INTO THE BLEAK INCREDIBLE

IN JULIA'S WORDS

16 August


The leg from Nairobi up through northern Kenya to Ethiopia has been the most mulled over of any of our journeys so far, by Rehana for years. 
There’s the most-used route, up the Moyale road, which is described by most as passable but treacherous, mainly because of the dust roads with thundering bully-trucks that remain invisible as you hurtle towards them through the sandfog until they’re about to make you past-tense.

Then there’s the other one, up the east side of Lake Turkana, which takes you through the rift valley and its concertina-style mountain ranges, plat and scrubby valleys, and fields of spewed volcanic rock until you reach Addis 800 or more kms later. It promised its own trials – parched both of water and of petrol, just for two – but also extraordinary landscapes and, most importantly, NO TRUCKS.

So we chose the Lake Turkana option – for the way up, since we’ll be returning the dreaded Moyale way when we do our u-turn and return south – and prepared in Nairobi. We filled up our 50l onboard water tank, bought another jerrycan which, added to our other two, gave us an additional 60l fuel, packed our fridge with fresh veg and dairy, got our paperwork done (there’s no border post from the Kenya side for visas and car carnet) and had a car service. How’s that for an admin checklist you can chew on?

On 8 August, off we snail-paced through the sticky jams of Nairobi traffic. We like to make lakes destinations, and here we had two: Lake Baringo, not as big and celebrated as the cold salty Lake Turkana, but promising crocs (eek) and birdies and such.

It was a fairly smooth ride – about 4 hours to cover 240kms – and Roberts Camp where we pointed Garmin to would have been simply fab, except … unheard of flooding. Not in living memory has the water risen so high, so the camp was just a third of what it usually is, which meant for tight quarters with the surviving buildings and the many other campers who stopped over.

Lake Baringo in flood

This is a double-storey house

Big Red did find a comfortable enough berth just a stone’s throw (by a small child with an arm as strong as Tom’s) from where the water, littered with flood debris, lapped. Crocs there were too (eek) – one but meters from our spot, which would have looked like nog a waterlogged log, except it had its mouth wide open to sun its teeth.
I’m only slightly a fan of crocs. They impress me in the Jacob Zuma sense of the word.

Fancy this as your neighbour?

Our other neighbour was this cutie and his wife

We stayed at Lake Baringo two nights, and then there was the rush of one-night stands that followed - three to be precise. This is my least favourite part of our travels. It involves getting up in the dark to pack up the tent, which is a shit thing to be doing when it involves me on the roof of the car tugging and slamming our tent back into its cover – its dust now dirt and slimy with dew or drizzle - with sleepy fingers.
It also involves at least five hours drive each day on roads that rough it, and rough us up with it. 

IN REHANA'S WORDS

I lost track of the days and date while we made our way out of Kenya and into Ethiopia, the toughest and most incredible part of our journey to date.

Luminous green tea plantations came down the hills to the highway as we drove out of Nairobi. There were pine plantations, with lush green grass beneath tall trees. It’s probably kikuyu grass – the kind my father swore by and lovingly watered and weeded. The goats grazing in the green light beneath the trees looked almost attractive, for once.

There were acres of nurseries, growing cut flowers for markets around the world. The airport fire must have been a blow to them.

The rift valley spread out like a green and yellow blanket below us and we passed several lakes before we left the highway and headed north. We crossed the equator, took the requisite photo and smsed our mums.

The drive to Lake Baringo was gorgeous. The trees were mostly acacia – green, fat umbrellas. The shade was an irritation when we crossed sections of road washed away by flood.

Lake Baringo was in a fine mood. Its waters were the highest in 50 years. Roberts Camp was flooded, two parts of it under water and vegetation debris. The boats taking tourists on the lake could moor at the bar. A double-storey house on the property was underwater.
I phoned home to greet my family for Eid. As usual, I already knew their news and they knew all of mine. But that never stops us from babbling. I told Ruhi Khan about the crocodile and he promised he would come sort it out. Hope he didn’t have nightmares about a crocodile eating him, or his nana.

It stormed the last night at Roberts Camp. I was heroic, prepared (readymade, bought in Nairobi) chappatis in the downpour for our Eid supper. The rain dampened the gravel road all the way to Maralal the next day (we probably won’t see tar again until we’re close to Addis Ababa).
There were beautiful views of Lake Baringo at the start of our drive, We saw herds of zebra, buck, camels and the ubiquitous cattle and goat. We spent a night at Yare Camel camp in Maralal. Not much to say about it, except that I did not use its ablutions.

Up at 6.30am, on the road at 8am to South Horr. With the bad roads slowing us down considerably, it was best to get to our destinations around lunchtime to gather our strength for the next haul.
The scenery changed from lush green cedar forests carpeted with Kikuyu grass to acacia-dotted brown scrub in valleys between the mountains.
We were in bandit country; our convoy of two passed a truck filled with soldiers on the road to Maralal and another on the way to South Horr. We saw a few other trucks, one bus and perhaps three motorbikes, but no other cars.

Can't go much faster than 60km/hour, but then you get to enjoy the view

South Horr was a cute village populated with mostly Samburu people and what looked like a good smattering of Somali imports.  We stayed at the South Horr Lodge – camped in the dust but it had more than adequate facilities.

Jules and I went for a walk after lunch. Within minutes she attracted a large crowd of children and they just couldn’t stop having fun. Kids came running from all directions when they heard the laughter and the singing. They loved “heads, shoulders, knees and toes”, learned it quickly.

The Pied Piper comes to South Horr

I had been fascinated by the Samburu males we had seen along the road and was desperate for a photo. They all look completely effeminate to me, as had many Maasai males I’ve met.  Tall, skinny men wrapped in cloth will create that impression, especially when they wrap it so their bellies are showing like Bollywood stars. Prancing around draped in jewelry is another giveaway.

I finally figured out how to overcome the problem of my prurience: as we approached three young peacocks, I started taking individual photos of Julia’s crowd of kids. The men summonsed Abdul, a boy I had been chatting to as we ambled down the road, to interpret for them. They wanted their photos taken.
I demurred until they demanded. Then I captured their bejeweled, feathered and cloth-bedecked glory – a signal to young women that they were available for marriage.

Who can resist such charmers?

The school-going children in South Horr spoke excellent English and were extremely knowledgeable about South Africa. Abdul could recite Madiba’s entire history. He knew exactly how high Table Mountain was. Kenya’s government – like ours – may be getting many things wrong, but they seem to be providing a superior education, even in rural areas.

When we got back to the campsite our hands and arms were covered in snot. I probably had snot on my shoulders as well, I had to kneel at the camp’s gate and hug each of the kids who had been hanging on me all afternoon.

IN JULIA'S WORDS

The places we saw! Nooo! No fucking way! As you approach Loiyangalani from South Horr, it emerges with each passing kilometre as some ancient and infernal cauldron, some place where the guts of the earth once spewed – and some probably keeps oozing out – field upon field upon hillside of volcanic rock. 
The bits of life that peek out from this scene of such scorching devastation, timid as weeds some of them with snow-white flowers, are like the heroes of the Place of Death. The little brown birds that very occasionally flutterby kind of break your heart.

This is it, far as the eye can see

Palm Shades was the spot we came to rest for 3 grateful nights, slap bang in the middle of this explosive Loiyangani nothingness with just the rose-tinted, saline Lake Turkana to break up the deathscape. 

In the midst of the lakeside rubble the Turkana people, who unbelievably call these thunderous badlands home, have built their reed-‘n-stick igloos; winds that could easily have come from the “hot” setting of a hairdryer roar across in unstoppable blasts. These winds are the kind to turn a fleshy papaya to crisp parchment – but be prepared to flake from sheer heat if they don’t blow.

People are living here!

Palm Shades was, as promised, an oasis with grass, a hot spring and, yes palmy shade.
And the Turkana are a bit like the courageous little flowers that dare to make a stand in the planet’s hell, like outlandish heroes conjuring life in spite of. There were button-bright children with bright-yearning futures who showed us the way to the lake, not as cold or as salty as I had expected. And after a 30 minutes’ walk (just one way) across an Upington-type wasteland, a dip in the murky brown-red waters was THE thing.

IN REHANA'S WORDS

It was up at 6.30am again for the next leg to Loiyangalani, along Lake Turkana. According to the blogs we read in preparation for this journey, this was going to be the worst part. At first, the road wasn’t bad at all. The sand was compacted by the rain. At first, the road was flanked with banked gravel – signaling recent grader activity. We could dawdle and we did.

Our eyes boggled so much as we descended to Lake Turkana that we had to stop often to give them a rest. We drove past fields of black lava rock, dotted with yellow trees that had bark as soft as baby skin. The hills were quilted with green, yellow and orange vegetation.

We stopped when we saw the first flash of lake in the distance. It was surprisingly blue, but for every meter we dropped down towards it, more and more green appeared in the water.

We stopped again when the road became smooth concrete(?) and walked across a red lava field to the edge of a drop to stare at the lake. The rocks were spongy under our feet; the orange gravel beneath it was pulpy. Brave white flowers grew in the shade of the larger rocks, but not much else.

Down, down to Lake Turkana

On the last stretch the wind that had cooled us down stepped up a notch to a hot blast. The description of road to Loiyangalani on the blogs turned out to be true. The sharp rocks and loose gravel on the insult of a road rattled against the skid plate protecting our engine. The top speed we reached was 25km/hr. We arrived without a puncture between us – one poor blogger had nine punctures and needed new tyres!

Loiyangalani seemed pretty bleak, until we drove to the north of the town. As were neared the campsite, the scenery changed. Palm trees grew where only thorn acacia was expected. The Palm Shade campsite was exactly as it had been described on many blogs – a lush oasis in a bleak landscape.

Palm Shades, our home for four nights

There’s a spring feeding Loiyangalani, and it burbles into a pool in the corner of the campsite. All we wanted was a cold shower but, for once, there were only warm showers on offer. There was plenty of water to wash our filthy cars.

It was 44 degrees Celsius when we drove in Loiyangalani and it remained above 40 degrees for the three days we were there. It dropped to around 30 degrees at night but, regular as clockwork, the wind began howling at 10pm, cooling things down a tad. I cowered on my side of the tent, on top of the sheet, hoping that Julia’s hot body wouldn’t come anywhere near.

Our first visitor was Abdi, an enormously gifted 12-year-old who dreams that he will one day be president of America. I dashed his hopes and said he could be the best president Kenya ever had. I pointed out that Madiba was an African president, and adored by people around the world – even in America.

Abdi and his friend Napao took us to the lake, a 20-minute hike from our camp in the blistering heat. We stopped at the Kenya Wildlife Service offices to enquire about a boat trip. KWS wanted $20 each for a visit to the crocodile-infested South Island in the middle of the lake and Ksh18 000 for the boat (that’s R1 800). We declined. Their office was hot enough to bake bread and it was hardly cooler on the shaded stoep. We had come halfway between the village and the lake. We bravely pressed on to the water.
Lake Turkana’s narrow beach was black soil, the water a muddy brown up close.  Naked boys who had been swimming a few metres away came splashing towards us as we entered the water. It was bliss. It wasn’t cold, but it was wet and we immediately started cooling down.

Mike, Julia and I waded out a distance to where the water was deeper and the muddy black soil at the bottom cool under our feet. We turned and floated on our backs. Carol stayed in the shallows. Lake Turkana has the biggest population of Nile crocodiles in the world, and she was nervous. I couldn’t give a damn about the crocs. The boys surrounding us were swimming, why shouldn’t we?

The boys looked a bit hesitant when they joined us. They shivered as they stood in water lapping their shoulders. Jules impressed me when she got goosebumps as well.

We fought our way back to the campsite through heat thick as a hot sheet, talking to the boys. They all had big dreams. One said he was going to be a doctor; he wanted to work for the Flying Doctors’ Service. There was a wannabe engineer among them and, of course, Abdi the politician. The boys walk 12km to school on Sunday afternoons and 12km back on Fridays. They’re boarders, and sleep on the floors of their classrooms.

We had good company at Palm Shade.  Benedict was a great host, his staff were all quirky. The gardener worked in full Samburu regalia, wearing every bead and feather he owned. The barman had a gold chain draped above his lip, around both ears and under his chin. Gabriel the cook seemed drunk most of the time, but he was as tall as a stork so it was possible he was just falling over his feet. He cooked us grilled tilapia (the sweetest fish) with the crispiest bestest chips, enough to share with two hungry boys.

Napao, Abdi and Rehana

We went with Abdi, Napao and Samuel, a Kenyan tour operator, for a stroll through town on our last night. Abdi took us to where they played pool, a hot hut filled with men on wooden benches.

I regret that I didn’t take my camera, because the pool we watched (we didn’t have the nerve to challenge) was unique. The tables were L-shaped; a pool table had been sawn in half and added to another, giving it seven holes.

They sunk the balls by number, and if they managed to snooker their opponents by hiding the white ball behind the lower section of the L, they got an extra shot. Scorers kept tally on blackboards behind the tables; players got points added or subtracted. One player had 25 points deducted for a fault we couldn’t figure out. What was completely incomprehensible was the fact that there were three players at one table and two at the other.

Samuel, born and bred in Kenya and 32 years old, had never seen anything like it. One of the players, Locks, said this version of pool had been invented in Loiyangalani. He said there was another, “high level”, version of the game in town where the table was in the shape of an “N”, but we were late for the sunset so we gave it a miss.

As we walked down the main street I again kicked myself for not bringing my camera. It looked like a scene straight out of a spaghetti western. Hot zinc buildings flanked the wide, dusty road and people sat on the stoeps, cowering from the heat. The men had feathers in their hats or in their hair. The women were draped in yellow and orange cloth, with thick bead necklaces around their necks.

Abdi and Napao took us to the lodge neighbouring Palm Shade. They weren’t allowed beyond the car park. I hate the way some foreign-owned lodges won’t allow locals to use their facilities. Do they want foreigners to come from far to visit with each other?

Again what a place, why didn’t I bring my camera? Perfectly paved paths took us past flowering frangipani trees. There were two swimming pools, both empty. A spout at the deep end of the biggest pool, about three-quarter Olympic-sized and ringed with blue tile, gushed water that whirled down a drain on the floor. Abdi said it was fed by the spring, so the water was probably about 44 degrees celsius. The second pool had brown scum on its floor.

The lodge’s huge restaurant and bar was empty except for two waiters, an ugly white man and a not-too attractive teenager. Abdi had warned us that the owner was a drunk German who swore at his guests and was in a particularly foul mood because his 16-year-old son had rolled his car. I can only imagine how much salacious gossip the locals pick up from unhappy staffers at some lodges.

The owner reluctantly allowed us to have “one drink only” and we accepted because the sunset was too beautiful to miss. We sat down at a table overlooking the lake and finally I found the place in Loiyangalani that had featured in the film The Constant Gardener. The grey graveled airstrip below the lodge with the lake shimmering in the background had been in one of its tortured scenes.

I loved Loiyangalani. I’d love to visit it again. Next time I’ll bring a two-ringed blow-up paddling pool and an icemaker.