KEK

This blog is about Kenyans Exploring Kenya, a trip I decided to join. In my case it would be IEK, pronounced “EEK,” or Indian Exploring Kenya. The main reason for going on this trip was for the experience. It turned out not to be fun, just as I suspected.

At the outset, “African time” struck our departure which actually turned out to be in my favor. Despite having gone to sleep early on Thursday night, I woke up at 6:35 am. Nancy had said that the plan for latest departure would be 6:30 am. No one woke me up. Well, lucky for me “TIA.” We actually did not leave until 8:30 am. I took the back seat with the hope that it would be all to myself. I was right. All the women stayed up front. Their aversion to the bumpy rear was justified. There were numerous occasions when I caught significant air on a bump and crashed down so hard on the seat that I feared further damage to my back. Jeez.

We drove north passed Kisumu. We stopped at Raila Odinga’s house in Bondo. He was not there. His caretakers wouldn’t let us in.

We then drove to his childhood home where his father is buried. There is a museum on the site. It was interesting. I discovered that Old Man Odinga was the first Vice President of Kenya, then jailed by Kenyatta and replaced by Moi. He was also an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1992. Perhaps, it’s a good thing he didn’t succeed – he died two years later. Or perhaps that’s why he died.

After visiting that site, we drove to Sio Port. It was a harrowing journey. The rain up here was much worse than in the South. The roads were a mess – well, more so than normal, if you can imagine. The mud was so thick and slippery that the whole Big Fish, a vehicle that can comfortably seat 35 people without luggage, would fish tail. Perhaps, the bus was trying to live up to its name. Several times the driver requested that the bus be emptied of half the occupants so that he could drive with a lighter load. The rain had cut so many gouges in the road that I was standing during much of this part of the journey. We would hit bumps so hard that my knees served as shock absorbers for my careening body.

When we finally arrived at Sio Port we ate at a Hotel. I did eat some cereal in the morning before we left, but we ate nothing else until passed 10 pm that night. Then we partied until about 2 am. I danced and got into the music. At one point, the beat lent itself to some Bangra style jumping up and down. In that moment, I was dancing with one of the waitresses who was quite a good dancer. When I had transitioned back to the more subdued gyration, the two of us got a lot of congratulatory whoops, claps, and amused laughter. It was a nice time.

After all that dancing, I had to shower. It was being used in an olfactorally offensive way, while I was cleaning myself off. That was a new experience…

We slept in the restaurant. They moved all the furniture and cleaned the floor of all the mud tracked in. We laid the mattresses down and just slept side, by side, by side.

In the morning, we woke up at 6 am so that the restaurant could prepare to be opened for business. We did very little. The plan was to go to Port Victoria and possibly take a boat to Uganda. Unfortunately, the roads were so bad that the driver decided against that. Consequently, we drove directly to Busia, the Ugandan border town.

Busia was like Sirari (the border town near here between Kenya and Tanzania) except bigger. Lots of trucks going back and forth. We were allowed to cross illegally. Most everybody did some shopping. All the transactions were in Kenyan Shillings and in English for the most part. I took a picture in front of the Ugandan Immigration sign to prove that I can add another country to the list of places I have visited.

Then we drove to Kisumu. The plan was to camp on the beach but that fell through. We did stop by the campsite and hang out. But then we decided to stay at some sort of church institution. They had their own mattresses and a place indoors to stash us. That was nice. It rained so much more that night and I’m very glad that we did not have to camp. The noise on the metal roofs was deafening.

We ate. I asked a lot of different people about how many KEK’s they’ve been on and which was their favorite and which was their worst. It seems that the overall consensus was that this KEK was the worst one. Lucky me.

That evening, I hung out with the women mostly. One of the interesting things about the trip was the loss of the work-related hierarchy. Although it was Marico and Jackson (management) who got rooms at the hotel, overall the relationships between all the Kenyans reverted to a more egalitarian basis. With hat phenomenon was also the assumption of the traditional gender roles – the women cooked and washed the dishes, the men just sat around and ate. Similarly, I dropped the role of medical expert and assumed a posture of meek Mizungu accompanying the Kenyans, completely out of his element. I deferred to everybody else regarding all the decisions and goings on. At one point, I ate a banana on the bus. I didn’t know what to do with the peel, for there were no obvious trash receptacles. Like I said, TIA. I had asked Joseph and after some consideration, he just threw his out the window. I felt uncomfortable with this littering. Eventually, I spotted something that potentially could have been a trash can. As I got up to throw the peel away, Joseph grabbed it from me and tossed it out the window. He told me, “You shouldn’t be so bothered by such a small thing.” Hmmm.

Then that evening, I ate beans and rice in advance of the final preparation of our own food. I liked it, I was hungry, and it was available. However, when the main meal was prepared, I declined a plate citing that I was already full. All the women kind of clucked around me like mother hens and Nancy said, “This kid has to eat something or he’ll be hungry in the morning.” From Medical Director to “this kid” – a funny change in role.

Our last day saw us in the Kenyan National Museum – Kisumu branch. It was small. There were some archaeological artifacts showing some of the old traditional tribal customs and wares. The Luo had and still have a culture of marijuana consumption and they had special pipes for that that are still used. Like the Ibo from Achebe’s book, traditional, communal beer consumption was also practiced. They had a multi-mouthed vessel for that purpose. They also had this exhibit called the Ber Gi Dala – Good [times] in the Home. The staff seemed pretty enthusiastic about showing me the homes of the multiple wives, the role of the different buildings, etc. They kept repeating that this was the traditional Luo homestead. I didn’t understand why they seemed to perceive it as a fact of the past. What I saw is exactly what I see around here. The structures of the animal coop, the granary, the Tukul – all of them are exactly how things are in Matoso. Weird.

It rained like crazy again that night. I escaped the vehicle as quickly as I could. The driver had to hurry to catch me to bid me good bye. Man, what a trip.