Niarobi or Bust

For the bargain price of 10 dollars and 11 hours of your time, you can get a bus all the way from Mbale to Nairobi. We boarded at 5 and left on African Standard time at 5:30/5:45. Watch out Kenya, here we come!

You know you meet the funniest people on buses. I tried sooooo hard to keep the seat next to me "saved" but it just didn't work out and a very chatty man finally took the seat. I'm all about meeting new people and learning about other's so it was interesting to hear about the life of this man. Oddly enough, he knew all about Arlington Academy of Hope and even had some family members schooling there. I don't know why it is, but every time you have a conversation with someone on a bus that automatically want to keep in contact with you and give you their phone number, email, whatever. I'll take, but I won't give. No worries, mom. J

Anyway, a woman boarded the bus close to the boarder and had to stand in front because all the seats were taken. Apparently her seat was taken by my neighbor, but she didn't seem to mind. After a bit of standing, she sat down on the armrest of Amy's chair across the row and snuggled right in. I about died. You should have seen Amy's face! That picture would seriously have been worth a thousand words. She was all up in Amy's business, not even caring, like it was no problem, an every day occurance and she wouldn't even think there could be an issue with her sitting half in someone else's chair/face. After much confusion and a few words, Amy communicated how she felt about the woman sitting in her seat. The woman moved to the neighbor's armrests with a laugh. My neighbor surprisingly commented how he thought Amy seemed a bit upset about the incident. I said, "In America, there is something we call 'personal space'". For better or for worse, personal space is something African's don't have.

At the border we were less than politely informed that we didn't have Kenyan visas and we would have to pay 50 dollars to get one. This was great news, as I neither Amy nor I had 50 dollars. We may or may not have fought with the "official government employee" over the fee as experience has taught us some Africans see white skin as dollar signs and try to get money out of you any way they can. We of course assumed this was the case, "official government employee" or no. It never occurred to me we would need a visa to get into Kenya. After much patronizing from our favorite govt employee a few choice words back and forth, and some discussion, Julie bailed us all out of trouble by paying the fees. Lesson learned: everyone takes American dollars and it is always a good idea to have some when you travel. Just in case you get stopped at the Kenyan border and have to produce 50 dollars out of thin air.

Not the best night's sleep of my life. Incredibly bumpy roads, I had to constantly fight with the window to keep it closed and the cold air out, frequent stops, a string of negative latrine experiences, and several bus searches. At one point, probably around 3 in the morning, they stopped the bus on the side of the road, made everyone get off with their bags, lined up according to gender concentration camp style, searched the bus, then searched us and our bags with metal detectors, made us show our passports, then shoved us all back on the bus. I would not have been surprised if they kept our bags and left us on the roadside. I half expected it by the way they were looking us up and down.

But hey – I now have a Kenyan visa and stamp in my passport and a crazy story to tell the kids someday. I think I got my 10 dollars worth!