Shaking my Organs

Again, posted by Susan

Let this chapter be called “shaking my organs.” (sorry my camera battery was dead from Nanyuki to Moyale, so words will have to suffice for imagery in this account)

At precisely 9:15am last Saturday Morning, I found myself in a dusty parking lot on the main road in Isiolo Kenya haggling over the price of my convoy transport to the border. In the end it was agreed I would pay 1500 shillings (about $20) to ride in the front seat of an extremely overloaded Mitsubishi cargo truck. Indeed I was lucky not to be sitting on the outside in the blazing sun on top of about 5 tons of used clothing that was being hauled to the Ethiopian border. Also I was lucky to have found a truck that happened to be leaving just as I was pulling in (some guys told me travelers sometimes have to wait days before finding a convoy). It seemed a solid vehicle to me, I had a comfortable seat in the cab, and I couldn’t have been happier. Besides me and the driver up front, there was one Ethiopian guy, one Somali, and one seat that was shared between the three crewmembers. Everyone was happy as we set out north on the paved road out of town.

First stop was five minutes down the road, not yet out of town, at the standard police check/pay-off point. Sure enough, the driver instinctually passes over his license with a 100 shilling note tucked inside, and after a brief friendly chat with the cops we’re on our way. There is another 2 or 3 more blissful minutes of me eating bananas and the truck cruising down the tarmac, when all of sudden it ends. Not my bliss per se, but the pavement. Just like that, 10 minutes into our trip, the reality begins to dawn on me. The truck slows to what will become its regular cruising speed of about 20 miles per hour for the duration of the trip. At this point I didn’t know the exact length of the road to the border, but I thought to myself, man is this it? Is this what it’ll be for the next 24 hours? I was told we would arrive at the border by Sunday morning, so I figured I could deal for a full day and night.

Then a couple of very revealing things occured. First thing is: I pick up the day’s paper which is sitting on the dashboard in front of me. I flip through and happen to find a public interest story in the middle of the paper entitled, “On the Road From Moyales.” The story describes the deeply neglected state of the road upon which we’re traveling as well as the desolate nature of northern region of the country. The author describes the regions suffering economy and the kenyan government’s continued rhetoric but lack of action on paving the road. There was in fact a protest march organized last month in which nearly 200 residents of the border town of Moyales, including the author of the article, walked the entire 510km of the this road that I am now driving on. Now it begins to become clear; 510KM is the total distance, we’re traveling no more than 25 maybe 30 km/hr, at this rate walking might actually be faster.

And just like that, no sooner due I close the newspaper and settle in for some organ jarring wash-board craziness, does the driver pull the vehicle over and the crew jumps off and starts throwing tools down from above. We were less than an hour into it and the first mechanical failure had occurred.

To make a very long story short for all of our sakes, I will summarize from here on out.

• 4= number of 1-hour stops made to repair the trucks failing suspension. Driver and crew carved blocks of wood with a machete and hammered them into spaces between the struts in order to avoid continual bottoming out
• 5= number of 1-hour repair jobs for flat or leaking tires (3 were on our truck and 2 were helping out fellow vehicles on the road)
• 4= total number of hours stopped in roadside hovels for driver and crew to flirt with drink-selling women
• 10= estimated number of kilograms of locally cultivated stimulant plant (called mira or chat) that driver and crew chewed throughout trip
• 12=approximate number of other vehicles seen traveling on the Isiolo-Moyales road during the duration of my trip (total trip hours=40)
• 4=number of Landcruisers seen speeding by with empty seats for me
• 5=number of police checkpoints requiring various forms of bribes and document showing to pass
• 2=total number of hours spent waiting for police to accept bribes and open gates
• 15 or more=total number of times driver forced us to listen to the only two cassette tapes he had on board, which incidentally were both initially quite enjoyable Arab-Ethiopian guitar music
• 2=total number of stops for actual sit down meals (both of which consisting of rice, rancid tasting meat in tomato sauce, and stale oily chapatti-bread)
• 5=number of packages of sweet biscuits I ate
• 4=number of sodas I drank out of desperation
• 2=number of cigarettes I smoked for similar reasons
• 1.5=total number of hours driver chose to stop vehicle for sleep (3-4:30am on Saturday night)

In the end, it really was not the hours of organ rattling, dust sucking, mind numbing, bouncing upon the heavily wash-boarded road that made me uncomfortable. I was in fact ok with and even morbidly enjoying the extreme physical discomfort. I learned to sit straight and put a piece of clothing under my ass. I didn’t mind sacrificing sleep, food, and physical comfort for the privilege of traveling with my eyes wide open through one of the most beautifully austere landscapes I have ever seen. The great northern Kenyan Rift Valley is absolutely breathtaking (again too bad the camera was dead). There are only scattered settlements along the road. At times we passed some tribal folks herding animals in a place that seemed so barren and remote I thought no person could possibly survive. And indeed the pleading expressions on people’s faces as we passed them expressed more than a hint of desperation. One particularly older looking Masai gentleman pulled enough pity from our driver that he actually threw him his half full bottle of water out the window of the moving truck.

When we did stop in these remote outposts, I always seemed to stumble upon someone who spoke a bit of English. From these fleeting encounters, mostly with businessmen as the tribal peoples did not even speak Swahili let alone English, I had several conversations that were quite uplifting. Then in the final four hours of the journey, we passed a terminally ill vehicle on the road and picked up a few of its passengers. One was a Moyale Kenya resident who happened to speak English. I spent this itme chatting with him which made me realize one crucial thing: it was actually just a lack of human communication that made the journey truly challenging. Prior to those final hours, I had had a few futile conversations with the Ethiopian guy in the cab, but in the end, it was only the word Mzoongu that I kept hearing over and over. Mzoongo this mzoongu that. Out of everything the driver’s arrogance and lack of respect to me and his crew was what made the whole thing truly exhausting. I guess it just goes to show how much people can suffer physically if they’ve got the emotional needs covered.

In the last stretch before Moyales, after the driver had pulled the vehicle over for the fourth time in as many hours, I made the easy decision in my mind to hail down the first vehicle that passed and pay whatever was required to take me the final two hours to Moyale. Sure enough, a nice Land Cruiser comes zooming up to us and not only me but the other 8 assorted passengers from our truck all decide to jump in. Just as we were pulling off, one of the crewmembers from the truck runs up and jumps on the back. This guy, whom they called Musa, was an especially crazy, mira chewing dude who was actually the only one on the truck that I really liked because he was always trying to make me laugh while avoiding any of the tire changing work that the other crew members did so diligently. The driver of course just sat around and watched.

So Musa jumps on the back of the landcruiser and we’re just about to speed off when the asshole driver comes running after us yelling stop. Musa and the driver begin a volatile argument, that only ends when the driver of the landcruiser says Musa must get off because he hasn’t paid. The driver is happy with this, until I volunteer to pay Musa’s fare. Of course there was a little well earned spite and respite involved in that final interaction.

And off we zoom down the same rutted road but now at speed twice or three times what we’d been doing in the Mitsubiushi. Again my ass hurt as I bounced wildly on the wooden benches in the back of the truck. But this time I knew we’d get there, and indeed quickly we did. One more hour and we pulled in to the joyfully dilapidated old town of Moyale, Kenya. The clock was just about to strike midnight as I checked in to the 2 dollar a night roadside hotel. I set my alarm clock for 6am and went to sleep thinking excitedly about crossing over bright and early into the Ethiopian promised land.