No Hurry in Africa

by Brendan Clerkin

  It was onwards for me after that. Glenn dropped me off at the bustling bus station in Nakuru town (the fourth-largest urban centre in Kenya), where one of the many conductors loudly pounding the side of the buses persuaded me to travel to Lake Baringo on the other side of the equator. I had not really been planning on going there, but, on impulse, I decided that I might as well explore further.

  On the bus, I found myself wedged between two drunken old women, wizened with age, who were sharing a bottle of something potent. They motioned the bottle to me a good few times to take a swig. I gestured back: not a chance! By now, the fertile farmlands were gradually giving way to a Turkana-type desert landscape. Nearer Lake Baringo—which is about 100km north of Nakuru—the bridges were long washed away, necessitating a hazardous crawl through the rock-strewn riverbeds. Men were hanging off the sides of the bus hollering and gesticulating at the people on bicycles who were holding on to the rear of moving lorries. The lorries themselves were crammed with people standing on the back, and were puffing out monstrous clouds of black exhaust just like every other vehicle on Kenya’s roads. During one of the many breakdowns on the journey, fruit sellers stormed the bus pounding loudly at the sides trying to sell melons and peanuts through the open windows. Every journey in Africa is an adventure; passenger boredom is unknown.

  Lake Baringo turned out to be one of my favourite places in the whole of Kenya. The freshwater lake, which is picturesquely encircled by cliffs and dotted with islands, appeared to have taken on an unusual red-purple hue from the silt on the bed of the lake. The campsite, right on the water’s edge, was really just the grassy lawn of a modest colonial-era house. It belonged to an old-stager, an upper-class white-Kenyan lady named Betty. The afternoon I arrived, a party of white-Kenyan visitors came to stay for a few days. We met up at the lakeshore shortly afterwards and bonded almost immediately. Having been virtually alone in the previous campsites, I was glad of their company and the laugh we were having together.

  This is hippopotamus country. My very first night there, I was woken up in my tent by really loud chomping coming from literally feet away. Here we go again, was my first fearful thought. But I soon relaxed because I had been forewarned that the hippos would graze close to the tents at night. They are unlikely to attack unless scared by bright lights or loud noises. I was more excited than scared this time, though still not entirely at ease. I knew that hippos are vegetarians, but I could imagine that a mutant carnivore might want me for dessert. It is not knowing what is out there in the darkness that is really scary.

  Lake Baringo is also ornithological heaven. The stillness of dawn is delightfully disturbed by the singing, sweet as harp music, of hundreds upon hundreds of birds, most of them spectacularly painted species of every size and shape.

  ‘There are nearly five hundred different species here,’ old Betty told me as we breakfasted at first light.

  She herself was an avid ‘twitcher.’

  While I was keeping a beady eye on the crocodiles, sunbathing on the grass at the lakeshore beside my tent—I was pretty sure they were keeping several beady eyes on me—I encountered Ruarí. At 6”9’ tall, it would have been hard to miss this outgoing Scot who was doing voluntary service in Kenya. He had grown up on the Isle of Skye, and had just completed training in Edinburgh to be a teacher. For the last six months, he had been working in a school a few kilometres outside Nairobi. We traded stories about our respective adventures and experiences.

  On the second afternoon, Ruarí and I climbed up the near vertical cliffs set about two kilometres back from the lake, clambering up the scree with great difficulty. At the top we were rewarded by spectacular views of the lake beneath, with its many picturesque islands, some of them inhabited, to judge from the tell-tale trickles of smoke.

  We encountered a barefoot herdsman tending his goats, the only human being around on the high plateau. He was carrying a bow and arrow. He could speak English surprisingly well, and seemed glad to have someone to talk to.

  ‘Do you see that island there?’ he asked us, as he pointed with his arm to one of the islands with a line of smoke rising from it. ‘It’s called Devil’s Island. That one is uninhabited, but there has always been a fire on the island. It never goes out.’

  I could not quite follow his explanation.

  Ruarí and I had difficulty finding a safe way back down the cliff again. After some time, our friendly herdsman, who was watching our predicament from above, came to our rescue and, with his nimble-footed flock in tow, benevolently guided us part of the way down.

  ‘It will rain later on today,’ he predicted.

  As it was about forty-degrees Celsius at the time and there were unblemished blue skies to the far horizon, Ruarí and I exchanged glances of disbelief.

  ‘I have already lost fifty-four goats in the drought out of my total herd of sixty-eight,’ he lamented.

  We could only sympathise. His fourteen remaining goats were making music, the bells around their necks clinking merrily. When we stopped to take our bearings, I pointed to a pristinely tarred stretch of wide road below, apparently coming from nowhere and leading nowhere.

  ‘Aye, probably the best road in all of Kenya,’ Ruarí agreed in his Highlands burr.

  During an entire hour of our descent, there were at most only a dozen people walking on it, and one cyclist—not a solitary vehicle.

  ‘That stretch of road leads to former President Moi’s home village,’ Betty explained, back at the campsite. ‘Moi was a typical “Big Man” of Africa; a virtual dictator with a fondness for his own name. In the Rift Valley, for example, he changed “Hoyes Bridge” to “Moi’s Bridge.” That took great imagination, boys!’

  He commemorated himself all over the place, like Moi Avenue in Nairobi and many other examples I was forever coming across on my travels.

  Moi treated his own Kalenjin tribes very preferentially, and is still revered around Lake Baringo. However, he is also rumoured to be the richest man in the whole of Africa—not bad for someone who started off as a schoolteacher. In saying that, he is one of only a handful of African leaders to have retired—as opposed to dying in office or being ousted militarily. He is still highly respected, if not exactly liked, by many sections of Kenyan society today.

  A short while later, the herdsman was proved right, of course. A deluge started in the evening, as we were enjoying dinner and a few drinks with Betty and the other white-Kenyans on the verandah of the colonial house. On the positive side, the sheet lightning clearly illuminated the wildlife all around the campsite, especially the hippos at their nightly graze. On the way back to my tent in the darkness I had to be extra careful, as I slithered through the mud, not to disturb the mighty beasts, especially the mothers with their young.

  Nearly everybody assumes that lions are the most dangerous animals in Africa. (Some nominate the tiger, unaware that tigers are only found in Asia). In fact, hippos are responsible for killing more humans than any other animal in Africa, followed by buffaloes. What is common to both hippos and buffaloes, apparently, is their lack of intelligence. They will certainly charge if one comes too close, or if the mother feels her young are under threat. Some male hippos also kill their own male offspring in response to some primitive territorial instinct.

  On my third day at Lake Baringo, Ruarí, two white-Kenyans and I hired a boat for a day and rowed out on the lake. We marvelled at the local Kalenjin tribesmen who were wading out with nets to catch fish in the crocodile and hippopotamus populated waters, walking out a kilometre or more in the shallow waters. On an island in the middle of the lake, we bought fish from one of the Njemp tribesmen who inhabit those islands—they are related to the Maasai tribe. His only clothing was a loose loincloth. The Njemps row with their cupped hands, sitting on a simple two-foot long one-man wooden raft. Betty had earlier told us if they ever drop their guard, they occasionally fall victim to both hippos and crocodiles. Living this close to nature, though, their survival instincts are sharply honed.
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br />   While I was travelling in the Rift Valley, a row erupted in Donegal when a well-known guidebook rubbished the county. A Donegal councillor went on the local radio station, Highland Radio, and countered that the guidebook on Kenya in the same series had claimed that a lake in Kenya had been safe to swim in. However, after reading the guidebook, an English student went swimming in the lake and was killed by a crocodile. This was his proof that the guidebook often got it wrong, and that Donegal was indeed a tourist paradise.

  In no time at all, I got a phone call from my mother warning me not to swim in the lakes, not to go here or there, not to do this or that. I am afraid the story had meant more sleepless nights for her. If there were riots as far away as Zimbabwe, I might get a phone call to check was I alright. Bird flu broke out in Nigeria, and she was urging me to stay away from my chickens. When bird flu broke out in southern France a few days later, I rang her to make sure she was safe in Ireland. I think she got the message after that.

  My mother’s concern made me appreciate that the strong maternal instinct to protect the young is not restricted to hippos! At this point, she had children living in four different countries on three continents, but an awful lot of her sleepless nights seemed to centre on me. My father, on the other hand, only lost sleep to answer my occasional phone call home early on a Saturday morning.

  Even though I did not really want to leave Lake Baringo, I decided I should move on and explore some more of the Rift Valley. It was a perfect sunny morning when I set out on the fifty kilometres journey south to Lake Bogoria, where I intended spending a day. At the very moment I reached Lake Bogoria, a sudden tempest whipped up an impenetrable fog of dust, followed by torrential rain. I watched most of the campsite becoming flooded before my eyes, but I risked pitching the tent anyway on the only island of dry land.

  ‘You are the first person in well over a month to camp at Lake Bogoria,’ the ranger informed me.

  After the good craic with Ruarí, Betty, and the white-Kenyans, I would have to get used to my own company again.

  Once again, I woke before dawn, haggled over the price of hiring a rusty boneshaker for the day, and cycled into Bogoria National Reserve. I seemed to have Lake Bogoria entirely to myself that day. Hauntingly beautiful, it resembled Donegal’s Glenveagh in the summer, or a Scottish Highland glen under a tropical sun. A few kilometres further on along the lakeshore, I reached the impressive hot volcanic geysers. I had not appreciated how hot these could be until I hopped among them; maybe there could have been some warning signs to alert the unwary, but I was not in the least surprised at their absence. Further on down the soda lake were thousands upon thousands of pink and white flamingos chattering away. I sat on the rocks there for ages, amazed that I had such a magnificent scene of perfection to myself. Eventually I resumed cycling, gently puffing and sweating my way to the far end of the lake. Here I relaxed beside a babbling stream, under shady trees at the tip of the soda lake, watching a herd of kudu deer with long spiral horns. They were watching me too.

  Suddenly, from out of the forest there appeared a ranger in a state of panic. He stopped, shocked at the very sight of me.

  ‘Run, run bwana, there are dangerous buffalo approaching!’ he shouted with urgency.

  Apparently, if you venture beyond the hot springs, you are supposed to be accompanied by an armed ranger. I had not seen any signs warning of the danger—I doubt there were any. I mounted the bicycle and raced back as fast as I could manage under the sizzling sun.

  There is no regular bus service from Lake Bogoria. I waited around for hours in vain, hoping to thumb a lift from passing tourists. But, of course, there were not any. Just as it fell dark, I finally succeeded in hitching a lift in the direction of Nakuru town in the one and only vehicle that left Lake Bogoria the entire day. It was an old Volkswagen hippie van. Inside, to my great surprise, were several councillors and a Kenyan MP. The politicians were touring this part of Kenya looking at ‘models’ of development in the Rift Valley that they hoped to apply to their own constituencies. They seemed to be up for a bit of fun along the way. They were having great craic, and had Dolly Parton playing on a tape. A typical politicians’ junket, I decided.

  The MP was in expansive mood. Maybe he had enjoyed a liquid lunch!

  ‘Will you not come and tour with us for the next couple of days?’ he cajoled.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ I replied. ‘But you can drop me here in Na-kuru, please.’

  Still, the old hippie van proved a better way to travel than some vehicles I had experienced—like the forty year old Flint-stones taxis with no floor, where you can see the road uncoiling beneath you. These were the ones I would invariably end up pushing back to a petrol station halfway to town.

  I always got a thrill from crossing the equator, even though I had lost count of the amount of times I had passed over it by now. My excitement on this occasion was curtailed somewhat when I spotted three different ‘You Are Now On The Equator’ signs a few hundred yards apart on the one road going north to Nyahururu town. Souvenirs were available at each point. Someone was milking it.

  ‘They are all the real one,’ the bus conductor insisted.

  Theoretically, I suppose, they might all have been on the line of the equator, but somehow I doubt it.

  Nyahururu is about fifty kilometres north-east of Nakuru, up twisty mountain roads, and is reputed to be the highest and coldest town in Kenya at nearly 8,000 feet in altitude. It was founded as a white-settler town on the terminus of a railway line, and lies in the Highlands east of the Rift Valley. I stayed in a freezing wooden lodge built in 1930 that had never been revamped since, but was oozing character in its own down-at-heel way. I was the only overnight guest. There was a log fire in the bedroom overlooking the impressive Thompson’s Falls, a waterfall plummeting 240 feet into a narrow, misty ravine. It was named after the Scottish explorer and scientist, Joseph Thompson.

  The doorman informed me that circumcision ceremonies of Kikuyu teenage boys were to take place under the Falls a couple of days later.

  ‘The freezing water numbs the pain,’ he casually remarked.

  I certainly was not about to hang around to test his assertion and witness their pain! So I boarded the ‘Stalingrad Shuttle’ bus for the 200km ride south to Nairobi. The bus was emblazoned with glittering decorative lights, a loud horn that played a tune, and bright artistic graffiti, like so many of these quaintly named vehicles.

  Only hours before we came down the same road, bandits had hijacked an earlier bus. The police shot them dead. Bystanders looted the bodies of the bandits, and burned to death one of their number who tried to escape. Somehow, a news camera was on the scene, tipped off by the police perhaps, and relayed the story in all its gruesome detail on the television news that night. Pour décourager les autres!

  I was looking fairly rough that afternoon. I badly needed a shave and my clothes were layered in dust. A passenger on the Stalingrad Shuttle managed to get sick over my only set of clean clothes. In spite of this, I headed for the grand luxurious Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi for dinner. I decided I deserved to treat myself to a decent meal. In colonial days, it had been at the very hub of business and social life in the Kenyan capital. It still is, though to a much lesser degree than in the days of the Happy Valley set.

  The early colonial settlers used to ride horses through the hotel lobby, firing pistols aimed at the chandeliers or ornaments on the grand piano. The original Lord Delamere, dressed in finest evening wear, used to attempt to leap his horse over the large dining room table without disturbing the delicate crockery. He would then blast the whiskey bottles off the bar with his gun.

  ‘Gentleman, I see you have been on a long safari. Let me take your bags, sir,’ the waiter welcomed me, as he pulled my chair out and carefully placed a white napkin on my lap.

  I could get used to this, I was thinking. The meal proved to be the best I had all year.

  CHAPTER 18

  A VOYAGE TO LAMU

  IT WAS A QU
ICK DASH in the back of an old London black taxi from the Norfolk Hotel to Nairobi railway station; I wanted to catch the night-train for Mombasa. Nairobi owes its very existence to the East Africa Railway and to this station. The city started as a rail depot in a swamp in the 1890s, and quickly developed as the new centre of the colonial government. It was conveniently, though not intentionally, located at the meeting point of the Kikuyu, Maasai, and Akamba tribal lands. During Nairobi’s formative years in the early 1900s, inquisitive lions and other game could be seen roaming the dusty streets, having wandered in from the nearby bush.

  My intention for the coming fortnight was to make my way to Lamu Island, near the border with Somalia. The train journey to Mombasa has been described as ‘one of the great rail journeys in Africa.’ The train has also been nicknamed ‘The Lunatic Express.’ There is truth in both descriptions, though the word ‘express’ is an optimistic misnomer. Admittedly, first-class travel cost hardly anything. And the journey had a certain, if faded, charm. The dinner service and carriages remain largely unchanged since colonial times. Even the station timetable, I noticed, was dated 1971. It was located beside a wooden notice board on which wooden letters and numbers were manually inserted into the slots.

  As we pulled out of Nairobi station, young Africans ran alongside the tracks, jumping on and off at will; or they clung perilously to the sides, as the train leisurely snaked its way out through the acacia trees of the savannah. I stuck my head out the carriage window, basking in a cool evening breeze. I spotted giraffes, ostriches, and elephants, and waved back to Maasai families who were waving at the train from outside their mud-huts and compounds.

  Not long after departure, a conductor playing the xylophone walked up and down the carriages, signalling the commencement of the silver service dinner. The waiters, immaculately dressed in starched white uniforms and white gloves, busily laid the five-course meal on the crisp linen tablecloths in the wood-panelled restaurant car. That the waiters steadily slipped into drunkenness as the meal progressed, contributed to the novelty and charm of the experience.