Day 44: Nairobi,Kenya

We woke up pretty early again and started to prepare to leave the park and head for Samburu. Ernest wanted to see the sun rise over the lake and enjoy the last minutes of this terrific space. We had pretty much run out of water as, when we left Henry's camp the day before, the owner had not allowed us to fill up our tanks as he had no bore hole and relied on rain water...
In the desert? He must be mad!

Anyway, yesterday there had been a suggestion, when we decided to stay an extra day, that we should go back to the lodge and fill up with water. We could have filled up the day before when we had tea there but, because we had all been half asleep and not thinking, we never actually did it. Sometimes you just go blank and forget about everything, even what day it is or maybe it is because we are after all a bunch of geriatrics - except Steve and Andrea of course, but then after much working out of "5 liters each for a bath, 10 liters to wash up, two liters each to drink” we figured we could just make it through the day and then in the morning before leaving go back to the Lodge and fill up. You recall that in the last blog I mentioned that the day before we had gotten to Marsabit and damaged our water pipe on the road and lost the majority of the water. So all round it was a problem and even though it delayed our departure by at least an hour, we thought that we had better get water before trying to camp in Samburu which is a full on desert and we doubted that we would get anyone there to give us the water we needed for the two days in The Samburu Nature Reserve.

Ken had been complaining that he felt he has a bladder infection and had been drinking a large amount of water to flush out the kidneys. He was having difficulty passing water. These men and their waterworks.

So we packed up, put Ken in the truck as I wanted to run the rife machine on him to handle any possible infection and off we set. Got back to the lodge, filled up with water and left the reserve with a very uncomfortable Ken who was now floating up to his eyeballs with all the water he had drunk.

Henry from Henry's camp is a local (so you would think we had a reliable source) had told us the road from Marsabit to Osiola was now tar except for the first 40 Ks. What a relief as that is known as the worst road in Africa.... Never mind the rest of them!

Well 40 Ks came and went ... No tar.... Now we are saying "any minute now" then the next 40 Ks came and went. Now we were just about in tears as it IS the worst road in Africa. Then the next 40 Ks and we realized he had forgotten the hundred in front of the forty. My gosh these people are so out of it. So eventually after over a hundred and forty of the most teeth breaking road we eventually got to the tar. Now our poor friend Ken was really in trouble and the water is now just about coming out of his ears and all the shaking and rattling hadn't helped at all. We realized we were in trouble, he needed urgent help and we had to get him to Nairobi hospital as fast as we could. So when we hit the tar at three o'clock in the afternoon, we stopped, gave everyone a good lunch as we knew we could not stop again and hit the road.

We had 400 kilometers to do of tar but it was still a terrible road and we knew it would be long gone dark before we managed to reach Nairobi. Poor Ken was now in agony but thank goodness he was able to stretch out in The Queen and he wasn't sitting cramped in a smallish car seat. He is a big man with very long legs and I think it would have been twice as bad if he was sitting in a car seat. He was eventually lying on the floor trying to take the pressure off the bladder.

The trip was probably the worst we have ever done in Africa. Our policy of never driving after sunset became ever more real.

The traffic on a Friday night is like being in New York at rush hour, with every skadonk, car, truck, and motorbike in Kenya on the road, some with headlights some without. No motor biker wears a helmet and there are usually three or four people on the bike. They drive in the middle of the road and refuse to get over. Then at night you can't see the holes and some of them are so big, the whole car would disappear in them.  The only way you know they are coming up is because the car in front knows the road and breaks violently.

Then there are the police road blocks. Heaven knows what they are doing there. Suddenly there would be a little one foot by one foot sign, unlit in the middle of the road saying “police stop". You have to madly break as they have these hectic spikes across the road and if you misjudge it would mean two burst tyres. So you screech to a halt and then they wave you through. One policeman stopped us, actually climbed up Ernest's door and opened it and asked Ernest for some coffee money. The smallest change that I had was 1000 shillings so Ernest gave him 10 Kwacha (Zambian money) and said that was all he had. Little bit of arguing back and forth and he eventually let us go. We were by this time at least 10 kilometers ahead of the others as somehow Ernest is a tyrant on these roads and seems to get ahead quite quickly. I think it is because 1) he is a very good driver and 2) nobody argues with The Queen. The bikes just shoot off the road and even the cars are intimidated and move over when they see it lumbering towards them. Anyway we should have known better than to move on as we knew this guy was trouble. He first stopped Kim and said he didn't have the required sticker on his windscreen which was BS. Kim not knowing if he was telling the truth or not, panicked. The policeman said he must give him 500 shillings and he could go. Kim then said he would go straight to the police station in Nairobi and check if this was true, the bastard took fright but still grabbed the money and quickly waved Kim through. The 500 was also meant to cover Rouvierre and Steve's “fine" who were behind Kim. This of course didn't happen and he would not let them through. He wanted to see the Carnet (car papers) which Ken had put in The Queen for safe keeping. Oh my gosh, we now could barely hear them on the radio because we were so far ahead, but we realized we were going to have to turn around and go and sort out the police guy who was just after more bribes. Ernest was going to park in the middle of the road block and block all traffic and sort this guy out!!!

Fortunately as soon as the police guy heard that the truck had turned around and was coming back, I think he thought, Rouvierre and Steve were easy meat but hell, all three of us and Kim's threat of the Nairobi police station was too much so he let them go!!

Gosh that cost us another half an hour and now we had to turn around again as we were now facing away from Nairobi on this narrow road with a constant stream of cars, busses and trucks. So Ernest did what he does best and just turned. Everyone came screeching to a halt, he waved smiling out of the window and we turned. One thing about these people that is quite fantastic is that nobody gets upset or agro, they just wave and carry on.

Shew!! Time was marching on and Ken was now looking decidedly grey and had passed absolutely nothing. When we were about 50 Kms from Nairobi we hit the freeway.... What luxury, we picked up speed and could see some light at the end of this very dark tunnel.The only really ridiculous thing about their freeways is that suddenly, they have some huge speed bumps.... Then a pedestrian crossing, another bump and then off you go again at 100 Kms and hour. The only way you know that these bumps are coming up was a little sign on the side of the road that indicates  “slow to 50" then another that says " slow to 20" then the bump and not a small one at that. The signs are old and some on them have lost their day glow so it's a matter of constantly watching the cars ahead and looking for their brake lights.

We finally drove into Nairobi at 10:30pm, navigated our way through the city with Kens help on the GPS as he just didn't want any wrong turns and as usual there were road works going on everywhere with detours and unexpected stops. Town at 10:30pm was packed with cars, almost as bad as the day and it took us half an hour to reach Karen Hospital with the other cars right on our tail.

We arrived at the hospital and a very puzzled guard said " no no no this is a hospital, you can't come in here.” We told him we had an emergency! Boy was there action! The gate opened, the guys came running out of the emergency rooms with wheel chairs and when Ken walked into the Emergency doors the doctor was waiting at the door and within 5 minutes the catheter was in and the bladder was being drained. They took 2 liters of fluid out of him and basically saved him a burst bladder and some very unpleasant consequences. I think of some hospitals in SA and wonder if the action would have been quite that fast and efficient. His blood pressure as a result of the trip was way up at danger point so we were very lucky we made the call and drove straight through. I think it was on all our minds that we should possibly stop at some camp site in the Abadairs or somewhere and tackle the road again in the morning but thank goodness we just knew it was the right thing to do and pressed on. Ernest, Kim and Steve really displayed unbelievable driving skills, especially Ernest in the Queen which is not the easiest thing to drive. And then of course I need a pat on the back for not screaming all the way to Nairobi. Being the passenger under those circumstances is not easy and I think I should get the medal of bravery!

So it was now about midnight and we pulled into our favorite camp site again (ugh) very hungry but wide eyed because of all the adrenalin. Kim had gone off to find some take away dinner but the only open place was some dingy nightclub that served pretty unmentionable food. We all ate and flopped into bed to catch a few hours’ sleep knowing we had made it in time to save Ken some very dire consequences.

The next day was spent sorting out The Queen after that mad dash, restocking the truck and letting Ken have all the tests etc. done and deciding what his path of action should be.

He definitely would need an operation so we have some planning to do as to how we move forward on the trip.

 

Well im exhausted! until tomorrow