Out West part II

We are slowly getting used to life here. For example what once filled us with fear – matatus - now seem common place. Although I wouldn’t say we are getting used to being crammed into a 14 seater death trap with 25 other people, we feel comfortable enough for Joanna to shout at the conductors when they displease her.

But the death traps, that are Matatus, do raise an interesting question. If ethical investors boycott arms dealers and tobacco companies, why not boycott Toyota who make the damn things? 

‘So why the rant?’ I hear you ask. In two weeks we shall be in Namibia enjoying (hopefully) some warm weather – without any matatus at all.

Well let me tell you. We have booked ourselves on a tour – and what do you think they drive? A Bloody Toyota Hiace – aka matatus. Argh.

Sorry, got a little side tracked there. So we travelled from Kisii to Kisumu by overcrowded matatu - ‘yes your halitosis is impressive, please get your elbow out of my eye’ - a journey of just a few hours. Kisumu is the third largest town in Kenya and backs onto Lake Victoria. Sadly with the decline of the East African community the town has also declined and it is more of a convenient rest stop than a tourist destination. Also sadly, Joanna took it into her head to go shopping so we are now broke (although we have lots of lovely stuff having cost us only a fraction of what it would have cost in Nairobi). 

Kenya Wildlife Service is putting money into the local area and are promoting an impala sanctuary where various animals live in very small cages (a baby baboon was holding the hand of a baby blue monkey through the bars) and you can also go on boat trips, both of which we enjoyed courtesy of a very enthusiastic and persuasive KWS ranger. The major tourist destination is Hippo point, and we can confirm the view of the guide book – there is nothing there. At all. Apart from hippos, Hammerkopf and kingfishers. Otherwise it is a complete void. 

But one thing we did learn in Kisumu is that the rainy season changes as you go through Kenya. So in Nairobi is isn’t meant to rain until October (although it rained today). Western Kenya is in the middle of their short rains. We were sadly unprepared.

And so, all too soon and not soon enough, we found ourselves on another matatu, this time bound for Kakamega. Kakamega is home to the last piece of equatorial rainforest in Kenya. It rains in the rainforest. A lot. Noticing a theme here yet? To get to the actual forest you have to take a decrepit old pickup truck type thing, which has a cabin at the back where people are crammed like Sardines – but it is better for the sardines as they are dead and so miss the discomfort. Sardines also miss the fear of having half a tonne of cement piled on a dodgy roof just above their heads. One then either walks or takes a motor taxi. Being the rugged outdoor types that we are we took the taxi.

We stayed in the Rondo Retreat, a place with an interesting history. It was left to charity by the original owners who owned a sawmill and was converted to orphanage, but obviously people in Africa look after the orphans already so they didn’t have much to do. So they tried to teach farming methods – the priority to farming in the rainforest is to kill the monkeys which they didn’t do (phew). The monkeys ate everything as revenge and so this didn’t work either. And so a fundraising effort was entered into and teams of volunteers organised and shipped out from the States. I hate to think what the volunteers thought they were doing but they built an amazing hotel, right in the middle of the jungle.

Sadly the rainforest, which once stretched across Africa all the way to the Atlantic (which is miles and miles and miles), is now a shadow of its former self (in Kenya anyway). Even so it is an incredible place with mammoth trees, funky birds and lots of monkeys (we saw yet another new species, the red tailed monkey). We went to see the sunrise over the forest. Can you imagine, Joanna got up for 5.30!!! It rained, but was still amazing.

 

Kakamega was also an educational experience. We confirmed that Jo is very good at finding  marauding hordes of Safari (army) ants, which she does by standing on them. This is purely subconscious and she only notices when they start biting her. She is also very afraid of bats. Kakamega was once a gold mining area and we went into one of the mines. Unfortunately, the bats arrived slightly afterwards and so our exit was blocked by a panicked bat which panicked Jo, much to everyone else’s amusement.

Sadly we had to move on all too soon and so we found ourselves on yet another matatu to Kericho, one which stopped to extort more money from the passengers before Jo snapped and told off the conductor – who proceeded to sulk for the rest of the journey. Kericho is the major tea growing region in Kenya and was very popular with the British. It rains there every day, and indeed rained on us. It is a chilled out city, and like many towns here it is a shadow of its former self, with the famous(?) Tea Hotel slowly falling into ruin.

And so we found ourselves on our way back to Nairobi, but we had learnt. No matatus for us this time, ‘Easy Bus’ is the answer. With the slogan ‘have dignity’ (or something of the sort) one gets a whole seat to oneself. Having said that, how we got back to Nairobi without killing anyone or crashing I shall never know.

And finally, we just went get the car tyre repaired. Unfortunately, having dropped off the wheel, the car conked out. Apparently the starter motor has gone. To prove it one of the mechanics shorted it with a spanner and the car then started working. African engineering rules.