DAY 18/19/20 MONDAY, BOXING DAY, TUESDAY 27th, WEDNESDAY 28th DECEMBER 2016. KITALE, KENYA

Life goes on much the same. I am in the heart of this happy family, welcomed warmly, eating their simple but tasty meals, playing Scrabble, riding to town in vain efforts to get strong internet access (it’s not even strong enough these last few days to upload an episode of this journal), and working on the big swing project with Rico.

I’ve little interest in working with metal. It seems to me such an unsympathetic material, but I have found that working with Rico, who has so much confidence and knowledge of machines and methods (and the tools required), that I’ve been quite enjoying the process of stripping down a huge chunk of industrial machinery piece by piece. It’s always satisfying to watch skilled people at work. Maybe I’ve learned something – not much danger of becoming a mechanic however! We have now reduced the three enormous pieces of very heavy structure to their component parts and manoeuvred them into the garden with jacks, wheels and rollers. Now the girls will prepare them and we will paint them and add the top bar for the swings. It’ll be just about the sturdiest swing in east Africa.

*

Frustratingly, motorbikes still seem to be elusive. I suppose I was over optimistic to imagine that international money transfers would happen over Christmas, with half the world on holiday. I am faintly encouraged in the fact that a transfer I made at the same time to my ‘son’ Dennis in Ghana is also undelivered. At least it means that there’s no particular problem with my transfer to Nairobi, for the system to Dennis has worked well on previous occasions. So I just have to hold myself in patience still longer. I wanted to be on my way by next Monday at the latest. At present I have no idea if that will happen. Another holiday weekend is approaching so if it’s not here by Saturday, it could well be the first days of January..! Almost a month. All I can do is wait. Huh.

It’s funny how nervous I become at this stage. Far from the intrepid traveller of some readers’ imaginations, about now I become apprehensive of the journey to come; of the unknown that I profess to enjoy so much. It’s quite different sitting as a passenger in Rico’s Land Cruiser looking out at the crazy antics of African traffic or African towns; passing the cheap ‘hotels’ with which I will have to haggle, and the prospect of negotiating it all myself; of overcoming all those fears, probably apocryphal, of robberies on the road, bad roads, wild elephants, disintegrated bridges, foaming rivers, and all the hazards of the tales that abound over our beers.

Of course, once on my way, even the first miles, it will all become a new journey filled with observation, nothing very dramatic to cope with, just living on my wits – that I know from past experience can deal with pretty much whatever befalls, usually with fun and interest. Much of it will be boring, some of it fascinating, and a very small percentage – the bit that makes all the discomfort and effort worthwhile – will be absolutely exhilarating and wonderful, memorable and the stuff of my future stories!

All as yet elusive…

*

On Wednesday afternoon I received an email that the money transfer company needed to speak to me in person, with a London phone number. It makes me appreciate just how easy that sort of action is from home… Not so easy from a rural town in western Kenya. By sitting in the corner of the garden behind Rico’s house I was able cheekily to piggy-back his neighbour’s connection and make a Skype call to London where, it seems, it wasn’t the large sum that you would expect to ring the alarms as it goes to ‘Nairobbery’, that caused the problems but the small sum I sent to Dennis, that I have sent often before. Oddly, that same transfer also triggered a fraud warning from my own bank that I had to deal with a few days ago. Well, it seems to be sorted and I am awaiting, on Thursday morning, the confirmation from the Nairobi bank. “I have to tell you that since you are using the money for purchase of goods, WorldRemit cannot be held responsible for any defective products,” the pleasant young man informed me from far away London. “That’s a risk I will accept happily when the money goes through!” I replied. It made me think: when I started my world travels in 1973 there was no way I could just phone home, transfer money to remote places or be in contact with anything but the world immediately around me. We certainly live in a different world fifty years later. Remember travellers’ cheques? Remember envelopes and stamps? Remember telegrams? Remember Telex? Come to that, remember Fax..? Doubtless, we will soon raise an ironic eyebrow and say, ‘Remember email? How SLOW it was’..!

DAY 21/22 THURSDAY/ FRIDAY 29th/30th DECEMBER 2016. KITALE, KENYA

FINALLY, at 4.35pm on Friday we had a call from Yuri, the bike owner, that the money had shown up in his account. We now had 25 minutes to transfer £80 to the transport company in Nairobi! Talk about ‘up to the wire’ at the eleventh hour! I gave Adelight 10,000 Kenyan Shillings and she jumped in the car and drove to town to send the money with her mobile phone. If we could get it to Titus, the transport fellow down in Nairobi, it would be on tonight’s Wells Fargo delivery to Kitale. It made for a nail-biting half hour, but at last, soon after six, we had confirmation that my ‘wheels’ should arrive by noon on New Year’s Eve! Wow. What a saga it has been. Early on Friday I discovered that I had missed a digit from Yuri’s bank account number and the transfer had failed – again.

Well, I suppose all’s well that ends well!

*

Meanwhile, we have constructed the swing for the children, spayed it this morning and even made a seat and had our first swingers enjoying the considerable work we have put into it over the past few days, activity that has maintained my sanity during this very frustrating period. It has been voted a success by the girls! A practical Christmas present for them all.

Thank goodness for the happy family around me that has kept me surprisingly content these past three weeks. It’s such fun to be part of this very cheerful group, one of the truest families I have ever been amongst, despite the fact that so few of them are actually blood relations…

DAY 23 SATURDAY 31st DECEMBER 2016. KITALE, KENYA

The last day of 2016, and at 10.45 the bike arrived! Phew, what a struggle it all has been. So now I can begin to plan my journey. Tomorrow, New Year’s Day, we will work on the bike – some brackets for my panniers, some new handlebars that Rico had for his old BMW GS, some brackets and bits that need attention. The bike seems alright and Cor, who has lots of motorbike maintenance experience, reckons it’s as good a buy as I would find here. It’s a bit small for my height, but it’s light too; it IS, though, the most expensive vehicle I ever bought, reckoned per cubic centimetre! Even my big BMW 1200GS cost only a quarter per cc! But that’s the way it is here: a ten year old, 73,022 kilometre small 200cc bike has cost me, including transport from Nairobi, just pennies short of £2000. But Rico and Cor reckon it will sell for as much when I am done with it.

Now, or soon, my safari can begin. Probably a shortish journey in Kenya to kick off before I depart for foreign parts.

*

As I grow older I wish New Year could happen at about 9.30! 2016 ended in a happy crowd at the Kitale Club annual New Year celebration, an event into which they must put a lot of work attended by the great and good (and, this being Africa, the corrupt and uncaught!) of Kitale glitterati, including the Rico family and guests. Squeezing all fourteen of us, plus baby Liam, into the Land Cruiser, we set off in full party rig, the girls dressed to kill, including their spray-on trousers, short skirts and elaborate hairstyles – looking great! We old white blokes couldn’t quite keep up the side…

Rico deserves unbounded respect for the way that, now with Adelight’s understanding, he has heroically created one of the truest ‘families’ it’s been my privilege to join for a few weeks. There is so much love, mutual support and delight in each other’s company amongst these girls and young women. There’s very little competition, no bickering, no mean-spiritedness – just a very cohesive spirit. It’s been a true lesson to witness this family life, for only a couple of them are related by blood, the relation that we, in the ‘developed’ world, count above all else. Family and community have so much more to do with generosity of spirit, acceptance of others and openness, mutual support, unselfishness and liberality than it has with mere kith and kin. Once again I applaud and honour the extended family system, probably the one aspect of African life that I admire above all others. Surely these profound human relations, this kindness and acceptance, this generosity embodied within such an extended family is the real meaning of life itself? Shy, quiet Rose, rescued from the street, is as much part if this FAMILY as anyone, equal, sharing and taking her part in a group that seems to be without hierarchy, rivalry, or strife. How have we, with our so called ‘development’ got it so wrong, become so aggressive, competitive, mean-spirited and self centred?

And 2016 must go down as one of the most mean-spirited years in history. Brexit, Trump, the rise of far right parties across the globe, ‘religious’ wars, greed and self interest; attitudes to refugees, outsiders, strangers; ignorance and ‘post-truth’ politics; people closing ranks to look after their own interests – surely one of the least generous years of my lifetime? Narrow, unquestioning ignorance, mean rhetoric exploited by liars and ambitious leaders and immoral corporate greed, abusing the vulnerability of the uninformed, whipping sentiment and alarm from the poorly educated and marginalised – it’s been a year worth putting behind us. Not a lot of which to be proud…

Although I have little hope that 2017 will actually teach many of us in the arrogant ‘advanced’ nations the lessons that I see about me on this ignored, misunderstood continent…

*

We sat beneath the decorated awnings and tents beside the 18th green, ubiquitous Chinese plastic chairs camouflaged in white nylon and ribbons, a good barbecue and buffet supper washed down with lots of pale gassy Tusker amongst several hundred folk, many of the adults poring over mobile phones to the detriment of bored small children. The young people of our considerable party were off behind the swimming pool where disco music thumped, more to their taste than the African beat of the live band entertaining our party, one singer’s awful voice tempered by her astonishingly mobile backside, gyrating in a frill like I have never seen! Small Shamilla and Sherry dozed, heads on the table as we waited the midnight hour. Then, at last, we saw in the New Year with the usual hugs and exclamations and eventually piled, fourteen of us, back into the car for the couple of miles home. By now Orion (the constellation on its side here on the Equator) now high overhead and a slight chill to the night air as we all fell into bed about one o’clock.

And so began 2017. Where, I wonder, will it take us all..?

*

I’m beginning to feel a trifle grubby. We have been without water for three days now! No internet and occasional power cuts. You have to adapt to live life in Africa. Just imagine the angst in a household of eight or nine pretty young women in England if they couldn’t shower and wash their hair twice a day!! Haha. I like to imagine that!

DAY 24 SUNDAY, NEW YEAR’S DAY 2017. KITALE, KENYA

Now that my safari gets to be a likelihood I am strangely reluctant to leave this happy family and relaxed lifestyle! But by Thursday Rico is off on a new contract in South Sudan and all the girls start school this week, so it will be a natural end to this most enjoyable holiday and the start of another journey. I will have been here most of a month, a third of my trip. But of course, if I want to I can later extend my stay a bit. It is limited only by my visa, which is easily extended here apparently. There’d be a charge for changing flights but I won’t make the decision for a few weeks until I see how it all goes and how the little blue bike performs and how I am enjoying myself in the new countries.

Rico and I fabricated an efficient rack to hold my pannier bags – well, I say Rico and I… of course, Rico did the making, I just did the observing and painting! Tomorrow we will fix new handlebars and attach the headlight properly; currently it is held on with cable ties. The clutch lever needs work and then we have to reregister the bike in Adelight’s name and get a local lawyer to make up a simple but bullshitting document that it is on loan to me. It has to be registered to a Kenyan citizen and Rico is still battling through the arcane system for his Kenyan passport. Then there’s the insurance to sort out too. I also have quite a shopping list: lock and chain, spare tube, mirror, spare key, replacement petrol pipe and the like. It’s an expensive option, owning your own vehicle in foreign lands. And I am certain I will be buying another in South Africa too! I am missing Lesotho and the free and easy travelling down there. I’m sure I’ll be back.

But for now, by Wednesday or Thursday I will be on my way at last to explore Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania! Lots of new people to meet…

DAY 12 TUESDAY DECEMBER 20th KITALE, KENYA to DAY 15, FRIDAY DECEMBER 23rd.

Despite all the endless internet frustrations here at home, it looks as if my motorbike may soon be on its way up from Nairobi. I HOPE that I have transferred the money to Yuri and that tomorrow morning, Wednesday, he will drop it off at the transporter for carriage up to Kitale over the next couple of days. Let’s hope it went smoothly… It’s all a bit of a leap of faith. Using the internet in Africa is seldom straightforward which, considering how modern life now relies on the convenience, means patience. A few days ago I punched in the wrong PIN number on my credit card (I have two with similar but transposed numbers) and the card was blocked. It takes a few minutes to unblock it – if you have a convenient phone line to the Bank of Ireland, in this case. Try that from rural Kenya! The only phone I have available is to Skype on my iPad, for which I need a strong signal. Huh! The internet cafe manager kindly lent me his office for the business, where it then took me forty minutes to reestablish my summarily discontinued Skype account! “Just take your card to any ATM and select ‘card services’,” said an Irish voice eventually. Of course, the ATM I found had no such selection – but it did pay out £240 in Kenya shillings..! Ho hum.

Today also, we have had a break in the water pipes in Kitale, leading to no running water and later to cloudy water unwise to drink. Then in the evening an hour-long power cut. Infrastructure in Africa is so stretched by poor maintenance, overuse and bad workmanship and, not infrequently, corruption. The power cut created a lovely atmosphere, happening after ‘beer o’clock’ as Rico, Cor and I sat after sunset on the verandah, the stars spreading into the dark night sky and an occasional firefly sparkling across the garden. Behind us in the kitchen Adelight fried banana chips for supper by candlelight, the aroma wafting out to us. The children and girls played and talked and there was no intrusion from the media world. Sometimes I wish there were more power cuts in Africa! (I shouldn’t have written that! See later…).

Digging a hole to support the seesaw that Rico intends to build for the girls took all my energy – a hole a couple of feet by two and a half, and only ten inches deep. By the end, hefting a sharp hoe, I was exhausted for much of the rest of the day – here at 6200 feet on the sunny Equator. Still, I sleep well in my garage bedroom, much as I did in 2001 when I slept in a battered old brown tent in Rico’s garden up in desert Lodwar, until flooded out one night by extraordinary and rare torrents of brown water that inundated the yard and made rivers flow fast enough to wash uprooted trees and trucks down the previously parched riverbeds. When nature takes over in Africa, things don’t happen by halves.

On Thursday Rico, Adelight and I drove down to Eldoret, the ugly, bustling, traffic-clogged town fifty miles back along the main road towards Nairobi. “I’ve seen enough of Eldoret for this trip!” I exclaimed as we finally shook loose of the traffic jams later in the afternoon. I recollect that feeling fifteen years ago on a brief visit. I shall do my best to avoid the place. But even in the chaos, one of the things I like best in Africa is the way in which people return a look. Catch their eye and everyone reacts, a smile, a wave, an ironic shrug. No on ever looks away embarrassed.

A stiff wind blew all day, whisking dust and plastic bags, the ‘Flowers of Africa’ into whirling clouds; the most persistent wind Rico could remember here in western Kenya, where wind usually only comes with rain or in brief episodes. Chaos ruled in the town, traffic congested and filthy, people everywhere. The big supermarket was full of families Christmas shopping, flocking the aisles, dithering with trollies. We went there so I could buy presents for the girls back home for Christmas; Rico and Adelight’s suggestions being a large Scrabble set for the older girls and a plastic bowling set for the younger ones – (and perfume for Adelight)! Life isn’t cheap in Kenya, much more than in South Africa and its surrounding states. Those items and a few groceries came to about £70, with VAT here at 16%. Food is quite expensive, especially when you have ten or so young stomachs to fill.

We drove to Eldoret to collect Faith, another of the ‘original’ Rico Girls that I remember from 2002. Faith is now married to Felix, a young German who has worked a good deal in Africa – mainly Tanzania, and is something of an expert on alternative energies. Faith and Felix have a five month old baby, Liam, and have come for Christmas here in Kitale from their home base in Berlin. Faith is the daughter of Rico’s first wife Anna’s sister, who died in the first months of Faith’s life, her father having died in a traffic accident even before she was born. A grandmother took her in until Rico and Anna took her into their family aged three. These are stories so common in Africa, well, the former part of the story is common, finding a new family and being brought up as generously as Faith was is far from common of course. Rico deserves so much admiration for his total involvement in Africa, his astonishing support of so many waifs who, without him, would have had hard, difficult lives – the lives so common to so many that fall by the wayside in these hand to mouth economies in Africa.

Adelight, of whom I have become increasingly fond and respectful, must now also be mentioned in despatches for her complete commitment to the family of girls. Happily, she is now pregnant with her own child, so Rico will have one blood relative in Africa after all. Between them, Rico and Adelight have created a delightful family, seldom more in evidence than with the excitement of the return of their sister Faith, and especially, of course, her baby! We arrived to great elation and animation.

At home the power had been off since the morning; now on Friday morning it is still off. It makes for peaceful times, only a couple of solar bulbs and candles, the TV quiet, the night star-filled and silent. Adelight and the older girls cooked up a big saucepan of pilau rice and small cubes of meat and I went to bed happy, with a couple of litres of thin, gassy beer inside me and stinking, no doubt, of Adelight’s chopped garlic with mayonnaise.

No internet; no news therefore of the bike or money transfers. It’s so frustrating… “Oh, this is Africa!” says everyone with a shrug, an acceptance that perpetuates the inefficiency endlessly. It’s always the excuse and it never solves the problems, never improves the situation, never provokes activity; just this ceaseless inability to take initiative and do something about it! THAT is Africa!

But one must adapt, for I myself can change little. My dear friend Leslie paid me a fine compliment in a recent email: ‘I know you appreciate your surroundings and situations more than most people I know. One of the things I love about you. You bloom where you are planted.’ It’s not a struggle to bloom when surrounded by warmth and generous friendship.

DAY 16. SATURDAY, CHRISTMAS EVE 2016. KITALE, KENYA

I’ve come to the conclusion that to achieve one thing in a day here in Kenya is good progress. This sort of resigned acceptance makes life so much easier. Yesterday I finally made the money transfer to Yuri the bike mechanic in Nairobi – but we have yet to find out the status of quite where the motorbike actually IS! Maybe it is at this minute on the road north? Maybe… I’ve been here two weeks and at least I know there’s a bike on the way. I have to be satisfied with that.

The power has been off for 48 hours as I write. It is on next door to the east, but off for the whole block towards the Ugandan sunsets. We fear that if it doesn’t get repaired today we will have no power until after the holiday. Well, ‘this is Africa’, comes the usual excuse for lack of initiative. Meanwhile, everyone copes and rearranges their lives, adapts and compromises. It’s a lesson in fortitude for Europeans so used to light at the flick of a switch and water at the turn of a tap. We had no water for some hours, followed by cloudy stuff flowing from a broken pipe somewhere. And Kenya prides itself on more advanced infrastructure! Haha.

Life continues pleasantly here in the cheery household. Scovia just spotted the roll of Christmas paper on the desk in front of me, left over from wrapping the Scrabble, bowls and perfume. She’s taken it away to wrap around the bucket that is holding the Christmas tree, made from a tall branch of some conifer from the garden. I suggested to Adelight that I should buy ice cream and fruit as a Christmas treat, to go with the goat that is currently roaming outside the gate (safe from the compound dogs!). Maybe we can keep it cold enough in the fridge in the room that Faith and Felix are fortunately renting next door – to the powered east! You see, adaptation is the key to African life… So is complete patience – 16 days in and I am still where I started!

I spent the warm afternoon restoring chairs. “I can’t mend cars but let me do some crafty odd-jobs and I’m happy!” I told Rico, as he and Cor fixed and mended vehicle electrics and discussed things technical with Felix, expert in alternative power generation. I’ve no interest, let alone aptitude, but give me a chair to reupholster and I’ll make my best efforts! Useful skills in an African household economy.

*

Some years ago, my late mother took me to a supermarket on Christmas Eve. For years afterwards she laughed at my reaction: “Don’t EVER do that to me again!”

Yet here in Africa, I can join the throng, have trolleys driven over my feet and butt me in the bum, battle my way through dithering families, struggle at heaving checkouts, watch the proliferation of another ten thousand ‘Flower of Africa’ plastic bags – and do so with a wide, contented smile on my face, watching people. Small excited children wore shaped and knotted balloons as headdresses, tied by three fellows in Father Christmas hats for charity as the warm sun beat down outside. Ghastly mechanical mannequins jiggled inside an Alpine hut surrounded by cartoon animals and jerking felt elves. A cotton-wool bearded, black-skinned young Father Christmas ho-hoed at little girls in spangly party frocks and mothers pushed over-piled trolleys to the long queues in the compact cashier area where assistants packed a million plastic bags with groceries. This was, I have to add, a middle class shopping mall, supplying the relatively well off. The market will have looked different, of course. Guards perform a pointless security check at the entrance, their scanner beeping uselessly, probably a result of the terrorist attack on the shopping mall in Nairobi a few years ago. None of the guards check bags and I doubt the scanner actually works for it makes the same beeps and the guards the same bored actions if I empty my pockets as I did the first couple of times, or just wander through as I do now!

*

This evening we all crowded round the sitting room, the branch tree blinking in the corner. The TV switched off – we eventually regained power this afternoon after more than two days, resulting in ghastly Christmas singing from the South African Broadcasting Corporation – and the girls and children gathering on the floor. I hadn’t put two and two together until I remembered this is a continental household, half Dutch in spirit, and Christmas Eve is ice cream and presents round the tree time. The next hour was warm and good humoured, a few modest gifts unwrapped with laughter and jokes, with none of the extravagance and aspirations of western Christmas. Packs of new knickers and chocolate bars instead of unreasonable electronic devices and expensive toys, greeted with hugs and warmth. It’s a privilege, especially at this material time of year, to be part of such a cheerful family gathering where people are grateful for the little they have; where the love of family counts for so much more than the acquisition of ‘stuff’; where smiles and laughter express so much of the closeness of this largely unrelated FAMILY. So many lessons to learn in Africa if you look…

DAY 17. SUNDAY, CHRISTMAS DAY 2016. KITALE, KENYA

I awoke to the sound of supper: the Christmas goat being slaughtered somewhere outside in the garden. One is usually close to the sources of nutrition in Africa!

Later, little Shamilla with a crestfallen look and a tear dribbling down her cheek, sat on Rico’s knee. “They’ve killed my goat!” and he had to explain where the meat in the house comes from, a lesson seldom learned in Europe, merely a vaguely uncomfortable concept, almost never an animal screaming in the morning.

*

It’s been a family Christmas like many around the world; unlike Europe in the fact of the goat legs protruding from a washing up bowl on the kitchen table as Adelight and Scovia hacked with a cleaver, for the dogs playing over cloven, hairy forelegs, for the total absence of material reminders and of course for the warm, bright Equatorial sun; African in the fresh goat stew and universal for games of Scrabble and bad sentimental Christmas music from the kitchen radio.

Rico and I worked in the garage, stripping a large car lift, parts of which were stolen some time past for their scrap value, leaving the robust frame – from which we are going to make a sturdy garden swing with probably an attached seesaw. It’s heavy work but another resourceful recycling of scrap materials. Little is wasted on this continent: that’s unaffordable.

So, by some grubby manual labour, goat meat – barbecued for supper – a few beers and Scrabble games, a congenial, memorable Christmas 2016 came and went, my fourth consecutive African Christmas. Where next year, I wonder?

Seventeen days and still no motorbike. Well, one just settles into the mood and waits patiently, or as patiently as possible. I admit, I AM beginning to become a bit impatient to be on my way much though I am enjoying the warmth of and apparent total acceptance by the family here in sunny Kitale on the Equator.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS