January 31, 2026 by jonathanbean1

KENYA, UGANDA, GHANA – THE 2026 JOURNEY

EPISODE THREE – January 31st

*Isaac, grandson to Alex’s father my another mother (I think!). Relations are complex in Uganda…*

For some inexplicable bureaucratic reason, I can stay in Uganda until the end of my visa in March, but my motorbike is only allowed in for 14 days without paying a £50 tax.

So here I am back in Kenya…

****

If the middle part of the ride between Sipi and Kitale wasn’t one of Africa’s finest rides, I’d be rather bored by it by now. Fortunately, the slopes of Mount Elgon and the swooping Chinese road combine to make it a special journey. The views to the north are magnificent; the engineering – perhaps especially because I first knew it as little more than a chaotic footpath – combine to make this a memorable ride. My road is twenty yards wide and still in good condition. I can choose my riding line on a whim, it’s so devoid of traffic. I’m so well known at the border that I can cross in minutes.

“Do you know where you are going?” asks the immigration officer in the empty echoing halls of the ridiculous Chinese-built border post, “…Exactly?”

“Yes, I’ve been this way many times.”

“Well, you can’t use GPS! There’s no internet.”

Biting back the retort that I was born fifty years before GPS was even thought of, and mankind has found its way for tens of thousands of years without it, I assure him I’ll be able to find my way.

With a ridiculous ‘election’ tomorrow, a purely hubristic exercise on behalf of the inevitable winning party – there being no chance of any other outcome – the president has demanded that all internet services are switched off for the next days. Such is the power of despots (watch out USA). It means that all banks must close, hospitals, communications and most services will be disrupted. Recent events in Tanzania in which people died during election protests assures the ancient president of an excuse to take draconian action. As if he needed an excuse.

****

*Keilah in my awful hat – but at least the top of my head isn’t sore*

My ‘grandchildren’ jump up and down in excitement as I ride down the track to Rock Gardens at the end of my journey. Alex is hurrying from Chelel, having asked Precious on the phone, “Has my father arrived yet?” I feel at home.

For the next several days, I’m engaged in putting chain link security fencing around the guesthouse. Digging soil here is like mining plastic: crushed single-use bottles, countless thin black bags, sachets, wrappings, broken plastic plates, plastic shoes that lasted only days. The filth is painful to see. And how old is plastic as a material? About seventy years? Yet all the world is thus thickly polluted. There’s no rubbish collection in Africa.

*Ryan, a willing helper, fixing fencing*

I take charge of the cheerful, fun teenagers: Charles, Rach and Ryan, and we erect the fence to Rock Gardens, fun days with the young men. I do like to be around young people – and here in Uganda it’s pretty impossible to avoid them! These boys are polite, thoughtful, respectful and endlessly full of life and jokes, while including me as a sort of equal too.

*Charles, a charmer; one of Alex’s junior brothers*

Seven days of chain link fencing, with sore hands and punctures and scratches all over legs and arms; working with sharp wire, rusty barbed wire and no proper tools except small pliers from my Mosquito toolkit is trying. For cutting, no saw, just a panga (machete). For drilling, just a six inch nail (bent). For nailing, an twisted broken hammer with a welded handle that transmits every blow. For digging, only a hoe – if the bloody neighbours haven’t taken it.

Joshua, a guide and helper at Rock Gardens, overhears someone say, “Alex has his own engineer! It’s a mzungu!”

“Ha!” laughs Alex, “Don’t joke with me. I can even employ a mzungu!”

****

But there are frustrations too. This village is poorly educated and many wish Alex ill for his success. Some even use ‘African Magic’ to try to bring him down – but that only works if you believe it…

The trouble starts when it’s reported that Alex is enclosing his compound. Perceived as rich, it’s seen as an opportunity to attempt for some quick money. First the neighbour to the side objects that the outward angling tops of the concrete posts have taken a few inches of his land, on which, he says, he’s going to build. Alex must pay compensation. He’ll never build. Instead, we remove the poles and turn them round. Frustrating, but somehow satisfying.

Then, the neighbours at the bottom of the plot see opportunities to extort money and claim that we’ve encroached onto their land by eight inches. This discussion brings the father, a fat, ill-tempered drunkard, who’s abandoned his family for drink (the African problem). He claims two million shillings (£400!) for our encroachment. Angry discussions continue, the gleam of money-for-nothing in their eyes. Eventually, 300,000UGX (£65) is decided upon.

“I won’t pay the bastard even a glass of gin! Not ONE shilling!” I tell Alex angrily. The land in contention wouldn’t even grow a row of potatoes, even if the man tilled his land, which he doesn’t. We undo our day’s work and move the poles back out of sheer but satisfying spite!

I must remember they don’t represent cheerful Uganda, just this village that so much resents Alex’s success – although he buys their produce, chickens and goat meat and brings tourist money to their village. Lack of education in this derelict country is a sad fact. Fortunately, It’s a very local phenomenon to the village where Alex was born, who cannot bear to see one of their own progress, while they stagnate through lack of effort.

****

*Precious and Keilah make the first chelel coffee*

Happily, the Chelel villagers aren’t like this.

Chelel is where our future project is slowly maturing into coffee plantations and the next hotel: the Chelel Starlight Hotel on its wonderful mountain terraces. Here, we meet friendly people, thrilled to have a mzungu investing in their area for the development they hope it will bring. We receive gifts of local honey and a big heads of matoke (the savoury banana staple). They put the local Sipi village to shame. Back in Rock Gardens, everything has its price, even to having to buy old newspapers when we built the earth oven – and accusations of ‘stealing’ a few inches of land!

****

Fortunately, Chelel is where my pension+ has gone in the past year. A future for my Ugandan family.

I never felt the paternal urge, and I couldn’t have lived the life I have with a family to care for. I doubt I could have borne the restrictions on my liberty and self-reliance anyway; I’ve protected that to an almost absurd degree and lived life very much on my own terms, without many compromises.

So it comes as a big surprise to find how much I have come to love two small brown African children! I find I have the infinite patience required to be in the company of a seven year old boy, full of questions and limitless energy, and an affectionate, increasingly smart, questioning nine year old girl. Both JB and Keilah are benefitting by their exposure to so many people of different Western and African cultures at Rock Gardens, and live a life not dissimilar to that of my own childhood – from a now very different age. There are few ‘sophistications’ and very little access to ‘devices’ that limit imagination. They have an active life filled with familial duties and small adventures; allowed to take risks – perhaps the most ‘natural’ existence and growing process any child is allowed today. They play imaginatively, despite their many privations of situation, and it’s an enviable childhood I think.

Jonathan and Keilah will grow with ideas of their own, rather than influence from the manipulative control of other agendas. I can see a growing natural wisdom in these two children: Keilah is already forming her own independence of opinion and character, and JB will follow fast, as they are intelligent children. Perhaps their biggest benefit is to be just two children, close to one another, playing generously together without dispute and sharing happily. They haven’t 6, 12 or 13 siblings – or even 64 by one father and ten women, the most prolific producer I have heard of in this baby-factory of a nation. They have an intelligent father and a caring family situation. They go to a good school, which they love, and are well fed and healthy – things impossible to guarantee in this country where education is rudimentary at best, and health a matter of chance and money; where no one has been taught to plan for tomorrow, let alone future years – and half the population of 50 million is less than 14 years old.

Keilah and JB do household chores, play endlessly and proudly look after the five cows or go walking with us, which often turns into a nature study walk. They’ve had hours and hours of fun with colouring books and pencils, creating images from their imaginations.

*Keilah draws Rock Gardens with its round houses. She and I are at the bottom*

****

I’m not ‘rich’ in many people’s terms, but I did sell my Yorkshire house for 34 times more than I bought my first property 30 years earlier; a short-term madness that’s preventing so many from enjoying wealth in the future. A few years ago, my wise financial adviser (and I NEVER thought I’d have one of those!) gave me the best (and most surprising) advice: “Jonathan, I think it’s time you started giving the money away. Your African families are important to you. You’ll have much more fun watching those families progress, than waiting until you’re dead.”

We Baby Boomers, we’ve had embarrassing riches to enjoy… Not only have we had the ridiculous change of economic values that brought us the ‘Housing Boom’ with, for some of us, the lessons learned from the DIY revolution that kicked in during the privations of our parents after the war. We may be one of the wealthiest generations, in all senses. We’ve lived at the start of the destruction of all that maintains life, rather than suffering the consequences that are coming. We’ve had all the advances of science and social welfare reforms, now being stripped bare by selfish, prejudiced rightwing politics; we’ve enjoyed freedom to do things our way; we had optimism in our youth that we were going to change the world (although, in the end, we changed only ourselves…). We’ll probably be one of the longest-lived generations, growing up before the industrialisation of our diet and ‘playing out’ as children.

The pleasure I am getting from my advisor’s advice is immeasurable. We’ve created Rock Gardens together, Alex my ‘son’ and I. Now there’s the coffee plantations and Chelel hotel. The children are at the best school available (rated 17th in Uganda). Adelight is gaining independence in Kitale, assuring me that her next government contract is almost assured, thanks to my loan last year, (now half repaid). William counts himself a ‘dairy farmer’, with his three Holstein cows, and is becoming modestly self reliant. I’ve given modest interest-free loans to other family members to invest in their future, and over many years I’ve been able to give support to my Ghanaian family as well, and help for medical and family emergencies.

In my world travels, so many strangers have shown me TRUE generosity. The most generous are those who give what they can ill afford: food they would eat themselves but that humanity and culture insisted they gave to me; they’ve opened their homes and hearts. It’s a lesson I’ve not forgotten.

****

Last week, I bought another acre or two of Ugandan mountainside in Chelel. It has an even better view, but I’ve told Alex, no more building! I’ll allow him a small thatched shelter under which his guests can drink coffee or beer and enjoy the view of the vast yawning valley that stretches to infinity, but now it’s time to invest his effort in getting the farming business up and running.

Meanwhile, the new hotel continues to grow. Moses, the best worker, is digging foundations for the kitchen and restaurant. Local boys are laboriously hoeing acres of land to plant more coffee seedlings and ‘Irish’, as potatoes are known in Uganda. There’ll be onion fields, passion fruits and local vegetables that will help to make Rock Gardens and the Chelel hotel self-sufficient.

Alex is already bringing work to Chelel villagers. And they support him happily.

****

Travelling is frequently tedious, uninspiring and trying, but there are days that make up for all that. I guess life is always like that: a few highs worth waiting and working for…

Alex and I keep on hiking for relaxation. With the delightful, laughing company of the young men, Charles and Ryan (18) and Isaac (13), Alex, little Jonathan and I hike about 15 miles with punishing ascents and descents, stairways, ladders and clambering up mountainsides, all ending, long after dark, with the usual eight hundred foot clamber up to Sipi.

By the time we stagger back into Rock Gardens, long after dark at 8.30, we are exhausted from an accumulative climb of perhaps three and a half or four thousand feet and the altitude: never less than 4600 feet, topping out at 6450. We’ve clambered ladders and slithered down dusty rocks and climbed rocky volcanic slopes, scrabbled through vegetation and stumbled through matoke plantations and miles of coffee bushes in this magnificent countryside.

We’ve met hundreds of people; been called to excitedly by thousands of children; we’ve been disturbed by hoards of noisy election crowds clamouring for the pennies handed out by agents for local candidates (as little as 20 pence buys a five-year lucrative office for these corrupt officials).

*733 stone and 213 steel steps, straight up the mountainside. Punishing!*

Tea and chapatis in a scruffy village and then those punishing 946 stone steps, back up 650 feet to the heights. After that, a rising and falling wander through forests and coffee bushes with the yawning gulf alarmingly close, slipping away sharply from our grassy path. No place for those without a head for heights or of suicidal tendencies – or the drunkards who sometimes go over the edge. On a clifftop above a slender spray of a waterfall, that shimmers down 200 feet, we find a pool in which the boys frolic noisily. Then the two long steel ladders Alex and I have used several times to descend to his sister Doreen and husband Leonard’s compound far, far below.

*100 feet or so, down the STEEP ladder to Doreen’s*

We are welcomed warmly, with thick fresh chapatis and eggs – you can’t visit family without food and drink, even when the sun is slipping down the western sky and you still have four miles to walk and 1000 feet to climb. Leonard’s coffee must be ground in a mortar, roasted and prepared. By now I’m watching the orange sun sinking and glad I brought my torch.

Happily, Leonard knows a short cut. It proves to be a mile of coffee shambas and farmland, dotted as everywhere in this vastly overcrowded country with mud and earth homes with corrugated roofs. We must stop to greet the householders. Judging by reactions, it’s likely I’m the first mzungu to go this way.

Leonard and Doreen leave us at a dust road. We put little Jonathan and Isaac on a boda-boda as dusk sets in. They’ve walked at least ten or eleven miles. Now Alex is concerned for my safety. Unlike my companions, I can’t see in the dark, but I am determined to complete the hike.

*Children everywhere. This country is second youngest in the world*

In one village, as darkness falls, I am followed by a huge gang of children and youths, pretending to be a bodyguard for the mzungu election candidate. By now, I am getting beyond being the endless, day long – Africa-long – joke: “EH! MZUNGU!” from every corner, as I concentrate to see where I’m putting my feet on the now dark, dusty road. We finally stumble up the 800 foot escarpment, only Ryan’s light shorts visible as I flounder upwards in starlight, the sky filled with diamonds.

The best feature of my day is the company of the young men; Isaac, with his perpetual happy grin, and JB2 with his boundless energy. They make the day special. It’s so good to be around young people.

****

Alex and I have been long concerned about the fast growing pine in the middle of the guesthouse compound. It’s immensely heavy, slender, tall and shallow-rooted. If it falls in the evening winds that blow up from the plains far below, or gets struck by lightning again, it will demolish all – and anyone – beneath its trajectory. Reluctantly, we decide it must be felled.

Watching a 72 foot pine being trimmed to a bare trunk by a fellow with bare feet and a panga, and then felled by a man in flip-flops with a two foot chain saw, is an anxious activity for a Northerner. Later, the trunk is cut into one inch boards with the same chain saw, by a man in a tee shirt, with no eye protection, gloves, hard hat or ear defenders – let alone SHOES. It makes even me wince. Life is cheap in Uganda, and safety not considered. Perhaps such poor education causes a total lack of imagination? It’s the same with boda riding, 240 volt electrics, sharp tools, fire, construction work – every potentially hazardous activity: a fatalistic belief (or lack of imagination) that nothing will go wrong. A man, 60 feet up a swaying pine trunk, with no safety rope or protective gear whatsoever, wielding a panga… God’s will is in control, maybe?

****

In a week’s time, I fly from Nairobi across to Ghana for 23 days. Ghana, my first and longest African influence; my 22nd visit. Where and when I’ll find internet, I’ve no idea. I do know it’ll be the hottest month of the year, a decision I made to make the most of the school holidays of Keilah and little ‘Bean’ in Uganda.

*Kevin is Adelight’s compound helper. For him, the mornings are cold!*

*Chameleon, well disguised on the pine tree. It seems to be chameleon season in Sipi. They can live up to 11 years*

January 13, 2026 by jonathanbean1

KENYA, UGANDA, GHANA. THE 2026 AFRICAN JOURNEY

EPISODE TWO – JANUARY 14th 2026

*Trail riding doesn’t come like this in Devon!*

I’m often struck by just how remarkable all this is. Here I am riding a high precipitous rock and gravel road along the very lip of the Great African Rift Valley, inches from a great plunge into the oven-hot depths. I started trail riding forty eight years ago – but then it was for fun, brief Yorkshire trails over boggy moors and up and down stony tracks. Here, it’s sometimes the only road to use. But, I admit, it’s usually the one I choose, even if there’s a tarred alternative.

Riding along, bumping and bucketing about on one of the most impressive trails I can imagine, people run to the roadside to stare and wave; crowds of schoolchildren cheer at me, a flutter of pink palms and white smiles on young black faces, skin so smooth, unlined yet by the hard lives most of them approach, here on this escarpment slope. They’ll scratch at the red soil and herd a couple of cows and some goats, until they end up creased and dressed in tattered clothes like the old crone with one eye on the back of a boda I stop to ask directions from the rider. She looks at me like something from another planet – about her age, in all likelihood, but a world apart, a result of an easy life in the profligate North, good nutrition, education, medical intervention when required, relative wealth and CHOICES – the biggest difference between the prison of poverty and my relative ease of life. I’m choosing to ride this stunning track; she has to, bumping about on the back of a small motorbike in such discomfort for an old woman. Time was, of course, she’d have had to walk this way, without even the pennies for the ride. The ride is perhaps a luxury conferred by her old age.

It does make me reflect on the inequalities I witness everywhere around me and puts life in a different perspective. No one here, in their late seventies, in any condition – of wealth or health – can CHOOSE to do what I’m doing. Even if they wanted to.

****

Thirty kilometres on this punishing red road bulldozed across the steep slopes and I get lost. But there’re always boda-boda riders to flag down and ask the way. They make a living – of sorts – riding their unmaintained small Chinese machines on these vague roads. I follow this rider for several kilometres, breathing in his cloud of dust. My eyes are prickling, despite goggles; I think I’m suffering a paucity of vitamin A. My diet here is pretty simple, although mangoes, of which I have about five kilos (for £1!) bouncing on the back of the bike, contain it. It’s mainly in liver, fish, cheese, butter, squashes and greens – none of which feature much in the African diet. Lack of vitamin A, I found from a clever Ghanaian doctor years ago, is a cause of much blindness in Africa, as the surface of the cornea becomes dried and crazed. Feels like mine’s going that way these past weeks, with itchy eyes. Again, my knowledge and wealth mean I can get some supplements from a pharmacy tomorrow.

He puts me back on my road and I twist and turn on the high Cheringani Highway once again. It’s a fabulous road – tarred, this one, for now at least, depending on maintenance. It clambers through high scenery, hills rolling off into the blue midday, the sky deep blue above. I’m always conscious of the sheer immensity of African skies. As I ride up to 3060 metres (10,000 feet) above sea level, I dodge cows and sheep; people wear woolly hats and coats up here, and I must stop to put on a jumper under my jacket. Surprising how cold 15 degrees can feel!

There’s a road I’ve never taken, that drops sharply over the southwest face of the hills to the straggly town of Kapcherop, where tea bushes carpet the slopes around town. From Kapcherop, I’ll sweep on down, on deteriorating tar, full of dangerous holes and speed humps, the obsession of Kenyan road engineers, to the Kitale road. I was told of this road last year by some fellows in a tea house. I’ll try it…

Never again! It’s an APPALLING loose rocky staircase slithering downwards. I must concentrate and leap and dance about on my little bike. TEN MILES of this punishment. Good exercise, I tell myself. But I’m aware too, that a small mistake can cost me dearly. I mend much slower now. However, I stay upright and my Mosquito, now running soundly, does good work. We eventually emerge onto tar again – both of us worse for wear.

Then, with speed humps, wandering cattle, mad boda riders, straining vastly overloaded lorries with bits flapping, potholes and grumbling tractors almost as wide as the road with dry maize stalks, it’s the usual African riding back to base at Kitale.

****

*Faith. We hiked 11 miles to visit her! The best worker the Kessup guesthouse ever had*

For four days, I went to Kessup to hike in and around the Rift Valley with William, the friend I made nine years ago. ‘The goodness is…”, as he so often says, is that we both like people and we both enjoy walking.

Three or four years ago, I gave William a Holstein cow. He called her Dutch. The best way for me to help my friends in Africa is to encourage financial independence. The cow cost £375. A year on, she gave birth to British, a male calf. Another year later, last October, she gave birth to Joy (named after my mother!). A few days ago, while we were hiking into the great valley, Dutch was bellowing all day, a sign that she was ready to be ‘served’, in the coy, apparently sexist, phrase. William, in great excitement, called the vet who specialises in artificial insemination. He guarantees a female calf – or money back (£40). William dreams of Wilhelmina to complete his dairy farm. With three milking cows, and the sale of British, the male, his dairy will be complete. I’ve also paid for a rough wood shelter, and to bring water pipes down the mountain to his shamba. About £750 of my money can make William self-sufficient, able to sell milk to the cooperative for a few pence a litre and feed his cattle on homegrown maize.

*Half way down the escarpment, William takes a cooling rest*

*The Kerio Valley. Great hiking but HOT*

In return, William introduces me to his community on the edge of the Kerio Valley. ‘William’s Mzungu’ is well known on the red dust tracks and amongst the fertile shambas below the soaring cliffs that top the Rift Valley here. Each day, we hike in the fine nationally protected forests on top of the escarpment or down through fertile smallholdings into the burning depths. The bottom of the valley, where the finest mangoes in the world grow, is 2750 feet lower than the guesthouse where I stay; the top of the cliffs are another 1250 feet above. That’s 4000 feet from bottom to top! All on friable rocky, stony informal footpaths in the hot sun. Eleven mile, five mile and eight mile hikes, staggering up and down these step paths at between 3900 feet at the bottom and 7750 altitude at the top. Mighty exercise.

The forest on top of the escarpment is magnificent and silent, filled with birdsong and dappled light. A still day, the shadows merely flicker and dapple the bright undergrowth. A few cows graze, with bells tinkling. Deep blue acanthus blooms in spiky leaves. The sky above is crystal blue, unblemished.

Then the great chasm of the arm of the great African Rift Valley appears through the trees far below. So dramatic, this vast plummeting 4000 foot deep natural cleft. Just now, it’s filled with haze and the other face, twelve or fifteen miles away, to which I once unforgettably hiked through vicious thorn bushes and between grazing giant elephants, is invisible.

****

Desmond, an intelligent 27 year old I’ve met in past years, joined us on the walk up to the top to drink moratina, a home brewed, brilliant yellow honey wine, brewed on Sundays. The government has imposed tax and restrictions on its sale, but this being Africa, there are ways around things. It’s just less visible.

Apparently, I influenced Desmond to ‘get his life together’ a few years ago, with advice to take charge of himself, stop wasting time at home as the last born of nine, and go out and face the world. I have NO recollection of any such sage advice, but it’s remarkable where a mzungu’s influence lands! An onerous responsibility.

One day, Desmond stopped behaving like a teenager, upped and left home. He did menial work in a city hundreds of miles away, renting a room for £30 a month, but determinedly paying his rent on time. His landlord was impressed, and happening to be an official in a far distant education authority, he offered Desmond, trained as a teacher, a post. It’s in an end-of-the-world town, in the farthest corner of Kenya, sandwiched between war-torn Somalia, and troubled Ethiopia. You can’t go further east or north in the country, than this place that ends as an arrow head of Kenya, with two war-torn countries actually visible on either side. I suspect Desmond got the job because no one else wanted it. It’s a tough area of Islamic fundamentalism, where life is cheap. He will be authorised as a fully fledged junior school teacher in a few months, launched on a career without the bribery usually necessary.

To buy a teaching job, the going rate of bribe in Kenya is about £2900. To enter the military, expect to buy your job for £5750 at least. It’s for this reason that everyone is propositioning the mzungu to buy their land in Uganda, where these bribes are correspondingly enormous. Selling land that has passed through generations of peasant farmers and which can never be rebought; capital that is irreplaceable. Better to get your son (seldom daughters, of course) a paid job in some form of government work, than be a farmer – despite these being some of the most fertile regions of Africa. Government jobs bring the bribes and backhanders and the only potential to make you rich – if you have no ethics and only the morality assimilated from your leaders.

Chirpy, optimistic Desmond is committed to his post. He reckons to stay for five years, in a prejudiced Moslem area where Christian Kenyans aren’t popular, there’s no alcohol and no women. His ambition is to earn enough to start farming back here in the Kerio Valley area. He deserves to make it, this fellow with good integrity, admirable moral concepts and determination. But he’s made a hard choice – or perhaps, as so often in Africa, he HAD no choice.

****

*Schoolchildren everywhere love a mzungu*

Some of Desmond’s pupils, aged as little a 12 or 13, are married already. And those are the fortunate ones: allowed an education by their fathers. FGM, officially illegal in Kenya, is still practiced in remote corners of the country and women have so little status. Many die, too young for childbirth. Only education has any chance of changing habits and opinions in Africa – and even then, the majority of educated men retain their sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, superior attitudes. (Look for a feature film called NAWI, made in Kenya recently and entered for the 2026 Best Foreign Film Oscar – a powerful film).

At breakfast, a week ago in Uganda, a tiny girl came selling bananas from a tray on her head. A shy smiling child, she looked about six, surely too young to be trading, even in Sipi? But Shiela said she was nine. Precious thought she might indeed be nine years old. “There are five following her. I don’t think she’s reported [for school]; she takes care of the younger ones. The mother is just… huh…”

What chance has a child like this? Condemned from birth to poverty and probably a mother by fifteen herself. A baby machine for life. ‘Tradition’.

Alex and I came upon a couple of lads wasting their time. With election fever hotting up in Uganda, Alex quizzed them about a female candidate campaigning for their rural district.

“Huh! We don’t want to be controlled by women!” exclaimed the older boy. “Women are for marrying!”

There’s little hope for change in Africa. The boy is 16 years old. All over the continent women do ALL the work, despised by men. To most men, they are little more than baby machines and slaves. “Lower than donkeys, then?” I ask. My audiences laugh at what they see as my joke, but they don’t argue.

Changing habits and attitudes in Africa is painfully slow, if at all. “It’s the way we do it here. It’s tradition…” The excuse for every bad practice all over the continent.

****

Tomorrow, I’m going back to Uganda. Just in time for the ‘election’ on Thursday, not that there’s ever been any doubt of the winner. It’s just a costly exercise to show there’s ‘democracy’. I’m told that the internet has been turned off by the ruling power, so I’m writing in sunny Kitale this morning instead.

Oh, I forgot to say. Adelight GOT PAID! For the contract signed off before the end of March last year. They government has retained a significant sum for six months as a guarantee, in case ‘anything goes wrong’ – with a job satisfactorily completed already eight months ago…

But she’s singing this morning as she mops the floors!

*I’m still surprised to find such scenery less than a degree from the Equator, but we are at about 8000 feet*

January 7, 2026 by jonathanbean1

KENYA, UGANDA and GHANA. THE 2026 AFRICA JOURNEY – EPISODE ONE

I’m sorry this first episode is so late! Some people have even emailed to check that I’m alright. Internet in Sipi is too weak and children have kept me TOO diverted. But here, at last, a month into my journey…

JANUARY 7th 2026

It’s difficult to write in constant company with children. I’m a month into my current safari, and the best I’ve been able to do is to write a simple journal entry each night.

A prerequisite for travel in Uganda is a liking for children. It’s a country in which half the population is younger than 14 years old – an extraordinary statistic that is obvious every second of the day. In a country that has swelled from five million to fifty million in my lifetime, it’s frightening too. A land in which education has been ignored for years; where the average woman bears over six children, and many more than ten or a dozen; where half of girls are married by 18, and hundreds of thousands are mothers while still in school. Most families in this village have schoolgirl pregnancies and child mothers.

I’m fortunate in my Ugandan family. Alex is educated and intelligent. This will be a family of two children. They’ll be well educated, kept healthy and well fed. And they are an absolute delight!

*Keilah, carries firewood and her muddy slippers from Chele*l

What a joy it is to be given such cheerful, affectionate, charming wonders in my ‘old’ age! I spend my days with two small children almost constantly at my side, curious chattering beings that keep a rather silly grin on my face all day long. Keilah is now nine and Jonathan Bean is seven.

*Precious poses with a guest’s sunglasses*

****

I travelled up by the ten-hour bus from Nairobi to Kitale, high on shoulders of Mount Elgon, to my Kenyan family, Adelight and Maria, and Adelight’s sisters, Scovia and Marion.

People often ask me, “What do you DO when you’re in Africa?” Few realise how much time I spend WAITING!

A few years ago, I broke down in Kenya’s tea region. Flagging down a pickup, we took the motorbike to Brooke, home of the Brooke Bond tea estates, where the driver said he knew a trustworthy mechanic, Nashon.

Last visit, my Mosquito gave me a lot of trouble. I brought spare parts with me this year, Chinese but made for my motorbike, unlike the ones that the Ugandan mechanic used. “Original! Japanese!” he insisted in February, as he charged me premium prices and fitted cheap parts for Chinese and Indian bikes of half the capacity.

Nashon agreed to travel to Kitale, about 100 miles, to fettle my motorbike. He would arrive next day, Wednesday. I waited. By Thursday, he wasn’t answering his phone. “I know these people!” said Adelight. “He’s not answering; he knows our numbers. I’ll borrow a phone and ring him.” Haha. Adelight DOES know how Africa works! “I had trouble with the transport. I am just leaving now,” confessed Nashon. I waited. That was Thursday morning.

It was Friday, 9.00 at night, when he arrived. He spent all of Saturday working on the machine. I cancelled my plans to ride to Kessup to greet William, my Rift Valley hiking friend.

However, Nashon DID fix my motorbike efficiently. I have my ‘wheels’ back, and my coveted independence. But I didn’t get to the Rift Valley yet.

****

Two days before Christmas, I rode to Sipi and the Ugandan family: a wonderful mountain ride in the sun on the new sweeping Chinese road. At the vast border post, that hardly anyone uses, I am well known. Few white haired mzungus ride motorbikes here. Despite the six windows for immigration, a huge customs hall and extensive brick plazas, there’s still only one immigration officer and little traffic will ever use this high route. The new road reaches over 8000 feet; no trucks will ever come this way. For whom is this vastly expensive border? It’s just hubris and a source of back-handers to Ugandan government officials. The crippling debts of this deeply corrupt government soar. China took the main international airport two years ago, in lieu of debt repayment… They will strip the land of resources, beggar the people, and buy influence from those at the top. It’s the hideousness of African politicians. The rich get obscenely richer. Not unlike conditions in the West I suppose, just more overtly corrupt.

At Rock Gardens, the guest house that I have helped Alex to develop, my family wait excitedly. The children have been asking every day, “Will Uncle Jonathan come today?”

With its six round ‘traditional’ thatched houses, decorated and largely conceived by me, we get congenial guests. For four or five years, we slowly built the business. The pandemic actually helped us to prepare for what’s become a flood-tide of visitors. A couple of months ago, Alex was awarded a young entrepreneur award as one of the ten best hotels in eastern Uganda! “Ha! They all think we are a BIG hotel!” he laughed from the award ceremony. We are, in fact, a glorified backpackers’ lodge, but one run on such professional lines that in its first two years it gained two international awards for best customer reviews, often 10/10. I’m proud of Alex’s achievements and his endless hard work. Precious is popular with guests, and the children are benefiting from exposure to so many foreign visitors. My grandchildren are smart, intelligent and aware.

****

In March this year, I was walking with Alex for a day. From constant phone calls I knew something was happening. It turned out that Alex and his ‘rich mzungu’ were being propositioned to purchase a tract of land, two miles from home. We went to view it, and I could see it was fertile land, with a running stream and a spectacular view – all in the richest coffee growing region on the slopes of Mt Elgon. I agreed to purchase – about £3300 for something over a couple of acres. Through the year, we added plots on all sides, investing in the rural village. It seems that the community – a friendly cooperative population – is enthused by having a ‘rich mzungu’ buy the land, believing it will bring development to their village.

Alex bought 500 coffee bushes, which will crop in the third year. He rang me often from Chelel, from his coffee fields; he was there most days. What he was building was kept secret as a surprise, always turning his phone camera so that I saw only greenery and rampant growth. I got hints that caused me to imagine a modest thatched coffee house with a small restaurant for his international guests.

*JB1 and JB2 with Maria and Cedric, Alex’s charming junior brother, in the new coffee fields*

On Christmas Day I was to receive my surprise…

Every year, it takes time for me to adapt to this altitude. Twice in the past two weeks, we hiked 18 or 19 kilometres at 7000 feet plus. I puff and pant, these early weeks. On our second long hike, we climbed 936 stone steps about 650 feet straight up a mountainside!

But the walk to Chelel is a bit more modest, just a two mile hike, the last 500 metres up what I call ‘Killer Hill’, steep as a ski jump. We’ve done that walk several times. By the fourth trek, I could walk up without stopping for a breather, the chatterbox children trotting along enthusiastically with Uncle Jonathan. We were a cheery group, taking a sort of Christmas picnic to the Chelel fields.

Well, Alex achieved his surprise! I can understand his anxiety at my reaction. While I had images of family wealth established on coffee, he had an entirely different agenda. High on the steep slopes overlooking the amazing valley views, perhaps the best I’ve seen around Sipi, Alex has been building a two storey hotel. He had started even before I left Africa in early April!

*In eight months, Alex has built this! It’s an amazing feat, here where ‘workers’ are usually so poor*

It’s a measure of the love and trust I’ve developed for my ‘son’ that I was excited rather than angry at his extravagant use of a good deal of my money (my entire state pension, plus..!) this past year and all the income from his guest house. He’s unusual in investing for the future, unlike the African default of living in the minute, with no plans for the next lean season. The first money I ever gave him, as I left for the border some years ago, was about £30 of remaining local currency. He used it to buy seed potatoes. Next season many people went hungry, but not Alex and family.

****

The half-built hotel stands on its new terraces, surprisingly well designed and constructed. There will be just four rooms, all with balcony views across mile upon mile of beauty to the hazed far-distant horizon. The foreground is of abundant growth and rocky precipices, over which fall delicate cascades of silvery water. It’s magnificent.

The village council chairman and others joined our Christmas party. Many speeches were made, even Keilah and Jonathan persuaded to address the group, brave at their ages. The chairman, a close neighbour below the hotel plot, assured me that the rural dirt road is to be tarred as part of a marathon course from the national mountain stadium some miles away (We’ll see…). And the community welcomes the project for the potential development it can bring. Far from my embarrassment, they welcome that a ‘rich mzungu’ is a new member of their community. I am the new celebrity as I come and go.

*Community members join us on Christmas Day, with Jill and Nick from Belgium too*

Looking at the sun-drenched view, I wondered about the night sky, here where there’s no light pollution. “I think we should call this place Chelel Starlight Hotel!” A name instantly adopted by the group, who then told me that, fittingly, Chelel means ‘bright’!

****

The future for my charming Ugandan family looks good. It’s an achievement of which I am proud. The children attend a school judged 17th in Uganda; the guest house is successful; Alex is adding plot after plot to his land; he’s developing farming as well as the more risky hospitality business. His new hotel venture will undoubtedly succeed, compete with, and be the jealous envy of the best smart hotels in the region. It will succeed from the warmth of welcome and going the extra mile in customer service.

*Local girl Anna, joins Jonathan and Keilah in the Chelel cave on our property*

****

Rock Gardens attracts some very empathetic visitors. It’s on websites for overland travellers, with whom I tend to bond. My stories of a different time bring respect and admiration. “You did it the REAL way!” says middle-aged Brandon from Idaho, riding the heaviest laden BMW 1200 I have EVER seen; his wife Katherine on another 1200, almost as mighty, travelling the world with their devices. They arrived shortly before younger Tom and Lauren from England, riding their 30th African country on Honda 125s, spending hours each day making and editing videos for social media sponsorship. Webcams bristle from their handlebars.

“No internet, vague paper maps if you were lucky, no comfort of contact with home! I envy you. It’s so easy for us now,” says Brandon. ‘Easy’ isn’t a word I’d use for riding vast motorbikes the length and breadth of Africa and the world, but I admit I have NO regrets about being a traveller from the pre-internet age. The world was SO much bigger then. It all seemed more of an adventure. I formed my own opinions rather than reading the ‘reviews’ of others; I was not on a treadmill of ‘sights’ interpreted by guides and Wikipedia, (or godforbid Tripadvisor). I made my own stories; suffered from my own mistakes; had no instant comfort from home, no money transfers, no credit card payments; I didn’t spend half my time ‘sharing’ exotic locations with social media ‘friends’ and getting ‘likes’ as reward. I was THERE, in the moment, making of it the very best I could. My stories are now of a distant time to Tom and Lauren: before they were born. But I do bask in a certain respect that I did it then – and am still doing it now!

Fernando from Mexico is a congenial forty-odd year old with the travel obsession: a globetrotter, a rolling stone, curious about life, a likeable fellow. I tell him stories of Mexico City from over fifty years ago, a decade before he was born. As we clamber those 936 steps and struggle up semi-vertical green slopes, we are a generation apart, but satisfyingly equal.

And sharing the moment for real.

*Crossing a muddy river with Charles, another of Alex’s brothers, while out hiking far from home*

****

*A rainy New Year in 1818 restaurant at Rock Gardens.*

But now it’s chatterbox grandchildren that bring the smiles to my face. The riding about is just a way to be independent as I travel between families. This is my old age. What a wonder to discover such love from my seven year old namesake and nine year old Keilah, my favourite small people. To have hugs and chatter, questions and stories, to have them fall asleep over my knees by the fire pit; to laugh at Jonathan using my beard trimmer back and forth across his shorn head, shiny as a chestnut, as I relax on my bed after a day’s work; then to find him experimenting with shaving the Chinese blanket when I’m not looking; to hear a loud proclamatory childish voice as I am washing down, having ejected Jonathan from my room, then to look out and chuckle that he is solemnly reading out the guest house sign, word by word, requesting that visitors be patient in their demands here in rural Uganda, where nothing works the way it does in Europe. We eat breakfast and supper together. They hug me as they go off to bed and run to hug when I open my morning door. I realise that I love these two small people.

If I’ve achieved nothing else in my peripatetic life, I’ve secured a future for two utterly delightful African children, one of whom is named Jonathan Bean Cheptai.