I ventured up the harder, less used, but more scenic Sirimon route.
‘The trek passes through Kikuyu farms up into the rainforest, then through a bamboo zone, before we reach bog and alpine terrain,’ Alfred told me in his husky voice. ‘After that, you face the higher snow-covered reaches of the mountain. All in all, we will walk eighty kilometres.’
In reality, there was hardly even a trail to speak of for a lot of the way; I was very dependent on Alfred’s familiarity with the climb.
We got off to an inauspicious start. After eight months of refusing to countenance it (except for a policeman near Kwa Vonza the first week), I was finally forced to pay a bribe. As we entered Mount Kenya National Park, the female park ranger saw that my Kenya resident’s card was out of date. She demanded 500 shillings (five euro) from me to ignore the date. For her, that could amount to two days’ wages. Even so, paying the resident’s fee rather than the tourist charge ended up saving me a small fortune.
Alfred sympathised with me for having to bribe the ranger. There followed a slight tirade against non-Kikuyu tribes. It was the sort of anti-immigrant rant you could hear anywhere.
‘The white farmers around Mount Kenya employ people from the fringe tribes, uneducated people like the Turkana. They end up working mostly for food only,’ he complained.
That first crisp, starry, moonlit night, a hyena was laughing outside my tent at Old Moses Camp. I did not find it at all funny! I lay very still for an age, recalling all the Akamba stories about the viciousness of the hyena. Back in 2003, a plane crashed near the summit of Mount Kenya. Hyenas took the bodies. This, it is said, is why the beasts can now be seen patrolling up to a height of 14,000 feet. When I peeped out to see if the hyena had gone, I caught a breath-taking glimpse of Mount Kenya’s distinctive white peaks, gloriously reflected in the light of a full moon. I fell asleep eventually, and woke to a chilly sunrise and the sight of buffaloes and zebras grazing a few hundred yards away.
The second day involved ten hours trekking through moorlands, climbing over rocks, sliding down mucky slopes, and jumping across mountain streams. Now and again, I began to feel some of the effects of altitude and had to stop for a breather.
‘Polé,polé’ urged Alfred.
After several tiring hours, I experienced a truly revelatory moment. Puffing, panting and sweating, I climbed over a steep rocky ridge and there before me, all of a sudden, lay Makinder’s Valley. This long high-sided valley, bathed in brilliant sunshine, swept spectacularly upwards, framing exquisitely the mountain’s distinctively jagged and snowy peaks in all their grandeur. Truly, a home fit for a god! Makinder’s Valley is named after Sir Halford Makinder, the first successful climber of Mount Kenya. That feat was first achieved just over one hundred years ago, in 1899.
On the second night, when I popped the tent up in exposed terrain at 14,000 feet high, I watched it simply blow away like a balloon. My heart leapt. Fortunately, the tent lodged in rocks some distance away and I was able to retrieve it. The strong winds abated, thankfully, and an eerily calm night ensued at Shipton’s Camp. I had a slight headache and got no sleep due to the altitude. But, in all other respects, I felt good. Rock hyraxes invaded my tent searching for food. They look like a cross between a rabbit and a small tailless beaver. They were easily frightened off. Despite the difference in size, they are the closest living relative to the elephant, according to Alfred, though I would often be sceptical about such stories.
We were forced to change completely our planned route for the summit.
‘There is not enough snow on the glaciers,’ Alfred informed me. ‘There would be insufficient grip on the surface for climbing.’
I saw a certain irony in this situation. I could not help contrasting this dearth of snow with the blizzard conditions on Kilimanjaro, where it was the fresh snow that was treacherously slippy. The change of plan meant I had to abandon a day meant for acclimatisation at Shipton’s Camp. I had been looking forward to having the time to explore the tarns and glacial valleys beneath the summit; and having time just to admire the fabulous views of much of Kenya from this high altitude.
Alfred and I set off for the summit at 3am. The thinness of the air and steepness of the ascent were now severely testing my energy reserves. But, unlike the final assault on Kilimanjaro, visibility on this cold starry night was excellent. The white jagged summit towered over us in the moonlight; a full moon sat wedged between the two main peaks.
At such high altitudes, weather conditions can change with frightening rapidity. It started snowing on us at about 15,500 feet. The fresh snow was making it dangerous and slippery in many places, especially clambering over the loose scree. Most serious climbers use ski poles as walking aids in the mountains; I was using a cheap umbrella that I had bought off a hawker in Nanyuki. It did the job for me just as well as a ski pole, though.
We finally reached the summit just as a hazy orange dawn was breaking. The snow had stopped, revealing a stunning panorama of luminous peaks, dark tarns, glinting glaciers, and valleys quilted in snow. Looking around, the rest of Kenya stretched away to distant hazy horizons, and far to the south in Tanzania, I could make out the distinctive outline of Mount Kilimanjaro. I was overjoyed with a sense of achievement.
I discovered later that Alfred and I were the only people who attempted the summit that day by any route. Almost half of those who set out to climb Mount Kenya fail in their attempt. Some do not even get beyond the rainforest, driven off by elephants or buffalo. So, there was considerable satisfaction in realising, that for a brief while, Alfred and I were the highest two people in Kenya, on the second highest mountain in Africa. The batteries in my camera froze after I had taken a few photos to record the moment. As it was bitterly cold, and Alfred was keen to begin the descent, we did not linger too long at the top.
Re-united with our porter, we set off on our way down from Shipton’s Camp in the blazing mid-morning sun. After my Kilimanjaro experience, I had applied lots of protective sun cream. Then it was down through a thick mist that had entrenched itself in Makinder’s Valley in the afternoon. Something near total exhaustion meant that I slept very soundly indeed at Old Moses Camp that night. Early next morning, it was back down to the road for Nanyuki.
‘I have now retired from climbing African mountains,’ I announced to Alfred, as I slipped him a tip.‘… for the time being anyway!’
Back in Nanyuki, I wanted to catch a bus to Nyeri. I asked one local Kikuyu man for directions to the bus depot. He started a loud communal debate in the Kikuyu language with half the street, which lasted for five minutes. After much arguing among themselves, I was provided with an answer.
‘Just turn right here,’ he told me.
The journey got off to a slow start. Several passengers, including a Kikuyu proudly sporting a leprechaun hat, helped me to push the ‘Maggie Thatcher’ a few hundred feet in order to start the engine. We made it in the end however. Nyeri is the capital of Kikuyu country, a lively town about fifty kilometres south of Nanyuki. It nestles among the picturesque valleys in the Central Highlands, south-west of Mount Kenya, in the very heartland of the coffee farms. Nyeri, it is claimed, is at the optimum altitude for growing coffee.
In Nyeri, like every other sizable town in Kenya, I fell in with a gang of Akambas making bicycle brakes from worn-out sandals, and making sandals from worn-out lorry tyres. Other Akambas specialise in woodcarving or basket work, and are renowned for their artistic inclination and skill; they too are to be found in towns throughout the country. I always greeted the Akamba people wherever I went, and they were always thrilled to meet a mzungu with a few phrases of their language. One Akamba man insisted on me visiting his home for tea when he heard about my months in Kitui. He was from a village near Kwa Vonza and, inevitably perhaps, he turned out to be related to Mwangangi. But then who wasn’t, I was thinking!
Before I left the Nyeri region a couple of days later, I had to make a pilgrimage to Lord Baden-Powell’s final home, a modest cotta
ge on the outskirts of the town. He died here in Kenya, having lived in the colony for some years, and is buried in the local Anglican cemetery. His cottage is now an interesting little museum. It was Baden-Powell, after all, who founded the Scout movement, and it was in the scouts that my interest in mountaineering was born. Having just climbed Mount Kenya, there was a certain appropriateness in paying my own tribute by visiting his cottage.
After the short stay in Nyeri, I returned by bus to Kitui village to spend a few days there in mid-May. I was staying in a cottage next to Fr. Paul’s home. On the second evening, it flooded.
‘There has never been as much rain in Kitui since the El-Niño rains of 1998,’ Fr. Paul remarked as we watched the water levels rise and rise around us.
I woke up the next morning to find that a huge tree had fallen straight through the roof of a neighbouring cottage, a matter of yards from where I was in bed. I had not even heard a thing; I was still recovering from the exertions of the climb.
I was more concerned that morning about a mosquito infection that was spreading up my left leg. I visited Kitui hospital to have it treated. From the outside, the hospital resembled nothing more than a couple of old farm outhouses in Ireland. When I called into the compound, there was a hundred-strong queue of patients standing outside, all patiently waiting to have their eyes scientifically checked—by calling out letters on a sheet that was pinned to a tree. Some seemed to think it was like a school test; they were memorising what the people in front of them were calling out.
I eventually lost patience and ended up cycling to the Irish Mercy nun, Sr. Helen, who treated my leg at her new dispensary near the mission station. On my way back from there to Kitui village, I was forced off the road by the approaching ‘Monica Lewinsky’ bus, its horn blaring. It was a hairy moment. There was a sheer drop on one side and a giant crater on the other side that could have sent me over the handlebars. Luckily, it did not. To add insult to potential injury, some joker on board threw his banana peel at me. It crossed my mind that I might be safer climbing high mountains.
CHAPTER 20
‘HONEYMOON’ IN ZANZIBAR
IN THE SECOND HALF of May, my girlfriend, Bríd, flew over from Ireland to spend a few weeks with me. I had already organised my time in Africa before we started going out together in college. She had been my perfect match; her beauty and charming persona had left me smitten. That was then. Now my mind was a whirlpool of thoughts and emotions. Would she still feel the same about me, and did I really feel the same even though I thought I did? Had her first year of work changed her? Had I changed? Could we simply pick up where we had left off nine months before, as easily as all that? So many questions.
I tingled with nervous apprehension while waiting at the arrivals gate of Nairobi Airport; but mostly it was an eager feeling, an impatience to embrace her. People continued to straggle out past me as I searched for someone with jet-black hair. Finally, after an eternity, we set eyes on one another. The months simply evaporated as we raced ecstatically towards each other. Brid and I hugged warmly; it felt wonderful, magical.
We chatted and laughed so naturally on the back seat of the bus into the centre of Nairobi, it seemed like it was only the evening before that had been our last moment together. Over dinner at our hotel, she handed me a few special items she had brought from Ireland. I was so elated to be once again in her presence, to be able to admire her winsome features, and be beguiled by her gentle heartening smile.
We soon established that our loving feelings for each other had not diminished. Absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder, as the saying goes.
‘Brendan, you haven’t changed a bit!’ Brid assured me.
This was confirmation I needed. Though my outlook on life had changed in subtle ways, I was hoping that my experiences in Africa had not changed me as a person.
Bríd was only in Nairobi a few hours when she was greeted by the sound of gunshots in the street below the bedroom window during the night. Welcome to Nairobi, I thought.
‘It’s probably criminals, or maybe police in a shoot-out. It’s not exactly unheard of in any big city nowadays,’ I suggested.
She was alarmed, understandably, but I was able to calm her fears.
We were up early to catch the Kitui bus, which we ended up sharing with three smelly goats. Bríd was experiencing culture shock. She was wide-eyed with excitement when we had to stop to let a herd of giraffes cross the road.
‘Welcome to Kwa Vonza,’ I said as I helped her alight from the bus. ‘It’s a long way from Tipperary.’
The reply stuck in her throat, as she suddenly realised that all the eyes of the village were focused on her. The villagers always met the bus and greeted the passengers, out of idleness as much as curiosity.
I had not even noticed anything unusual; I knew all the people of Kwa Vonza by this stage. I had to tell the villagers that Bríd was my wife. They would not grasp the concept of a girlfriend. One of the ladies whom I had turned down in marriage (‘because I cannot marry outside my tribe’), grumbled to me in English,
‘But you are light brown (my tan), and she is white. You are from two different tribes.’
Then it was on to Nyumbani, bouncing on the back of a pick-up. I introduced Bríd to all my friends. They welcomed her warmly, and with varying degrees of shyness and curiosity. Just as I imagined, there was not much Village activity going on, only a few workers keeping the organic farm running, and Nancy and Nzoki keeping the offices ticking over. I was not required in Nyumbani any more, because there was not enough work to be done.
‘It may be months yet before Phase III commences, Brendan,’ Kimanze speculated. ‘But at least the deeds have finally been signed over.’
This was a positive development. I was delighted, too, that Mama Mbolea and Kaviti were busy harvesting ripe vegetables to sell to the market in Kitui village.
Kimanze located a motorbike for us. Bríd sat on the back holding onto me grimly as we careered through the bush. I painfully stubbed my toe at twenty kilometres an hour as we bumped our way to Nancy’s most African of African homes. We found Nancy’s children sleeping in the dome granary. I explained to Bríd that sleeping in the thatched granary on wooden stilts gave the children some protection from the baboons and other nuisances.
Bríd was fascinated by Nancy’s home in its compound of round thatched mud-huts.
‘It looks as if nothing has changed since neolithic times,’ she observed.
Inside the compound, we were treated like royalty. We received the usual honour of being invited to pick out which chicken Nancy would slaughter for us. I suggested a medium sized one. Bríd winced at the idea.
‘No Bradan, it must be the biggest hen! Choose the big black hen,’ Nancy demanded generously.
By this stage, the food shortage in the region had eased, which made me feel less uncomfortable about accepting Nancy’s generosity. I knew from experience that the Akamba would go hungry themselves in order to feed a guest. They have a term for any visitor that translates as ‘a blessing,’ no matter what time of day or night the visitor calls. Food is always on offer. Nancy had been in the process of wafting smoke through her harvested maize to protect it from pests and, hopefully, disease. Other members of her family were harvesting the rest of their maize crop nearby.
Nancy’s neighbours quickly assembled when the bush telegraph announced our arrival. The adults had great fun fitting together the jigsaw puzzle that Bríd had brought with her—even though it had been meant as a gift for the children. The younger ones were as timid with Bríd as they had been with me months before, but she soon won their confidence. There was some disappointment when her arms proved not to be hairy like mine!
Bríd and I were planning to spend the next three weeks touring in Tanzania. Our send off from Kitui was another excuse for Sr. MM to host a colonial-style party for the Irish in the area. Fr. Paul was anxious to thank Bríd, who had worked tirelessly with our college friends to raise funds for Kitui. And so,
as another big red sun was consumed by the horizon behind us that evening, we found ourselves devouring a sweet trifle fortified with some of the altar wine meant for the week’s Masses—Sr. MM had run out of anything else to flavour it with!
The next morning, Bríd and I set off on our 900km journey to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. These distances always appeared much smaller on a map. The standard world maps tended to portray countries that are closer to the Polar Regions as relatively larger in comparison to the countries close to the equator. This, apparently, is because the European colonial nations pressured early cartographers to distort the reality so that African colonies would not look multiple times bigger than the size of the ‘mother’ country. So, when taking this into account, coupled with the fact that many main thoroughfares are not even tarred, journeys in Africa inevitably take much longer than anticipated.
We crossed the Kenyan border at Namanga, directly south of Nairobi. Just as I was handing my passport over, I suddenly spotted for the first time that when I entered from Uganda in March, the Kenyan official stamped it 23/06/03, instead of 23/03/06. Unfortunately, the immigration officer at Namanga spotted the date too.
‘Mr. Brendan, I see you have been in Kenya for a long time without a valid visa,’ he said menacingly, and threatened to have me thrown in jail!
‘Look, no need for that. I will just leave the country,’ I pleaded.
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