After a three day break in Kampala, Uganda M squad had to head to Nairobi, Kenya to catch our flights out of Africa and up to Ireland. Our leaders had already left and got there a few days earlier for a leaders retreat so it was about 40 of us heading out. We had chartered a bus and were told to be ready to go with bags packed and in front of our guest house by 7am. So we all got up early drug our heavy packs to the front of the building, and ate our hard boiled eggs and toast and prepared to leave. In true African style and to our expectations our bus was not there at 7, but after three months in Africa we weren’t surprised.
To pass the time I began to play 7 up 7 down with Kristen, Charity, and Brian. This is a game we learned from our beloved first squad leader Mark. It takes a bit of time to play all the way through, but we managed to play a whole game. At 8:30 when the bus still wasn’t there someone made a call to the company and we were assured they were on their way. We sat around and at 10am the bus pulled up outside our guest house.
We finally began the process of lugging our packs and instruments to the bus and loading everything in. Of course not everything could fit, but luckily most of it did. It has been our experience that most forms of transportation do not have enough room for the whole squad and our huge human sized packs so we usually end up with them in the aisles and people sitting on them. It always provides for lots of laughs and entertainment.
We set off on what we heard was suppose to be about a 12 hour ride. Life on an African bus is always an experience though and nothing goes as planned. Between the VW sized holes in the road, the speed bumps, and the random cows and bike riders in the way there is no such thing as a straight drive and mostly the driver speeds up for two seconds to slow way down again to avoid a hole or livestock. It’s a perpetual process of speed up slow down…it makes it exciting.
We arrive at the boarder which we’ve already seen and walked through already. We are use to African boarder crossings and quickly fill out the information to get a transit visa for the day and hand over our passports and information. Three hours later we FINALLY leave the boarder. Our driver kept trying to leave without everyone. He was in a hurry. Possibly because he had arrived three hours late to get us and was now behind schedule and now with our three hour boarder crossing he was even more behind schedule. We had to keep telling him to wait we hadn’t all gotten passports and got to the bus yet.
So we all get on the bus, passports in hand and we are off again. After stops for food, gas, bathroom, and tons of exciting driving on Kenyan roads we pulled into the backpacker’s hostel that would be our home for a few hours at 2am.
We found out that we had to be out of our rooms by 11am so this mean only a few hours for sleep and showering before we had to be packed up again and out. I was ready to grab my pack and sleep, but Rachael told me there was a guy from Ft.Wayne (of all places) who was there and I needed to meet him. I agreed it would be cool to meet someone from home. So Rach grabbed my pack and we found the guy and his wife. It was good to talk to someone from Indiana and my area. Then I found the last open bunk and crashed.
Nowhere else in my life have I ever had such an experience. Just one more way I know I’m on The World Race.
