I remember studying inertia in physics in high school, and I always identified with the idea of it being a little more difficult to get a body at rest moving, than is otherwise so. When I rolled in to the northern Kenyan town of Maralal late one evening I thought I would only be there a day or two, as I was hoping I would be able to hitch a lift further north to the fabled Jade Lake - Lake Turkana.On my way up to Maralal I had passed through a few tribal areas - northern Kenya is dominated by various groups of pastoral semi nomadic peoples. The people are easy to spot because of their colourful outfits - especially the women who are usually adorned in some very colourful jewellery. There is a lot of tension between different groups, usually involving endless rounds of one group accusing the other of stealing cattle belonging to other groups. Every once in a while the Government gets involved, which seems to make matters only worse, because each group says the Government is only on the side of the opposing group, so they have to go and steal the cattle back. The inflow of cheap automatic weapons during the nineties means that many shepherds walk around with AK47's slung over their shoulders and confrontations became far more deadly. Combine this with an unstable neighbourhood - the area is surrounded by Sudan and Somalia, and there is always trouble a brewing. Whilst I was in Maralal two young shepherd boys had their throats slit (allegedly by Somalis), a local guy was shot and killed, and there were riots in the neighbouring town. Needless to say I didn't see any of this - I was relatively safe seeing I had no cows to steal !!!Before I knew it days had drifted in to each other, and I had a routine, which consisted of passing the time between meals and sleep, going. I would get up early to watch the sun rise over the surrounding hills as I strolled along the main road out of town, checking to see if any new transport had arrived the night before. I would then return to the hotel and the water would have been heated. Receiving my bucket of hot water I would bathe using my hand as a ladle - surprisingly refreshing and effective in the cold chill of the morning. I would then wander to the market and get down my chai and chapati breakfast, before wandering over to some tourism touts I had befriended to chat with them for a while over the state of the world. The touts were very friendly fellows who refused to let the non existence of any means of transport stop them from continually renewing there promise of a truck arriving tomorrow based on information they had received from some secret source. I would then head back to my room to read for a few hours to bring me up to lunch time. Lunch really was the highlight of the day - I discovered the great Kenyan dish of KK - (kidogo kidogo or little little) a pile heaped high of everything from the kitchen, normally including pilau, beans, lentils, potatoes, all topped with a large chapati and a cup of chai, for the wonderful price of fifty cents. The only way to recover from the excitement of lunch was an afternoon nap, which was followed by an evening stroll. Dinner soon followed and by around 8 or 9 I felt as though I had accomplished enough to turn in for the day. Somehow this rolled on for almost a week, and I became a fixture in the town, local kids stopped calling out Mzungu !! to me and instead just said hi. Local merchants even started charging me local prices as people saw the stinginess of my ways are started believing I really didn't have a lot of money and hadn't chosen to spend all these days in town as a holiday. I spent six days in Maralal, and the only time I got near to any transport was when a battered old truck rolled in to town and the touts came hunting me down in my room. We legged it to where the truck was parked and finally found the driver. The touts asked him how much t
o take me to the Lake, and when he answered even they got up and walked away. It appeared that the driver had been blinded by the shimmer of gold that surrounded me as a mzungu and had asked six times the going rate, or around $100. Glancing at his truck as we walked away I wondered to myself if his truck was even worth that much !!After a false start one day, the following I eventually threw my hat in, the touts counselled me against it, there was definitely a truck coming the next day, but I had lost hope of proceeding further, and rumour had it that it would be much easier from Marsabit the town further north on the highway. Somehow I found myself in a minivan rolling out of town, fighting as hard as I could against inertia and moving again. As if to demonstrate the principle to me in real life, after spending the whole day in the minibus slowly building up speed, the next day I found myself sitting on the top of a truck rushing through the northern arid lands of Kenya, with t
he wind in my hair and the sun on my face. Reaching Marsabit in a day I found that rumour was wrong and that I could likely spend another week in Marsabit waiting for a truck to Lake Turkana. I decided to cut my losses and continue further north. The next morning I flagged down a truck heading north and jumped on board. The truck was filled with same large rolls of material, so the truck boys, the two other passengers and myself found ourselves sitting on top of the cabin, as the driver flew along the unpaved road towards the Ethiopian border. By two o'clock that afternoon I was in Ethiopia, tired, covered in dust and dazed by so much movement in so little time !!
o take me to the Lake, and when he answered even they got up and walked away. It appeared that the driver had been blinded by the shimmer of gold that surrounded me as a mzungu and had asked six times the going rate, or around $100. Glancing at his truck as we walked away I wondered to myself if his truck was even worth that much !!After a false start one day, the following I eventually threw my hat in, the touts counselled me against it, there was definitely a truck coming the next day, but I had lost hope of proceeding further, and rumour had it that it would be much easier from Marsabit the town further north on the highway. Somehow I found myself in a minivan rolling out of town, fighting as hard as I could against inertia and moving again. As if to demonstrate the principle to me in real life, after spending the whole day in the minibus slowly building up speed, the next day I found myself sitting on the top of a truck rushing through the northern arid lands of Kenya, with t
he wind in my hair and the sun on my face. Reaching Marsabit in a day I found that rumour was wrong and that I could likely spend another week in Marsabit waiting for a truck to Lake Turkana. I decided to cut my losses and continue further north. The next morning I flagged down a truck heading north and jumped on board. The truck was filled with same large rolls of material, so the truck boys, the two other passengers and myself found ourselves sitting on top of the cabin, as the driver flew along the unpaved road towards the Ethiopian border. By two o'clock that afternoon I was in Ethiopia, tired, covered in dust and dazed by so much movement in so little time !!
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