not completely unfortunately, and rock lined ditches run a mile or so feeding the gardens along the way. This oasis looks like the perfect environment for monkeys, lush and green with vines hanging from giant trees, but there are no monkeys here for they invade the shambas. So they are beaten back into the hills
The local Maasai market is in progress here in Narosura. It happens every Wednesday. People come from all around to sell their honey, milk, used clothes, beads, beans, fruit and veggies. It is nothing like the ‘Maasai market in Nairobi, no trinkets or carvings. I buy some oranges and look on as the cow and goat bells are sold. The herdsmen squat next to a blanket piled high with hand hammered steel bells that have rebar ringers. They come in many different sizes. They ring one after another, over and over again. It sounds awesome, all the different pitches and tones, like a symphony of clanging bells and symbols. I want to buy one for my bike.

Every person here is decked out in the most amazing array of colors and beadwork. The earlobe decor is the most fascinating to me. They slice their ears just above the earlobe and pack it with mud and herbs until it heals. I have seen some young woman with huge swaths of cloth stuck in the slit to enlarge it. The slice is so long that the lobe can be folded up and over the top of the ear, …making it very hard to hear I imagine. I have seen some young men sporting this fashion. This long loop is usually decorated with rings of colorful beads and or shiny metal chain and charms. Every man woman and child wears bracelets, anklets, necklaces and ear jewels, no two the same. It is really an incredible sight… so much color moving through a dusty monotone town.
Rain comes early and the lively market is abandoned, washed out, leaving only the empty stalls to remind us that the bartering ever took place. Crowds of people stand under the eves of the buildings watching rivulets of water pour from the rooftops, smoking, chattering, and visiting until dark. Then everyone disappears and the town sleeps….as do I.

Day 8

Namelok Putwai… the hospital administrator at the Entasekera missionary hospital in the Loita hills. Originally from Scotland, or the UK as she puts it, she has now immigrated to the Maasai lands of Kenya. Namelok means sweet thing in Maasai, but you can call her Barbara if you’d like, that is her old name. Alisha Putwai, her husband a native Kenyan Maasai, didn’t speak English when they first met. They live in a small slope stone house in the mission hospital compound. She is 58 and he is thirty-six. They are happy together. She feels lucky, he is so sweet to her and only wants one wife…. which is unusual for his tribe. Together they learn from each other and love onr another in this remote African wilderness
I never thought to offer her money for her hospitality, it probably would have been awkward if I had. Two things I expect from a fellow mzungu, a warm shower and a free camping spot, I get both and much more.

This morning I leave Narosura and begin the last leg of my bike ride back to Nairobi.
I decide to try an isolated route to the South, a faded dotted line on my map, not passable by car but surly by bike?!?! When I reach Magadi I will catch a matatu to into the city…Nairobi.
It rained hard last night. I left my bike under the roof runoff, it was washed fairly clean. This morning I finish it with my bandana and WD40. Kinsi cooks crepes squatting over the open fire jiko using a half full flour bag as a weighted spatula to spin them. We talk. Her sisters will be moving to Nairobi on Saturday, back to school. Kinsi will stay another month, until her mother returns. Her mother has gone to a hospital in Nairobi with the youngest sister, Shukri, who has a serious problem with her leg since birth. Kinsi is the eldest, she runs the store and huge household with ease and charm. She is studying social service at a university in Nairobi.
It is warm and smells good in the kitchen room. Kinsi wants me to ride the matatu back to Nairobi. We talk about how people project their own desires and discomforts onto others. I tell her I want to ride my bike and would be miserable on the bus, she tells me she would rather take the bus and would be miserable in the rain on a bicycle. “I worry you will catch a cold” …. I smile, it is never less than 70 degrees here, even during the rain.
One more stop before I hit the road. I want to buy some chapattis for the road, five should do I should be in Nairobi in two days. Unfortunately none are to be found, everyone wiped out from yesterdays big market day. I buy six mendazis instead. Five oranges, seven tangerines, two avocadoes, three tomatoes 12 small bags of goober peas….. I feel like the kid in my father’s dragon, twelve sticks of gum, seven brightly colored ribbons. Well at least …I am full now, well fed by my Somali friends. I am off.
Within the first three kilometers I bog down in the thick mud. Unable to even push my bike due to the sticky clay that accumulates over the tires. An hour ticks by as I scrape, wash, push… scrape, wash, push. I young Maasai helps while shaking his head and making the soft clicking sound with his tongue and the ‘eye eye eye’ that they all use when expressing challenge or difficulty. Finally we get to a river crossing and give it a thorough washing. I am off again.
Thankfully the roads dry out a bit. I ride through a flat valley, south. I meet the orange lady and several other Maasai walking home after their market day experience. I walk with an old man and his young grandson. They are talking so sweetly. I communicate in universal sign language. I tell them about my journey so far…. not in great detail, but some basics.
We see baboons on the road as it begins to wind up a 3km hill onto the escarpment. They direct me onto a footpath that branches to the left. I hestitate, they convince me with maps drawn in the dust with a stick. I follow. Soon it becomes steep, too steep and rocky to be accomplished with my heavily loaded bike. I show my doubts, the young boy pushes from behind. We struggle more and more. My body is drenched in sweat my heart is pounding every inch is hard won. I am worried. This path seems so far from the road, I can see the road across a wide gully. I wonder if this is just the trail to their home and they are just wanting me to join them for a visit. I trust them further and we continue the fight for another half hour. As we near the top the road appears…. oh, a ‘short cut’ I say out loud. “A short cut” the boy repeats. I later find out that this particular section of road is known for highway robbers. I wonder if they were protecting me. I bid them adieu and I start a long descent into a very wet swampy green valley.
The road is hard to follow because it splits a million times and ways to avoid colossal mud holes and foot deep puddles and it often turns into just grass, very very wet grass. Sometimes I am splashing through six inches of water. I eventually realize that all roads lead to Rome, and just keep heading downhill. More and more herds of goat, sheep and cow…wildebeest, zebra and gazelle. Open grassland.
I loose the road. Have to traverse the valley, watching out for buffalo in the trees to regain it. The water gets worse and I am pushing my bike through watery mud up to my knees, mile after mile. I wonder if leaches live here. I disconnect my brakes my pants are rolled up to my thighs, I almost loose my flip-flops to the sucking mud. A memory enters my day dreams.Visions of that fateful day in 1962 when a returned home with one foot in a mud covered boot and the other in a slimey sock. My beloved cowboy boot sucked off my foot by the sticky, hoof turn muck in the cow pasture behind myparents home.
SLOW GOING.
I meet a Maasai safari guide and ask directions, to Magadi. Slow is the conversation for first I must convince him that I am capable of traveling alone through the wild bush of Africa. No women he knows would ever think of doing what I am proposing, for that matter no well minded man. He says there is a way, it is possible for he has done it with donkeys. But he believes it will be next to impossible with a bike. He gives me his hopeful ‘guide’ pitch.
“I will guide you there if you wish.”
“I have no money and you have no bike. We are not a good match” I tell him.
“I will not forget you woman, please write me if you make it”… PO box 148 Narok. I am off.
I see something. Something out of place on a grassy knoll…. what is it? Oh how weird, soccer goal posts! Flimsy metal goal posts in the middle of nowhere with a few zebra grazing near them. Wow.
I enter brushy rolling hills. The riding is glorious. Huge clear elephant tracks alongside buffalo prints fill the road. They must have walked here during the rain this morning.
Damn that Nairobi bike mechanic for fixing my bell. I ring it with my thumb over and over again…. I am reminded of West Hollywood. Ringing my bell through the quiet tree lined streets of West Hollywood. I feel a pang of sadness.
I ride through lush green Maasai farms. Maize leafs rise well above my head the road is lined with dark green flowering hedges. The red clay bomas contrasts against the dark lushness. So fricken beautiful! Such a view, the sky is deep blue with massive white cumulous clouds. The road winds up and around and through the rolling hills. These hills could be the green oak filled hills of my childhood in California… this could be the Dickenson trail. Those could be squirrels, but they’re not …they are monkeys! Life is so weird. I use to pretend the squirrels were monkeys now my mind assumes the monkeys are squirrels.
It is getting late. The rain has begun. I ride over creeks and roads washed out from watershed streamlets. I am headed to Entsekera and the ‘mission’ that Kinsi’s uncle Ahziz told me about. I find it on a steep hill, I am so tired… my bike doubles in weight each evening. I ask for the muzungu and meet Namelok Putwai.
She is in her humble stone house with Jess her fat, spotted mutt puppy. We share a cup of chai and she offers me lodging. An empty quarters within the compound, it has solar hot water shower and lights. She has no food to share but we enjoy the chai and an evening of conversation by the fire. She says she will inquire about directions to my destination in the morning.
We talk about the patients in her hospital: five rabies victims, all bitten by the same rabid dog, two toddlers dying of malnutrition, and the buffalo-goring victim who has been sent to Narok.
We talk about the buffalo.
“They are here …I know it from the poor victims that come in. They are here in the tree lined gullies. They are tricky. They hide from you and wait in ambush, goring you in the stomach or thighs and tossing you over their head. In the four years that I have been here I have never seen one, but I know they are here”
There is cholera, malaria, dysentery and typhoid to contend with here. She has suffered through typhoid herself…Alisha makes her drink bottled water now. The doctor has gone to Europe for a month, Namelok is a registered nurse and has worked as a surgical assistant, but was hired here as the hospital administrator. She has not been outside of Entasekera since a trip to Nairobi in February…. it is now May. She is the first white person I have seen in my three weeks of travel.
On the way back to my cabin I think about the leopard that stalks this neighborhood... at home I would be thinking about the mountain lion that stalk my neighborhood. I sleep on a simple cot and listen to the Colobus monkeys outside my window.



Day 9

No cell network, no landlines, no electricity for days, yet I get high speed satellite Internet this special morning. Although I do have to wait until 10:00 for the solar panels to kick in. I shoot off a few ‘I am alive’ emails with not much info for I don’t know much right now. All I know is I am headed towards Lake Magadi and then Nairobi.
Namelok gives me a tour of the hospital. It is a formidable size cement building with offices and different wards for children and adults. The weirdest thing is that, there is hardly anything in this impressive building. I go to use the computer and the wall adaptor doesn’t work. Some one has taped it to the wall, spent some time doing it too. But it still only works sporadically. I finally take the initiative to untape it and inspect the damage. One of the prongs is broken off in the wall and the adapter is charred where the electricity has been arching between the two. Oh boy, high tech all right.
‘Isn’t there a different adapter we can use’?
Oh yea and life goes on...
She shows me her theatrical staging area. Gotchya there, just like she got me… this theater is for surgery! Funny thing about it is the way she walks effortlessly over the cow pies hidden amid the piles of lumber. She tells me where the protective lead walls will be and how she doesn’t think they should have a complete x-ray lab before they have beds for the patients. The eskari has been using the half finished building as a barn to keep the calves safe from the leopard that prowls at night. Namelok shakes her head and mutters under her breathe ‘This has got to stop, I’ll have to talk with him today.’
I meet David a real Maasai guide very knowledgeable. He knows about the way I have chosen. He is skeptical. We talk about other routes, easier routes that lay far behind me at this point. Oh well. He writes a note to his friend Olenkuo who lives in Mausa, one of the villages in my list of landmarks. ‘Please take care of this girl’ more or less. Thank you, Daniel.
Many small hills, they seem to be endless. My destination for the day, Mausa. Right now I think I am technically in Tanzania, I must turn north again and then east.
The Maasai especially the children are mesmerized by my presence. I hear the cry ‘olashunpai’ from far away and see them running from the fields. These people just come to stare and giggle a bit. They do not ask for ‘treats’ or say anything in English, they just stare and smile. When I stop the younger boys, less than ten yrs old, bow their heads forward for me to touch, a gesture of respect like hand shaking. I am the first mzungu some of these children have ever seen. It is so remote here. The villages are self sufficient.
I feel tired so very tired. Village after village, the day goes on and on. I climb gradually out of and endless green valley, into wilderness. It is late the stars begin to appear. One last struggle up a seemingly vertical hill.
I camp atop a cliff that looks out over the valley I have just conquered. Raw beauty does not comfort me tonight… I am drained. I fight with the wind and my tent. I set up on a rock slab under an acacia tree. It rains hard into the night. I am so tired I fall asleep filthy without changing my clothes and pray my tent stays tethered. I am plagued with nightmares and a tiny persistent voice saying ‘is your passport safe…. where is your passport’ oh god I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing it for a few days. I wake up and search by headlamp for it. Gone…. I can’t find it anywhere. I take everything out of my bags. Oh I wish I had hidden it like my intuitive voice had told me to. What am I going to do? Where could it be? Who could have taken it? I fall back to sleep even more rundown and wait for a new day.