For some reason culture shock never hit me when I got to Nairobi. Maybe it’s because I have seen poverty to a grander scale in India. Maybe it’s because its month four of this thing and I’m starting to get used to the idea of mats, tents, and random food.
The eleven hour bus ride from Nairobi to Busia on the border of Kenya and Uganda felt more like a six flags ride or a four wheeling adventure on Rocky Mountain National Park trails than driving down a state highway like 1-25. Highway is a loose term here for “pray we get there� and seatbelts are no fun because then you can’t get air at 50 miles an hour. I was in the back of the bus. Like the very back seat. Hitting a Grand Canyon size pot hole allowed more hang time than a Vince Carter dunk.
As soon as we got off the bus I turned to ask Jonathan is that was my body odor or his remembering I hadn’t showered in a week. He said he though it was just Africa. I nodded in agreement.
The house we are staying at is pretty nice dang nice for Africa. I kept expecting a straw hut. The first night we slept here I realized there were other guests in the house that would be sleeping with us.
Roaches.
And I know that New Yorkers like to claim that they know all about Roaches but these guys were big sons of mothers that had there own area code. Malaria is a huge problem in the area we are in, so we all went out and bought nets to string up around our makeshift padding where we slept on the floor. I had stayed up late the second night and didn’t want to wake anyone, so I just decided to forgo the net and pass out on my bed. Not a minute later I felt something land on my head. I immediately was wigged out. Found my headlamp and began a search. The culprit had moved on quickly to its next tenant’s bed in the form of a three inch Roach. I decided I would deal with the little bastard tomorrow night and ventured into the main room to sleep on the couch. That lasted for a whole of fifteen minutes after mosquito’s partied late into the night above my face like a bad techno club whose victims fell out of the club when the sun came up. I realized I didn’t have any spray on and looked around for some to use only to find a friend of Mr. Roach sleeping on the couch next to me. It was then I realized there were more house guests as a few mice sprinted across the floor and mazed through the walls.
After that I figured one furry friend in the room were the other guys slept was not as bad as a rave of creatures in the main the room. With my head lamp on and no other lights on in the house I crept back to my room through what looked like a hallway from A & E’s haunted house episodes. Once arriving back to the scene of the original parachuting crime on my face I realized the door was somehow locked and I couldn’t get in. I tried the handle only to have it fall off in my hand and the pin clank against the ground.
Nathan Boaldin was up at that point trying to exit the room he was now locked in so that he could take a late night leak. Once I found the pin we were able to jimmy the door open.
The night ended by Nathan knocking his net down with a shoe while trying to murder the original Roach. I believe the last comment from any of us that night is best censored as, “Africa is a difficult place to be at the moment.” How’s that for reader friendly.
That’s when I knew I had officially arrived.
Running out of ways to sign off, William Salley Nathan
