We headed off to the Sudan Embassy with little hope of getting our Sudan visa easily. Other people on the truck had been told that they would not be issued with a Sudan visa until they had their Egypt visa, as a sort of insurance policy that they were not going to build a hut and live in Sudan forever! We filled out the form, twice and submitted it with two passport photos, two copies of our credit cards (no way we were handing over a bank statement!) two copies of our yellow fever certificate and two copies of our letter of introduction from the Australian Embassy. The lady behind the counter was one of the surliest creatures to roam the planet (with the exception of me aged 13) She said ‘so many tourists nowadays’ to us...(not really, looking at the forms at the gate of the embassy there had only been 20 visitors the day before, I don’t think that Sudan is quite the tourist destination yet!) I replied to her...trying to be nice ‘is that a good thing?’ Didn’t quite catch her answer, but it was less than positive. We left and headed back through security, which was non existent compared to that of the Australian Embassy and found our taxi again.
We had ordered the same taxi driver from the previous day and were surprised to find a different one waiting for us at the campsite, we pulled into a service station, it does not matter how far you have to go, or what type of taxi you are in but every time, andI mean EVERY time you get in a taxi, the driver pulls into a service station for like $3 of fuel! So in a week of visa hunting and embassy visits we have been into about 20 service stations, for a total of about $50 of fuel! Ha ha So when we pull into the service station I silently groan thinking that we would not be at the embassy at 9am as planned, instead of pulling into the bowsers we instead check the tyres for air! Then drive across the forecourt and are told that we change taxi’s here, well that’s new! So we change cars and are told that the driver from the previous day couldn’t make it so he hired his cousin, who couldn’t make the pick up hence the taxi relay... after 20mins of four fully grown adults (3 blokes) and me, squashed into the back of a Toyota corolla with four backpacks swerving through the streets of Nairobi we finally arrive, again thankfully to have survived as there are no seatbelts in any taxi over here!
We head to a shopping centre to search for a sleeping mat for Spencer, he was thinking that he could manage 12 weeks of no sleeping mat, he lasted one night...best we could find is an aerobics mat, seems Ok and he has refused offers of swapping the aerobics mat for the thermarest each night. We got lunch at the shopping centre, I ordered something on the menu that was called ‘lemonade’ hmmm I thought I knew exactly what to expect...no way! I was served up a contraption of potions and additives which needed mixing together, turns out it’s a fine art and I had to order another to work out that you don’t add all of the thick, sticky stuff that comes in the silver jug to your glass! That wasn’t the only surprise on the menu; the vegetarian samosas were laced with meat! I bit into the first one and hit animal whilst the waiter was standing next to me, with my mouth full of some type of beast I asked him ‘are these vegetarian?’ already tasting the answer...he looked and said ‘no’ at the same time that I was making a big scene in spitting out the offending moo cow or baa baa blacksheep and then wiping out my mouth with a serviette, whilst he apologised profusely. Turns out that saying vegetarian and actually pointing to the ‘vegetarian samosas’ on the menu was just not comprehensive enough!
The following day we head to the Elephant Orphanage and Giraffe sanctuary. But honestly the taxi ride was possibly more entertaining than the elephants of giraffes. Although a giraffe did try to head butt Spencer which I found a whole lot more hilarious than he did! Four of us breathe in deeply and manage to somehow get in and close the doors! We take off down the bumpy, dusty road in one of the outer suburbs of Nairobi, a couple of times I realise that we are rolling with out the engine running (this has happened in quite a few countries, Madagascar mainly, to save fuel) So I didn’t think much of it, apart from the fact that the Toyota corolla was pretty hesitant to start each time. Then the driver starts swerving down the road and the car sounds sicker and sicker, the swerving turns into a jerking of the steering wheel right and left and right and left, this is so not cool when you are jammed in between two blokes in the backseat! Then the car stops and flatly refuses to start and I am thinking ‘far out, we have broken down in Nairobi aka ‘Nairobbery’, we are carrying a decent amount of cameras between the four of us (four SLR’s and possibly about 10 lenses). The taxi driver gets out and starts pushing the car forward down the road, lucky he was aided with a slope as none of the ‘mzungus’ could get out without exploding forth out of the crammed vehicle! The car somehow starts again and splutters as we rock back and forwards for the last 100m to the service station....ah ha! There lay the problem; this was the first taxi driver to not take us directly to the service station as a first stop! $3 of petrol later and we are on our way, with a transformed Toyota corolla. The elephant orphanage was good fun, apart from the herd of tourists! The giraffe sanctuary was also enjoyable, we got to feed the giraffes ‘giraffe pellets’, their tongues are so rough! Whilst they were eating you were able to pat them and give their ears a scruff. Their heads are so big up close!
That afternoon we head back to the Sudan Embassy at 2pm, we got a head start as the traffic in Nairobi can make the difference between a 20 minute and a 3 hour journey. We arrive at 2.30pm, ready to pick up our visas at 3pm. The clock hits 3pm, we wait, the clock hits 3.05 we still wait, clock hits 3.09 the receptionist gets up and walks into the back office, clock hits 3.10, I get up and fill up our water bottle from the water fountain whilst the surly receptionist is absent, clock hits 3.15 we still wait, Clock hits 3.19 large African lady across the room answers her phone and speaks very loudly for 15 seconds, thirty seconds later this occurs again, and continues until we leave the embassy! Sometime after 3.30pm she stands up again and takes all our passports into the back office, after keeping our passports there for over 24 hours they were deciding to process them now? After another cup of water and ten phone calls to the woman across the room passports start being handed out, mine was handed to one of the South African blokes on our truck, I was surprised at the fact that they were able to pick up the drivers passport with out an authorisation letter, with all the hassle we had with DHL refusing to pick up Spencers passport from the Australian Embassy even with embassy approval!
From there we took another interesting taxi ride back to the local shopping centre to post my ‘insurance policy’ (a back up of my favourite photos back home) ( just on the small off-chance that sit hits the fan badly and I loose both external hard drives...err, not me lose them, more likely someone steals them!) and head to the super market to buy the worst cream cheese in the world...let me tell you, there was definitely no eating of the cream cheese with a spoon, it was an effort in commitment to even eat any of the crap on crackers. So disappointing as it was the nicest looking label on the shelves, painted up like a devondale cow! Now that’s why they say, ‘never judge a cream cheese by its cow print!’ We also manage to find a jar of vegemite, although the smallest jar in the history of vegemite, and I think it may be old enough to earn a place in an Australian museum, it was worth as much as a museum display! But totally worth every shilling the following morning on my toast!
Returned to camp to face my worst task of travel, the washing...dreaming of my fisher paykal 6kg, fully automatic, hot or cold wash, rinse and spin, wonderful machine, I find a plastic laundry tub, take the Omo and my new trial bar of Sunlight soap bar and head for the tap. Of course the tap is above a sink and the sink is too small to wash in and the tap is so close to the sink that one must balance the washing tub whilst filling it halfway then splash water down the front of ones self to lower the tub to the ground, where one must then scrub the African dust and dirt out of the clothes by hand. Turns out that the Sunlight soap bar is one of the best 15 shilling investment ever, we actually have white whites for a couple of days, not grey whites, or yellow whites or the favourite, red dust whites! So for any of you travelling to Africa, I will give you the washing information that has taken me 3 months and about 60 hours of scrubbing (and many layers of skin shed from my knuckles) to learn; the best way to wash is this; Step one. Fill washing tub with water. Step two. Use a bar of 15 shilling Sunlight soap and scrub all items thoroughly. Step 3. Rinse Sunlight soap out of clothes. Step 4. Refill tub and add liberal amounts of Omo washing powder (Anyone want to know why Omo is ridiculously expensive everywhere else in the world? Expensive prices are subsidising cheap African prices, no shit, it’s like $1.10AUD for 500g, if you get the 1Kg, it’s cheaper than $2!) So after adding the Omo, agitate the washing for a couple of minutes and let sit, and then agitate again (by this time the agitating becomes easier due to your agitation levels rising). Step 5. Balance the tub over the sink or dirt or bucket the water from the tap if needed (depending on your position) and refill enough to rinse the clothing out. Step 6. Piece by piece hand wring all items. Step 7. Erect a washing line to hang them on, if hanging on a tent, be wary of rusty tent poles or dusty canvas which will quickly undo your scrubbing efforts. Step 8. Position yourself in close range of the erected washing line to catch any items which look likely to fall onto the dirt or be eaten by stray goats and never, ever, leave washing on the line overnight, except in Johannesburg, it is apparently the only place safe to leave washing overnight! Ha ha ha (but true!) Step 9. Enjoy the fruits of your scrubbing efforts for the five minutes that you have clean clothes, as no matter how hard you try, you will never stay clean for longer than five minutes. Step 9. Repeat steps 1-8 every two to three days in varying weather conditions and surroundings with varying degrees of brown water!
Washing History: we have been in Africa for 3 months and one day, we had ‘machine washed clothes’ (MWC) once in South Africa and once in Namibia. We had our bigger items washed in Nairobi. Currently there are clothes that we own that have never been washed in a washing machine...yes these are the clothes that will not be making their way back to Australia and will instead be gracing the ‘vinnies’ bin or similar in Istanbul!
We left Karen campsite at 9.30am the following morning, half hour later than planned, this was due to the few last minute items being moved from the old truck ‘Ruby’ to the new truck ‘Roxy’, one part of this was the fuel tank, which I believe is currently ‘temporarily’ strapped into place until there is time for it to be fitted properly. As there is a holiday in the middle east around the time of our ferry to Egypt and two ferry services have been cancelled (they only run once a week) we are heading swiftly towards the ferry, otherwise we may get stuck waiting in Egypt for Roxy to get on the ferry! We headed out of Nairobi, with time for a quick stop at the supermarket to gather three days of supplies as we are told there is ‘f^&k all for three days’ in Northern Kenya. Lonly planet says something like ‘to travel in northern Kenya be prepared to tread where few have tread before you’ and it’s pretty accurate, after finding out I was on cooking duty the first night and gathering supplies we weaved our way out of Nairobi, stopping several times as one of the storage bin doors kept popping open, three stops later (and us breathing sighs of relief that amazingly no cars had been beside us at any stage it opened or they would have been badly dented) we say farewell to the outskirts and look towards Mt Kenya which ws, unfortunately, covered by fog. The truck rattles along very smoothly, I am told it is to do with the air suspension, whatever, it is far from back jarring on the rough roads. This truck is set up very differently from the trucks we have been on for the past 60 odd days, there is a ‘beach’ section at the back, the size of a queen size bed, for anyone wanting to sleep through the day, there are 12 forward facing seats at the front and 18 inwards facing seats in the middle of the truck. It has canvas roll up windows about 200 books (I don’t know what to read next, I am currently into Dian Fosseys gorillas in the mist, reliving just how amazing the gorillas are!) Our storage lockers are in compartments under the seats, which is handy, but I am missing the lock-up aspect of the acacia truck. On route “roxy’ had it’s first test, rain, there are plenty of leaks in the canvas and the trapdoor over the beach. After 20 minutes the rain eased and we continued down the road, to make camp at about 6.30pm just off the side of the road. We had only just pitched our tents when two of the locals appeared wearing their traditional cloths with sticks and tried to move us along, then offered us security for the night...at a price...security declined we cook tea, eat and get to bed ready for a 5.30am start the following day. The next morning we get away on time, suprising as breakfast was late as we spent about 15 minutes looking for the matches so we could cook the eggs! We had about 250km to travel that day, last year it took the truck 11 hours! It took us 9 ½ hours, in which I think we may have seen 6 other vehicles!. We were temporarily halted along the way by a 20cm piece of sharpened metal piercing a tyre, with the longest type lever in the world (About 8ft) one of our 12 spare tyres was fitted. (yup, when I saw that we needed 11spares I did wonder just what I had let myself in for!) North of Nairobi is completely different to anything else we have yet encountered in Africa, it is true ‘frontier’ land’, very few overland trucks come through here each year and you can tell form the excitement on the kids faces as they run after the truck waving and yelling, a couple of kids ran for kilometres this morning smiling and waving in their school uniforms! We camped in the empty lot beside an accommodation place, We were happy to have showers available, as we were coated in dust from the days drive. The ‘showers’ turned out to be a tub of hot water set in a stand with a jug, not bad though, I managed to even wash my hair with my 10lts of water! The worst was seeing the colour of the water run off you and the fact that above the tub was an actual proper shower, obviously not in working order anymore!
The following day was a long one in the truck, Spencer and I were lucky enough to get ‘the beach’ (bed at the back of the truck) however on some of the worst roads that we have encountered we did wonder if anyone else wanted to be at the back of the truck! It was a great day of laying on the truck watching km after km roll past (slowly, like 10km/h!) and seeing nothing bar empty barron desert with the odd twister in the distance, the occasional local with goats, cows, donkeys or camels to make you wonder just how anyone survives in such unforgiving land! We stopped for lunch, many people sat ont he truck as there was no shade, one tiny tree, not wide enough for my ass to hide behind for a pee, so I had to stroll off into the desert to hide behing a peice of plastic tank, hmmm, of course a truck full of locals chose that exact time and place to blow a tyre! Well they got a view of mzungu ass from a distance! We were planning to camp in a police station near the Ethiopian border, but our slow progress and some problem with the air brakes meant that we pulled the truck off the track about 60km short and set up camp, not all that for from Somalia and in an area known for bandits and truck hijackings. We discussed the use of rain sheets on the tents over a dinner of pasta, an decided ‘no we don’t need them, the locals said it hasn’t rained here for two years’, my answer ‘well the locals will be happy if we make it rain by not putting the rain covers on’ ha ha, murpheys law struck about midnight and had people scrambling for the covers in the desert! The smell of the first rain for so long was unbelievable! Teamed with the heat from the ground, like a natural electric blanket was a night that I won’t forget anytime soon! The next morning we were up and away at 6.30am to make the border, however a familiar ‘hiss’ alerted us to another blown tyre, as we climb out of the truck we notice hundreds and hundreds of nokia phone boxes, empty...hmmm, stolen goods, crashed truck of hijacked truck...my mind seemed to be the only one being paranoid about the fate of the truck and exactly what had blown our tyre in the exact same place! Another couple of locker door mishaps and we are finally at the border, it took almost 5 hours for 60 odd km’s. There was a problem with a couple of peoples Ethiopian visas at the border, the lady in the office mixed up the dates, after an hour and a half we were away and very grateful to the Ethiopian roads authority for sealing the roads! I was amazed at the change in the landscape as soon as we passed into Ethiopia, instead of being flat and baron, it is lush and hilly. We pulled off the road for another bush camp, before we were even off the truck we had a gathering of locals watching us with great interest, the kids were keen to play soccer and many had never seen a camera before, a coupe of the blokes got some great shots of the kids, much to everyone’s delight. I was having issues with my flash unit, worried for awhile that it had been a victim of hundreds of kilometres of jolting, changed the batteries even though the battery was showing full, sent a stream of sparks from the top of my camera, then worked fine....hmmm.....
We were up at 5am and away at 6am for the long haul to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, a little over 500km from the camp. Ethiopia feels like you really have arrived ‘somewhere else’ overland trucks are very rare here and the locals seem truly happy to see you, they yell ‘yu, yu, yu, yu’ as you drive past my arm has been waving all day! Unlike other countries, it’s the adults and kids that wave and smile, most waving with two hands! We stopped for a toilet break, however the truck attacted so much attention that there was no privacy after approx 150 people gathered around, two little girls spied my camera and sidled up to me to get a photo, then I had about 30! Then most of them wanted to shake my hand, the kids here are very good with the camera, I didn’t have to wipe fingerprints off or spend time readjusting the settings! Some people are very shy or nervous with cameras aimed at them, we saw one girl scream and duck like she had a gun aimed at her when one of the blokes on the truck tried to take a photo whilst driving past, another bloke took great offense to the 4 DSLRs hanging out of the truck (mine was safely in my locker!) and threw mud at the truck, he wasn’t a great aim and it missed the cameras by meters and lodged on the wall above ‘the beach’. Today was a 12 ½ hour day on the truck, I slept quite a lot of it, unlike me, but I had space to lie down! We came across some crazy drivers, donkeys and goats today, Spencer was sitting up the front with Mike the driver, he recons that sitting in the front you can see exactly how good a driver Mike is as the other drivers, animals and people take a bit of dodging. Because the truck is a ‘split level’ you cannot see the road in front from most of the seats, which makes it interesting when you have no seat belts and you are sitting in quick dry pants on canvas seats and the anchors are applied to avoid a crazy bus driver that seems bent on overtaking when our truck is going the other way! The first I knew of the problem was the esky sliding towards my feet, then my ass sliding along the seats, then the stairwell of the truck getting closer and me thinking my ass was going to land down there! Then we finally all stop sliding (the people on the beach remained on the beach, somehow!!) My arm was linked with the lady sitting on the next seat, I thank her for catching me, no I had grabbed here without realising it! We arrive into Addis ,at over 2400meters above sea level, to find a crappy, dodgy campground with no water, hot or otherwise and poo sitting in the toilet, but the beer is 40 cents for a pint, now this is testing my self inflicted ‘dry season’ (yup mum, you will be pleased to hear that I have given up the beer until I get home, with the exception of my birthday, Christmas day and new years eve!) We have not had showers since Nairobi, five days ago, and too many km’s of dusty roads gone by! The lack of showers was not well received by some! I have just decided to ‘go feral’ for once and all! (And for any of you smart asses who say I have always been feral, I’ll let you know that I have found all new depths of feralness! (ha ha, dictionary tells me there is no actual word as Feralness!) he he he he
The cook group had trouble getting food for tea tonight, they arrived back at the truck with four whole chooks, it was a bit of entertainment watching four blokes pluck, skin and gut the chooks for tea, I was glad that I have a vegetarian option!
I am starting to worry about my behaviour when I get home, please tell me gently if you notice me peeing behind a tree when there is a toilet nearby, going days without a shower, or if I start ‘flapping’ my dishes dry instead of using a tea towel or if I start driving down the road madly waving at anyone who will look my way! Also note that it will take about a month of scrubbing for me to rid myself of the ingrained dirt in ears, nose and skin....cleaning your ears is a whole different experience up here, urghh!
So anyway, first impressions on ‘North of Nairobi’ absolutely fantastic! We have arrived in the ‘real Africa!’
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