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I was seated next to Jer in the 2nd to last row, the only row of seats that would not recline. We are both window seat people but I was there first so I had gotten the window and he could look over the seat in front of us to see out since he is so very tall. We looked out into the luscious green countryside as the equatorial sun disappeared over the horizon. An hour or 2 later we stopped for some vendors and to use the restroom, I use that term loosely, we basically hiked up a hill in the pitch black night into the underbrush and popped a squat.
After plenty of hugging and hand shaking I realized I really really had to pee. The no mans land border area looks and nefarious as it sounds so Tracey and I paired up held hands and scurried (I don’t run) across the massive drive through to the bathroom. There was a tire track filled with puddles of water so we opted to step on the raised track part, which promptly sank as we found ourselves in mid calf mud. I tugged Tracey to continue on since we had already experienced the worst of it, but she refused, like Artex in the mud, so I trudged on alone, wet and muddy. I paid my bathroom fee and went in to find a line, when it was finally my turn I was oh so pleased to find out that the back and sides of my skirt were caked in mud. I came out to find Tracey in line and lifted the mud spots to show her, an African woman in line loudly and breathlessly exclaimed “My God!” believing the dirt to be something even less savory than mud. She walked out and reported the apparent fecal explosion to the bathroom attendant. I laughed all the way to the Kenyan passport office.
When we reboarded the bus I changed into my white pajama pants (huge lapse in judgment) and decided I was going to finish the Matrix and go to sleep. Jer having grown tired of not understanding any of the movie decided he would read and left both ear buds to me. I finished the movie, placed kitty (my computer) in his bed and positioned my pillow and closed my eyes. THWACK! I was awoken by a hard blow to my shoulder, I looked to see the culprit was Jeremiah who being much taller than me can not effectively sleep on my shoulder and having fallen asleep, his head had become a dangerous projectile. He woke up mumbled an apology and sat up straight to attempt to read. After the 3rd or 4th Jeremiah attack I moved my pillow from the window to the space between us, so we could share. Our seats could not recline meaning that gravity by default was pulling him forward as he slept and since I was not tall enough to balance him out the pillow kept making its way floor ward.
Frustrated and unable to sleep I was looking out the window when we stopped at 2 or 3 am for a road block. In the thick darkness I thought I saw figures standing out in the pitch black. We were in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night so I thought my mind must be playing tricks on me. They were dressed like the sand people from Starwars and simply the wrong color to be black Africans even in the dark. I asked Jer to look, he told me they were probably statues or sign post and then I saw them move. They were talking to each other! The bus driver woke up the last 3 rows and had us move forward to make weight and we drove on.
I asked Jeremiah to switch seats with me, gave him the pillow to place against the window to prevent concussion and tried to sleep on my hand propped up on the arm rest. It worked, before to long I had fallen into a sweet dreamless sleep. THWACK! Another head but from Jeremiah, I looked to find my pillow wedged between his leg and the wall. I took it from him placed it on my hand and tried unsuccessfully to go back to sleep. I watched the world go by, sleepy villages and the occasional tall building. I wondered allowed about one particularly big city and Jer said it was the out skirts of Nairobi, it wasn’t familiar at all but how would I know.
I woke up to some mountians. The little map we had showed Kilimanjaro to the south of Nairobi and so I guessed that one of them was it. Jer said none of them was impressive enough to be Kilimanjaro, which seemed fair enough. An hour or 2 later after scaling the mountians we entered a large city full of sky scrapers and traffic, neither Jer or I had any idea where we were. He asked a few people on the bus and they didn’t know either, so I did the only logical thing and asked the people out the window, they looked scared and confused, Beckman climbed over the seat and said “we’re in Nairobi”. Not only was this embarrassing but it meant that we were only about half way through our journey at 1pm and would not be arriving in Dar es salaam at 2pm.
