So after hearing that our truck “Rufunsa”, (named after a river in Tanzania) would return all well again with a new solenoid, we waited and waited to see it again, mostly because all of our warm clothes were contained within and at an altitude of 2600m it got chilly quickly! As soon as the truck returned to the campsite it was clear to all that all was not well and we looked at the layout of the camp and wondered just how we would roll start tomorrow....the following morning old ‘Rufunsa’ started Ok and we headed into Eldoret for a new solenoid switch. Whilst we were waiting for Patrick to sort the switch we had a tour of Ken-Knit a huge mill making wool, textiles and clothing, with more than 1300 workers, and definitely the hardest working works we have seen on this continent!
After touring through the mill and surprising many of the workers (I think we were the first tourists to go through there) we headed off for the Ugandan/Kenyan border. The border was chaotic, one of the worst we have seen, there was a line up of trucks at least 5km long waiting to cross the border, they must have been waiting all day, lucky we are able to push ahead of the trucks and the border crossing only took 2 hours! After waiting so long at the border we were then stuck in the rain and there was a lot of foot traffic on the road, slowing us down, then it got dark. What was supposed to take us 5 hours of travel took us 10 and a half! But the upshot was that the truck was all well again and we were on the Nile river where we are to stay for three nights.
The following day we had a sleep in, and breakfast at 9am....so used to early mornings, i was hungry by 7am! After that we headed into the township of Jinja, (pronounced Ginger) to withdraw some money, it took 7 atm’s until we found one to work! Then off to the internet...not much luck there either! Got back to camp to wash all of Spencers Kili clothes that were not done with the big passport stuff-up, and they were festering in the bag. We have not worn clothes washed in a washing machine since Namibia, 6 countries ago...I lost the skin on a couple of fingers handwashing so many dirty clothes.
That afternoon whilst reading I noticed that what I had felt to be a blister on my heel was something a little more ominous...similar to something Spencer had a few days ago. Upon consulting our driver Patrick it was decided that it was a ‘jigger’ (no one knows how to spell it!) and that it needed to be cut out. A Jigger is a worm that lives in sand and burrows in under the skin and then lays eggs and then the eggs hatch, if the worms spread you can be in trouble, lucky we caught ours early, Spencer cutting his own out and Patrick cutting mine out, releasing black, green vile stuff, followed by white eggs, urghh! But i was good and didn’t faint and I really didn’t feel a thing, only when the pin went in a little deep and hit the flesh that hadn’t lost it’s feeling yet....mot sure where we picked them up, could have been Zanzibar or Malawi, apparently it’s too cold on Kili and I was wearing shoes the whole time in the Serengeti....hmmm
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