Nakuru and Kisumu

Yesterday Mollie and I made it to Kisumu, on the west side of Kenya next to Lake Victoria.  There were some odd, I'll say, events before and during our trip here.  But before I get into that I'd like to give a shout out for the Chester Hotel in Nakuru.  We stayed there four nights, I think it was, and it's a wonderful place although it's more wonderful when you're paying the Kenyan citizen rate of KES 2400 ($30) instead of the non-Kenyan rate of $60/night.  The restaurant is good and very reasonably priced, and the staff is great, helpful and friendly, be it the desk clerk, the housekeeper, or the waiter at the restaurant.  Definitely the place to stay in Nakuru if you can get the local rate, and probably still the place to stay if you can't.  I'm not saying this for my loyal readers, both of you, but because if a search engine finds this blog, maybe someone coming to Nakuru will chose the Chester.  I really like the place.  So just as you're not reading William Powers after my recommendation, you can now not stay at the Chester.  :)  I really liked Nakuru.  It's just the right size, it's pretty, and it's surrounded by beautiful countryside.

Mollie had a hair crisis starting a few days ago, and we (well, mostly she) took out her extensions, and she washed her hair, and it coiled tightly and then she plaited it until she could get it straightened, which she did a couple of days ago while I sat by the door of the salon and discreetly took picture after picture of the street traffic outside.  Today she is finally getting her new extensions plaited in at a place that she trusts here in Kisumu.  The salon is at a nice (which I guess means western-style?  OMG I'm an imperialist!) little mall here that has a coffee shop where I am sitting and enjoying my first non-tea hot drink in several days.  Al-Jazeera news is playing on the TV, read in English by people with British accents and generally, in my quick estimation, covering about the same stories as BBC News or CNN, with about the same emphasis until coverage of the Middle East or Islam comes up.  Then the shift in coverage is noticeable.

The mall hosting the salon and coffee shop, and about five cybers, is anchored by Tusky's, a department store chain that competes in Kenya with Nakumat.  Indians own most of the large retail outlets in the country.  Tusky's is like a scaled-down Super Wal-Mart, except that the produce is local and the products are much more diverse.  They sell motorcycles, for example.  In the hardware department I saw a plow meant to be pulled by draft animals, and rolls of barbed wire mainly intended, I gathered from the elephant on the label, for the purpuse of keeping wild animals out of a field rather than keeping livestock in.  And it's used along the tops of walls around house compounds.  The hardware departement at Tusky's also sells generators of various power outputs and gas-powered water pumps, as well as water storage barrels.  The pleasant and helpful fellow that I talked to was from the Coast Province, and spoke no Luo, the local language in Nyanza Province, so I was surprised that he got the job.  He said that many of the employees at Tusky's didn't speak Luo, which indicates that Tusky's tends to move employees out of their home provinces.  I don't know what's up with that, but I suppose that an employee that is willing to move has proven his loyalty to the company.  Mollie said that many Luo don't speak Kiswahili, so English is the language for staff/customer conversations at the Tusky's here.

Kenyan transportation continues to fascinate me.  It's so creative, the kind of nonsense I'd do in the same situation.  Pack, stack, strap, pedal, putt-putt, but get there on the cheap.  People ride bicycles with a sturdy luggage rack behind the seat.  A pillon and some foot rests can be affixed and it becomes a bicycle taxi.  We rode two bicycle taxis here in Kisumu and, other than my not getting to pedal, it was great.  Going about 2 km cost less than $0.40 so a lot of people use these to get around.  The hills are gentle here and in Nakuru, but still you seldom see a bicycle taxi man over 30.  Left alone, the luggage rack can carry big sacks of charcoal or kale, or 6 plastic bread-loaf baskets stacked high.  Another way to get around is by motorcycle taxi, but as no one wears helmets I won't be trying this.  I've seen 4 people on a motorcycle, the driver, a mother, a child, and an infant.  Nakuru has potholed gravel roads around the Chester, with big mud puddles, and the bicycles and motorcycles weave all over the street with great control and, I gather, very few accidents considering how precarious the whole situation seems.  Here in Kisumu we are in an area with better roads.

Besides motorcycle, bicycle, and regular car taxis, Kenyans get around with Tuk-tuks.  These are little three-wheeled vehicles made by Piaggio, similar to vehicles made by Cushman in the USA.  The driver steers the front wheel with a motorcycle-type handle bar, with a twist throttle and hand clutch for changing gears.  The rear seat is wide enough for three sitting in the squished-together style that one soon gets comfortable with here.  Tuk-tuks are powered by a two-stroke motor under the passenger seat which is started with a pull-cord from the back of the vehicle.  They have convertible canvas tops, although I have yet to see one with the top down.  Mollie and I ride around in these fairly often, as the rates are good.  In a bit of a pinch -- Mollie had her hair-braiding appointment and our hotel is in a residential area with few taxis passing by -- I almost reneged on my pledge not to take a motorcycle taxi.  The one that stopped would have taken both Mollie and me to the mall, say 400 pounds on a 125cc bike.  But an empty tuk-tuk came by just in time.  I gave the motorcycle taxi man KES 10 for his time, which isn't much but I could tell that it helped ease his disappointment at losing a fare to the tuk-tuk.

Well, I need to report on a couple of things that happened yesterday, even though I hate to arouse the fears some of my loved ones expressed before I left.  Yesterday morning Mollie and I were walking to the Presbyterian Church of East Africa in Nakuru, and were almost there, when we saw a large crowd that was looking down a street to our right.  As we approached the back of the crowd, shots started ringing out, some little pops and others a bit louder.  I really didn't want to know what a bullet feels like when it hits -- my imagination is quite sufficient thank you -- so we hustled to the entrance in the wall of the church.  But much of the crowd just watched and commented excitedly as if they were watching a sporting event.  After visiting with a wonderful and gracious lady at the church about holding 12-step meetings there -- some students have already talked to her about such meetings, and so by November Nakuru might have its first meeting -- we headed back out and the the chaos was worse and a bit closer.  Apparently some people had been living rent-free and when the police came to evict them there was resistance, maybe including a general neighborhood protest against the police with people throwing rocks.  In other words a small riot was underway.

Mollie and I headed directly away from the potential violence and started cutting through back streets.  At one point we were stymied in our path and a kindly fellow that ran a matatu business encouraged us, and others, to cut through his block-long dispatch and repair lot, which was surrounded by a safe wall, to bypass a noisy and no doubt rather dangerous part of the main road.  Exiting his lot onto a quiet side road, we came back to the main road and found a too-young little girl -- maybe she is four -- holding the hand of a still-younger boy.  They had come down to the corner to see what all the fuss was about and didn't know how to cross the road.  Mollie talked to them and told that they needed to go home, and the sweet little girl headed back, against the protests of her little brother, who wasn't ready to resume his usual three-year-old life.  It reminded me of the time that I got lost in the apartment complex in which we lived.  I think I was four then.  It was just a fine adventure, with no worry at all.  For me anyhow.  :)  But the little boy knew that his sister was boss, and we kept an eye on them from ahead until they turned off on a side lane.  Mollie said that they had encountered someone who knew them, and I'm happy that they got away from the road safely.  I'm also glad that the little girl knew better than to try to cross the road since her mother wasn't there to lead her, and that the little boy was accustomed to obeying his sister when on a walk.

Traveling from Nakuru to Kisumu, we paid an extra KES 100 or so, over the matatu price, to ride the Mololine shuttle.  The shuttle is just a matatu van with one less row of seats and a policy of one person per seat, so it's not packed beyond packed as a matatu often is.  (The day before I saw one with running with the side door open and three men on the step, clinging to who-knows-what to keep from falling out.)  We went through the beautiful farming area of Rift Valley Province, seeing maize and wheat fields and then tea plantations as the terrain got increasingly hilly.  In towns, alongside the road, people sold potatoes, chickens (the flock just sits around calmly, waiting for buyers), and other foods.  In rural areas the roadside is used to graze goats, sheep, cattle, and the occasional donkey.  Coming down from the hills, we got to the hot, flat sugarcane and rice fields of Nyanza Province.  This was where we had our second look at one reason, namely accidental death, why the population of Kenya seems, and in fact is, I'm sure, so much more youthful than that of the USA.  (The other more significant reason is the high birth rate.)  Crossing a river, we saw a large crowd, and a fellow face down on the bank, who had drowned somehow.  The shuttle drove on so we had no way to enquire what had happened.

Of course as in the USA most people in Kenya do not die from accidents, instead being killed by disease.  But when it comes to accidental death, I'll guess that traffic accidents are not as high a proportion in Kenya as in the USA.  I mean, how many American adults drown in rivers?  Now when it comes to disease, Kenyans can get taken by diseases that get the children, like malaria, dysentary, and cholera (I'm guessing a bit on these last two diseases because I feel that I've left some important ones off of this list).  But in America, as you know, we specialize in dying of old-person diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, all of which should be harder to get here with the superior diet.  Although I must say some people put an alarming amount of sugar in their tea.  Tea is served in 6-8 ounce cups, and some people (I won't name names, although I could give more than one) put in four teaspoons or so of sugar.

On the subject of tea, standard practice here is to ruin it in British fashion by steeping the teabags in hot milk instead of hot water.  Sometimes waiters are unable to supress their incredulity that I would have it differently, requiring them to make a special trip to the kitchen to bring, after a wait (during which no doubt a dusty book is consulted for the recipe), a pot of -- hot water!  Oh, those crazy Americans, with their odd and arbitrary culture.  Truth be known I would be happy to drink the milk-tea, as I'm not picky, but being lactose intolerant I draw the line at allergic reaction.  And at Nescafe, to which I'm psychologically allergic.  :)

Why do I always return to the topic of food?  I think just because the cool stares and the friendly smiles are too hard to describe or interpret.  And as for me and Mollie it need not even be said that, regardless of culture or distance, the Universal Proper Response For Men is still "yes, dear".  :)  Mollie is wonderful and knows that "yes, dear" is also the Universal Proper Response for Women, so we're getting along well.  She introduces me to her friends as her husband, and has only divorced me once, so that's pretty good eh?  I don't remember why she divorced me and I won't risk speculating lest I uncover several plausible reasons, forgetting why foremost among them.

Before I sign off I should report on our visit to the gate of Lake Nakuru National Park, which was a wonderful walk of maybe two miles from the Chester Hotel.  The gate is a kilometer or so into the park, and you can see the lake and its famous flamingos in the distance through the acacia trees.  I was too cheap to pay for park fees and a driver -- it would have taken a lot of planning as well, and used up more time than we had planned -- but there's a cafe at the gate that charges 3x or so the going rate for everything it serves, so one can enjoy the park from the outdoor tables, and still contribute to the park by ordering a few items.  There are several monkeys that hang out around the gate, and various beautiful birds that I photographed.  When Mollie came to the park as a student (Kenyans pay KES 300 to enter, others pay $60 which is KES 5000) a small pride of lions (a male, two females, and two cubs) was hanging out at the gate.  I didn't get to see lions, but we did see a huge herbivore, undoubtedly a buffalo, grazing in the distance.

I suppose that I had best upload this and see if Mollie needs me to bring lunch -- plaiting takes hours.  Nice chatting with you, or rather to you.   I'll try to work out some photo uploads withough stalling out as I look through the 300-400 that I've taken so far.  Hugs, and send money. :)