Part two: Journey through Kenya

Day 1

I’ve been in Nairobi for three days eating, resting and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. My bike is in the shop. News of my belongings being found has influenced my route to Arusha. I will make my way back to Narok, pick up my stuff and then take the less trodden path through the Loita Hills. Perhaps I will back pack there for a few days as well. It is toted as being the last real wilderness in Kenya.
Now I will attempt to describe the indescribable…. I know I will fail…. I think you will just have to come here to truly understand. It is the road between Narok and Nairobi. No I really shouldn’t call it a ‘road’, it is the way to Nairobi from this crazy town of Narok.

The new tarmac road that has carried us for 38km suddenly stops. We slow down abruptly as if there is a speed bump ahead. The truck lowers itself carefully off the pavement . Potholes appear like an exploded mine field across the entire space, we weave from side to side avoiding other vehicles, still moving slowly.
As we leave town we increase speed and head down a grade, it is raining quite hard, the windshield wipers click at a rapid pace. We veer off the center route, onto a dirt track that has been created on the left shoulder. The car tilts at twenty degree slope to the left. No one is driving on the center “road” for it is a continuous series of car eating holes. Suddenly there is a car head-on, we swerve across the “road”, to a similar dirt track on the right shoulder. We are now at a twenty degree tilt to the right.
We have increased our speed to one that, I feel, is compromising our safety. Muddy water spews heavily down the hillside and over the road’s embankment, like mini waterfalls plunging into a large creek which is really a deep crevasse along the “road’s” shoulders…. another slippery obstacle.
The tracks we are following are riddled with potholes similar to Jackass Flats at its worst, we avoid them jerkily. It also winds here and there constantly threatening to end. On-coming cars are regularly avoided but sometimes throw us into pot holes the size of our truck. Still no one drives on the ‘road’. OK I’ll admit it I’m scared for at least an hour.
Finally we hit a hideously torn-up tarmac road, but in comparison to what we just left it seems great. It is a large government project started five years ago, I am told.
The rain lets up as we pass through a mile-wide flying termite crossing. The dead bugs leave a thick film of fat greased across the windshield. This, combined with the rainwater and windshield wipers, create a white barrier that blocks our vision completely… we stop. Yosuf says that is why the natives eat the termites… the fat.
Hence my description…. as I read this over and feel I have indeed failed, it is really much, much worse.

It takes a whole day to drive the hundred and twenty miles to and from Narok. I check into the Chambai hotel and try to call Mohamed and Gabriel Matata, the police officer. No one answers. I later find out that they were sitting in court all day and when Mohamed’s phone rang out in the quiet, it was confiscated for a week. Poor Mohamed I seem to bring him nothing but trouble. The fact that the theft happened on the premises of his hotel has created a situation that he must remedy for the future success of the establishment.
I suppose you are wondering how he managed to get my things returned. Remember the scene I described involving the television on the throne and the fifty men coming to watch the 7:00 news. Well Mohamed told his fellow TV viewers that there would be no more showings until my belongings were returned. Needless to say everyone in town start looking for my stuff. Ah … the power of the almighty television! Finally the culprits try to hock my phone and are turned in to the big boss. I only wish the police had never been called. They are sixteen-year-old boys, who do not attend high school because their families cannot afford the school fees.
I wake up early this morning to connect with officer Matata. He woke up at five am to arrive, via public transportation, by 8:00. The police department has no vehicle, so he pays the 150 schilling matatu fare to attend official business. He says the station is getting a vehicle, it is coming very soon, a Landrover. I don’t know whether this is him hoping or saving face or whether it will really happen. … can you imagine a whole police department taking care of a whole county with no vehicle?
We walk down the dirt roads to the court of law. ‘Where is my stuff?’ this is the question of the morning. We wait in the witness waiting room for hours. God I wish I could take a photo of this ‘room’. It is an open air wooden lean-to with a rusty metal roof and a rustic wood railed fence around three sides. The floor is dry, dusty dirt with old garbage lining the edges. There is an ancient wooden chair in the center near the back, weathered and cracked, the remnants of the rattan seat hanging in shreds. We sit on some wooden plank benches attached to the fence. The best part is a graying hand painted sign hanging above the entrance reading ‘witness waiting room’.
The woman sitting next to me has her toenails painted shiny copper. Seems like every woman in Kenya has her toenails painted. While I was in Kisumu one of Phannice’s friends looked horrified at my feet and asked why I didn’t have them painted. I said ‘Uh, I don’t know’ she offered to paint them then and there. She used the tiny fingernail file on my metal fingernail clippers. An hour and a half later my toes glistened with a deep red polish. Unfortunately that was three weeks ago and hundreds of bike ridden kilometers, my toes now look like the ‘road to Narok’.
The guards in the doorway of the courtroom have automatic machine guns. The prisoners are brought in handcuffs. Finally it is our turn to go before the judge, no juries here. It is 1:00pm. Ten minutes into the proceedings court is recessed until 3:30… apparently a document needs to be photocopied. Officer Matatu is handed a few coins to go do so at the local Posta. Everyone leaves. Alas.
I sadly realize that I will be spending another night in the Chambai Hotel. Not that it isn’t charming with its sunny courtyard, the instant ‘luke warm’ heater in the shower, and comforting Kenyan breakfast, all for less than ten dollars. It’s just that I am anxious to be on my exploring way, my days in Kenya are numbered…. only 11 more.
Back in the courtroom I am directed to a wooden pulpit, the light blue paint worn through by the feet of many a witness. The court recorder/interpreter comes towards me she is carrying a book. I strain to see its title. I must have glared, she recoils and says ‘Do you believe in god?’ I realize it is the bible. I place my hand on it. She is annoyed and shows me how to hold it. I cup the binding in my hand and raise it up above my shoulder at about eye level. She begins to recite something I do not understand. She indicates the words taped to the cover. “I hereby swear to god our heavenly father that I will state the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me god.”
We begin the testimony… very slowly for the Judge must handwrite each word I say into his notebook, while the interpreter informs the accused in Swahili. We are there way too long while gallant officer Matata presents our case. End results I get back my camera, binoculars, phone and flash drive. I realize the camera is malfunctioning and the sim-card on the phone is blocked, I fear the flash drive may also be broken for they hid everything in their back yard buried in a bag, in a very wet, muddy hole. I ask about the money. They show me some new clothes and a cheap daypack that have been lying on the evidence table: four tee shirts, two pairs of pants and one pair of muddy leather shoes. I am informed that I may have these clothes … and the back-pack, for that is what they spent my seven thousand schillings on.
‘That doesn’t look like 7,000 schillings worth of clothes to me’
I look at the boys. They are quiet, obediently watching the judge, dressed in rags. I imagine the new clothes on them. I feel bad. I begin to feel sorry, I begin to feel like the bad guy.
‘Well what do you want us to do with the clothes? ‘
‘Give them back?’
‘We cannot do that… they will be auctioned off to help pay for the court costs’.
Gravel slammed, end of story.
Geese, I should have taken the clothes, just another buck going into the deep pocket of politics.
Please let tomorrow be a better day.

Day 2

This morning begins with chai, sausage and more chai…oh, and mandazis, Kenyan doughnuts. I buy a few for the road.I ride down the steep eroded streets of Narok, waiting as a herd of Brahma cows pass by. The street to my right is an open market, donkeys, goats and chickens use the road unattended like humans. Garbage and cow pies. I stop to admire some Maasai beadwork. The sales girl follows me. I stop here and there, at the posta to mail some letters, at the gas station to check the air in my tires. She is intent on a sale. We sit down and barter in the parking lot.She wants something from the US and I want something she has made. I trade her a compact headlamp for a beautifully beaded basket.
Sixty five kilometers to my next destination, Narosura. It is already noon, whoops. I have been warned that if I don’t make the whole distance before night fall I will be eaten by lions…. we’ll see. I cruise eighteen km on a tarmac road to Ewaso Ngiro. I buy a eight inch stainless steel kitchen knife… just in case the lions ahead are related to the infamous Tzavo ones. Ewaso Ngiro is a crossroads, the main road heads to the Maasai Mara east gate, the other leads off behind the buildings barely resembling a road at all. Wouldn’t you know thadda be my route. A middle aged Maasai merchant tries his sell, sell, sell technique on me, can’t he see I am on a bike?
The road is horribly muddy. I head for the hills, lots of cows. The terrain changes as I climb, small trees getting bigger, elephant tracks and droppings all around. I walk with a group of Maasai, the youngest knows some English. He sticks with me after his father and brother catch a ride up the hill. I share my chocolate bar. We talk. His eyes are intense, he listens hard to every word, I don't think he gets to hear English that often. I tell him how far I’ve come and how far I want to go. “I just go as far as I go each day, then I sleep”. I admire his conviction to learn English. He admires my freedom. I think he catches the traveling bug.
A dung beetle! Two actually, each rolling a one inch dung ball across the road. I can’t believe it. Well now I can go home happy. There were only a few things I really wanted to see in Africa, the elephant and the dung beetle being the main two. I nudge one dung ball off the road before I leave, the beetle plays dead… for a long time. I touch the other one he does the same. I leave them belly up next to their balls safe on the shoulder. The day of the Dung Beetle for sure. I see several more throughout the day some the size of ladybugs and some as big as rain beetles. One is rolling a three inch elephant dung ball, granted he does have a partner and he is huge himself, but the ball is the size of a golf ball! I have heard that they lay their eggs inside the balls and the baby maggots eat the yummy dung for the first few weeks of life. Leyein thinks they burrow themselves in and hold up through the rainy season.
Atop the hill the view is expansive. A huge flat valley spreading into a row of deep blue hills along the horizon.Those hills are my evening destination. I just can’t get over how beautiful African landscapes are, an unlimited amount of space and beauty.
I descended into the valley, into herds of game animals, wildebeest, zebra with their newborn babies, impala. Its African magic. I think I see giraffe in the distance and grab my binoculars. Dang they’re broken. A wave of frustration wells up in me, so much time and energy lost, days used traveling and waiting for a broken camera, a blocked phone, lost money and worthless binoculars. I shed a tear. Oh well.
I’m actually pretty happy. Wondering through the African countryside. Lovin it. I see the dust cloud of a vehicle coming towards me deep in the valley. It is fancy new Safari truck with the canvas side curled up. The driver is a Kenyan man dressed like a Banana Republic model, he stops and bellows out a ‘Jambo’, obviously wanting to talk. I stop.
‘Where are you headed?’
‘Narosura.’ It is already late in the afternoon and I think I am about fifteen kilometers into the 45km I must ride before nightfall. Being on the equator nightfall is always at the same time, all year round, about 6:30pm and the sun rises twelve hours later. I know I will not reach Narosura before night.
‘Where will you stay tonight?’
I’m not sure what got into me but I suddenly got tired of being warned…. or rather told that I can’t do this and I can’t do that. I copped an attitude.
‘Here.’ I said with an arm gesture indicating the open prairie.
I think I step on his big, protector, safari guide ego, being a solo female out in the bush with no fear, because he turns to his wide eyed Kenyan passengers with a cynical snort and says to me.
‘Do you know this is a serious place? I will tell you that I spotted six lions about 16 km back’ now he is smiling.
‘Wow thanks… I have my binoculars but I doubt I’ll get to see them. They seem to be very illusive animals. Thank you though, Asante and kua heri.’
‘Kua Heri Madame’ with a shake of his head they drive on.
Ok here is how my mind really works. First I ignore his words with a 'ha'. Then the ‘yea ...but what ifs’ start creeping in. ‘What if’ there are lions, and ‘what if’ they are close to the road. ‘What if’ they happen to be hungry or just curious about such a slow moving animal such as me? I pedal on. Lets see, sixteen km I should be there in about another hour at this rate. I start looking around. The game seems to be thinning out, is it because there are lions ahead? I kind of wish I had asked him what the terrain looked like where he saw them. I think I see something, I wish I had my binoculars. I start pedaling faster, a steady pace…. but I break a sweat. I glance at my shiny new knife. Well one good thing, I sure don’t feel tired and I’m eatin up the miles.
Eventually I pass through the open land and enter a shrub forest foothills,no lions... elephant country. Ah, a familiar danger, I feel relieved and laugh at my gulliblness. I ring my bell and enjoy the ride into the evening. I camp on a grassy spot under an acacia and watch the sunset as it begins to rain, it’s stunning.


Day 3

Last night brought a couple of hyena, or ‘fisi’ in Swahili, close to my tent. Not having much experience with crazy Americans in flimsy tents they were discouraged quite easily. This morning is another story, five young Maasai confront me and demand payment for traveling through their land. I say no, but they do not back down and I end up giving them my imitation swiss army knife. I feel violated. I had read about the Maasai before I began my African sojourn. The book had described them… well I quote.
“For many, the Maasai are the definitive symbol of ‘tribal’ Kenya. With a reputation (often exaggerated) as fierce warriors and a proud demeanor, this tribe of Nilotic origin has largely managed to stay outside the mainstream of development in Kenya and still maintains large cattle herds along the Tanzanian border.
The Maasai first migrated to central Kenya from current day Sudan…the Maasai scorn agriculture and land ownership. There is a strong taboo against ‘piercing the soil, and the dead are traditionally left to be consumed by wild animals.”
Unquote. Don’t believe in ‘land ownership’, these few think they own the whole valley. I make my disapproval clear.

I arrive at Narosura in a fowl mood. Like every town I pull into there are sneers, stares pointing and laughter.. and of course GARBAGE, fowl smelling garbage. I almost ride by thinking ‘this can’t be the main part of town’, Then I spy some ancient gas pumps and realize ‘yep’ this is the center, there was a gas pump icon next to the town’s name on my trusted map. Another relic of a past time… ‘old’ British Kenya.
Luckily Mohamed has given me the name of his cousins who runs a Somali shop here in Narosura. I found a shop with Muslim dressed women and showed them his handwritten note in my book. ‘Kinsi’ daughter of Isse’. Robust and outgoing one woman looks at the name and smiles. ‘I know her, follow me,’ a cousin apparently.
Kinsi happens to be the most beautiful young woman East Africa. She is the eldest of four daughters, all but the youngest being educated in Nairobi Universities. This is her summer break and she is filling in for her mother. She is running the shop. The Somali shops carry everything a Maasai needs to be Maasai, minus the cows. What was it like before these colorful plastic beads and factory woven shukas were imported … even their sacred swords are made of metal they do not forge? Like the ‘Asians’ (from Indian) people in Kisumu, the Somalis seem to be the merchants here and run many of the businesses in town.
She hesitates not knowing what to do with me. ‘I will talk with my father’ she says and sends me to Hussein’s café. Oh yeah, chapattis and chai always manage to cheer me up.
By noon I am part of the family. I am given grandma’s bed and eat from the family pot for the rest of my stay. Grandma and mother have taken the youngest daughter, Shukri, to Nairobi to see a doctor concerning her deformed leg.
Within a few hours all my desires have been addressed. I have a Maasai guide that speaks English for my backpack adventure, food in my belly and a safe place to leave my bike while I hike.
I sort through my gear, leave half my stuff and swing on my borrowed backpack (thank you Todd). We walk out of the courtyard, through the dirty streets, across the cornfield and into the hills. It feels good to walk.
I hike behind Leyien, my young guide. He looks like a little school kid. Jeans with guns embroider on the thighs front and back, some leather shoes, a long sleeved dress shirt and a camouflage back pack with the pocket zippers blown out. He chews the mira that he purchased with the money I gave him for food, and carries a half-liter of water. Mira is plant imported from northern Africa. When the leaves and stem are chewed the effect is a slight cocaine type high. He turns around and smiles at me and in his mira high says ‘ One thing is for sure I am so glad we have met.’ Ah but the hike is still so new young man… who knows how you will feel after a few grueling days with me, I think to myself.
We hike for a few hours over some hills. The road is steep and paved with small boulders. Night comes on as we reach a fairly large manyatta. He is proud of his homeland. He talks to the local Maasai, making our passage smooth. He wants to stay in the yard of his distant cousin, I whine a bit… I don’t want to sleep in goat shit. We compromise and keep walking ten minutes past the last boma. I set up my camp, he has brought nothing to sleep in save his woolen shuka, no pad or tent. I realize much too late that normally the mzungu… thadda be me…. provides an extra tent, just so ya know not to do as I have done.
Within ten minutes of settling down we hear an alarm snort. Buffalo! Leyein eyes grow wide, white circles accented by his dark pupils.
‘Lets go’ he breaths anxiously
‘Go? Go where?’
‘Come on…. lets go!’
‘No…. I can’t just leave my tent.’
I just want to crawl into my tent and begin my night, but I see him torn between leaving his ‘client’ and obvious terror of the buffalo. I start to realize that he has little or no experience of wilderness camping. Kenyans in general have different fears than I do. They have grown up with different horror stories than mine. Most fear deep water. They definitely fear lions and other large predators, elephants, hippos and buffalo. They fear the night.
I compromise again and pick up my stuff…. including my still constructed tent and start moving clumsily through the bush towards civilization of sorts. What a night. We end up sleeping in goat shit next to the only radio antennae in a 50-mile radius… ah, Maasai radio. Oh well. Sleep comes and I am safe and happy.

Journey day 4,5,6

Day 4

Today begins with a walk through the forest, which follows the Kenlitoto River. We walk along a dirt path that has many more baboon tracks than humans. They look like fat short human hands and funny feet with the big toe askew. I see a place in the sand that depicts a scuffle, I save the hair that has been torn out by the tormenter. I find a porcupine quill. The path empties out onto a bigger track, a main Maasai road, which as never seen a car. Cows, many cows. They stand in a wet eroded trench and lick at the earth laden with salt and mineral, eating mouthfuls. So many cows, at times the road is transformed into a long muck hole. We pass village after village. The flies are horrendous, they are different than the flies at home. They seem bolder, returning immediately after my hand swishes them away, as if they are annoyed that I even try to displace them…they OWN my face. Again I start to whine, ‘of all the places in this beautiful valley this road has got to be the worst’.
We choose an alternate route, the western ridge. We are treated to beautiful expansive views. Every rock in the Loita Hills sparkles. The grass opens to a rocky crest
along the top of the ridge they glisten in the sun, pink ones, black ones, grey ones they all look like shiny gold. Mica.
Among the boulders I notice horses droppings, it must be donkey, no horse could navigate these rocks. Hours later we come across a zebra carcass spread out under a tree, what a magnificent last view. It is cool to see a zebra hide so close, the black and white pattern is so stark, each line sharply defined.
Many livestock died this year because of the drought. Here in Kenya the rain comes at the end of March and lasts through May, it begins again in October and lasts through December. This year god forgot one season, it didn’t rain for nine months and everyone suffered. The Maasai especially, when their animals die, they suffer from malnutrition.
Even though they don’t usually eat their cows, they milk them for blood and milk. They puncture a hole in the cow’s neck vain and extract blood. The blood is added to milk in a special vessel made from a gourd and stirred it with a stick until the blood coagulates. This thick paste is their nutritional staple.
Live zebras graze on the hillside, coming to the higher ground to escape the leopards and lions that hunt near the rivers. Bushbuck and dik dik jump away at our arrival. I always see the dik dik in pairs, apparently they mate for life. A large turquoise lizard suns himself on the sparkling rocks, well he is half turquoise and half bright orange, crazy design. I deem this place ‘baboon ridge’, for all the barking and tree rustling.
Late afternoon Leyein begins to get anxious. We still have two hills to cross before the edge of the escarpment. We talk about tonight’s campsite. I find out that he is out of water, has no food and needs the shelter of his people ...and they are down there. I also find out that he has only been to the escarment one other time in his life, when he was fourteen. He and his older brother were sent to the Great Rift Valley to retrieve two bulls their father had acquired from a distant relative. That was eight years ago!
We start the descent heading towards the Endesopia River. My ankles feel weak from the long walk and heavy weight I’m carrying, my descent is slow. The thought of getting injured out here motivates extreme caution.
The flora change is dramatic. From dry thin grass to thick green jungle, now the grass over our heads and rope like vines hang down over the water. I see Colobus moneys, with their striking black and white coats, and more baboons. It is so beautiful, we walk for hours as the sun goes down.
At each river crossing… and there are many, we see butterflies. Bright yellow wings opening and shutting in a sunbeam reflecting off the muddy riverbank. The air all around me fills with soft delicate fluttering wings surrounding me with butterfly juju. Sometimes there are yellow clusters, sometimes purple or corn-blue ones, and sometimes they are all mixed together in a bouquet of fluttering color. A friend once told me that the newly hatched male butterflies come to certain mud to get the minerals they need to become potent.
I choose a camp by the river, we have agreed to camp separately. The only disturbance in the meadow grass is a set of buffalo tracks. He is walking up river, he has paused here to munch down a patch of thick meadow grass. I set up my tent on this manicured spot. Leyein rolls his eyes, “Aren’t you afraid it will come back?”
Most likely it will be different visitor if any, “no”… I feel little fear.
He builds a fire, I gather wood. Just before sunset he high tails it down the road. I love being in this wild spot alone, quiet, still. I am excited to see what comes to drink in the morning. There is a troop of colobus in the trees on the other side of the river, I can hear their peculiar noise. I sit by the fire in the still of early evening.
In Nairobi I watched an hour of “man eaters” on animal planet. I watched an African buffalo charge and gore to death some unsuspecting young lions. I make a plan, just in case. I set up the door intended for my tent mate facing a giant downed log. Now I can escape out that door and lie under the log on the opposite side. Doubt it will actually work due to the instantaneous nature of buffalo charging….. but ya never know. As I settle down for the night the sounds outside begin to change a whole new soundtrack and its getting louder and louder, especially the baboons. They bark and cough and continue a steady racket that seems to be getting closer and closer. Finally when I think they are close enough to see with my headlamp I crawl out of my tent and stoke the fire. I look around for them but see nothing… at least they are quiet. I sleep a dreamy night.


Day 5

Through the open rain flap I watch the tiniest little red hummingbird I have ever seen. At first I thought it was a flying beetle. It looks frustrated, hovering around my smelly shoes and a pair of bright blue undies hung out to dry. The morning is quiet and wet. I hear the monkeys. Their voices sound like slow motors, Tibetan monks in their deepest, lowest chant.
Leyein and Matthias, the Maasai that took him in last night, greet me and I start to pack my camp.
Matthias whistles through his teeth, clicks his tongue and repeats ‘oh mama, oh mama’ over and over. He so wants to talk with me, but alas, neither of us has made the effort to learn the other’s language. Mama is the Maasai’s title of respect for women in general, like Mr. is in the US.
‘Poli mama, poli mama’ (‘I’m sorry mama, so sorry’).
I ask Leyein what he is sorry for ‘he is sorry that you were alone last night’.
‘Please tell him I like being alone I have camped alone for many nights and I like it.’
‘…Olowotu’shaking his head.
‘What is olowotu,’ I ask?
‘He said, what about the leopard, it was headed up river towards your camp.’
Leopard? (they pronounce every letter leo-pard) I thought about the baboons, oops. Now that I think about it the scoffing I heard last night wasn’t the typical cranky baboon blabber and baboons are usually secure by nightfall like the rest of us on the general predator menu.
‘Why do the leopards make so much noise?’ ‘
‘They are looking for other leopards this time of year. If he meets another male he will fight him for his territory and if he meets a female … they will just have a good time.’ he says with I smile.
Wow, I think about all the leopard stories I have heard here. The eight year old boy who got snagged out of the Safari camp, the guy in the open-air truck that got scalped by a leaping leopard….guess I shouldn’t have gotten out of my tent last night.
We walk another15km to the edge of the escarpment. Altogether we have walked about 50km so far. The Rift Valley spreads out before us. There is a settlement just below, with an air strip. I see dust from a vehicle far across in the valley. So there is a road to lake Magadi! I had seen one on my map but it was a faint dotted line, now I know it exists and it is passable by bike. In Kenya, especially in the Maasai land I have found it hard to get accurate information about trails, track, and roads, how to get from point A to B. Besides the main public transportation road to Nairobi, which mind you hardly resembles a road, people seem to know about a ten mile radius and only guess or rely on hear say for the world beyond that. Its not like home, there are no cars…. hardly any bikes, hence no need for maps. People walk. They do not even use beasts of burden. I see woman and young girls carrying milk, honey and firewood for miles to the market. They wrap their burden in a cloth and hang it over their back with a strap around their forehead, or put it in a basket on top of their head. Many people are born live and die in that same ten mile radius.
We do a little cliffhanging hike to get a view of the waterfall, the Entosapia River doing its final plunge into the great valley. I find obsidian, black, grey and clear near the top of the falls. I add them to collection of sparkly rocks in my pocket…. Shawn’s gonna love these.
We start our long journey back. I am hungry. My diet of raw veggies and canned fish is lacking. I crave carbs. The Maasai are revolted by my consumption of fish, they would never touch the stuff, they don’t even eat chicken. Leyein says it would be like eating snakes. ‘Yea.. so?’ Apparently the snake is a fierce and powerful sacred symbol. We sit far apart until I have finished eating my dry top ramin sprinkled over tuna and wrap up the smelly can.
Because of the sight seeing detour we end up bushwhacking for a few hours. We crawl through the menacing foliage and cross the river many times. One time we surprise a pair of monitor lizards, the larger of the two being about four feet from head to tail. They are in a dark, quiet pool shaded by a canopy of green. The lizards lay on black lava rocks that rise out of one bank, bathing in a sunbeam that breaks through the leaves. Some dik dik are lying in a dusty, undercut cave on the opposite bank, their ceiling a tangle of b roots. White blossom petals fall into the still black water, it looks like a set from the ‘Legend’…. cue the unicorn.
Much later, Leyein confides how deeply frightened he was by them, it must stem from his inherent fear of crocs. He imitates the way their heads dart back and forth and the awkward jerking movement of their legs. I tell him my friend keeps one as a pet, (it is actually an iguana). She often lets it roam free throughout her house, knowing that one whack of its tail can break a human leg…another crazy image of the American woman.
We really cover ground and darkness finds us back on the banks of the Lenkutoto River.

Day 6

Leyein is a very resourceful man… and he is carrying my tent. I am tired and irritable, he is a good companion. He is always explaining things and showing me tiny details about his homeland. Like the brightly colored, extremely poisonous caterpillar that can make you sick with the slightest prick of the needle-like spikes along its back and the tree whose twigs make excellent toothbrushes with its bacteria killing abilities. He smiles a lot and feels comfortable traveling in silence. After sharing my sensitivity to over stimulation, especially at certain times during the month, he leads me through the Maasai land with little to no human contact.
He chuckles when he finds out I told the hyenas to ‘shut-up’ last night. They laugh like crazy people and cackle and hoot. I was awakened by a crash in the brush close to my tent, three of them started yucking it up. I listened to their ruckus for over two hours. I believe the tent perplexes African animals, they haven’t seen enough to figure them out. They know something yummy is inside but getting through the rip-stop material to the treat inside is like a childproof cap. Unlike our California bears they stay a respectable distance. I like that, but their continuous noise kept me awake for too long and a few shouts really did quite them down long enough for me to fall asleep.
I heard a leopard last night, actually I heard two. One was coming up river and one down. I strained my ears trying to hear what would happen when they met. I was expecting a leopard scuffle, but nothin. Must have been a girl.
I have such mixed feelings about the land I am moving through. I admire the Maasai for holding on to their rituals and customs that have evolved throughout their ancestry, and I realized their culture is still in transition, but I hate the results of their life style. To the Maasai being rich is having cows. They don’t usually eat the cows just milk them and bleed them. Their nutritional sustenance is a mixture of milk and blood, which they mix in a gourd until coagulated. The more cows the better. Western medicine has increased the life expectancy of their cows and the parks have restricted their grazing lands… the result, over grazed damaged grasslands from the Park borders on.and very few wild animals.
This morning I was so hungry and sore I didn’t think I could make it back. But here we are in Narosura eating chapatis and eggs and of course cup after cup of chai. I rest happily in my newfound home with my newfound Somalian family. I practice Swahili with the young Maasai girls they have adopted and read a book written by a Kenyan author ‘Across the Bridge’… another strange perspective of life in Kenya.

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.

journey day 10, 11

Day 10

Another day of extreme miracles.
Ok so my passport is missing. That is all I can think about. I will miss my plane for sure sitting in the Kenyan American Embassy all day. Oh god why this… I am so tired and now so depressed. I try on the thought of ‘maybe its for the best, its supposed to be this way, what is so bad about spending your birthday in Nairobi instead of with your boys? You can rest and write and… oh fuck it’ I’m bummed.
But as I start today’s ride nothing but beauty fills my eyes and mind. So alone, so wild. The track rises up a rocky cliff…. a sparkly rock cliff. It is hard to keep my footing hauling the weight of my bike, but it’s do-able and brings forth such great views. There are massive, dark forested hills rolling in every direction, the deep blue sky with stark white thunderheads rising out of the Great Rift.
I lose track of the trail several times, it just fades into the grass or gets lost in the rocks. Nevertheless in an hour or two I am in Mausa a beautiful lush farm manyatta with many bomas. I inquire about Olenkuo, the friend Daniel had sent me to find. He is a wise old Maasai just like Daniel. We talk, very roughly, through an interpreter that is hesitant and not at all clear. After discussing my intentions to proceed to Magadi and hearing again that it is impossible, we decide upon a plan. His son will guide me to the edge of the escarpment and point out the trail down the ‘big hill’. There are only a handful of paths leading down the shear walls of the escarpment cliffs, which runs the length of Kenya. It is so impressive. The Great Rift Valley is a very flat piece of ground that runs from Egypt to Tanzania. It is littered with salt lakes disappearing over time. The valley was formed by the continental plates separating and the land in between dropping, creating a huge flat gap with massive cliffs on either side…the escarpment.
I am pretty confident that I can make it down the ‘great hill’ because I have seen the trail from above on my back packing exploration and the Maasai bring cows up it … I remember Leyiens story. Olenkuo is pretty confident that I cannot. (I never expected to find what I did that day).
There are only three km left to the trailhead of the escarpment, the top of the descent, but the traveling is hard. I am completely drained physically and the heavy rain has made the creek crossings next to impossible. I slip in the slimy mud and have no footing. I can’t believe how heavy my bike feels…as if I am carrying two pygmies in my bags. Up, up, up just one more hill. So tired. Olenkuo II helps me by wearing my backpack.
There it is…. the way down! My heart sinks. It is so steep. In places it resembles bouldering routes in the Sierras, the kind you have to use both hands as well as your feet. This is not the road I viewed earlier, definitely not a cow trail. I should have known, I am two days ride South of the trail I had seen. This trail is three times as long, and three times as steep. The valley is at least ten km down. I plead with Olenkua to help me a bit longer. He carries my pack another quarter of a mile. I am thankful. The trail levels out a bit into a very steep road made of ‘way bigger than a bread box’ sized boulders. I strap on my pack and use both brakes to hold the bike back. I walk carefully over the rocks. I am worried about my ankles.
Thump, thump thump… poor ‘Hard Rock,’ the battering begins. By the end of the day every tube, deck, and bar will be dented, scraped and scratched.
Time drags on. There are moments I cry with exhaustion. For at least half the way I walk ahead with my bags, drop them off and go back for my bike to carry it over the boulders.
I see a dung beetle. She is pushing her dung ball up the trail. It falls, rolling backwards until a rock catches it. She rides with it, tumbling over and over, just to begin anew. I feel a kin to her. I am a dung beetle, tumbling down this massive hill in a continuous dance with my worldly processions.
Yet when I pause to breath, I see that it is the most beautiful landscape so far. Baboons peek at me from the sidelines, their bare butts on the granite rocks. I see their prints at every creek crossing; this trail is following a creek down. Butterflies, sweet butterflies, bringing with them the light… butterfly juju cheers me up. Butterflies in Kenya seem to travel in flocks, ultra blue and black ones, pretty yellow ones, soft corn blue ones, flashy swallowtails, all separate clans. Sparkling rocks, I am fascinated. I can’t help slipping a few in my pocket. What am I crazy? What do I need with more weight?!?! I find a porcupine quill and see thick forests full of elephant sign. What food I eat is extraordinarily delicious, my mouth waters over the tastiest orange ever… well except for the one in Maui on Xmas eve.
The shadows grow long as I near the bottom. I begin to ride my bike for short spurts. Oh how I love being in the saddle again. No weight I feel free, until a rocky draw stops the flow.
The trees are playing with me, they grab, poke, scratch and prick me. Some pull at my ‘money makers pump’ hat, ripping it even out of my tight-handed grip. I have run out of sunscreen, this baseball brimmed hat is all that is between the equator sun and me. One branch brushes up against the soft flesh of the underside of my arm leaving a long bloody cut, purple bruises, and thorns lodged deep inside. ‘Agh! You think that’s funny’ I yell. I am sooooo tired.
A HUMAN! I see a human. Two really, they are young Maasai boys, el morans, staring at me. They are dressed in amazing traditional garb. Headdress, necklace, bracelets, ochre dyed dreaded hair, sacred swords, each a true piece of artwork. They seem even more surprised than I am, meeting on this precarious mountain trail. We exchange greetings and just look at each other for a time.
The terrain slowly shows more and more sign of human inhabitance. The track widens into a road. Yes! I have made it to the next village in my map-list of landmarks.
Not so fast Cyndra you are not out of the woods quite yet. I get a sinking feeling when I ask people directions to Magadi and get repeated, definitely negative responses. One young man shakes his head and puts his hand under his chin with a strange faked desperate look on his face saying ‘magi, magi’. Magi means water in Swahili, the first words I learned were ‘Nataka magi’ which means ‘I want water.’ Sure enough, the road dead-ends. It just fades into a river and continues away on the other side… a river in flood. About twelve feet deep and forty feet wide.
Filthy, exhausted, cut, bruised and bleeding I sit down to contemplate. Ok, ok …I think I can swim it, yuck I hate to think what lurks in that brown mucky water. What about my stuff? I can’t swim with my bike over my head and my bag weighs over 75lbs. Oh, am I finally beat… no… I will build a raft… tomorrow. Tomorrow I will build a raft and float onward to Nairobi and my flight home.

Later that very same night:
What fate is this? I am eating CHOCOLATE mousse and beef borgenois with steamed carrots and string beans. Oh did I mention the spinage soup, liver pate and the sesame sprinkled cheese balls? My god I feel like I just fell off the edge of the world and ended up in another dimension. I am sleeping in clean cotton sheets in a queen size bed under a soft white mosquito net listening to the odd symphony of an African night, writing in my journal via solar powered bed lamp, and sipping the cold drink served to me on a bamboo platter. God the view is absolutely breathtaking. Sunset… peach colored hue touching the under bellies of giant thunderheads looming over the dark purple Shompole Mountain, the flat Rift Valley with the salty white shadow of lake Magadi spreading below. A hundred and eighty degrees of African beauty… I feel guilty just looking at it.
How did I get here? Well I’ll tell you. I was sitting near the river, trying to figure out a place to schlep my tent when a car drives up, a fancy safari rig from some Camp. My mouth drops open. I talk to the driver… he doesn’t speak English. I gather that there are mzungus at this lodge. ‘White people’ they will know what’s up concerning directions and…. they can tell me in English, hopefully. I throw my bike in the back and head towards the Shompole Lodge. Oh readers please look it up on the net “shompole.com”. Completely crazy place. Gourmet meals with crystal glasses and eight piece silverware settings. Beautiful women in super model silk dresses, chilled white wine and dainty fragrant beedee cigars from India.
The owners Elizabeth and Anthony happen to be here this weekend. They take pity on me and treat me to the night of my life. Elizabeth invites me to drive with her to Nairobi tomorrow afternoon. My room has an open air bathroom suit with a river of hot water pouring from the showerhead. White towels hang from the mirror and the Jacuzzi hot tub waits, warmed and ready near my bed. All the floors are polished white cement so clean you could eat off of them… I do yoga and smile deeply. The composting toilet is a throne and an incredibly designed heavy thatched roof covers the whole thing.
Oh I must tell you one more thing that counts as a separate miracle. As I am dumping out my backpack to find the least dirty clothes to wear after my very, very HOT shower, my passport falls to the ground! My heart jumps. I know, I know I should feel guilty because the loss of my passport played a major role in the sympathy hosting, but I rejoice knowing that indeed I will be coming home for Christmas… I mean my birthday!
Ya gotta love it.



Day 11

I sleep in soft cotton sheets spread out over a fluffy queen size bed behind shear white gauze completely protected from the flying malaria bestowers. Tucked safely away from the crazy hyenas hoots and genet cats screams that fill the night. I wake up scrubbed clean, smelling like lavender and white gardenias. I gaze out at the most delicate rose colored sunrise and sip cool clean water from the glass on the bed stand. A pair of dik dik pick their way through the flowers planted along my bungalow’s path.
After lazing around with a cup of tea and a soak in the hot tub I join the others for breakfast and a walk in the conservatory. Breakfast is a long table ladened with fruits, flowers, cheeses and Danishes. The eggs, sausage, sliced tomatoes, and fresh squeezed orange juice come later.
The walk starts out with a short drive past the airstrip and into the savanna. We pass the three kings on our way, three young male lions that Elizabeth has watched grow up here. Click, click, national geographic style photos from grandma’s tiny digital camera. A close up of a Maasai giraffe and four new foals in the zebra herd. We stop the truck and begin to walk across the field in knee high grass and low growing devil’s thorn. The fox terrier pups that are with us whimper and limp from the nasty thorns between their toes. We see hippo prints in the dust. Elizabeth looks like a high fashion model framed by Mount Shimpole, her silk skirt and hair blowing gently in the wind, a woman alone walking her dogs in the beautiful Serengeti wilderness.
It all seems like a dream. I get to experience the American dream of Africa as well as the real, rugged, wild, down to earth Africa. Unbelievable.
The drive to Nairobi is long flat and dry, I am glad I am in the truck. We pass lake Magadi and see the pink flamingos. The town of Magadi is a company town of the salt processing plant. The matatus do not come often, again I am grateful I am in the truck. The road up to Nairobi causes the truck to over heat but it is gradual and paved, and I imagine riding here would have been fun especially down, but again I am glad I am in the truck. My strength is gone and I have already left this beautiful crazy place called Africa. Thank you Elizabeth. Thank you my traveling angels.


In conclusion

I am grateful.

Thankful to be home, but more than that I am grateful to have had an experience like this one. Many times I felt blessed… and still do. So many things just happened in such a beautiful way that, I must admit, I believe I have an angel traveling with me. How else can I explain all the miracles that were bestowed upon me. The force opened up and held me safe for a spell.

Many people asked me if I ever felt like my life was in danger or I might not make it, or if I was ever scared. And truthfully I have to say no. My experience of Kenyan people in general is one of gentle, genuine, giving people. They were helpful, welcoming, charitable and friendly. It is true that everyone I met had hopes of receiving something from me, and I hope many of them did, but on the whole they treated me with great human respect. My experience of the African wildlife was also one of mutual respect. I knew that if the opportunity arose some of them would hurt or eat me, but there are rules one can follow that exclude, or at least curtail those opportunities. Unlike the bears of California the animals of Kenya seem to respect the barrier of my tent as off limits, even though they could smell me and my food inside. Walking or riding during the midday hours seems to lower the chance of accidental meetings which could lead to accidental goring, trampling or predator deaths. My trusty broken bell worked like my hiking songs do at home, a great warning system. The conscious effort not to leave the tent during the night reduced temptation and the strategically timed campfires served to announce that ‘man’ is here this day.

I’m standing by the kitchen sink watching the water run, letting it heat up for the dirty dishes. I think of Kenya and the differences between here and there. How precious water is. We ran out of water for five days at a time even in the ritzy suburbs of Nairobi, Teresia would scoop buckets of cholorine water from the pool for the toilets. Water sources are not well developed, the majority of residents gather rainwater off their roof. I can't imagine what it is like during the dry season. I remember how grateful I felt when my host could bring me a pan of water warmed by a cooking fire or paraffin stove to bathe with. Showers are not the norm in Kenya, especially hot ones. All clothes are washed by hand sparingly with second hand water.
I have mixed feelings about our way and their way of life. I wish Kenya could skip over all our mistakes and wrong routes and just achieve the good progress we have made…. cleaner-air cars, less polluted rivers, rich food production, clean drinking water, refuge recycling and clean up, wide spread health. While keeping the amazing achievements they live everyday, public transportation, trail and track systems for foot and bike traffic, organically grown food and no fence livestock care, widespread physical fitness, roadless populated areas, conscious water conservation, well established traditions and rituals, clear structure for the elderly and death.


Thank you Ed for lending me your camel back, but more importantly thank you for supporting me in my bike endeavor, your words and reading about your past adventures inspired me and gave me courage to go for it.
Thank you Amsterdam bikes…. not one flat!!! And the bottle became indispensable too.
Thank you Kim for just giving me the xtracycle …it has a good home now.
Thank you Shawn and Davin for staying up late and shoving your own lives aside to piece together the African Fankenbike.
Thank you Lida for filling my head with African backpacking stories and possibilities.
Thank you KC for riding with me on many of my previous adventures, your similar roughin-it, starvation style helped me to realize I am not alone in my perspective and tolerance.
Big thanks to my sis Jeannette for taking care of me in multiple ways I can see better, I have some photos, I was dressed appropriately, I ate the last few weeks, I rested knowing ma and pa were in good hands, and well, I went…thanks for making it possible.



I am grateful.