Sleeping Around

by Brian Thacker

  ‘Vincent’s other name is Mutuka,’ Mutisya said, ‘which means “It was dark” because it was dark when he was born.’ Mutisya’s older brother’s name is Mutunga, which means ‘looks like grandfather’, while Francis Wambua translates as ‘born in heavy rains’.

  ‘My name means “too long to be born”,’ Mutisya said proudly. ‘Because my mother had very long labour pains.’

  After lunch we headed west to Fourteen Falls, which was on the border of Oldonyo Sabuk National Park. Fourteen Falls only had twelve waterfalls, but I won’t quibble—one of the major tourist attractions near Melbourne is called the Twelve Apostles although there are only nine of them.

  To get near the falls we had to leap over a series of rock pools and clamber up and over steep ledges. This proved to be almost fatal. As I leapt onto a boulder I failed to notice a protruding rock ledge. A perilously sharp protruding rock ledge. I slammed my head into it with a sickening thud and blacked out for a few seconds. If Mutisya hadn’t caught me, I would have tumbled over the edge. When I regained my senses blood was trickling down my forehead, but I didn’t feel it. What I could feel, or more accurately not feel, was my back. It had gone totally numb and I could barely walk. I had to be helped to the car and on the subsequent long drive to Lake Naivasha the roads were so bad that I would squeal with pain every few seconds as we went over a bump.

  We arrived in Naivasha town at nightfall and the main street looked decidedly seedy under the cloak of darkness. ‘This place is very famous in Kenya,’ Mutisya said. The area did have a claim to fame, but I doubt if it would make a great tourist slogan. ‘This area has the highest amounts of rape in all of Kenya,’ Mutisya said.

  We were staying with a ‘sometimes friend’ of Mutisya’s who owned a restaurant and small guesthouse. After having a bite to eat we were shown to a few old lumpy and soiled mattresses on the floor in the back room. I decided, however, to pay 5 dollars for an upgrade to one of the guestrooms. Yes, it’s not technically couch surfing because I paid for my bed, but I think my back would have disowned me if I’d slept on one of the lumpy mattresses.

  A large sign on the side of the road read: ANIMALS HAVE RIGHT OF WAY. There were certainly plenty of them to exercise that right if they wanted to. In the space of only a few kilometres, we passed [insert appropriate collective nouns] of zebras, warthogs, antelopes, buffalos and black-and-white colobus monkeys.

  ‘Most Kenyans have never seen a giraffe or a lion or an elephant,’ Mutisya said as he turned around to point out another herd of zebras. The whole turning around thing was worrying me because Mutisya was driving. Willy had been called back suddenly to Nairobi to do another driving job, so he’d got up early to catch a bus.

  We were on our way to Crater Lake Game Park to ‘see some animals up very close’. When we pulled into a car spot in front of the stone-hut ticket office, we almost ran over two vervet monkeys who were very close indeed. Without losing rhythm for a second the copulating monkeys looked up at us as if to say ‘Do you mind?’ Mutisya waltzed straight past them in the middle of their lovemaking and into the ticket office.

  While Mutisya was inside the ticket office, one of the formerly amorous monkeys leapt through the driver’s window and casually hopped onto the back seat. He got himself comfortable then gave me a look as if to say ‘Right, so when are we going then?’ When a ride wasn’t forthcoming, he snorted at me and jumped back out.

  ‘You are a famous author!’ Mutisya barked angrily when he returned to the car. ‘And they will not give us a discount, so we will not pay!’

  We snuck in instead.

  Mutisya drove off the main road down a dusty track, then slipped through a side gate. It was even dustier in the park and after only a few minutes we were both covered in dust. Not only was it too hot to close the windows, but if we had I wouldn’t have been able to see the grazing herds of giraffes, buffalos and zebra; or the elands, gazelles and impalas sashaying silently through the bush; or the troupes of playful monkeys leaping between tree limbs. And that was all in the first fifteen minutes in the park.

  We were driving along the designated track when we happened upon a walking group being led by a park guide— Crater Lake Game Park is one of the few national parks in Kenya where you can wander around because there are no big cats that may consider you a tasty afternoon snack. Instead of slowing down when we got near the group, Mutisya thundered past, blanketing them all with dust.

  Luckily for us, after the great dusting we didn’t see any more people—or more specifically any park guides on the lookout for freeloading hoons. We spent the next hour driving around, stopping now and again to get out and take a photo of loping giraffes or gambolling gazelles. Except they all kept scampering away when we got too close.

  ‘I’ll get you a good photo!’ Mutisya bellowed, after yet another unsuccessful attempt to get close to a herd of animals. Mutisya hit the accelerator then spun the steering wheel wildly, sending the car lurching and rattling off the designated track towards a family of giraffes. The old Toyota bounced around like a tin can tumbling down stairs. And so did my head cannoning repeatedly into the roof. Mutisya chased the giraffes and then some zebras around an obstacle course of acacia trees, then sent some dementedly frightened impalas leaping over bushes. I didn’t get any good shots, but we did almost collect a family of antelopes.

  I was just happy that we finally left the park before a park guide got a good shot at us.

  At least we didn’t have to sneak into the Crater Lake reserve. Entry was free. We parked the car and clambered on all fours up a steep incline to a lookout on a rocky outcrop. Below was Crater Lake, which was emerald green with a pale pink fluffy fringe around it. The pink fringe turned out to be thousands of flamingos wading in the shallows.

  On the edge of the lake was Crater Lake Camp. It wasn’t a two-man tent, shared shower-block type camp, though. It was more your five-star type camp with shaded lawns and neat curved stone paths leading to secluded tents in the lakeside forest with sweeping views over the flamingo-lined waters. Each tent was furnished with giant four-poster beds and ensuite bathrooms with hot showers—but you’d hope they would be at US$250 a night.

  We had an expensive, but desperately needed, cold drink overlooking the lake in the open-sided dining/bar pavilion, which was made of rough-hewn stone and dark wood. While I was sipping my iced tea, I noticed a very odd sight. A man in black pressed pants, white shirt and bow tie was standing on the edge of the lake casually pulling dead flamingos out of the water with a long pole. After we’d finished our drinks we wandered down for a closer inspection. The plucky flamingo plucker was one of the waiters. ‘It is not good for the guests to see lots of dead flamingos,’ he said, throwing another large flamingo into an already laden wheelbarrow. The flamingos had died, he told us, because the water was too low so there was not enough algae for the birds to eat. Or there was too much algae to eat. He seemed as confused as we did.

  Another waiter came to collect the full wheelbarrow and headed back in the direction of the dining pavilion.

  I had a sneaking suspicion that there might just be Fricasseed Flamingo Pie on the menu that night.

  On the drive back to Nairobi we stopped for a late lunch at a hot dog stand, which had been set up next to a petrol station. A troupe of blue-bottomed baboons joined us for lunch. I’d just started on my hot dog when the largest and meanest-looking one tottered over towards me, then, in a furry flash, wrapped its fat little fingers around my hot dog and wrenched it from my grasp. He gulped it down in one mouthful then looked at me as if to say ‘Go on then, go get me another one’. I did get another hot dog, but I ate it in the car.

  ‘I’m very tired,’ Mutisya said as we were about to leave. ‘Can you drive?’

  If you asked any of my friends if I can drive, they would probably say not very well at all. So it was with much trepidation, and a powerful surge of sheer panic, that I took over the driving on possibly the worst roads that I’d ever experienced in my life. I c
ould just about handle dodging the oncoming trucks (I simply swung onto the dirt shoulder, which was often in better condition than the road anyway), but I also had to dodge people, goats, cows, donkeys and the odd baboon wandering across the road. Oh, and potholes the size of bathtubs. It couldn’t possibly have been any worse. Then it started raining. It did make dodging all of the above easier, though. That was because I couldn’t see a thing. I spent the entire time clutching the steering wheel like I was on the world’s scariest rollercoaster. Actually, it was a lot scarier than that.

  ‘Pull over up ahead,’ Mutisya said. The rain had cleared now, so at least I could see the hordes of people standing on the side of the road holding up bags of fruit and vegetables to the passing traffic.

  ‘This is called the Crazy Market,’ Mutisya said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  When I pulled off the road, a gang of screaming people clutching bags of carrots, peas, onions, potatoes, leeks and cabbages converged on the car and pressed their faces up against the windows. My window was only open a few centimetres and one of the insistent vendors tried to force a bag of carrots through the tiny gap. ‘You buy carrots!’ he pleaded. ‘You must buy carrots.’

  ‘I’m leaving the country tomorrow,’ I screamed back. ‘I can’t take carrots with me.’

  ‘How about onions then?’

  Mutisya very bravely jumped out to buy some cabbages. When he opened the boot, ten different cabbage sellers shoved their bags inside. It took ten minutes of arguing and shouting before we could finally drive off with only one bag.

  For more than an hour we’d been climbing steadily, but I hadn’t realised just how high up we were until we rounded a bend and the ground next to the road fell away to the Great Rift Valley far below, an immense plain that spread out as far as the eye could see. At the highest point—more than 2500 metres above sea level—was a long row of souvenir stalls. When we pulled into the empty car park, a legion of hawkers bounded over to greet us with armfuls of trinkets.

  ‘I have no money,’ I said gravely.

  ‘He is my driver,’ Mutisya said. ‘He is very poor.’

  We were then left alone to admire the view—although the hawkers did grill Mutisya on why I was so poor. He told them that I was from Mongolia and that we are not allowed to take money out of the country.

  Driving into Nairobi I almost wet my pants a number of times. I had to constantly slam on the brakes to avoid crashing into the buses and cars that kept cutting me off. At one point I gave the locals a taste of Australian road rage. When a small van cut me off, sending me up onto the traffic island, I stuck my head out the window and yelled ‘You’re a FUCKIN’ MORON mate!’

  ‘Don’t do that. He will kill you,’ Mutisya said matter-of-factly.

  When I finally, thankfully, mercifully, pulled over in Kenyatta Avenue, I leapt out and gave Mutisya a high five. ‘I didn’t get us killed,’ I yelped with delight. Neither by getting hit or by getting shot.

  I offered to take Mutisya to a restaurant for our final night’s meal and he said, ‘I will like to show you where every tourist in Nairobi goes to’. As he told me its name, I shrewdly guessed that it was unlikely to be a vegetarian restaurant.

  Carnivore was massive. And that was just the car park, which was full of tour buses. The restaurant catered for more than 500 people at each sitting. The building itself was a monolithic modern place with a few rough wooden poles added to make it look rustic. Just inside the entrance was a massive charcoal fire pit surrounded by a dozen chefs in ridiculously tall hats and enveloped in barbecue smoke.

  We were escorted to our table past large herds of tour groups, mostly of the Japanese and old-folk variety. Sitting next to us was a bunch of oldies wearing safari vests (with lots of pockets), loud shorts, white socks and white runners. I wasn’t that surprised when I heard their American accents.

  As soon as we sat down, the waiter hoisted a small cardboard flag up in the centre of our table, which we were to put down when we’d gorged ourselves enough.

  ‘Soup, sir?’ the waiter asked, holding a wooden tray laden with bowls of soup.

  ‘Don’t have any soup,’ Mutisya barked. ‘Save your stomach for the meat.’ Mutisya said the same thing about the bread and the potatoes.

  ‘I don’t want any of that,’ Mutisya spat at the waiter when he appeared with a tray of salad. ‘Where’s the meat? Bring me some meat!’

  What followed next was a procession of charred flesh on skewers, including beef, chicken, lamb, lamb chops, pork sausages, chicken livers, camel, crocodile and ostrich. You can take the boy out of the village, but you can’t take the village out of the boy. Mutisya ate with his hands while spitting fat and bones onto his plate.

  When I finished my last morsel of ostrich, I was so full I couldn’t even face dessert—and that’s very unlike me.

  Mutisya, on the other hand, refused to put the flag down. When the waiter came around asking if we wanted dessert, he said, ‘We’re taking a commercial break, we’ll be right back.’

  The rest obviously did Mutisya a power of good. He had three serves of dessert.

  By the time we got to Mutisya’s house in town, it was after eleven and Terry and the kids were asleep on the double bed. Mutisya gave me the fetching brown velvet couch, while he slept on a thin mattress on the floor. I went to bed still covered in dust. It was caked on my skin and my hair was like straw.

  Even though I was exhausted I had trouble getting to sleep. It was stiflingly hot in my sleeping bag, but it was a choice between melting or malaria. A crack squadron of mosquitos was hovering above just waiting to devour me. At one point I seriously contemplated jumping in with Terry and the kids under the mosquito net.

  I woke up at five. Well, technically I didn’t wake up, because I hadn’t ever been to sleep. I spent most of the night swatting mosquitos. I feel a little guilty doing this because Mutisya was such an accommodating and generous host, but—I’m sorry, Mutisya—I’ve given your couch a rating of 2/10. And I won’t do the pro and con thing because there wasn’t a single pro. Oh, there was one. I didn’t get malaria.

  SOUTH AFRICA

  16

  ‘You can stay only after being screened and approved and authorised by my mum.’

  Walindah Mosia, 25, Soweto, South Africa

  CouchSurfing.com

  My next couch-surfing host didn’t live in a tin shack. Not that I was really expecting my host Walindah to live in a rundown lean-to, but the images beamed around the world of Soweto tend to only show a scruffy, littered and crowded shanty town full of rusty shacks. Then again, I also hadn’t expected to find that Walindah lived in a nice brick suburban house in a nice quiet suburban street. The only stereotypical sign that I was in Soweto was Walindah’s brother’s car in the driveway. It had been totally trashed during a recent carjacking. ‘They put a gun to my brother’s head,’ Walindah said somewhat casually, as we walked up the driveway, ‘and threatened to “blow out his brain” if he didn’t get out of the car.’

  ‘Is it, um . . . dangerous around here?’ I asked a little nervously.

  ‘No, not at all, it didn’t happen in Soweto,’ Walindah explained cheerfully. ‘We feel safer in Soweto than we do in Johannesburg. They’ve got the highest murder rate in the world, you know.’

  So you may well wonder why I chose the murder capital of the world as my next couch-surfing destination. I chose Johannesburg because, as with Belgium, I’d been there before without having seen any of it. All I had seen in my very brief previous stay was the heavily fortified hostel next to Johannesburg airport where I stayed while in transit to West Africa.

  There were plenty of couch-surfing hosts to stay with in Johannesburg, but after reading a bunch of profiles I decided that I didn’t want to stay in a nice white neighbourhood and eat barbecue steak in a nice white restaurant and sit in a bar surrounded by locals boasting that ‘South Africa has the best rugby team in the world’.

  But I only had
a short time in Johannesburg (due to a short connecting flight), so if I wanted to experience South Africa with an African South African, then Soweto, the black township southeast of Johannesburg, was the place. It wasn’t easy finding a host in Soweto, though. I scoured all three websites and found only four potential hosts. But as it turned out I received a reply and a couch invitation in response to my first request—on the proviso that I had been screened, approved and authorised by my host’s mum first.

  Walindah gave me directions from the airport, which involved catching a bus into the city then an overcrowded taxi-bus to Soweto. My first introduction to Soweto was when my taxi-cum-bus-cum-sardine-tin pulled into the chaotic Baragwanath taxi-rank-cum-market-cum-fast-food-outlet along with hundreds of other mini-buses. The market stalls were mostly manned (or should that be womanned?) by women selling fresh fruit, vegetables, clothes and lots of plastic junk. In between the market stalls were chickens and chickens’ feet being roasted on roadside barbecues while butchers were brushing away flies from sheeps’ heads. There were constant clashes between the First World and the Third, as when I watched a Zulu witchdoctor sell medicines and animal skins to a man in a suit who was speaking loudly into a mobile phone.

  ‘I will find you,’ Walindah had said in her email.

  How would she ever find me in a crowded bus station? It didn’t take long to figure out how. I was the only white person. Walindah, who was a petite thing and wearing a pretty bright red dress, found me within a minute of me stepping off the bus. There was a bus to Walindah’s house, but I said I was happy to do the 30-minute walk—which, with a big backpack, only seemed like a good idea for the first four minutes.