What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

Wow.... This is my first opportunity for an update in almost 3 weeks. I feel completely overwhelmed with the amount of information necessary to catch you all up. So here goes, please bare with me as I regurgitate as many details as I can remember.

The shortest possible explanation that I can give would be to say that nothing works out the way that you would expect it to when you have chosen to travel the way I have. I should have never even written that I was on my way to Uganda... I never made it, but I did get close. If that is enough to hold you over, then please stop reading here because there is a lot to cover.

I spent another night or two in Nairobi getting a feel for the city and trying to organize my plans with Harry. He wasn't feeling so hot and was a little worried about leaving Western medicine indefinitely. So we decided that I would take the bus to the Kakamega Rainforest close to the border while stuck around to rest. I would wait for him there. I don't blame him for sticking around. Harry has already suffered through a bad case of malaria (he had a 104.5 degree temperature the day I met him). I would have made the same decision if I had been in his position.

So I took the bus into the unknown... It left two hours later than it was supposed to by the way. And by bus, I mean "African style bus." It was medium sized and stuffed like a clown car with people for most of the journey. There was a point where it started raining and the door flew open at about 60mph. I guess it was broken because they tied it shut with twine for the rest of the trip. I had to smile because I was experiencing something that almost no one else gets to... Or maybe I was just laughing to keep from crying. I still don't know. And the roads were terrible... I mean comically terrible. We were bouncing off the ceiling at different points. These buses stop in every major bus station and wait to fill up with more people. Meanwhile, I had my first experience with total anarchy on this trip. All of a sudden, there were over 20 villagers on the bus pushing every vegetable you could imagine in my face. I had no idea what was going on. I was the only tourist (and by that, I mean white person), and there was zero English. I'm not going to lie, I experienced a little bit of traveler's anxiety.

Here's one discussion up for consideration. Where do African people pee? Honestly, I have never seen a public bathroom. That was my reasoning for dehydrating myself. So I spent 9 hours on the bus... dehydrated with a headache... and I still had to pee. But, the view outside the windows was beautiful. The ecology of western Africa is exactly what you would picture in your head. It's the greenest place that I have ever seen. There are scattered farms children playing in the the fields. Sometimes they chase the bus waving their hands. I think the bus provides a great deal of the daily entertainment for most people. So you can imagine there excitement of seeing me.

But I made it in one piece and spent the next three days reaping the benefits of my struggle. Kakamega Rainforest is beautiful and lush. I did day hikes and saw things I never could have imagined. There are trees that actually eat other trees! I have pictures to prove it. There were butterflies of every color on the paths and in the canopies of the trees. I would sit on the porch and enjoy a beer with other travelers every night while I waited for Harry to show up.

He never did... and thats where things turned upside down. Apparently, Harry made the right move by staying in Nairobi. He called me three days later to tell me he had given up. He had pneumonia and would be getting on the next flight home... So now I'm stuck in Kakamega with no traveling partner. Suddenly, Uganda and Rwanda didn't seem like such viable options. I would say that this was probably the psychological low point of my trip so far. The only optimistic thing I could think of was at least I didn't have pneumonia. It's times like those were your only consolation can be the sadistic pleasure of knowing it could be worse.

I immediately called my friend Muthoga and begged him to let me join the trip building the classroom all over again. They were happy to have me, but it meant that I had 13 more hours of busing fun to reach them before they left on safari for 4 days. I left before the sun came up the next day. The security guard from my hostel walked me to the bus stop, gun in hand. He kept telling me "don't worry, You're safe." It's saying like these ones that seem to have an adverse effect. I felt less safe every time he said it. Here was a point in my journey where I realized my naivety. We walked through some serious slums. It smelled terrible, and there were street people who had built fires to stay warm in the middle of the city! I've never seen anything quite like that and I hope I never do again. It was like being in a movie. One where they show you a city that has gone to hell (batman, or the crow come to mind). That being said, however, I did make it to the bus with no real problems. I'll spare you the details of the actual journey over the bumpy roads. Just know that it was just as much fun as my first bus trip... only longer!

I can't emphasize enough how happy I was to see a familiar face in Naro Moru. All I wanted was to know that I was taken care of and that I wouldn't have to do something like that for quite a while. I realized when I got there that I had never even really thought about what I might be doing here at the base of Mt. Kenya. I was surprised and elated to learn that I would be doing a homestay for the next week. It was a small house with three rooms filled with a mother, father, three children and their 16 year old niece. Broken down cardboard boxes provided them with ample wall paper and the floors were made of dirt. They cook over a fire in a shack around the side of the house. I would try and sit with them while they cook, but the smoke would make tears stream down my cheeks. They, kept asking why I was crying. They have two cows, two dogs (one of which wanted to eat me... truly terrifying), and chickens that have free reign inside and out of the house. This may seem like a description of poverty at first glance, but I realized that they were very lucky after a day or two to of soaking it all in. All of the children are in school. Michael (the father) pays for their education (barely) by growing cabbage and running a small carpentry shop. They are surviving. Which is more than I can say for many of the other people I've met along the way.

We were successful with the classroom too. The kids worked hard to get the project done in time. We were surprised to see how grateful everyone was to have it too. I guess that the kids had been learning under a tree before us. Oh, and we had some fun along the way too. Our weekend excursions took us all over Kenya. We camped on safari and watched some baboons run a distraction while others open one students bag. They stole her towel and power bars. I'm still trying to figure out why they need to dry off after a swim, but I'm impressed with their strategic organization overall.

The tale end of our journey took us to Lake Nakuru National Park. Imagine turning a corner and seeing a fresh water lake... Only you don't even know what you're seeing at first because it's bright pink. This is where the flamingos live. Now I can check "seeing 3 million fluorescent pink flamingos in one place" off of my life list. It wasn't just the sight of them that was so incredible, it was the collective sound they make. It was like a loud melodious groan. Kind of like a more subdued biker gang all revving their engines at once. I was blown away. And we topped it all off by staying in the park and watching the sun set over a classic African setting. It was a field filled with gazelles.

All in all, I would say that missing out on Uganda was a blessing in disguise. I have experience more in three weeks than I ever would have thought was possible, And I wouldn't take anything back in retrospect. Not even the bumpy roads or buses. Because that is the trip that I've chosen to take. You have to accept that situations like the one I had to go through in Kakamega are an inevitability. I came to the realization somewhere along the way that this is not a vacation for me. It's a life experience and you take the good with the bad. Muthoga told me over a beer once that there are two ways to travel through Africa. There are volunteers and there are tourists. He was a little critical of tourism saying "a person will fly to Nairobi, fly to Masai Mara, and go on safari to see the animals... but what did you see? That's not Africa." Those words have stuck with me and I believe I have found a third was to travel. It's being willing to be flexible and trying to experience as much as possible. I want to be able to say that I tried to see all that Africa has to offer by the time I'm done. I will climbed the highest peaks, rode the most crowded buses, learned as much of the language as I could, seen the animals, lived on the ground and in villages. I've given back wherever I saw an opportunity. We've built schools, taught students, and sent the brightest ones back into mainstream education. Yes, I think African has made a permanent mark on me.