Kenya

President Obama, President Mubarak of Egypt, and President Kibaki of Kenya are all flying in together to a conference. But soon it gets very cloudy and the pilot gets lost. So President Obama says "No problem, I got this" and he walks over to a window, opens it up, and starts feeling around. After a minute he pulled his arm back in, closes the window, and says "We're in New York." The other two are amazed; they ask "How did you know that?" Obama answers "I felt the Statue of Liberty."

A little later they're still lost and the pilot wants to know where they are again, so Mubarak says "I'll give this a shot," opens a window, feels around, pulls his hand back in, and says "We're over Cairo, now." "How'd you know that?" the other two ask. "I felt the Sphinx," he says.

Yet later they're still lost. So Kibaki decides that he'll give it a try and so he opens a window to feel around for a few seconds. He pulls it back in, takes a quick look, and says "Yep, we're over Nairobi right now." "Why do you say that?" the others ask him. He says "Someone just stole my watch."



After Djibouti decided to be incredibly lame and not allow me entrance I decided to skip Yemen because of difficulties in crossing the Gulf of Aden. Instead I spent my time back-tracking through Ethiopia and chilling out in Addis Ababa. This was a small problem in that my timeline, for the first time on the trip, was beginning to get a little crunched. Unfortunately, Addis Ababa had a bit of a hold on me.

You how there's nothing particularly appealing about potato chips? Well, you eat one, and it gets a little addictive, so then you just keep on going until all the chips are gone and you're stuck feeling bloated and unhealthy. Well that's how Addis Ababa was for me. It was a nice enough city, and even though there wasn't anything stand-outish for me it was a bit addictive and I spent longer than I should have. After six weeks in Somaliland I was so tired of over-cooked spaghetti and boiled goat that I could scream, and I hadn't gone that long without liquor since I was . . . well, we'll say 21. So Addis Ababa was my place to drink good, cheap beer and eat tasty national food while at the same time gathering myself for the trip south. I had an ambitious plan for crossing into Kenya that I had been working on for close to half a year.

The southwest corner of Ethiopia is called the Omo Valley, located at the confluence of Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Kenya. Because of various wars in the region guns are cheap and easy to get, and the nomads have no problem with offing each other. But it's really isolated and I had gotten wind of a crossing there that involved some 50 kilometers of hiking through the desert until Kenya's Lake Turkana, the largest desert lake in the world. One guy had done the from the south six years ago and I wanted to be the first from the north, but upon arriving in the southern-most city in the region I was met by a policeman who told me 1) I couldn't cross this way 2) It was illegal for me to even be in the town. So I guess that's why nobody has done it from the north side.

I spent a couple days working my way east towards the real crossing, a city called Moyale which has its own reputation among overlanders as being the craziest on the Cairo-to-Cape Town Circuit. Come to think of it, it may be the most infamous in Africa among backpackers.

I say this because it takes two days just to get there from Addis Ababa. Once there, you're in an obnoxious, mosquito-filled town whose only transportation are cattle trucks heading south through the miserable dirt path. Up until only a couple years ago, banditry on the Kenyan side was a real problem and travelers frequently reported getting shot at by shiftas. If you managed to get a spot on a truck and miss the shiftas, you still had to contend with three days of horribly uncomfortable riding until you reached Nairobi.

Paul Theroux wrote about this crossing with great zeal in his cross-continent Dark Star Safari . It was here, he writes that his convoy of trucks were shot at by shiftas and two separate trucks broke down before he was finally able to make it on the third to Nairobi.

While the shiftas were no longer a problem, nomadic fighting is, and word reached me that two days before my crossing some three hundred Borena had been killed in a firefight in the exact area I was crossing. But it's the only overland choice, so after a night in Moyale I took off through Immigration to try my luck.

I happened to meet a pair of Israelis who were also crossing that day into Kenya, and together we looked for a vehicle to take us south. The were both intent on not taking the trucks, as only a few months before a friend of theirs riding on top of one of the trucks died after falling off and breaking his neck. But I didn't see any other option, so I decided I was going to bite the bullet and travel this way. It wasn't until I actually saw the trucks, though, that I realized why so many injuries and deaths actually occur on this road.

These hulking monsters were stuff full of cattle down below and the "top" was only a series of metal bars providing support. A total of 36 hours of riding this precarious perch seemed beyond miserable - it sounded stupid. A huge stroke of luck came my way however when I was lashing my bag to the bars as one of the Israelis showed up and said there was a 4X4 willing to take us south to Marsabit, the first major stop, for only $15 USD each.

I didn't hesitate, and so took an infinitely faster and more comfortable car ride. After only a few hours of riding we finally saw a welcome change of landscape in that the desert began to give way to a green landscape and I decided to spend some time in the city of Marsabit before continuing onward.

After exploring a nearby crater I climbed Mount Marsabit and continued on away from the town for what was to be an afternoon hike. Not far into my walk, however, I stumbled upon a group of surprised Borena herders armed with spears and World War I-era Winchester rifles. While there was no common language between us they responsded to my presence with real interest and after a short discussion gestured with their guns that I was to follow them. (It is times like this that I regret never checking in with the local US embassies to let them know I'm in their respective country.)

The small detachment led me away from the herd and back to their village, about an hour from Mt. Marsabit. The group motioned me towards a tree so I parked it there to observe the goings-on. It appeared they were mostly nomadic, as I didn't notice any permanant buildings in the village, though there were more weapons than any villages I had ever been to previously. That very fact was a bit unnerving given the fact that I didn't know what the hell was going on, but I was treated well enough so I decided not to worry about it.

Sure enough, after no more than a half hour a local ranger pulled into the village and cordially told me that while I was very welcome to explore Kenya, I had been wandering in prime cattle raiding territory and these helpful villagers, while slightly bemused at my appearence, were more concerned for my safety than anything else. He graciously drove me back to Marsabit where I caught a transport to safer regions.

Speaking of safety, I was anxious to avoid Nairobi and decided to bypass that entire part of the country. Instead I headed to the western side of Kenya, criss-crossing the equator and eventually making it to Kisumu. This city is the third-largest in Kenya and lies on the shores of Lake Victoria, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world (What-what Lake Superior!). It is a great climate here and was good fun wandering around the lake.

But entering Kenya meant entering tourist grazing area, and I wasn't impressed with the amount of hawkers that Kisumu presented to me trying to get my money. Not as bad as in other areas of the country, I was told, but still pretty obnoxious. In this part of Africa the hawkers who focus on tourists are called "touts", meaning "ticks" in Swahili, and the name fits them well. Whether or not its true, I think of them all as eager to rip me off and then laugh about it to their cackling tout friends as soon as they have their hands on my money, so I'm typically pretty cold to these guys.

Before leaving Kenya I wanted to make a stop in the village of Kogelo, an hour outside of Kisumu. Kogelo has risen to a position of prominence in recent years as the homestead of the Obama family, so I made it a point to get visit there. Surprisingly, there were no touts there and it seemed every bit as a typically village would here. It was clear that they were hurting a bit because of the late rainy season like the rest of the country, but they sold normal priced soda and beer and were friendly to the white guy who showed up not knowing any of the local language.

Despite the lack of rain for Kenya, which has affected millions, the area is located on the Great Rift Valley and has beautiful, rich soil that supports a variety of greenery and provides a gorgeous background. (This change from the desert and semi-arid land of Northern Kenya, Southern Ethiopia, and Somaliland was refreshing and put me in a lasting good mood that has largely stayed with me.) And Obama's family is very welcoming to outsiders. I was greeted by two of his cousins who introduced me to his grandmother, a woman who appears to have taken her own rise to prominence in stride and conducts herself in an extremely dignified, if somewhat amusing, manner.

The next day, in a minibus heading towards the border, I saw a roadside hut with a keg outside of it. One of the joys of backbacking, of course, is that there's no schedule to keep so I had to driver stop and jumped out with my bags to hike back to the hut for a drink. I found they were selling Senator Beer, named in honor of Obama after his 2006 senatorial victory. It was a bit less than a dollar per liter, so I spent the afternoon with a group of fun locals downing liter after liter in the shade of a banana tree. For any liter I bought them, I was offered an equal amount of liquor in their homemade palm wine, and in short order the lot of us were quite silly.

I stopped counting after six liters but I'm reasonably sure I at least made it to a ten before I called it a day. By the time we were done the busses had long passed for the day but I was in no condition to ride anyway. The fellows I were with were in similar straights and we decided to hit the hay right there, in the hut.

The next morning saw me with a blinding headache dulled only slightly by my typically hangover remedy of alka-seltzer, milk, and electrolytes. But one by one my fellow drinkers from the previous night left and eventually I flagged down a bus heading towards the border. It was in this condition I entered Uganda.