Sardine can death traps

Public transportation in Kenya, particularly Nairobi, is a thing to behold with a small amount of awe and fear. Busses are limited, and in their place is a collection of thousands if not tens and hundreds of thousands of mini-vans called “matatus”. They’re unmistakable. From a far distance you can hear them rolling into stops, brakes squealing, side door sliding open with the tout shouting the name of the destination in rapid fire, and the horn tooting a quick beepbeepbeepbeep. And they’re thrilling. I waiting until I could get one of the students to take me into the city of Nairobi, since I didn’t feel bold enough to attempt the matatu by myself. They’re supposed to seat 14 but easily cram 25 passengers on board. They blare hiphop or reggae music. Some have a screen showing scantily clad women in the accompanying music video. And some are eerily lit from within by neon lights.

The first matatu we boarded was blaring hiphop at an extraordinary decibel level, but only in the high range. Annoying. No fear – about half a mile further up the road, we made a stop to pick up the recently repaired subwoofer. A few quick moments to throw it in the back and wire it up, and we had the full ear bleeding range.

Wednesday I had decided to go to Lake Naivasha with a couple of the gals from the workshops we were teaching. We got up and out and off to Naivasha town where we switched to another matatu to go the last half hour to the edge of the lake. Half way there, we pulled into a gas station, but not up to the pump. The driver and another guy came digging amongst passenger legs to retrieve two 5 gallon jugs that they filled and returned to fume up the inside of the matatu. Another few miles down the road, we pulled over to pick up a man and his young son and their stack of 5 ft logs that were slid in the back door, again in amongst passenger legs. All we needed was a match, and we’d have a pretty decent bonfire.

My goal for the day was to rent bike and cycle Hell’s Gate national park, but that didn’t go so well. One of the gals I was with wasn’t much of a biker and ate tarmac pretty quickly. I felt horrible for her, but she seemed to pick up ok and struggled on like a trooper. But it quickly became apparent that this was too much of an undertaking for her when we hadn’t even gotten to the gates of the park and realized we had a good 14k bike ride ahead of us with too broad a range of fitness, so we turned back to explore the backpacker lodge/campsite area and then made our way back into the little near village for dinner. And then drama ensued. I’m still not entirely sure what happened, but the one who pitched off the bike suddenly decided to go back to Nairobi, and her friend stumble stuttered and quickly followed. I was left with the quick decision – go back with them late at night or stay with the other foreign backpackers I’d already met and enjoy the rest of my visit at the lake. So I stayed, which was great. I ended up with a couple of ecology researchers – the guy is from Sydney, and his girlfriend is from Mozambique. They were lovely, we had a lot in common, and we just had a really nice relaxing day over lunch and a boat ride on the lake. I’m now wishing I’d stayed behind another day to visit Hell’s Gate with them on Friday, but I felt I should get back to finish work at KU – particularly to make a meeting with the ambassador. This was a re-scheduled appointment after we were trapped in traffic for 3 hours and had to cancel our first meeting. Unfortunately, with some schedule misunderstanding, I missed the second meeting as well. I guess it just wasn’t in the cards for this meeting to happen.

I am now lounging in the Amsterdam airport in an extremely long layover. New favorite airport. If you ever have to be stuck somewhere, this is the place to be stuck. I’m in an eggplant colored body hugging lounge chair watching music videos, and the whole airport looks like it’s got enough interesting nooks and crannies to keep me entertained for awhile at least. And there’s an art gallery around here somewhere that’s exhibiting “Dutch Cows”. Will have to check that out.

I’m home again in about 16 hours and looking forward to it. This has been a really exhausting but rewarding and fun trip. And it’s settled my wanderlust for at least a little while…