Motorbike to Mombasa

Ok so this blog really needs some action: we’ll see if this helps. For now I’m going to skip all the other updates I could give and settle for this one story. One Saturday afternoon at the end of May, Anson and I were sitting in my room trying to figure out what we should do. We both were kind of sick of school and wanted to get away (and I didn’t have any major deadlines for like 3 or 4 days, so it seemed like such freedom), so we ran through possible options: Westlands, Junction, something like that. He really wanted to go swimming, which I said was ridiculous, like it was way too cold. I said I would go to the pool but refused point blank to go swimming. We talked for awhile, and then he was like man let’s go to Mombasa. Now for those of you who don’t know, Mombasa is like across the country, 500 kilometers away, like 6 or 7 hours by car. I was like that is crazy, and paced up and down the house ranting for like 20 minutes going through all that could go wrong, how small 125 cc are, and what a crazy idea this was, until after I had worked it all out in my mind, and canceled my lunch appointment for the next day, I was like, ok yeah let’s do this.

We packed up and heading out on the motorbike. We stopped for dinner, and by the time we left it was dark, 8 pm. Now I didn’t even know the way for sure, but I assumed Mombasa road was a pretty straight shot there, and lo and behold it worked. At each gas station when we filled up, we would ask how many kilometers to Mombasa, but everyone was like, um you know that you can’t make it on that size motorbike. We were like, yeah we will, and we’ll stop by on our way back to tell you how it was. We had estimated our arrival time at like 4 am, but as we pressed through the night that looked increasingly less likely. We both became quite tired, and had to rest the engine a lot to prevent overheating. It had never been driven for longer than one hour before, poor thing. We were also getting tired, so fairly close to Tsavo national park we pulled off the side of the road to rest. Now I have seen The Ghost and the Darkness, and was aware of the location, so I’ll use standard Kenyan terminology and chalk it up to strong faith… We had a tarp and blanket with us, parked the motorbike right by us, and used our backpacks as pillows. It was awesome, and I slept so well…until I woke up to 4 police officers surrounding us yelling at the top of their lungs to wake us up. It was somewhat disorienting…but they were going on about danger, animals around, but I was really tired, so I persuaded them we would be fine and they finally left. We went back to sleep, and slept for another hour, until we were woken up again by another female police officer and her partner, and then I was like ok, lets go.



We finally arrived in Mombasa around 11 am, at which point I sent some text messages informing people where we were. After eating some Indian food at a restaurant I had gone to with Vincent, we went up to the public beach on the north shore to go swimming. It was pretty sweet, but after swimming for a bit I decided that I should sleep, so I slept on the beach for a few hours. Anson swam the whole time.

When it got dark, we left for Nairobi, stopping a few times for dinner and to rest. Now Mombasa is at sea-level, yeah, and Nairobi is really high up…so I was concerned about the journey back. Anson was really tired, so I did most of the driving at this point. About 1 am, we were probably 200 kilometers from Mombasa, with another 300 to go, and were in the middle of nowhere. Nothing around. I pulled off the road to rest the engine, and what do you know, the front tire is flat. I didn’t see anything I had hit or gone over, and we didn’t find any nail or anything in the tire. I think it just overheated. Now I had been going 90 kilometers an hour seconds before I stopped, and if the tire had gone at that instant…let’s just say it would not have been good. But here we are without a tire, so now what to do. This is pretty incredible to me…but I stopped right by a police check-point, and the policeman came over and kept asking me, so what are you going to do? I had no idea. Fortunately, he didn’t rely on my resourcefulness, but started asking all the buses he was pulling over if they had room to take us to Nairobi. My opinion of police-checks underwent a radical transformation…and I looked at all the buses flying through without stopping with a rather different perspective. However, after about 15 stopped, one agreed, so we threw the motorbike in an empty compartment on the bottom and we bought two tickets. At 5:30 am, we arrived in Nairobi, and it took 4 hours and lots of emotional negotiation before we finally found someone to fix the tire (which costs like $5, I can’t get over how cheap motorcycle repairs are here). So I missed the first two hours of systematic theology…but we rolled into campus only 10 minutes late for field ministry. And I’m pretty sure this story will be remembered at NEGST for some time…


*NOTE* Think of this as belonging to the genre of narrative, true not fiction, but is not intended to offer any propositional truths providing moral lessons leading one to infer the activities related herein are recommended or encouraged.

Travel Tips

As I’ve been reflecting on my recent travels through East Africa, I felt I had some gems of wisdom to share with any of you who may be less “experienced” travelers.

1) You’re probably busy and thinking about a lot of other things, so its best to mentally prepare as you’re hastily skimming through a guidebook a few hours before you arrive and you realize you know next to nothing about this place.

2) Don’t calculate an exchange rate in advance, rather just work it out in your head right after you get change from someone and then you can figure out later by how much he defrauded you.

3) Try to arrive at the bus station at least 30 seconds before the bus leaves [this was only a 3 hour bus ride that cost about $5, for my major bus rides I was there about an hour early].

4) If you are in a country such as Rwanda and you know no French or Kinyarwanda, try asking around in Swahili. This will get a response maybe 30% of the time.

5) Don’t top up your airtime in advance when the price is set and it’s readily available, but wait until you are potentially almost out—and hence stuck with no way to contact anyone—and the credit is almost completely unavailable, meaning if you are lucky enough to find some you get charged twice as much.

6) Don’t bother to write out important numbers such as the people you are meeting in the places you’re visiting. Wait until you try to recharge your phone’s battery and it goes crazy for no reason when you plug it in, refusing to start at all—again meaning you are stuck with no way to contact anyone, and this time its even worse because you can’t even get the number to call using another phone. Then someone at the table next to you will probably offer you their Blackberry so you can go on facebook and look up all the numbers people sent you in facebook messages.

7) Another strategy in the situation above is to try random things with your phone to get it to work, and if all else fails, take out the battery and let it sit separately from the phone for at least two or three hours. This seems to make everything okay again.

8) If you don’t know why some outlets shut down your phone, just keep trying them until you find one that works.

9) If you realize its prohibited to bring something like plastic bags into a country, that you think would come in handy later, stick them in your back pocket and hope for the best.

10) When you realize that you have forgotten to bring an immunization certificate like yellow fever and you don’t remember which countries require it, you could try asking the bus conductor, but you’ll probably just find out that he doesn’t know. Don’t sweat it, and hope that you can sweet talk your way through the border if the need arises [although, um that won't always work]. It probably won’t.

11) If crossing the border into a potentially sketchy area like the DRC, try looking as far as you can from the border, maybe confer with your friend, and if it looks okay go for it.

12) If you only want breakfast and you don’t want to actually change money somewhere, just wander in the first hotel you find and chances are they charge in dollars.

13) If you’re in a bus, and they are playing really ridiculous music videos from the 80s, such as one demonstrating the dangers of drunk driving—“I was caught, caught, for breaking the law…”, or a fire truck going to put out a woman who is “on fire”, just go with it and enjoy.

14) As long as you don’t take too long at stops, buses don’t usually leave you behind.

15) If you’re on a beach and Arab men want to take a picture with you and a white girl, let them. This applies to any African men or boys as well, unless they are being really annoying.

16) If you’re on a beach and it looks like it is about to begin pouring rain, try to time it so you leave exactly five minutes before the rain starts. A good follow-up strategy is to hang out at a hotel for the rest of the day, playing cards and watching Al Jazeera. Try overpriced tea or if you’re very bold, a piece of “traditional” apple pie for only 9 dollars, and rather strange filling.

17) If there is a volcano that looks suspiciously active near you, try to ignore it.

18) Preaching can be a good way to get by in many countries. I was a visitor, so most of this was not just because I preached, but when I stayed with my friend’s pastor I received dinner, breakfast, lunch, tea, Coke, several bottles of water, a bed for the night, my church clothes ironed and folded, my shoes brushed, a three hour ride from the place upcountry back to the capital, and an Rwandan shirt. They were very generous.

19) Safari njema.

You want me to bring what?

Coming back to America and then returning to Kenya can be a somewhat stressful experience, I have found. For those of you unfamiliar with such an experience, here is a list of the things I have been asked to buy in America and then bring to Kenya with me (usually with no money down and an unspecified repayment in the general future):

- 7 laptops
- 3 digital cameras
- jeans
- shoes
- weights (the little magnetic ones you add to dumbbells)
- water filter part
- Hebrew textbook
- 1000 CDs
- an entire suitcase of textbooks for the bookstore
- credit cards (but I'm not buying these, just bringing them)

If I were to have brought all of those things back with me, if would have been roughly 200% of my total luggage allotment and would have cost around $3000. I am bringing back 3 laptops, 1 digital camera, the water filter part, the Hebrew textbook, and the credit cards. That's a bit more manageable. I must say, my favorite request was the 1000 CDs. It came less than a week before I leave for Nairobi...

Getting Stuck [Mwanza part IV]

On this side it looks fine.

But there was this huge ditch on the other side we didn't see coming up the hill.

We eventually dug under the vehicle, put the jack down below, lifted it up, filled in under the tire with stones, and backed up.

On the road back to Nairobi, we suddenly found ourselves stopped behind a whole line of cars. This is why.


We all tried to avoid getting splashed from the truck, but I got really muddy anyway.

The bus did make it through, but I was quite afraid it wouldn't, and would just fall over!
We finally escaped by driving out on the open field around the water.

Ha. Success. I've tried to do this post about 5 times over the past 10 days, and now it finally worked. Our faster internet finally came through, and it does make a difference. Ok, now the vacation is over. Now time to get back to school updates!