Survival in Nairobi, Visas and introducing African trails

So after surviving the first 24 hours of digestive system mishaps, I arrived back at the hospital to collect my test results, of course this was never going to be as easy as the doctor had said it would be the previous evening! I arrived and had to move from counter to counter, noticing that locals have to use a fingerprint scanner to get medical treatment, we assumed this was so that no body else could access medical treatment on another’s health care. After waiting for an hour we hear the call for someone vaguely sounding like ‘Allison Harvey’, although it sounded more like ‘Alshun Arvy’ and through we go....quite funny really as when we had first walked in we didn’t know where to go and were shocked that we walked right through the Emergency Department, past the beds where I had been pumped full of fluids and through the doctors station! Once through we had to wait for longer, once the doctor arrived he tells me that the cultures that they had taken the previous day would not be ready for several more days and that I would need to come back again for the results...not happy Jan! So I hand over my poo in the smallest bottle in the world, still impressed with my accuracy in not spilling a drop (yup still liquid) down the sides. Spencer was quite impressed with both my poo texture and the accuracy of execution, he showed our travel companions the sample, although they claimed that they didn’t want to look, they couldn’t stop themselves from checking it out and commenting that it looked like curry paste....well I was just glad to see that it wasn’t straight water anymore! By the time we get back to the campground I am feeling very weak, the pizza that I had forced down earlier was pushing at the hatches to get some fresh air. I head off to bed, seriously contemplating skipping  my trip to the Maasai Mara as I felt so bad, Spencer arrives just in time to climb into our spew and poo scented canvas abode for me to yell out ‘open the zip! I’m going to spew!’, The issue lies with the tent having four, not just one zip, he gets it open just in time for me to dive out of the tent to vomit on the ground, we use the tent bag as a doormat, I was just able to clear it before the reincarnation of my vegetarian pizza. (which looked amazingly like a mini-me version of the one I ate at lunch, the pineapple was even spread evenly!) Only real problem was that my undies got caught on the clip that you use to keep the door open and they pulled down, so I could not extend any further out of the tent less my undies fall down further, until I could stop vomiting enough to speak to ask Spencer to unhook me, allowing me to then clamber out only all fours to continue the process of reincarnation. With tents all round, I was severely hoping that nobody came to help and see me in this state! I get back to bed and start to think that I really needed some vegemite, a cheeseburger without the meat and some of my mums tuna mornay! Once I finally fall asleep I have a doozy of a larium and fever fuelled dream, involving myself, my camera bag, the back streets of East Albury, an ’84 toyota troopcarrier and a bunch of dodgy looking people, the outcome of my dream: Robbed again....hmmm...however when you wake up from the dream at least you still have your gear! Larium is the malaria medication that we are on which is renowned for sending people a little batty, strange but incredibly realistic dreams etc etc. I had been finding it OK, but mixed with the fever I was starting to understand what all the fuss was about! The following morning I climb out of the tent, feeling so incredibly weak, and our driver Patrick walks into the camp ground and comes over to see how I am feeling, and stands about 30cm away from my spew and tells me that I look better! Ha ha. I had been hoping that one of the camp dogs would clean up the mess before morning, but I guess even African dogs are fussy about their food! By this stage I am doubting if I can make it to the Mara and so is Marirtjie, Spencer is starting to loose patience with me and I am wanting to curl up in a corner somewhere and not move until I feel better. The trip out to the Mara was good to take my mind off the way I was feeling and did not instil any confidence in me of Kenyan drivers, we went in mini vans, ours was atrocious, suspension was making all sorts of noises that it shouldn’t be and very few of the seat belts worked...which I consider to be important when you are spending more time on the wrong side of the road staring trucks in the face until the last minute when the driver decides to pull back across. We thought that this bit was bad enough, but once the road deteriorated to about 20 potholes every 10 meters the driver started driving with two wheels on the gravel to the side of the road, a wonderful manoeuvre if the gravel to the side of the road is not 40cm lower than the road surface, with a sharp drop off! Depending on the amount of potholes off the road, we would sit either to the left or right of the road on about 80km/h. I was hanging onto the hand rail, and noticed from its loose condition that others had done the very same thing in the past! To our surprise, we make it there without collecting goat road kill for dinner or squashing any of the tiny Maasai boys who tend the cows. I head off for a sleep. An hour later Spencer wakes me up, game drive time, half asleep I grab my camera bag and wander very slowly out to the van, I still have little energy. We are not in the park long when we see a commotion going on a little ways from us, next minute we are flying along at top speed toward a mass of white vans; they were all sitting around a male lion. It was horrible, all the vans were off road and had the poor thing surrounded, when he got up to walk off we were shocked at the size of him, huge! The biggest lion we have seen by some ways in Africa! He started to wander off and I thought ‘well that’s the end of that freak show’ but all the vans started following him, about 20 vans. At one stage one got stuck in the mud as we had a tropical style downpour that afternoon, the driver started forward and backward and forward and backward, the Asian tourists on board didn’t seem to notice it’s plight...we were cracking all sorts of jokes about who would have to get out and push as they were only about 4m away from the biggest lion in the world! Eventually another car pushed the stuck vehicle from the back, with little success, then he drove around the front and managed to budge him out...the cameras hadn’t missed a beat on that van! The lion eventually got bored of this and started to wander off again, much to my amazement to freak show continued, our driver was circling him and we were so close, I was so sad for the lion who didn’t even appear to notice that this behaviour was not normal in game parks. I noted to our van companions ‘just who is the hunter and the hunted here?’ but the situation was best summed up by one of the Aussies “wow, look over there...it’s a huge heard of....white vans” in a great Steve Irwin style! After seeing another 7 or 8 lions about a million wildebeest (Yeah, yeah, I know you are thinking ‘I’ve told her a million times not to exaggerate...’ well with the migration being in the Maasai Mara at the moment there is actually 1.2million wildebeest there, and I think we saw every one of them, twice!) Lots of zebra, buffalo, elephants we head back to camp, have tea in our mess tent, sitting at an actual table! And head off to bed. The tents we were in were big permanent tents, with a double and a single bed inside them, I was pleased to note that the shower and toilet were 30cm from the back of the tent, facing the tent, our very own pedestal, flushing toilet in a tent! I am pretty happy that there will be no reoccurrences of the Lake Nakuru lion episode and head off to sleep. About 2am I need to get up (I think just to take advantage of having my own flushing, pedestal toilet so close and then head back to sleep. Once asleep, my friend Larium and fever play their tricks once more and I have one of the worst nightmares of my life...yup, robbed again in my sleep. This dream was so real that I thought the events were actually happening; I was shocked to wake up and find Spencer still alive beside me. I tell him about my crazy dream; he is just tired and wants to sleep. Shortly after that I see lights circling the tent, and someone walking between out tent and our toilet, looking into the shower and toilet, I tell him this and he just tells me that I am going mad! The following morning we find out that one of the Maasai had been chasing off a lion that was hanging around our tent and the tent containing Aussies Jess and Steve next door, crickey!, can’t get away from these bloody lions!, if I see a bed pan or chamber pot I’m investing! So the following night I am vowing that if I get robbed in my sleep again I am going ‘cold turkey’ on the larium, darn the consequences of malaria and also vowing to limit the liquid so there is no need for night time flushing (really, I never need to go to the toilet at night, only if there are lions about!) So I fall asleep easily, despite the saggiest bed in the world which causes Spencer and I to constantly roll into each other during the night. I wake up just before midnight, yup, you guessed it, toilet break!, So I lay there contemplating where my torch is etc etc when I hear the most bloodcurdling scream that I have ever heard coming from Steve and Jess’s tent, the scream went on and on and on and then died down...I couldn’t breath, I was terrified! I couldn’t imagine what was going on in the tent to make Jess, who is a ‘no nonsense’ Aussie girl from Karratha scream like someone was being murdered, I truly though that there was a lion in the tent! I am not sure if her screaming or my fingernails digging into Spencers leg woke him up. Then I hear the situation calm down without any sudden cut off scream and figure that the situation is under control and try to go back to sleep. Hard though when someone is walking around your tent in gumboots a rain jacket and a Maasai spear shining their torch in the window every 10 odd minutes! The next morning we discover that the screaming had been a ‘frightmare’ where someone had crept into the tent and stolen a wallet and camera bag...hmmm....someone else getting robbed in their dreams! Must be the African influence! The game drive the last morning in the Mara did not live up to expectations, or the previous days game viewing, after some landscape photos we headed back to the camp for breakfast and to mentally prepare ourselves for the drive back into Nairobi....

The drive back to Nairobi didn’t disappoint, we spent lots of time on the wrong side of the road, both overtaking and just casually, one of the other vans overheated so we stopped for 20 odd minutes in the sun (when there was shade that ‘old mate David’ could have parked under 10m away!) and waited, listening to Old Dave shouting ‘Simon, Simon, Simon’ into the radio to speak to the other driver who was going ‘too pole-pole’ (too slow in Swahili) and telling him to go ‘twendy twendy’ (Lets go! In Swahili) The people in the other van later told us that Simon was indeed ignoring Dave on the radio. After sitting in the sun we head back up the Great Rift Valley, overtaking anything and everything on the road regardless of oncoming traffic. I tried to stop watching the road and prepared myself to meet my maker after staring at the grill of an oncoming bright purple bus with about 40 cubic meters of luggage on the roof and ‘god is great’ plastered on the front, baring down on us, head to head, on the same side of the road, which was the wrong side of the road, as it was barrelling downhill and we were struggling to find any guts in the clapped out and overloaded van going uphill. Somehow we manage to pull back into the correct lane in time, with about a meter between the grills of the two vehicles to spare, but we have to squeeze in the 6-7 meter gap between two trucks! This continued all the way to Nairobi, needless to say ‘Dave’ didn’t get a tip of any description from us, (although we possibly owed him something for allowing us to survive the trip!)

We arrive back at the campsite and Spencer starts getting sick from the same thing that I had, about 10 other people in the group are starting to suffer by this stage. I am proud to report to them that I am back to 100%! (They are not happy to hear this!) Spencer gets worse and worse as the night rolls on, shitting and spewing and shitting some more. With him huffing and puffing beside me, the mozzies buzzing around my ears as we had the tent zip undone for easy evacuation (of both the tent and the bowels) and listening to every dog in the whole world barking (yup, there was a dog conference in Nairobi on Tuesday night and every dog in the world attended and barked it’s ass off all night!) I had very little sleep either. The next morning we were up for our last breakfast with Acacia, discuss everyone’s bowel movements throughout the night; count the people on the ‘sick list’ and wave goodbye. We jumped into a taxi and headed for the campground where our African trails truck is due to depart from, still not knowing what time, or even if the truck would leave that day. We arrived at about 7.30 and were glad to see a truck still there; upon wandering over to the campsite it was quite apparent that the truck was not going anywhere soon, empty bottles evidence of a big night previously! (Last year the truck on this journey left 6 days late as it was being repaired) We pull up a seat at the bar to wait for any signs of life from the tents surrounding the truck and are soon surrounded by our new travelling companions who tell us that we need to spend the day organising our Sudan and Egypt visa, that to get our Sudan visa we need to get a letter of introduction from the Australia Embassy. We arrive at the Australian embassy to be greeted with some of the toughest security we have ever encountered. First up was the four inch thick metal door, then the x-ray and subsequent temporary confiscation of my camera bag, the little camera, laptop and both phones, then came the metal detector and full body search, our passports were recorded and phone numbers taken before we could enter into the compound and walk another 20 odd meters into the actually embassy. The lady in the Australian Embassy asked if we had read the travel advice regarding Sudan, I said, yes we have, she responded with “well you need to read it again”. An hour or so later we have our letter, but we have ran out of time to get to the Sudan embassy before they stop issuing visas for the day. We had hoped to leave our passports in the Sudan embassy for 24 hours to process that day and then drop them into the Egypt embassy the following day for processing. We were pleased to hear that our Sudan visa is going to be about $120USD (each) cheaper than we had thought and that our letter of introduction had not cost us anything more than an hour of our time, another Australian who is travelling on a British passport had to pay about $100USD for his letter of introduction, then the visa price on top of that. We head to the bank, internet to print off Spencers yellow fever certificate scanned and emailed by the health clinic (his was stolen). Then back to the hospital to see if I could get my test results, this time I refuse to wait in line and wander right into the emergency department doctors station and pretend to be a stupid ‘mzungu’ not knowing that I need to wait inline outside. I am subsequently sent back to the lab where I am amazed at the lack of any type of system, computer or otherwise. To find my test results the lady needed to look through all the tests that were performed on Friday, search for a specific code number beside mine and this is not done on a computer, it is all scribbled in an exercise book, that code needs to be written down and carried by a young girl to the store room to manually search through the paper files. ½ an hour of being stared at and poked by kids amazed that my skin was white, later I am greeted with photocopies of my test results, I glance at them and cannot tell head from tail, then ask if I am supposed to understand them....no, I need to line up and then wait for over an hour to discuss these with a doctor...errr, no thanks. Luckily one of the blokes travelling on the truck is a pathologist so he checked them out, minus the blood test that they didn’t include in the photocopies and says that they seem fine, so I am still no wiser...but feel fine now (I guess that’s the main thing!) So back to the campground to meet the driver, who has managed to fight off his big night long enough to get out of bed and give us the low down on what’s happening; the trucks f%*ked, new one arriving tomorrow, thief on board and Interpol interviewed all passengers last night, Egypt visa should be right to get at the border, new driver arriving tomorrow with the new truck! We checked out the truck, which was filled with empty bottles cans etc, we have lockers (not locking ones) under each seat, there are charging points, but mainly for USB, the library onboard is huge! And we get to name our tents and write the name on the tent and tent bag....I am thinking along the lines of ‘territories own, or territory tough, or tiger territory’....Spencer is just not a fan of any...however he is in the shower right now so I may just write it on before he gets back!

There are quite a few people on board who are doing the 11 month trip down west Africa, then up the east coast then continuing on the route we are travelling for three months, Nairobi, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Turkey. They have had a rough time of it in West Africa, one night they had their tents slashed and whole bags stolen whilst they slept, one girl had her bag stolen from right beside her head! (my favourite place....hmmm...decided right at that moment to tie my bag to me or put it in my sleeping bag), they were also stuck in a riot and had rocks pelted in at the truck, as it is a canvas sided truck they were all laying on the floor in the back so as to not get hit by rocks, there were many truck breakdown stories and about 80% of the group contracted malaria, one bloke twice. We were told that there has never been any issue with tent slashings or riots on our route, just that we had to watch out for the thief on the truck. The driver thinks he knows who it is and is waiting for evidence, once found out; thief will be left to the devices of the African police (or Interpol). We make up 6 vegetarians in the group, and again there are a few Aussies, but also a liquorice allsorts from around the world. The crew seems to be pretty laid back; I still haven’t worked out if the nice girl that I met this morning is ‘Kimberly Clark – shit ticket thief’