Friday, February 11, 2011

Trip to Kenya Part 2: Kibwezi and Mutomo


I woke up at 5:30 to pack and get ready to catch the bus to Kibwezi. Kibwezi is a small town a little past halfway between Mombasa and Nairobi, on the main highway. So Lilian (the team leader/branch manager of the local office) picked me up at the hotel and got me on the bus to Nairobi. Since it's a major route, it's not exactly a matatu, but more of a tour bus with as many seats as passengers (usually). Still no AC though.

I took the 7:00 am bus to ensure that I would be in Kibwezi by noon or so to catch the 2:00 bus to Mutomo, another small town a few hours north that hosts a World Vision office. Look it up on Google earth to get an idea of where it is- it's in the middle of a drought-stricken but mineral rich region near Tsavo National Park, which is most famous for the Tsavo Man-Eaters, a pair of lions that killed 135 men working on the Ugandan Railway in 1898. The lions are now in the Chicago Field Museum (they're dead). So after driving through some pretty bleak landscape for six hours, I started to wonder when we were going to arrive. I had yet again failed to underestimate the African Way, and giving myself seven hours for what should have been a four to five hour drive was a mistake. The bus paused by the side of the road to let me out at 3:30 pm, nine hours after boarding. I was confident that I had missed the bus and would have to find alternate transportation to Mutomo. But as you may be able to forsee, I again overestimated the value of schedules in Africa. The bus was still loading, and Ambrose and myself were able to squeeze on. The best way to describe the bus is a Tokyo subway car combined with the family car from the Grapes of Wrath with all their household goods piled on top for the trip to California.


Since we were late, we were unable to get seats, so we had to stand in the aisle. As this is the only bus to do this route, and it only makes it twice a day, the bus was quite full- I did my best to count, and there were 40 seated, and almost another 30 standing in the aisle. No experience quite like barreling down a washboard dirt road packed into a bus so tightly that if anyone were to faint, they wouldn't touch the ground. And it's a given at this point, but there's no AC. Fortunately, we only had to stand for the first 45 minutes until some people left and we got their seats.
Notice the shadow of the bus? Those guys ride up there.

We arrived just before sundown and visited the ADP (Area Development Project- the name for a World Vision field office) office to use their internet and meet some of the staff. They were doing their work in the main meeting room that had a TV which was blasting En Nombre del Amor, a Mexican Telenovela which is dubbed in English for Kenyan consumption. It is apparently very popular- Ambrose told me on two separate occasions that he likes it because "the acting is very good." Ambrose is an interesting fellow- he is the middle child of 11, and is basically a one-man branch office for the Kenyan MFI, covering around 500 clients in a 50 km radius. As a result, he is an insanely hard worker.

L-R: Tim, Ambrose

We stayed in a local hotel that cost 500 Kenyan Shillings -about $6.50- for a room. Nothing fancy, but the hot water worked (despite nearly electrocuting me).

What $6.50 gets you in Kibwezi


Thursday morning we went to the WV office for the devotional and a brief presentation on the Micro project that I'm working on. They said they were busy, so I promised to keep it under 20 minutes- I finished in 15, and several told me it was too short. They said that usually when people say 20 minutes, it means an hour. We then took the Land Cruiser into the field to meet with clients. One client we spoke with, John, was a chemist who ran a small pharmacy in his village. With his loan he wants to increase the variety of drugs that he sells so that people in his community don't have to go the 30 km back to Mutomo for the Catholic hospital.

We were back on the bus down to Kibwezi by three. This time, the driver happened to be a friend of the WV driver, so we were able to get seats in the cab with the driver. This was much preferable to standing in the back, but was all the more frightening to realize how fast we were going. Back in Kibwezi, I spent the night in a hotel, and went out to the highway in the morning to flag down a bus going to Mombasa.

NEXT: Mombasa!

3 comments:

  1. This is so neat! What a wonderful experience. $6.50 will get you a venti frappacino here - so sad. I want to see some more pictures!

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  2. thats my home place.Mutomo is such a wonderful place.

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  3. thats my home place.Mutomo is such a wonderful place.

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