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.

KWA HERI TANZANIA, JAMBO KENYA

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Monday, 29 July

I didn’t give Arusha a chance; I retreated at the Masaai campsite on the outskirts of the CBD and licked my wounds for two days. Bill Clinton described Arusha as the Geneva of Africa. Don’t know what he inhaled when he said that. 
The little I saw seemed depressingly similar to other towns in Tanzania, except that the gravel roads the chickens were scratching in were a lot cleaner. I didn’t really see enough of the place to pass judgement and I haven’t a single photo to share.

Even if I had the strength, Jules and I were put off exploring by Mike and Carol’s tales of the city. They were subjected to racial abuse for spending money and at Indian-owned shop and a beggar ripped of their car’s side mirror.

Jules and I hung out at the camp’s restaurant, where the pool was free and so was the wifi – although intermittent at best. Pool is a great equaliser: even when there are language barriers, we all know the rules and get it on immediately. We generally play doubles and against each other. Soon as our partners realise we can actually play, we make friends. Problem is you only meet men at pool tables.

On Thursday we headed for the Ngorogoro crater. Because we couldn’t afford more than 24 hours in the conservation area, we camped at Doffa’s Safari Camp near the gate the night before. Driving to Mto Wa Mbu, the town closest to Ngorogoro, was hellish and interesting. The road was under construction at least a third of the way so we choked dust on rutted diversions while we drove deep into Maasai territory.

I saw my first Maasai male in Mbeya, a few hours after we crossed the border into Tanzania a month ago, swivelled to stare at the tall, skinny man draped in red checked cloth. They’ve been ubiquitous in every campsite, hired as askaris to protect us or being loverboys for mzungu women. They’ve been on every beach in Tanzania and at every market selling tourist souvenirs. 
We’ve played pool with a few, some surprisingly effeminate despite the knives and knopkieries sheathed on their leather belts. We’ve tried not to stare at the circles carved into their cheeks and the huge holes gouged into their earlobes.

All the way to Mto Wa Mbu I saw little boys in red cloth on the side of the highway, some as young as five or six with nothing but a stick to herd the thousands of shillings worth of family wealth while trucks and busses hurtled towards them. I wouldn’t trust many of the thirty year olds I know with my most treasured possessions, and I certainly wouldn’t want to give my grandson a stick and responsibility for fifty cows and bulls in a year or two.

In the village we saw women in traditional dress for the first time. Now I know why Maasai men are so attractive, they are born of drop-dead gorgeous women.  Equally stately, the women carry their heads high despite the masses of ornamentation draped on their heads, ears (shimmery silver earrings) and around their necks (lots of beaded necklaces and little purses).

Doffa campsite was typical. It had grass (a major plus), the toilet broke (although there was an eastern one available) and the showers could do with a few tiles (but the water was hot and plentiful). There were two mosques within earshot, but their hafeez had good voices and rhythm. When we left, one of the staffers who had done nothing for us stood at the side of the driveway with his hand outstretched.

Ngorogoro Crater was gobsmackingly gobsmacking. I can’t find words to do justice to it. You try, look at the photo and see what words work:

We stood on the lip of the crater, surrounded by wazungu from all over the world, every one of them with a camera, and stared out. I had expected it to be an exceptional landscape but when it is all that fills your eyes it’s quite dizzying. 
Of course you also stare at the two Asian women making a peace sign while one of them points a cellphone at their faces, and the sulky American teenager who doesn’t want to pose with his mother. There’s no escaping wazungu in the Ngorogoro Conservation area.

The place is overrun by safari vehicles driving wazungu from one park to another – Ngorogoro is linked to the Serengeti and the Maasai Mara – at high speeds on roads sappurated with gravel ruts.

The safari vehicles throw up huge clouds of dust as they roar towards and past you. By the time their cloud clears the herd of giraffe you stopped to admire have disappeared. I gloated a little when we came across one of them that had overtaken us at speed with a flat puncture. Won’t do that again, our car wouldn’t start next time I tried. Jules quickly diagnosed a battery terminal shaken loose, Mike was the mechanic and we were on our way a few minutes later.

There was wildebeest and flamingo down below in the crater (another $200 could get us a better view than our binoculars offered), and plenty of giraffe in the park. But the most ubiquitous animals were herds of cows, donkeys and goats being herded across the desolate landscape. I don’t believe I’ve seen herds of donkeys before. Definitely have never paid for that privilege before.

Each herd had the requisite small boy in cloth with stick. Some of them had white paint on their black faces and parked themselves on the side of the road. The wazungu, who sped past the animals, stopped to take photos with the boys. Wonder how much they paid for each pic? 
We also saw car-park quantities of safari vehicles outside the kraals in the reserve where wazungu paid extra for an authentic interaction with “the people who had roamed the ancient landscape for centuries” (said slowly in a Richard Attenborough voice).

Why drive at speed past landscape like this?

And this?

Simba campsite at Ngorogoro was my final straw. We paid $30 dollars each to camp on a sloped, cow-shit infested field. The toilets (the little I saw of it and according to Carol’s reports) were foul. There were about twelve toilets for a campsite that accommodated around 200 people. There was no hot water and it was freezing on the lip of the crater.

I took one look at some of the ablutions and lost it a little. Walked away shouting loudly, “One more day in Tanzania! One more day for fuck you mzungu! That’s what they say. Fuck you mzungu!”. For the first time on this trip, we took refuge in our cars until it was time to go to bed (around 7.30pm).

We were up at 5.30am, packed up our tents with frozen fingers and set off to the Oldupai Gorge, where Louis and Mary Leakey found the hominid fossils helps prove (Julia scoffs and says it suggests, maybe)  that humans originated in Africa.

It was worth getting up early. We stopped to look at the misty dawn in the crater and there was no one else around. We drove at our pace to the gorge and didn’t encounter another car. We had the viewpoint at the gorge to ourselves where we brewed coffee and had muesli with fresh fruit, yoghurt and honey.

After admiring the Leakey’s work at the museum and listening to a lecture on the site, we decided not to hike into the gorge. The place was filling up with wazungu, it was time to leave. 
We stopped for one last look at the crater, where clouds were dropping down the lip in a drapery that made Table Mountain’s tablecloth pale in comparison.

That’s it. We can leave Tanzania now. One last night at Doffa’s campsite and then it’s a hop to Arusha and a skip across the border. Mike suggested on our last night that the reason we feel so negative about Tanzania is that the travelling had been hard in the country. 
We've been in Tanzania for 40 days and the longest he and Carol had stayed anywhere was three nights. Jules and I were luckier, we put down anchors for four nights in Dar and four in Stone Town. Mike was right; we’d had too many consecutive days of tent up at sunset and down the next morning.

Unfortunately, there hadn’t been many places in Tanzania that made us want to linger longer. We’ve seen exceptional natural beauty but few of the places we stayed offered us sufficient wazungu amenities to make a long stay bearable. Those that did were far too expensive for our budgets. We’re exhausted and Tanzania’s tourist economy made us so.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON TANZANIA

1.     Their roads are foul and we visited at a time that they were trying to fix some. We had to drive along rutted diversions for hours alongside pothole-infested highways being repaired at snail’s pace. They’ve been fixing the highway between Dar es Salaam and Mtwara in the south for 50 years and they’re still not done.

2.     They are obsessed with speed bumps. Where the highways have been restored to pristine tarmac, there’s at least four high and wide speedbumps in every village lining it – and there’s a village every five kilometres in places. They put speed bumps on their diversions which are all rutted and corrugated and seldom allow for speeds of more than 40km an hour.

3.     Tanzanians work incredibly hard and for very little return. They’re stumped by a lack of technology and widespread shortages of electricity and water. The lack of basic technology like wheelbarrows makes many tasks incredibly physical. They all have cellphones though and, boy, do they talk!

I did see one wheelbarrow in 40 days in Tanzania

4.     The tourism economy caters largely for wealthy Germans and Americans and they come in droves, especially in July. There seems to be very few local tourists. We met far fewer foreign backpackers in Tanzania than in Mozambique and Malawi. Most of them were packed into trucks converted into overland vehicles. Poor sods, we evertook many of them on our long journeys to cover short distances.

5.     While I never once encountered a Tanzanian with an irrational hatred of foreigners akin to South African xenophobes, there is a wazungu economy. Produce sellers at the market hesitate when asked a price before naming one that makes their neighbours giggle. They don’t care that their neighbours’ currencies don’t fare well against the US dollar. Most of the places we’ve stayed and many where we’ve eaten have charged US dollars. At a restaurant in a lodge at Ngorogoro crater they tried to charge us $25 each for a cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee.

6.     Our communication with people was hampered by our limited Swahili and the poor English skills in Tanzania. One of the stand-out people we met was Sophia at Kikha Lodge in Tunduru. At that stage we had about 10 Swahili words and she had no English but we really digged each other.

7.     Their loud religious wailing – Muslim and Christian – would be prohibited in most countries on the grounds of public nuisance. It is unnerving to enter a shop with a huge photo of the Ayatollah Khomeini or see Muammar Gadaffi on the back of a taxi or truck.

8.     They’re equally insane about European soccer – mostly Man United – and the poorest children in the dustiest villages all sport club or Tanzanian soccer T-shirts. And every small settlement has a pool table.

9.     The only part of Tanzania I would visit again – I’m not sure it is part of Tanzania, I think their demand for independence should be granted – is Zanzibar. I could probably live there. The place works, for the locals and the tourists.

IN JULIA'S WORDS

DUSTED IN THE DECEASED

31 July

The air here even looks hot, shimmering as it is in the luminous lemoncheesecake grass.

The air here even sounds hot, shimmering as it is with the sounds of giant black beetles, the screams of objecting baboons, the declarations of 10 000 birds.

We’re taking our hot refuge under a lapa with a giant witch’s hat for a roof, here in the wilderness near to the town of Magadi. There is no hint here at all of the slightly icky type of town it is: all industrial with utilitarian blocks of flats for those who work at the serious soda-making factory, perched on the edge of the salt lake from which it gleans the chemicals it needs to make washing powder.

Soda ash factory on a gorgeous lake

Looking to make our way swiftly from said Magadi-town eyesore, we immediately found ourselves like flies entrapped in the web of inscrutable Maasai politics and agendas. A limping man flagged us down with his official invoice book, explaining that there were fees to be paid and guides to be procured so that we could go further than the town’s limits and enter the “community tourism” area. 

A young Masaai man – David – effectively hijacked us, taking us via the famous hot springs – 44 degrees just about scorching the feet, and FISH living in it – and took us to his family home in the exact midst of a gorgeous nowhere in the Rift Valley. 

Fishing in a hot spring

It was a moonscape of an environment, gorgeous and dry-tortured, and we parked on what we realised the next day (after hearing trucks and motorbikes roaring past at all hours) were tracks that were no less than the local highway.

A whole lot of this, and me!

With some fleecing and much to-ing and phro-ing, we eventually ditched David to look for one “Magadi Fly Camp” listed on Garmin (fondly known by us, with her authoritative and clear BBC voice, as Garmonia).
The drive deteriorated from sublime to excrutiating as we drove more by faith than Garmonia over salt pan, across powder-dust roads, up sheer rocky “roads” for about 6 hours – failing to find either of the two campsites listed on Garmin.

It became clear when we were flagged down again by a man in a shiny green tracksuit and another would-be scamster bedecked in Masai’s best waving their invoice books and incanting “community camp” that this was how mzungus are hijacked in these parts. We went with them to a godawful thorn infested non-camping site not near the river before we ditched them too. 

And, most, most gratefully, followed Carol’s suggestion and headed for some thatched roofs she’d spotted not far from the river. Thus our fate was kind enough to land us comfortably enough in the arms of a research centre with acacias to shelter us on its large stretch of dust and straw, complete with night fires and dry air sultry under glowering black clouds piling up towards the mountains that surround us.

Safe in the arms of acacia treses

We’ve long been ashudder at all the talk we’ve heard of Kenyan bandits – and yet twice now we’ve agreed to go off with total strangers, both times finding ourselves in places we didn’t particularly want to be and definitely didn’t agree to at our initial discussions.
Time to lose that gullible habit, me thinks. Only, there’s the slight sadness of losing the positive side of gullible – trusting, and expecting the best from people. Shame that.

Our trip has been mindblowing in our haring from coast to mountain to dry savannah. The contrasts abound – not only the landscapes, people, languages, but also going from soft hair and tanned supple skin on the coast to rednosed shivering to dustcrusty hair and scaly skin. 

And the contrasts in camping experience too. Putting up and taking down the rooftop tent is one good example. I am the designated monkey who climbs on the roof to wrestle with the tent cover, attend to the tent’s ladder, and heave the tent so it concertina’s up or out, depending if we’re setting up or heading off. 

At the coast, the debris and stof I’ve wiped on myself doing this particular task was the least offensive. Climbing on top in the cold and dark and wet, with naked feet and only one layer of clothing at Simba camp, Ngorongoro, was probably the hardest. 

But the dust is something too. I’ve had to set aside a designated outfit to be permanently filthy, and put it on when setting out our tent after our duststorm of a drive through these driest parts.  Given that dust and ashes are the stuff of life now dead, we’re fairly coated with the deceased.

Our spare tyre after three days in Magadi

IN REHANA'S WORDS

ODOMETER READING: 248 647 (We’ve driven 9 875km since April)

Monday, 29 July

Swahili crossed the border with us. We said kwa heri (goodbye) Tanzania and hello to Kenya which, so far, has been kind to us. A border official told us we no longer required visas (ours had expired since we got them in Pretoria) .

Tizi’s Guesthouse in Namanga was comfortable and affordable. We struck up conversation with Theresa, who worked there, and the first Kenyan I connected with was a political refugee. I hadn’t expected that.

Theresa was from Nakuru and her family’s home had been burned down in the 2007 post-election violence. She had come to Namanga after friends in a refugee camp suggested they could find work there. Her family was still in Nakuru and have not received any compensation or form of justice.
She shrugged and pointed out that people voted again this year for the crop of politicians responsible for the violence. She had no sympathy for herself, or others.

On Monday morning we set off for Lake Magadi. I was hoping for a place to settle for a few days, where we could catch up with ourselves and do some much-needed life admin. During my research for this trip I had read a blog by South African travellers who raved about the beauty of the soda-ash lake and its community of pink flamingos.
The drive there was a potholed extravaganza made worse by a convoy of army trucks steered by learner drivers. But it seemed worthwhile when the lake first shimmered pinkly into view. As we crossed the causeway into Magadi – a factory town owned by Tata Chemicals and dominated by its huge soda-ash facility – we made out individual flamingos head down in the shallow water. We also saw a good few dead birds in the water, quite unsettling. The security guard at the boom gate into the town said they were electrocuted on the power lines.

The pink in the water is a flock of flamingoes. Sorry we can't provide an aerial view

Our Garmins struggled to point the way to the nearest campsite. A man dressed in red checked cloth flagged us down. He had tried to stop us earlier while we drove in small circles, but we ignored him. This time we stopped, and he offered to show us to a community campsite. He got into Mike’s car and we drove to a gate where there was a proper sign, with a menu of prices for picnics and camping – higher prices for wazungu than what the locals paid, but reasonable.

We paid at the gate and let David, our Maasai guide, show us the way to the camp. The drive across the low-season roads crisscrossing the lake was exhilarating. There were pools of pink water crusted with salt and patches of black and white where the water had receded. Best of all were the flamingos, iridescent in the distance. We saw wildebeest at the water’s edge. We had also seen a herd of zebra on the drive to Magadi.

We stopped at a hot spring bubbling out of the lake – the water was 44 degrees Celsius and unbearable after a few minutes. The air temperature was 35 degrees. In the middle of this nowhere was a Landrover and three Maasai women selling the same beaded ornaments we had seen everywhere in Tanzania.

Carol bought jewellery; Jules took our first photos of Maasai people and had to pay for the privilege. The Landrover had brought Nairobi university students – one of them was a geneticist studying the fish that lived in that hot water for her Phd.

Our first Maasai photo

David said it was time to go to the campsite. We expected to camp somewhere near the lake’s incredible beauty, he took us to a watering hole used by his community for their herds of goat and cattle. The landscape surrounding us was Africa-stark – a few acacia and other thorny trees in brown dust with a mountain in the background. It was too late to leave and, as David explained, this was the Magadi Community Eco-tourism Project promised at the gate – we would camp with his family.

He introduced us to his brother and nephew who were herding his flock of 400 goats (he also has cattle) and many of his neighbours came to introduce themselves – the word had spread and people turned up to check our receipt for payment. It was getting dark, there was nothing we could do except set up camp in the dust and the dung.

Jules made a magnificent filling of spinach, brinjal and ricotta for Mike’s pancakes and we settled down for an evening of Maasai fellowship. This involved David being visited by friends all evening. Most of them roared up on motorbikes with blaring music systems attached to their handlebars. David had a transistor radio that played bad, scratchy reggae all night. The night was the darkest I’ve ever slept in. When I opened my eyes in the tent I had to check with my fingertips that they were really open. I could see nothing.

Turned out the teeny track in the gravel between our tents was a major highway. Motorbikes roared passed our tent through the night and the traffic was heavy from dawn – it was market day at nearby Lake Natron where Maasai from Tanzania and Kenya met and traded with each other.

The next morning I explained to David that we wanted to go to a wazungu campsite, preferably Magadi Fly Camp that was flagged on our Garmins. We wanted to be at the lake and we wanted wazungu facilities like toilets and showers. He said sure, he would take us there.

He took us to meet his mother at his family’s kraal. It was ringed with thorn bushes and has another circle of thorns inside, for the goats. Two small children screamed in terror as we entered and two women gave us sulky grimaces. David’s mother, Mrs Maria, was all smiles. She took us into her house, a stick and wattle dwelling with a cow dung roof not high enough for even Jules to stand upright – Mike had to bend to the waist. We sat on the bed, made of sticks, rope and covered with a hard hide. My eyes burned in the smoke coming off the fire in the middle of the hut. Mrs Maria gave us sweet tea with real cow’s milk in enamel cups. Must be years since tea was foisted on me but I finished every drop.

Their home had very little. The bed was the only furniture and there was a shelf from which David’s mother took the enamel cups and the thermos of ready-made tea. It also held a few enamel bowls, but that was it. I wondered what she would have made of our home if I had the ability to teleport her there to return her hospitality.

David and his mother outside their home

After we bought David’s mother's beads, he took us back the hot spring, where there was nothing but a leaning lapa to protect us from the elements, which including a huge hyena Jules and I spotted loping through the landscape on the way there. We also saw gorgeous giraffe (darker than ours) and more wildebeest.

We thanked David for his time, foolishly paid him for a day’s camping at Fly Camp, and set off on our own. Our Garmins had picked up a track in the bundus. We drove four hours and travelled less than 100km. It was mostly tracks in soft sand, our tyres threw up clouds of dust three-stories high in places. But there was some raggedy rocks that required 4x4. Mike whipped out his super-strong towrope and pulled out a truck that had sunk into the black gunk of the lake, in two ticks.

Garmin kept taking us to the bottom of a stony hill where there was nothing but goat tracks. We walked up the track but I already knew; if there was a campsite nearby serviced by staff, there would be at least a motorbike track in the soil.

I envied the Maasai women and young boys who had come to a watering hole at the bottom of the hill to collect water in buckets and water their goats. They were all covered in dust – as we were – but they knew where they were coming from and exactly where they were going. All I felt was lost and completely out of place.

We gave up and headed away from the lake to the next camp Garmin suggested,  20km away. When we neared it we were flagged by two men who tried to sell us their community’s version of eco-tourism – a thorny sloping patch under a tree near the wide, muddy river.

We spotted a lapa on the opposite bank, thanked the men for their time and ditched them, and headed for what looked like a campsite. Turned out it was the Lale’enok (brown river in Maasai) Resource Centre, and the project manager Joel said we were very welcome to stay.

We set up camp under a patch of acacia trees, nervously eyed the troop of baboons watching us, but Joel said they would leave us alone, they were not habituated to humans. We went down to the river and soaked our hot feet in the dark brown water, cooling down our over-heated bodies and minds.

The campsite had ample water, toilets and showers. Our laundry bag was overflowing; I soaked clothing within minutes of parking the car. The hot, dry air ripped out the water from the washing minutes after it went on the line. Our dishcloths folded like cardboard when I put them away.

We collected piles of wood and made a braai and veggie potjie. Our huge campfire after supper (we sat some distance away, it was hot) made a small ring of light in the dense darkness.

Joel came to visit and was fascinating. He had stood for political office in 2007 and narrowly lost to the corrupt incumbent who he said bought votes. Disillusioned with politics, he came back home and was employed by the resource centre, which has programmes from lion tracking to agribusiness.

I had the best shower of my life last night. I was the dirtiest I have been since the days when my mother sent me into the yard to play and I made mud cakes. The water stored in black plastic tanks was still warm at 9pm, and gushing fulsomely.  

It is impossible to keep your feet clean. With every step the dust rises up to your shins like a pair of grey socks. Our sheet is cream, I have to Wetwipe my feet most nights before I go to sleep. When we camp in dung or mud we have to leave our shoes outside our tent and hope that the hyenas don’t make off with them.

I am so glad I am here. I am so glad I met David (despite him ripping us off for a night’s camping) and Joel and his colleague Albert. I wish them all the luck, especially with their eco-toursim projects. Magadi Lake and the Maasai conservancies and villages surrounding them are worth a visit. This was the first time we heard lions roaring in the darkness near our campsite. We all deluded ourselves into believing it was baboons barking, till Joel came all excited the next morning to tell us we’d been ringed by lions. He knows, many of them are tagged and monitored.

He offered a trip later that afternoon to see the lions. But Jules and I had had enough of dust and thorns. We left for Nairobi, only 60km away.

Soda ash in the heat

IN JULIA'S WORDS

BOURGEOIS BITCHES TAKE A BREAK

7 August

This is the anniversary of the infamous bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, back in 1998. The security measures around malls and other such places are a reminder of this and other terrorism more recent, and it does remind me so of Joburg in the ‘80s: uniformed security checking car boots, being frisked when entering the building. Besides that familiar feeling of nausea at the presence of the armed – note how such personnel (not quite people) NEVER have a sense of humour – it does make me feel slightly ashamedly safe.

You know some words just go together: like "starving" and "artist", "wanker" and banker", "patient" and "gardener"? Well, so does "weary" with "traveller".
When we first arrived here, I was weary indeed. Much of my weariness, I think, is also due to having crap sinus (cities DO this to me), and also having missioned to conquer a significant pile of admin over the last week. 

Tomorrow we’re on our way to Ethiopia via the crappiest roads, probably in the known roaded universe, PLUS there be bandits. 

The car's service took two days (we've clocked up 10 000kms) which entailed us sitting waitfully in a cold, cosyless space throughout; then getting the visa for Ethiopia took two days (with a woman with a bad case of Big Bureaucrat our main obstruction); then there was the downtown mission of getting our passports stamped out of Kenya here in Nairobi because there's no border post where we're crossing into Ethiopia (was far better than our Home Affairs though); and then getting our car's passport, the Carnet, also stamped.

But done it all is. Besides two nights camping, Rehana and I cunningly hid from the cold and mizzle of winter Nairobi in a low key guesthouse called Angaza, where we lay stubbornly upon the bed as much as possible, watching CRICKET on our very own TV, and using Wifi till we could Wifi no more.

Now refreshed, I’m about to repack the car with our mega shopping from one of several of our mall visits (strange – is it? – how I’ve come to value malls), and then AM READY for the Great Adventure which lies just ahead.

Or am I?

The only photo we took in Nairobi before a man came to warn us to put our camera away

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Wednesday, 7 August

Nairobi has given us an excellent six-day break from our trials and tribulations. We finally found a place to stay, and took a much-needed break from our journey. We had a little holiday, and it’s girded my loins and given me the strength to face the road ahead.

We've been living large, we found our bourgeois mojo minutes after we arrived, covered in dust. We stopped at the first mall we passed and had a huge meal (I had lamb chops for the first time since I don't know when - for once it wasn't goat dressed up). A host showed us to our table, the waiters wore bowties and aprons, we had cloth napkins, there was free wifi and they took Visa.
We stayed at the Mediterraneo Restuarant for four and a half hours and left with the waiter's cellphone number. Everywhere we go people give us their business cards and tell us to call if we need anything. The waiter at Curry in Hurry also gave us his card, and offered to cook for us.

We went back twice to the Mediterraneo Restaurant, it's in the particularly nice Junction Mall which has a Levis shop, Nakumatt supermarket with everything, two bakeries, a chemist, a coffee shop and a greengrocer with rocket, dhania, parsley, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, green chillies, fennel, peaches, organic double cream. All these shops take Visa! It also has cinemas and we badly wanted to go, but only American violent crap was showing.

It’s been a huge burden on this trip, not having access to ATMs or places that take Visa. In Tanzania we spent most of our time in rural areas. We stopped at every ATM we spotted, and most rejected all our cards. When we found one that worked, we drew on all our cards. Barclays was always the most generous, Standard Bank had branches everywhere.

We haven't seen blue sky once since we arrived in Nairobi. After two nights camping in the cold and rain at Jungle Junction, we debunked to Angaza guesthouse where we have a huge, firm bed, an ensuite bathroom, a TV with satellite (we've been watching SA play Sri Lanka, they finally played well and won the T20series) and best of all, we have unlimited, free wifi.

Our wonderful hostess Ruth and two other guests

We’ve been emailing like mad when we’re not smsing. My father’s been the number one correspondent, writing beautiful emails in the early hours of the morning. He’s bucked up my spirits and gotten me going again.  There’s nothing nicer than opening your inbox and there’s messages waiting to be read.

There was also a buck up email from my aunt Nazeema, and the best email ever from Zarina – a long, detailed account of a day in Ruhi Khan’s life. She wrote down everything he said while he looked at the photos on our blog from Zanzibar. Next time we have working wifi I’m going to demand skype time with Ruhi.

My Arusha gloom had people worried. Nazeema said I should consider taking a flight home to see my family and then start afresh. When I spoke to my father today we both realised that even if I had wanted to fly home for Eid lunch on Friday I couldn’t – a massive fire has crippled the Jomo Kenyatta Airport.

I’m back in the saddle and heading north. Nairobi has been just what I needed and I can’t wait to come back.
With Egypt a no-no and Sudan still bristling, we’re making a U-turn in Ethiopia and driving back home. So we’ll probably be back in Nairobi in about six to eight weeks. Then it’s Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania (on the west which we haven’t yet seen), Zambia, Botswana and home.

Big Red Car had a service, which took two whole days. Samuel, the mechanic at Jungle Junction, was fantastic. He pored over every inch of the car, discovering that the brake drums needed skimming and an exhaust bracket had been jolted loose. The engine’s been cleaned, but that won’t last long.

Big red getting some TLC

We’ve explored Nairobi’s upmarket suburb Karen on foot – that’s where Big Red Car had her service. Cabinet ministers, MPs and businessmen who get government tenders live in Karen. Their houses are monstrosities, many of them breezeblock double-storeys with White House pillars. But there are goats tethered to their hedges and cocks crowing throughout the neighbourhood.
We’ve driven past the Kibera slum several times but we haven’t gone in. We don’t do slum tours and the mounds of plastic burning at its edges don't look very welcoming.

Jules and I have visited several Nairobi malls and skip out carrying brown bags with string handles. Yaya mall down the road is just like Cavendish Square and it has Julia yearning for cousin Najma. Our favourite is Nakumatt Junction, where the Meditarraneo Restaurant is.

We're not in our rooftop tent so we had transport. Nairobi's traffic is a nightmare. They're in the middle of a middle-class boom and the road department hasn't cottoned on yet. It takes ages to get everywhere, an hour and 15 minutes to travel 10km. Our guesthouse is on the cusp of the CBD, surrounded by fancy private hospitals (and funeral parlours and the state mortuary). We haven’t had to travel more than 10km to get anywhere.

There are very few robots and where they exist drivers ignore them. There’s lots of traffic cops trying to unclog the mess, but Nairobi’s the only place I’ve seen cops ignoring the traffic while they speak on their cellphones. At huge junctions and the hundreds of traffic circles you have to let six or eight cars pass before you start pushing your nose in to give yourself and five drivers a turn to move.
A bullbar’s a good thing to have in Nairobi. Most of the drivers are courteous, but the taxi drivers mount the pavement and create four lanes where there should be two. There’s very little roadrage and we haven’t seen one accident yet, inshallah.

Nairobi is so familiar, it's just like Joburg with its noisy hadedas, car and house alarms, electric fences, security guards and malls, malls, malls with excellent restaurants. And the Porsche Cayenne drivers who lunch with cloth napkins. A Julius Malema lookalike posed for his two girlfriends next to the pool at the Intercontinental Hotel – where we had lunch with cloth napkins.

There’s no tent to put up. No gas tank to unlock and take down from the roof. No mattresses to be blown up inside the tent. No bedding to be organised. No water to be fetched from a tap that could be up to 800m away, or needs to be hauled up from a well, or poured out of a tank.

No washing dishes in the darkness with lukewarm water, that has to be fetched and warmed on the gas stove if your pots are greasy (they always are). We've handed in our washing at the guesthouse, no going to fetch water at the tap.

We're living the high life and it’s just what we need. We didn't take photos in Nairobi, sorry. But you probably saw the airport in flames on TV. We slept through all of that.

Tomorrow morning we’re heading north, to Lake Turkana. Doubt there’ll be wifi up there.