Obstacle Course
Obstacle Course
Posted on: Saturday, April 20th, 2013 at 8:05pm
Yahoo! I actually made it to another post where I’m still riding! Based on my last few failed attempts it seems that I’ve hit the road and I’m committing to it. The road – ugh, Welcome to Uganda, Dave. Getting here was one thing, and then it quickly went down hill fast. On the road. Not the grade. I should find new euphemisms.
When I last wrote I had just left Nairobi, perhaps 2 days in where I was scrambling to get the muscles in my body conditioned before any surprise hills came. Surprise! They came. And they came in hard and fast. 25km of steep grades leaving the days total of 1600 some odd metres ascended sapped my energy, brought frustration as I was turned down for my very first time ever at a church to spend the night. Ok, it was just some groundskeepers in charge of handing out water for the Red Cross who said no, and couldn’t quite grasp that I wanted to have them fetch the Priest’s number so I could give him a call to get authorization. Luckily I had been spotted by many people in the town and word was circulating that someone was roaming around looking for something. A friendly fellow named Richard took me over to the school where he taught at and I was able to settle off. In the morning, 300 children swarmed around my bicycle waiting on their very last day of school of the term asking every question under the sun. I gave a few candies to the ones who asked the good questions, and we managed to grab a bunch of photos too. It’s all downhill the Principal said to me as I rode away to make my way to Kisumu.
It’s all downhill for he first 40km, and it’s also all mud. Major diversions in place for a new road to be built made it a slip and slide as I had to shift from side to side on the road and hold on so that I wouldn’t topple over. Covered in mud, both bicycle and myself I seem to have had every truck driver who passed me stick his thumb out the window and give a congratulatory toot on the horn. Then came the climbs again, what the? Worth it to see the Kenyan Highlands where it seems all the Tea is coming from. I saw where the Coffee comes from a few months back, and the tea fields are something that legends are made out of. After a 30km descent at 60km an hour I was at the lowest elevation I’d been since leaving – the temperature rose because of this and I slowly pedaled forward, stopping along the way at a few churches to sleep. The one thing that stands out was the breakfast I was invited to, where I was offered fertilized chicken eggs for breakfast. Hey – I eat Chicken, I eat Eggs, why not eat halfway? Quite Salty but very tasty none the less. Good protein too apparently!
I arrived in Kisumu, which is situated on the edge of Lake Victoria, meeting some people I had been in contact with for a few weeks though a hospitality network, taking advantage of some free Wi-Fi, before being escorted by bicycle taxi to the “Ghetto’ as it was affectionately called. The Kisumu Slums. I’ve been in worse locations before, these places had brick walls, electricity and power, compared to some of the places I’ve stayed in and rode past in Africa, so I shrugged off my Couchsurfing host’s comments and made myself at home for a few days, hanging out, getting some good solid rest, meeting people involved in a few Bicycle NGO’s, and a surprise visit to the hospital. I’ll get to that in a few weeks when it’s all over – but I’m now being forced not to drink any beer for the next five or six weeks, while at the same time going in for tests and samples once a week. Everything will be ok – as long as I watch my stress levels. In fact, friends told me that I should stop and rest in nearby Jinja, Uganda for a few weeks, but I’d only go crazy sitting idle, and going back to my reasoning of never being sick while riding, this seemed like a good way to shake my toxins out. It’s working.
Sega, no, not the video game company, but a small township in the western edge of Kenya not far from the border is where I ended up one night saying hello to a friend Julia, and her roommate Leo, whom I met both on the other side of the country in Mombasa. They live at a Catholic Parrish providing healthcare services for people in the community (top problem – Malaria) and provided a bed for me and lots of food. They even helped me out by buying two of the books I’ve been carrying, considerably lightening my load and making bags easier to shut. I’ve gotta get some stitching done again on a pannier as after overfilling it, I ripped it wide open. It’s ok right now, but the more I delay, the worse it will get. Stop procrastinating Dave!
The same went for my power generation kit. I’ve been using my new phone pretty regularly, and it slurps on battery life. I’ve also been listening to music again, as I managed to find a drill press in Kisumu to make my new speaker mounts, as my old ones were too small. Hello Stereo, and hello weird looks from people as I whiz past them playing quirky music. At the end of the day though, my batteries are dying, not charging. I took everything apart again, and found that the connectors going to the hub needed to be reinserted. Will monitor from now on, but I really want to have some good days where there is nothing to be bothersome, and that everything acts optimal. The riding itself is great, and my body is in fine form, the odd ache in the back, pain signal In my leg or knee, and yeah, the ass hurts, but those are to be expected. I’m even getting reasonable sleep. So it is, the routine again. Although I’m not eating cookies before bed anymore – sorry, have to add you to the list of things I can never eat again. African Cookies. I hope the next one is Nutella, as I heard a rumor that in Kampala, Uganda’s capital that it is the same cost as it would be in Germany, and the Germans love that stuff. I don’t know what I am, but I’m all over it as well, memories of it being frozen in 2010 in Québec city and being able to run a spoon across the had brown goodness and place a few shavings into my mouth. When it’s warm I just end up eating the whole damn jar in one sitting, so it would be nice for some cool weather.
It’s not going to happen though, as it’s unreasonably hot in the day, and mostly cool at night, no matter which side of the equator I’m on. I crossed it for the first (of many times coming soon), eventually meeting someone later on that day who told me that the world apparently moves 7 different ways instead of the two ways we’ve all been led to believe. He’s fighting for a world clock in that area to be used for research around the world. I’d always heard that things are lighter at the equator than they are at the poles, but I wasn’t going to test, I did see that Sunrise was at 6:32am, and Sunset was at 6:46pm – so it’s obvious things have gone a bit awry, or we’re not so round after all.
Crossing the border was an easy affair, as I changed all my Kenyan Shillings into the new Ugandan Shillings – which have an awful lot of 0’s attached to the end of them. Any change I had left turned into banana’s hanging off my bag, and a big Pineapple that I salivated about for the next 5 hours after crossing the border, being told by Kenyan Authorities I needed to fly back to Canada if I ever wanted to return, and with a smile by a female Ugandan border officer who said I was welcome for 90 days and could even work if I wanted to tell them. As I waited I watched the debacle of what’s been happening US Stateside in the east coast. It was a terrible thing to occur, but at the same time I’ll leave all my comments to myself other than “Whatever happened to Innocent until Proven Guilty?”. I’m not sure if it was related today, but I received a lot of yelling, and some pretty negative remarks from people who assumed that I was from my southern Neighbor as opposed to Canada. Ugh – I hope people can keep their cool.
I had an experience that has been on my mind sometime in the middle of nowhere in Kenya. I entered a Petrol station to buy a cold drink. When I paid, the female attendant looked at me and said – I have met you before! I get this all the time, so I shrugged it off and said that no, this was my first time in the area. She then proceeded to tell me when I arrived in the mid morning, bought a bag of popcorn, and a 500mL Coca Cola, paid with a 200 shilling note, and sat outside by myself before leaving. This is where it gets strange. She told me she had met me late November, 700km away. It finally clicked with me that I had been in a similar situation, and was amazed that she could remember the exact transaction. It turns out she travels around helping people out at the chain of petrol stations who are on leave which is how she ended up in the middle of nowhere. I can only wish I had the same memory that some people I have met on this trip have.
Uganda seems to be ok so far! Crappy roads, but awfully nice people who insist I come and stay with them, even if they are one room shacks with 5 people living inside. Politely I decline and give them my phone number and contact information in hopes we’ll see again and move forward. Rolling hills but nothing steep to strain myself over which is a huge plus as I pedal off the effects of high powered medication, learning a new unit of measure, p/H (Pukes per hour). Yup, it’s happening multiple times, and I’ve now just given up on stopping entirely and letting it go while riding, using a bit of water to rinse my mouth when finished and slamming a piece of ginger in my mouth to suck on afterwards. Should be all over soon. Many people seem to be quite confused that I’m going up this way towards South Sudan, as the typical route is from Nairobi straight to Kampala, but I figured since I’ve wanted to get myself back into riding, exploring, and trying new things again, I figured a 900km detour would be worth while. Besides, what’s the rush?
A blessing in disguise came today, as I declined the 3 offers to stay in some ones house for the night, looking for some peace and quiet. I was riding along for 45 minutes in drizzling rain, spying churches (last resort, knowing that tomorrow being Sunday brings people in the morning), rest areas (hard to come by, but I found a chicken coop the night before that worked well to sleep in), and finally Schools, which always seem to have a stash of rain water and a roof to protect from the nightly downpours. It turns out I met a few teachers as I pulled in who were living on the grounds, who said I could pitch my tent under the aluminum roof, but I could also go inside if I wanted to. Right when they said this the clouds opened up and downed more rain than I have seen in weeks in one spurt, flooding the area. I made it within 45 seconds, and smiled as I wheeled my bicycle into the very modern school classroom. It even had two power plugs being unused! The power was out, but it eventually turned back on, allowing my components to start charging since they have been neglected do to the loose wires I mentioned above. So that’s that, nothing special, business as usual.Apparently the roads get better in a few hundred kilometres, whatever.
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