How did we get here?!

Last Monday was Madaraka Day, a national holiday in Kenya to commemorate the attainment 46 years ago of internal self-rule. A friend, Annemieke, and I chose to get out of the city for the day. En route, I drove past Nyayo Stadium where various public ceremonies are held during the year,the celebration of Madaraka being one of them. I passed many buses parked alongside the road with various uniformed military and public service personnel going this way and that. I’m sure they were very orderly in the stadium, but outside was a different matter for some of them at least. A few looked decidedly dishevelled, jackets only partly done up; some were talking on mobile phones; guns were carried very casually. Not exactly a picture of military precision.

Anyway, back to the day out. We started out with the intention of driving from Ngong town to Suswa volcano. Almost as soon as we left Ngong, we hit dirt road and seemed to be in a different country altogether with a vast openness, and sweeping views across the Rift Valley. Looking back, the knuckle of Ngong Hills stood out very clearly. Our guidebook was written 18 years ago. It’s normally pretty accurate, but things do change – particularly the condition of dirt roads. Having navigated our way around some shallow gullies in the road, we came to one that was about 5 feet deep. Whilst we could possibly have got around it, it didn’t bode well for what lay ahead. So, instead we had lunch in the semishade of a whistling thorn tree, enjoying the absolute absence of any manmade sounds, and then turned back. By this time, the sky behind us was black with the threat of an oncoming storm. Having seen the gullies in the road, I didn’t fancy being caught out there in a downpour. We had a choice of 3 routes: Go back the way we’d come; Go another way that I’d done the previous year (and which I’d heard since was washed away in parts); or try something new which would bring us out on the Magadi Road. Being adventurous souls, we opted for the latter.

It was great, taking us a different way, and in parts along rocky roads down into the Valley. After driving for a while though, we realised that we’d completely missed wherever it was that we were meant to go, as we’d gone way further than the guidebook was indicating that we should have - and no tarmac road in sight! At one T-junction, children were clammering for biscuits (we had none) or a ride in the car (they evidently had never been taught not to accept a lift from strangers!). We asked for directions for the road to Magadi , and were pointed off leftwards. This road had some vicious bumps over drainage pipes (an indication of what the rains could do). The occasional habitation brought some comfort, whilst signs of electricity caused great excitement! At one point, we were trying to follow some electricity pylons, the logic being that they probably ran parallel to the road – if they did (other than the one we were on), we didn’t see it! We wound up eventually in something that resembled a mud river bed rather than a road, though were encouraged to see tyre tracks. When the river bed became scrub, the tracks ran out……. At this point, two Maasai very handily came on the scene. We asked for the road to Nairobi, figuring that as that was where we actually wanted to go, it would be more useful – after all, we didn’t want to wind up in Magadi as it’s about 100km from Nairobi! They indicated that they were going to Mai Mahiu so could direct us there. At this point, we were flummoxed. Mai Mahiu is a town in completely the opposition direction to the one we had thought that we were going in. How on earth had we wound up there? We had to laugh, especially as the mountain that we’d commented on as ‘looking like Mount Longonot’ was indeed that very volcano that stands out in the view of the Rift Valley from the escarpment on the Nairobi-Naivasha road. The Maasai guided us very adeptly along barely discernable tracks, knowing which would be the best for the vehicle. How we’d have got home without them , I don’t know. It was certainly quite a trip out. Not sure I could retrace our steps, but I do want to find out where on earth we went wrong!