Transportation Adventures

Written Saturday, December 16th, 2007

It started off as a simple plan – catch a ride from Yatta to Ndalani. We discovered that our ride was to be the pickup truck carrying us plus 23 other girls riding in the back. I had a feeling from the beginning that we were pushing our luck to arrive without incident. The truck had already made two problem-free trips that day carrying just as many people. It kind of felt like we were due for a predicament.

Sure enough a predicament came. We were five minutes down the road when we realized we had a flat. We pulled over and everyone climbed out, including the 23 girls. It was decided that Lindsey and I would take matatu to Ndalani. Zachariah, our driver, flagged a bus and we got on board to a chorus of passengers calling to us, “Mzungu, mzungu”. In Sophia we had to transfer to another matatu. This time it was one of those pickup trucks that had been converted into a bus by covering over the bed. Two benches sat along the length. Ever so gradually the matatu became fuller and fuller. First more people were squeezed onto each bench. Then people climbed in and stood in the tiny aisle. By the time we had left there were seven people on each bench, another seven crammed into the aisle and then another three people hanging off the back! 24 people in all plus driver and front seat passengers! The people in the aisle looked the most uncomfortable and the most comical. The roof was too low to fully stand up, so they were hutched over, all facing the same direction and fit together like some strange human jigsaw puzzle. They reminded us of a line of elephants because each one had one arm hanging down and another arm draped over the back of the person in front of them like an elephant’s truck. Very, very amusing. I could not believe how many people fit in there. They just kept packing them in. If there was ever a competition between how many Canadians could fit in a phone booth versus how many Kenyans could, the Kenyans would win – hands down!

It was a long and awkward trip down that bumpy, winding road. I couldn’t feel my legs by the end, but at least we had made it. The moral to the story is always expect an adventure when traveling in Africa.