No Hurry in Africa - Our Journey from Nairobi to Same, Tanzania

Leaving Giraffe Manor was bittersweet, but I was so excited to be heading to one of my favorite places for real this time. Our driver, Joshua, was a native Kenyan and very friendly - haven’t really met anyone here that is not friendly. He is of the Kikuyu tribe in Kenya and moved to Nairobi for work. I told him that I learned the previous day that in Kikuyu tradition if you walk around the mgumu tree seven times you turn into a man and he laughed, telling me for sure that was just a legend. (lol) His village was also mostly farmers, but they farmed corn and alfalfa, not livestock. Joshua claims that ugali in Kenya is the best there is - and I have stumbled upon my first of a few Kenya-Tanzania rivalries. Ugali is a cornmeal starch food that takes the place of rice or potatoes in meals - I think it tastes like air but in solid form, so I wasn’t really believing that ugali in Kenya could be way better. But I will not know this trip because I didn’t get to have any - more on that later. Interesting facts about Kenya/Tanzania - both were settled/occupied by the British for a lot of the 20th century. When both countries gained their independence, Kenya maintained English as the national language, but Swahili is spoken by pretty much everyone. But school is taught in English and not Swahili. In Tanzania, they went back to their cultural roots by changing the national language to Kiswahili, and courses are taught in Kiswahili. It’s kind of an interesting contrasting approach, as the ability to speak English does help on an international level as far as marketability, but I admire the choice to go back to your culture rather than adopt the language of the country across the world that settled your land.

View from the street

Car dancing to Toto- Africa because…

Anyway, we drove on a Sunday which was a good move because there was no traffic. In Kenya there is no real enforced speed limit versus Tanzania which has a 50kph speed limit in every village. So Joshua was flying at some points. On the one lane roads here they drive slightly over the divider which pretty much scared the shit out of us every time - I couldn’t tell if it was to accommodate motorbikes or what, but it kept us on the edge of our seats. They also pass by crossing into oncoming traffic often. We closed our eyes and prayed to “our Lady of the Highway” - that was from Liz and cracks me up. All was going well until all of a sudden everyone on the road was stopped. Joshua just parked the car in the middle of the road with everyone else and got out and started asking what was going on. We were in Ilbisil, a Maasai village about one hour from the border. There was a stabbing in the town the nit before, which was a big deal because everyone in this small village knows each other. It was a woman who stabbed her husband and killed him for cheating on her with another villager. So the village was angry because they did not feel like the police were doing anything about it (ironic because everyone I have talked to in Kenya about the police say they are corrupt and untrustworthy). So they held a protest, which meant that they lit tires on fire in the middle of the road and did not let anyone pass through the village, which is a big deal because there is literally one road down to the border. So definitely people took notice. Our driver decided to give it a shot and we drove up to the front, and… nope. So we went back to parking and waiting as we were dong before but now Liz had to pee - we asked for a bucket and Joshua said “no buckets here” but took us into the village where a wonderful woman named Sylvia let us use her backyard outhouse (concrete slab with a hole in it). She was so kind and I got to practice a little bit of Kiswahili. At this point there was a big town meeting on the side of the hill by the village. This is called a Nyumbakumi (which means “house ten” or a meeting of the “mzee” or elders). We saw them bringing over plastic chairs for the elders to sit in for the town meeting. The police were actually there with their guns sitting on the side of the road but the story was that they were allowing the town to figure it out on their own without intervening. There was even a diplomat that came in a super fancy car and they didn’t let him through either. Some kids started talking to us because we were “mzungu” (Swahili word for white people) and they were saying the meeting had been going on all morning and that they were drinking blood at the meeting (not sure how true that was, but I do know that Maasai warrior tribe is known for being very carnivorous and boys need to drink blood when they are circumcised. They also need to kill a lion before they are considered a man. Liz just googled it - blood is a big part of their tribal diet so sounds plausible. Anyway, we were waiting there for about 2 hours and then a rowdy crowd started walking back and Joshua told us to get into the van. We then raced to the border because he knew that there would be a lot of residual traffic from the road closure.

Once we got to the border we got more of a taste of “no hurry in Africa”. The passport line was soooo slow. The Kenya representative at the border saw my passport and smiled ear to ear saying “USA - The Most Powerful Nation In The World!” I had absolutely no idea what to say. He kept saying it - so weird. Then at the Tanzanian side the woman didn’t want to honor the visa that we had already bought in Dar so that took another long while. Also people use freely cut you in line here, which seems counter to “no hurry”. We then were heading out of the crossing and we picked up a police officer, because that meant you got to bypass all the security checkpoints… smh!

Giving the police officer a ride at the border - yes they drive on the other side of the car/road

Finally we crossed the border at around 4pm and we were like, ok, how much longer? He said 4-5 hours and we about fell over. We couldn’t believe how long this was going to take, we were supposed to get to Marangu by 4 or 5pm. Lots of good conversation but we were weary travelers by the time we made it. Joshua ran out of internet so couldn’t call our new driver, Juma, and then was not clear on the meeting point. Just a lot of miscommunication that would never have flown in the US but, Hakuna Matata! Joshua said that family life is very strong in Kenya and that when people here do not have children it is sad because that is how they live on. We talked about how that has changed a lot in the US and how the dynamic of a partnership in marriages is becoming more of a thing in the US as women have achieved more equity in the workplace and in education. Seems like in Kenya it iss till significantly more traditional though Joshua did say he loves people for their personality and not their tribe or their appearance, which was noble. Anyway, we finally were able to connect with Juma and Peter from the Elephant Motel who brought us back, another 1:30, so by 9pm we were exhausted and grateful that Juma called for some chicken and chips to be ready for us when we arrived. Tomorrow - Mkomazi mini-safari!