a couple China pics

 I'm having some trouble with the technology here, so I can't turn this picture around. Nevertheless, it is me and the lovely Miss P, with North Korea in the background. It's colder than it looks.

 C in the distance and A running, on the Great Wall of China!

 C and A on the wall--We climbed up a pretty steep, scary hillside to get to where the pic was taken from.

 Bruno and the frozen stream. The pics I took did absolutely no justice to the utter exquisite beauty of this frozen canyon.

A pagoda on the canyon hike, up Big Black Mountain.

China!

I am here in Dalian, China, a small city of, according to friend C, 6.5 million people (from the US we'd heard 8-9 million, but really, by the time you get to that number, it's kind of splitting hairs). C and S and their daughters have been living/working here for about 2 1/4  years, and are going to be heading back to the US at the tail end of June, and so I got my visit in just under the wire.

First off, it is bloody cold here. Like, even wearing my new Patagonia down sleeping bag, plus long underwear, knee-high (faux) fur boots, Smartwool ski socks, jeans, a tank, a long-sleeved T, a calf-length sweater, fleece-lined wool mittens, an extra-long scarf twisted around my neck and face, and a hat, I was still shivering, even climbing the steep stairs of the Wall. Cold. Nose off brass monkey cold.

Inside their luxuriously posh 29th-30th-floor penthouse apartment it is, blessedly, warm. I can be quite comfortable in normal Smartwool socks, no long underwear, and the sleeping bag hanging over on the coat rack.

Anyway, C has been working hard helping Intel start up a chip plant in China, and we met her for lunch today (quite a fine soup I had), whereas S has been the Intel wife, hanging out with all the other Intel wives, and taking lessons in Mandarin, which has really paid off! I am pretty much flabbergasted by how much Mandarin S uses, and how comfortable she is in this utterly un-Western society. We shop at markets for veggies and fruit which are another flabbergasting thing: there are tons of both, and where are they coming from? There are, in fact, lots of hot houses along the peninsula between Dandong (which is about a 3-hour drive away and directly across the river from North Korea) and Dalian, which is on the tip of the peninsula. I can only assume that at least some of the masses of pears, apples, longan, bananas, pineapple, tomatoes, carrots, lettuces, onions, garlic, and dozens of other things both recognizable and not--way more than we find in US supermarkets, even the fancy ones--are grown in those hundreds of greenhouses.

Quickly, what I've done so far has been:

1. Hike some of the Great Wall at Dandong
2. Eat at a North Korean restaurant, also in Dandong, run by the children of high officials in the North Korean Government so that they can improve their Mandarin.
2a. Look, from a lounge near the top of our Dandong hotel, through a conveniently-placed telescope, to the drabness that is North Korea during the day, and the almost complete (and completely opposite of Dandong) blackness that is North Korea after sunset. We saw one van driving from NK into Dandong when we were out walking along the river, and were avidly speculative about what it might mean.
3. Go to four different offices (three of them police, one immigration), taking 2 1/2 hours, to register as a tourist staying in a private home for four days (this was three more offices than had been necessary for the last visitors).
4. Go with S to pick up cashmere sweaters that she'd had made to size (from spools of yarn!), and observed her pointing out discrepancies and requesting changes, all in Mandarin.
5. Buy a gift for my grandmother in an amazing, huge mall--a mall somewhat like the bowels of Pike Place Market but on opium and steroids--a mall reached from the street by, essentially, pushing through an unmarked, nondescript weighted plastic butcher's curtain that spills you into steamy Asian mayhem.
6. Buy yards of fabric and order shirts to be tailored for a friend back in the US, from a sample I brought with me.
6a. Eat hot pot for dinner where you get to cook everything at your table--why do we not go out for that more often at home?
6b. Have an I N T E N S E massage, where C and I were both in the same room--essentially, a couple's massage (but quite normal here, and not exclusive to couples, or even people who know each other at all)
7. Hike to a Buddhist temple, up a steep gorge peppered with pagodas, next to a frozen cataract, with two of the other Intel wives and the dog of one.
8. Eat a delicious dinner of, essentially, gyoza (I'll get the proper Chinese name later, if I remember to do so--jiao zi, says C) made by the maid of C&S (they also employ a driver, who is a really nice young man who takes really good care of us--both driving, and talking when S isn't quite sure she's made herself clear), with some Intel friends, and with fresh strawberries (!) and (my contribution) molten chocolate to dip them in for dessert.

I am SO HAPPY to be here. I keep saying it, and it keeps being true, every time I turn around. I love that I am getting to live a week in my friends' shoes (not really, as they're all MUCH smaller than mine), and that they are showing me places that they haven't been to here in their current home town. And I just love these people so much--yesterday S and I went to pick up the girls after school and after their ballet lessons, after A's, but during P's. A (who is 5) was running around playing in another dance room outside the classroom when we arrived and went to chat with other mothers; all of a sudden, the sweetest thing ever happened--there were pounding feet, then A slammed into my back and flung her arms around my waist in a huge hug. Did I mention that I am SO HAPPY to be here?

On the morrow I walk with the girls to their school bus (with S), then I have an appointment with their Chinese doctor, because my back is giving me pains after the flights and all the time in the van from Dalian to Dandong and back again. I may get some acupunture; maybe some more massage. I'm really looking forward to it. Tomorrow night I'm making us lentil soup, just like at home in Seattle.

I like my life.

This Too is Kenya, Part II

People kept asking us before we left, and, indeed, people were still asking when we arrived in Kenya, what kinds of plans we’d made.  Plans? Why would we need plans? And, in truth, for the bulk of our independent travel, or non-work-related couple travel, we do NOT have a strong habit of planning out what we’re going to do in foreign climes. There are several reasons for this, including lack of time back at home for non-essential trip work (a planned hotel everywhere is clearly non-essential to me, whereas VISAs and shots for exotic places: serious business); hesitancy to choose something based solely on what Lonely Planet says about it; and a not completely retired sense of adventure—we want  to see what things are like when you’re simply observing them, hoping desperately that you won’t, after all, have to sleep under that stunted acacia in that city park(dangerous both because of other “sleepers” in the outdoors—human and otherwise—and because those trees are full of THORNS.  One popped my first Thermarest pad back in ’93, and I found the butts of several more in the soles of my Tevas after that trip.  
 

All that said, we had actually been thinking about places we wanted to go in Kenya.  I had been in ’93 and ’96, and one of the places I had dearly loved and insisted we return to during this trip was Lamu. We would fly, as flights are common and the bus bumps along for 6 hours or more on sand roads (after the “normal” roads give out), through the middle of the almost-border lands of Somalia. Our original plan, then, as we had, in fact, been discussing some basics,  had been to fly up for our second week to Lamu—on the north coast, near the Somali border—and spend a week sailing on dhows, fishing, eating fresh coconuts, and exploring 8oo-year-old ruined mosques.  Concurrent with our planning period, however, the Somali pirates kidnapped three Europeans off beaches in the Lamu Archipelago, and then Al Shabab, the Somali militant Islam group, began making trouble for Kenya by crossing the border and setting off lots of bombs. Lots of friends and strangers, from the US and in Kenya, agreed with us that avoiding the northeast was in our best interests. Okay, so, no Lamu. So . . . what next?

We knew we wanted to go to Mombasa as well, and as Mombasa is 70% Muslim (Lamu must be 95%) we would definitely be able to experience the call to prayer (although Kenyans, being relatively secular in action, rarely dropped what they were doing to high-tail it to a mosque.)

Mombasa feels like one of the most foreign cities I’ve been to. Even Tokyo, Yokohama, and Hokkaido felt pretty reasonable and recognizable (Naples, not so much), even with virtually no language in common between me and any of the Japanese (not an absolute truth as “arrigato” in Japanese is a direct descendant of “obrigado” in Portuguese.) It took us a couple days to grow comfortable incorporating Mombasa’s set of norms into our own, pretty jumpy set. Old Town Mombasa is a warren of narrow, crooked streets with curving walls split by intricately carved doors lining them below, and balconies hanging above. Beautiful, but no place for a clear vista, and a lot of hiding places for crooks. Who, as far as I can tell, we never actually saw.  

(Note: this paragraph and some of the post written on 22 Dec) Dear Readers, I am going to pause here to say that there has been a lot going on over the last two weeks since Ian and I arrived back at home, and it’s been difficult to find a good time to write. At the moment, I’m on a glorified stretcher on the ground floor of Harborview Medical Center, waiting for my second Gamma Knife procedure.  I will be going third today, which means that I arrived here at 6:30 a.m., I was given Ativan and some other antianxiety pretty soon after that, I didn’t sleep even a wink last night, and we’ll probably get out of here today around 6 p.m. All of this is to say that I’m going to switch to bullet points of the highlights I remember from the previously unmentioned portions of our trip. 

In Mombasa:

• Our hotel, The Royal Castle, was just the right blend of seriously comfortable and not too expensive.  From our little balcony on the third floor, we could see the crumbling Hotel Splendid, which was where our group leaders stayed in aircon comfort when we students were all living in infinitely less comfortable situations in private homes.  Mine, where I had a bed to myself (family maid slept with the littlest kid; the other two each had a bunk), was pretty fine.  One of my friends was placed in a family of 9 children; she had a bottom bunk and they shared each of the others three apiece; one night, one of the little ones above her wet the bed and it ran all over her. Water was patchy, electricity too, and the temperature was about 100 degrees and about 98% humidity. 
•  (Note: this part and below is being written 6 Jan, and then I’m giving up) We had a fancy supper our last evening in Mombasa on a dhow—a handmade wooden sailboat—which had been built in Matondoni, a little village in the Lamu archipelago, a nice morning’s walk from Lamu itself.  One of the first things we did, all of us LC students, upon arriving at Lamu in 1993, was to be boated up to Matondoni where we were able to watch a newly-build dhow being launched, rolled on logs down to the sea. I felt for this trip that I had, in fact, managed to get more of Lamu than we’d initially thought we were going to get.  There was some miscommunication about how we were actually to arrive at the dhow, and it had left the dock by the time we were delivered, but they put us on a dinghy and took us out into the starlit lagoon to meet our cruise. 
• Requested—and delivered—masala chai for breakfast. 
• Tuk-tuks, those three-wheeled rickshaw-type taxis in Thailand, imported in the last ten years from Italy, HUGELY popular in hot, busy, noisy, Muslim Mombasa.  The taxi drivers are very sad. 
• Lots and lots of great, brightly-colored fabrics along Biashara Street, beaded sandals and belts, ancient sewing machines, giant shopping bags, dirt, crowds, tuk-tuks, watercarts, fancy dresses (worn under bui-buis, the Swahili name for the black overclothes worn by Muslim women.  Bui-bui also means spider.) 
•  Ft Jesus, built by the Portuguese and used as a fort for a couple hundred years, I believe. You can no longer just run roughshod over Ft Jesus, meaning we had a guide, and we actually learned something about the place. None of which I remember anymore.

Here is perhaps the best example I can give of Kenya delivering exactly what is wanted and needed, without any struggle or pre-arrangement necessary: Near the end of our trip, we knew we would need to get from Mombasa back to Nairobi. We had done the 8-hour bus ride, and weren’t all that interested in taking another bus all the way back; we were likewise not all that interested in taking an expensive flight back. Kenya is, of course, full of national parks which are, in turn, full of exotic, dangerous zoo animals; there happened to be at least two parks that I knew of—Tsavo East and Tsavo West (split by the highway and railroad)—situated between Nairobi and Mombasa. “Maybe we can get a safari,” I proposed to Ian, “that will pick us* in Mombasa, and drop us in Nairobi, with two days of touring.”

It turns out that, Yes We Can. On the verge of a heat-induced anxiety attack, I followed Ian up the stairs to a safari company listed in our Lonely Planet book, which happened to be located only a couple blocks from our hotel.  While I contemplated the end of the world and put in my oar only when absolutely necessary, Ian made plans to get us back to the capitol, plans which involved leaving early (6:00am!) two days later, but would allow us to see Tsavo West for a couple days, then Amboseli for a couple days (with an overlap of parks in the middle), and two nights’ stay in fancy lodges, the old Voi lodge and the new Amboseli lodge. For maybe $200 less, we could’ve been dropped on the highway to catch a long-distance, Mombasa-Nairobi bus, at the lunch stop. But by putting that $200 in, we were able to have an entirely private safari with just us and our driver/guide in the car—PLUS, he could then take us directly back to our friend’s house just outside Nairobi. We enjoyed having a driver all to ourselves as we made our way back up that main highway our last weekend in Kenya, seeing no fewer than five large hauling trucks tipped over off the shoulders of the road, plus one that was upright, but on fire.

The short rains are not the best time to view animals in Kenya, as the greenery around them is full and lush, and they’re often hidden; plus, the several lodges that have well-placed watering holes find that their holes are competing with natural watering holes. We saw one mud-red elephant drinking from the closest hole to Voi lodge, for example. Our talented guide did, nevertheless, manage to show us a little of virtually everything, including, during our last evening drive in Amboseli, right as a major rainstorm came up and we had to lower the roof of our van, two lions making a bunch of little lions. Our guide was VERY impressed with himself, finding us some cats to see, as cats can be quite difficult—being that they are cats, and not in the least interested in doing what humans would like them to do.   

We also managed to see Kilimanjaro, on our last morning, on our 6am game drive.  Mzee (old man) Kilimanjaro had been hidden for more than a week behind rain clouds; I asked as nicely as I could, though, and the next morning, for maybe a grand total of 15 minutes, we were able to see the snow-capped summit of this giant beast. 

I know there were many more details that I would have put in here had my December gone more the way I was expecting it to go . . . but it didn’t go that way, and the way it went took more time than I could have imagined. But this last bit about the Kenya trip: It was SPECTACULAR.  We had an absolutely amazing time. We got to do everything we wanted to do, and everything worked out, and we lost nothing, and gained new friends as well as new things, and were reminded of the importance of open minds, of asking for assistance, of listening to our bodies. Of loving life.

 

*”pick us” is very Kenyan. They never pick anyone UP.

This, Too, Is Kenya: Part I

(As I write this post, I find that I’ve been emailing so much on smart phones lately that I keep expecting Word to finish my words for me.  What do you mean I have to type the whole thing myself?!?) 

We arrived home last Tuesday evening at rush hour, collected our car from long-term parking at Sea-Tac, and got on the road, me driving.  More or less perfectly healthy during the entire trip (nominal bouts of “kaka huraka”* notwithstanding), on Monday, our last day in Africa (we left at 11:30pm), Ian developed a nasty cold, and I, three hours after breakfast, developed a much more grim case of the runs.  This was no annoying but predictable fast brother—this was serious, Roto-Rooter stuff.  Fortunately for me, we had supplied ourselves not only with our  malaria prophylaxis, but also a powerful antibiotic, just in case.  

“Take two per day for three days,” it said, “or take four all at once.” I thought about our upcoming travel: 8 ½ hours to London, 8 hours in London, 9 hours to Seattle.  Four all at once, please. 

The drug worked beautifully and so, while Ian continued to worsen the closer we got to home, I got better and better, the guts rapidly quieting and solidifying.  Ergo, me in the driver’s seat in traffic, just about my least favorite position in the world to be in.  What a welcome.  

Except that, compared to Nairobi, Mombasa, and the intensely dangerous highway between the two, it was like driving down the middle of a six-lane LA freeway after an epidemic has wiped out 98% of the population (obviously before they all got on the road in their cars).  Comparatively everyone here used a turn signal before changing lanes.  Comparatively everyone here allowed safe distances between vehicles—i.e. more than 3 ½ inches.  Comparatively everyone here, in fact, drove in a staid, boring, predictable manner.  And the roads were smooth like newly-Zambonied ice.

Kenya, I found after 15 ½ years, was exactly the same and completely different.  The cars on the roads now are contemporary, well-maintained, normal cars such as you might see anywhere in the world (i.e. mostly Japanese coupes and sedans, with the occasional German luxury car thrown into the mix).  The delivery trucks, however, are the same 60’s-era junkers that have been befouling the air since their inception.  The roads, too, seem to be—still—the tattered remnants of British infrastructure.  The one exception in Nairobi is that several new ring-type roads are being built to ease congestion in the center of this city of 3,000,000.  

New roads are a fine idea.  Unfortunately, all that was accomplished in this major public works program before the short rains came (and they may be short, but they’re nervy), was clearing all the vegetation and carving out the basic road grades. Most countries (one might imagine), when faced with a two-month nature-predicated hiatus, would cut their losses and hang back, waiting for the conditions to change.  Kenya, knowing that no further work could be done on this new network for several weeks, decided the roads were good enough unpaved for the time being and opened them up to public use, effectively turning several neighborhoods into ochre mud, off-roading, car-luge pleasure parks.  

Of course, traffic crawls along (when it isn’t slewing about)—but here’s the thing about rush hour in Kenya: you can do most of your necessary shopping while stuck in your car, waiting for your turn at the kipilefti (Swahili for roundabout—they drive on the left there).  You could buy a caged songbird, or a fluffy white puppy (as pets, not to eat). You could collect the ingredients for a tropical fruit salad (mangos were in season!).  You could buy your lover a bouquet of flowers or a lottery ticket or a packet of gum or cigarettes.  Have a job interview in the morning, or ten minutes from now?  You could professionalize your upcoming interview with any of a dozen different sport coats.  The evening paper is delivered right to your window along with a bottle of cold water. You could even, as Ian discovered to our delighted admiration, top up the minutes on your cell phone.  

Cell phones and cell service in Kenya have got to be the pinnacle of the technology anywhere in the world.  On our first full day in the country (after breaking our fast with Helen) we were taken to a Safaricom store where we purchased—for $1—a SIM card for Ian’s 4G Android phone.  For another $5, we bought enough credits for email, picture uploading, and, of course, phone calls, for the next few days, until we were able to top up in a traffic jam. Everyone in Kenya has a cell phone—or more often two.  There were originally two major networks and each network offered in-network deals, and so people started acquiring phones so they could get the deals with all their friends and families.  Making calls costs you credits but receiving calls does not, and if you’re out of credits, there is a free text you can send, up to three times, asking someone to call you. Much of the country has never had wired phone service; most of that area now has excellent cell coverage.  Most rural people don’t have electricity with any regularity, but there are kiosks in every community where you can charge up your batteries as well as your credits. Perhaps one of the best discoveries for us was that there are zoned international dialing plans included, and the US is in Zone 1, the cheapest, and for 10 cents per minute we could call our families from anywhere we had service.  Which was everywhere.  

Cell phones also took a lot of the stress out of getting around: you find a taxi driver you like, take his number (invariably men in our experience), and call him whenever you need a ride.  Easy as pie.  Also, when you do ultimately make up your mind on where you want to sleep the next night, you can just call up the number listed in the Lonely Planet.  You then find that the Lonely Planet exclusively lists out-of-date numbers for hotels in Kenya, but with your 4G you can just look up the website of the place directly (websites are not as cutting-edge as cell phones, alas, and we usually just showed up at hotels unannounced.  Being Kenya, it always worked out). 

Being Kenya, it always worked out.  That hadn’t changed at all.  

Everyone was genuinely nice and helpful (and most warned us about everyone else).  At our hotel in Naivasha, Simon the accountant took a turn as a taxi driver and dropped us at Mt Longonot for our hike (8 miles, about 3,000 feet gained and lost in elevation, beginning at around 6,000 feet—so, thin, pant-for-it air for us maritime Seattleites).   

Our eagle-eyed guide, John (I think his name was John.  Most of them were named John), pointed out millimeter-high giraffes grazing thousands of feet below us, as well as all sorts of vegetation and other fauna.  I used to debate whether or not getting a guide was a necessary or desired expense; I’ve mostly switched to using guides when they are offered.  Our guide told us a story of an American couple who chose not to use a guide about two months ago—the man was evidently a largish man, and he died of a heart attack almost at the peak, about a 3-hour hike from the gate.  The guides had to come to the rescue of his wife and his body, carrying him down a trail that was, often, little more than a pumice-covered scramble. The folks had taken the difficult way around. Anyway, we were glad for the assistance, the direction, and the “giraffes” grazing in the “tall trees” far below.

We called Simon as we neared the end of our climb so that he could “pick us” as soon as we got to the bottom.  “We want to take a bus from Nairobi to Mombasa tomorrow,” we told him as we drove back into town. “Where should we get a matatu that will take us back to Nairobi?”

“Okay,” Simon said, “I will just show you where to go for the best company.” And he drove us a few blocks out of the way just so he could point out the safe matatu stand.  Safe, regulated matatus:  that’s a definite change from last time.

Our two nights in Naivasha aside from the hike were not particularly wonderful, but they were gloriously comfortable and posh for $30 each night.  We had a private bath with with a dripping shower head (when it was on; otherwise it was silent. It never really counted as a “shower”, and in fact I think I didn’t even try to take one.) There were two sagging beds and holey, just barely too-small-for-the-beds mosquito nets, and so we each took a bed and did the best we could our own selves. We enjoyed some beers and curries and chapatis, wandered briefly and nervously in the gloaming around the dusty, muddy, stinky, noisy town; and more nervously yet, withdrew a big pile of cash from an ATM. 

Naivasha was our first real town on our own, the first place where we didn’t have a fall-back plan in case we encountered some of those awful people we kept being warned about. Naivasha seemed ripe to be full of villains, to our untrained eyes. The commotion unsettled us, and knowing we were going to be holding a lot of cash unsettled us more. But it turns out, commotion is Kenya. Dirt is Kenya. A lot of black people living their lives is Kenya.  And the 5 a.m. matatu to Nairobi, up to 18 people crammed in a 4-row minivan (some were dropped; some were picked)--regulated or not, that, too, is Kenya.

The only time I really lost it on this trip, and I think it was a pretty minor example of losing it, was just after arriving in Nairobi, safely, in our matatu. We were dropped somewhere along River Road, which lives in my memories as a place you were much better off avoiding completely, except for when you wanted to go anywhere but Nairobi.  All the long-distance buses and matatus congregate along River Road, and it is full of bustle, hustle, and crime.  

“If a nicely-dressed man bumps into you accidentally,” one Kenyan friend warned, “it was not an accident.  He is picking your pocket.” No one bumped us, and no one once picked any of our pockets.

We walked along quickly, trying to look like we knew where we were going, trying to blend in.  Not fooling anyone.  We arrived safely at Akamba Bus with its secure waiting room before 8 am, hoping to catch their first bus to Mombasa.  Turns out we were in plenty of time.

“No bus this morning,” said the man behind the counter. “Tonight. For two?” he pulled his ticket ledger toward himself.

“Shit!” I said, and pumped my fist like a baby. 

“No thanks,” said Ian to the agent, and turned to me. “We have a couple choices. We can get in a taxi and go to the airport.  There are supposed to be five flights per day to Mombasa.”

“But I don’t WANT to fly!” I wailed (I am not the Abercrombie and Kent type!) “I want to TAKE THE BUS!” (who is this person insisting on the bus, I thought. I hate the bus.)

“Okay,” said Ian again, "then how about THIS plan: we go find a taxi driver to take us to another bus company, another good one, that will have buses leaving this morning.”

I pulled it together. “Okay,” I sniffled. “That sounds very smarty-pants.”

It was very smarty-pants: we crossed the street to the taxi stand and walked up to the first one. “I’ll give you 1,000 shillings to find us a bus to Mombasa,” Ian said. The driver smiled broadly and welcomed us into his car. Ten dollars—nothing to sneeze at in Kenya.

Within ten minutes we were at another bus company purchasing our “premium” tickets for $17 each (or maybe total? It was preposterously cheap . . . if you lived through the journey). We were ushered into another clean, secure waiting room, and I relaxed into a new panic: food, and more importantly, caffeine. Surprising perhaps, but Starbucks has yet to wedge in amongst the Kenyan chai shops.

“Chai,” I said to Ian. “Chai. I need some. What do we do?”

On a roll, Ian, who had been discovering all over the place that if you wanted something—anything—just ask the nearest Kenyan, went up to the guard at the door of the waiting room of Mash Poa Buslines (Much Power?  Like the Citi Hoppa bus, City Hopper?), carrying my peripatetic mug, and asked if there was a place nearby to get some masala chai.

“Here,” said the guard, “come with me.” He guided Ian across the street to a busy storefront with a line snaking out the door. He explained to the guard at the door of the shop what Ian wanted.  The shop guard held out his hand and Ian passed over the mug and some shillings.

“Chai for two?” asked the shop guard.

“Yes, please.”

The shop guard popped into the shop, skipped the line, got the mug filled and returned with it and Ian’s change in a matter of seconds. Ian was back in the waiting room—with the best chai I have ever tasted in hand—in under 3 minutes.  Kenya is AWESOME.

My premium seat on the bus turned out to be the very front seat, to the left and up a level from the driver, who was down in a bit of a well. There was a grab bar, presumably after-market, a couple feet in front of my seat, the seat reclined to a pleasingly comfortable flatness, and I rested my feet on the bar, sipped at my chai, and watched the world go by at breakneck speed. And then I fell asleep, which I proceeded to do for a total of about 85% of our entire ride.  It was my only defense against dying of fear.

Ian was across the aisle next to the classic African Mama, with her headscarf, her comfortable bosoms, her colorfully printed clothes, and her woven bags full of the shopping.  He didn’t have quite the same view of our endlessly repeating, petrifying traffic near-misses.  I took a couple pictures of the vehicles mere inches in front of us as we barreled down the 8-hour, 2-lane road to the sea. Frequently the pictures are close-ups of the back of fuel trucks. “Danger, Petroleum” said signs looming in the windshield in front of me. 

For all the near misses (at least by my perspective), we had an almost completely boring ride; the one exception being a totally non-official road block midway through our journey.

We arrived at the strip of a town just behind two trucks hauling things (bananas? goats? petrol?). Our bus driver, not wanting to be third in line for any reason at all, just moved over into the empty right lane (oncoming traffic having been stopped at the other end of town) in an attempt to push on through, while maybe 20 young men hurriedly carried and rolled reddish boulders across the lanes. They were just faster than we were, and the driver sighed and turned off the engine.

“What do they want,” I gasped to the bus conductor, who was lounging on a large, wedge-shaped speaker covered in carpeting. He sort of shook his head at me, then got up and left the bus. Who knows? 

As the group of men finished blocking the road, several of them picked up extra boulders, formed a loose gang, and started toward our bus. I wanted a picture, but much more, I wanted to stay as unnoticed as possible. I felt very exposed, the white woman lounging in the front seat, wearing a bright red polka-dotted skirt and an orange sweater. The men surged around the bus and started shouting, some of them banging their rocks against the side of the bus. I desperately had to pee (Nina hitaji kuji saidia: “I need to help myself”), but I watched regretfully as other, braver passengers than me blithely left the bus and situated themselves, men on one side and women on the other, to do their business. I knew we had an official stop, for lunch and toilets, in about 30 minutes. Well, if the road opened up soon.

A police jeep appeared out of nowhere, though, not long after the roadblock did, and a police officer calmly told everyone to stop being such boobs and clear away the rocks.  In seconds, the rocks were being rolled back off of the road (with some assistance from older, more mature members of the community—there was a man in a 3-piece suit helping); passengers zipped up and dashed back onto the bus, and we were on our way.  

Thirty minutes later we were at a roadside buffet, I’d peed (squat, no paper), and we were eating some sort of curry and rice.  We decided that the young men in the previous town had been interested in extracting bribes, since it was clear that they weren’t going to be able to legitimately make money if everyone was already stopping 20 km away. 

One of the difficult things about traveling in Kenya, the whole Kenya, and the real Kenya, is that there are such vast distances—cultural, socioeconomic—between peoples.  There are still nomadic pastoralists, including the Maasai, the Samburu, and the Turkana.  The Maasai, even today, had herds of cattle grazing in the outskirts of Nairobi. “You can’t reason with them,” one of our drivers said. “’You can’t graze your cattle there,’ a policeman will say to them, and they just look confused. ‘Are you going to eat this grass?’ they ask. “Because our cows need this grass.’ Crazy.”

First world entitlement and first world guilt work at cross-purposes in Kenya, leading to, at least for me, some moral discomfort. It is so easy to avoid the grubby, over-stimulating, foreign parts of Kenya. Stay in the airports and the air, in the beach resort hotels, in the five-star tented camps. Travel with Abercrombie and Kent (and Prince Charles). Visit Giraffe Manor. You’ll stay clean, safe, well-fed. But you’ll completely avoid pickpockets, traffic that appears to be handfuls of Matchbox cars dropped from the heavens, the unique stench of tropical cities, families teaching their young children to beg.  Awesome, you say, give me that Kenya any day! And we did enjoy the coolth and quiet of a fancy, air-conditioned hotel room in Mombasa, and giraffes, and a private safari. But that Kenya is only a few grains of salt in the pig (most of those grains not going to Kenyans), and the whole experience tastes a lot more gourmet if you dump that pig out and spread the salt lavishly around your visit.  Instead of feeling guilty about your good luck, take a bus ride. Stay in a cheap hotel. Use local transit. Note: if all you want is grubby, over-stimulating, and foreign, plus cloths and jewels and excellent food, Mombasa is just what you’re after.

* a sort-of “swahinglish” euphemism coined in 1993 by my schoolmates and me: “huraka”: hurry/fast; “kaka”: brother.