Moyale, a grotty border town on the Ethiopia-Kenya border, is the start of a long, hard, tyre-destroying road south to Isiolo in the more populous Central Highlands. An occasional bus runs these days, but the only regular transport is by truck. I stocked up on bananas, biscuits and samosas, handed over 600 KSh (about US$9) and found myself a place up behind the cab. Most of the other travellers lay on the truck’s cargo (sacks of beans), which were under a tarpaulin to protect them from the rain. I fashioned a seat by criss-crossing some bits of rope between the steel bars that supported the tarpaulin and this became my spot for the rest of the journey.
Don't fall off!
One of the Ethiopians on the truck with me was particularly friendly and we became travelling buddies. His name was Antenah (easy for me to remember) and he was on his way south to Uganda to look for work. It was his second attempt. Three years ago, he’d tried to make it to South Africa but had been picked up in Zambia and thrown into prison for 6 months because his papers were not in order. Now he was having another crack. I admired his spirit!
A breakdown somewhere on this 600km journey is virtual certainty – the question is what will break and how often? For us, this time, it was the tyres. One hour after leaving Moyale, we got our first puncture. The tyre was swapped, but a few hours later there was a bang like a gunshot and we had a tyre blowout. That meant a longer delay as the first puncture had to be repaired and the wheels swapped again. We ended up spending a night in the town of Marsabit and set off again at dawn the next morning. As we descended Mt Marsabit in the grey light of early morning, I spotted several elephants grazing in the bushes by the side of the road. Sitting up behind the cab gave me a great view out across the acacia-covered savannah stretching unbroken all the way to horizon. Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia were all nice in their own way, but here for the first time I felt I was seeing the ‘real Africa’. Whatever that is! Anyway, we soon struck more problems as one of the wheel hubs cracked. There were further delays as the tyre was removed from the hub and the hub replaced with last remaining part of the spare. By this stage we had absolutely no spare kit left so we rode our luck for the next 7 hours to Isiolo. Fortunately, we made it without incident.
The real Africa?
We limped into Isiolo just before dusk on the second day, 40 long hours after setting off from Moyale. Asphalt roads, ATMs, bars and restaurants signalled a return to some sort of civilisation. This was my jumping-off point for Mt Kenya, so I left the truck and set about finding a bed for the night. It turned out to be pretty easy. In the half-darkness, I spotted a white face coming the other way and waved the guy over. In a nice bit of serendipity, he turned out to be a kiwi called Dan. He’d even studied for the same degree as me at the same university back in New Zealand. Dan offered me the spare bed in his room, and we spent the rest of the evening downing Tusker beers and discussing the options for climbing Mt Kenya – something he’d just done a few days ago. Perfect.
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