Fish and Chips: Kenya Memories

Before our upcoming trip to Kenya, I'm collecting together here some of my favourite memories from my last trip out there.

Here's the first few that I posted: Kenya: A Prologue

Now for a few more:

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Birthday Boozing

The evening was rather a wild one. It started with several gin and tonics (very colonial!) and then moved on to the beer. We had a BBQ outside. They had half filled brown paper bags with earth and stuck candles in them and scattered them over the front lawn. They looked amazing. As it was Pete’s birthday the previous day, Njorogi had made him a cake and we had made him a card.

After the meal, for some reason, I was really tired and had to be nudged on more than one occasion. However, once I got my second wind the evening livened up a bit. PK announced that he’d give £10 (~1000/-) to anyone who could drink one camera-film canister full of beer every minute for an hour. Gillian and I took up the challenge. It only amounts to about 4 pints but it’s like drinking through a straw - it gets you really pissed - and besides, we’d already been drinking all evening.

Gillian managed about 40 minutes before being sick, pissing herself, and passing out. I romped home victorious despite Johnny and PK spiking my beer with vodka for about 15 minutes before I noticed. After that I was incredibly pissed and was moshing to Outkast on the radio.

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The first of many bouts of diaorieah during a capming weekend at Lake Nakuru:

It had rained hard during the afternoon so those of us who were planning on sleeping under the stars had to re-think. The choice ended up being in the bar (still full of drunk squaddies and twats) or in the pickup of this very drunk white Kenyan girl

In the end we slept out under the stars on top of waterproofs, plastic bags, and towels, around a campfire. A campfire always seems to inspire the silliest in people and, indeed, Monty Python was being quoted into the early hours.

The next morning I woke up feeling really sick and it was not long before I was sick. Then I farted. Only it wasn't a fart...

It was running down my legs and even started coming out of the bottom of my trousers before I reached the long drop. A shower was soon sought and since nobody hads any pills, regular trips to the long-drop ensued for the rest of the day.

Johnny undercooking the sausages: that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Whether it was uncooked sausages or just a bug, I don’t know, but it sure was a pain in the arse and pretty fucking embarassing too; I'm sure people saw evidence of it as I turned tail and fled towards the long-drop.

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The first staff meeting of the year (only 3 weeks into term!)
I had a shocker of a night. I took my temperature at about midnight. It was 39.

In the morning I was feeling a bit better and after umming and ahhing for a while I decided I was well enough to go to school. Needless to say, we were the first teachers in. The next arrived at 8:20 and most were there by 9. We were told that there would be no teaching but that at 2pm there would be a staff meeting. We are currently in the staff meeting as I write: two people have already left; over the last hour several people have been asleep; and Doug is playing rugby with one of the other teachers in the middle of the staff room.

I’m not quite sure if the meeting is over now or not, but I guess it is as the headmaster has just walked out! Madness!

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Here's the entry I wrote immediately after our first weekend in Nakuru:

My dear God - WHAT A WEEKEND.

Fuck me, so much amazing shit and some seriously weird shit has been happening:

Haggelling, people not turning up, prostitutes, chessboards, more prostitues, cool and cheap guest houses, no matatus, hitchiking the whole way, amazing food and a bunch of tossers at the Gilgil Club, panckakes, football with Kahuho Africans, our running off with the Kahuho keys, fucking stunning views, the first letter in Box 219, weird jockey/pimp dude, and fuck loads more.

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Here's the full version, I penned later:

So this last weekend was just totally mad.

We met Johnny in Gilgil on Friday afternoon (Doug scived off teaching agriculture so we could leave school early). We hitched with him to Kahuho and none of the others turned up - all the blokes were supposed to. We played football with some of the locals - great laugh, very knackering. We just spent the rest of the evening chilling.

We left for Nakuru at about 11:30 on Saturday without the others. We hitched all the way, via Gilgil, and from Gilgil to Nakuru I was sat on a bed/matress in the back of a pick-up. The views on the way were totally out of this world.

My view from the back of the pick-up

Here's hoping our luck's slightly better

I was surprised at how big the suburbs of Nakuru are. We were dropped outside the post office so we spent the next three hours or so haggelling with the street sellers. It was such a laugh beating their prices down and they were really funny, a lot of them. I got a really cool soap-stone chess set for 500/-. I did really well - quite convincingly the best haggeller of the three of us. The negotiations for the chess board probably last over an hour. He started at 2,700/- and I knocked the final 50/- off by giving the guy a music lesson and a cigarette. I also bought a pipe for 65/- and he threw in a little elephant cos he claimed to have no change for 70/-. I also swapped Doug's lighter for a wodden necklace, hehehe.

From the street sellers we moved on to find somewhere to stay for the night.

Amigo's Guest House

Amigo's from the inside.

We got a twin room for 250/- between the three of us and Doug slept on the floor. The guy there set us up with a trip to Menegai Crater which we got down from 500/- to 300/- each. He then got some womane woman, who may have been his wife, to take us to get a haircut and get some films processed. The hiarcut was a fun experience, although it was fucking bad to see the street kids sniffing glue in the alley outside.

General wanderage followed the haircut and preceeded a return to the hotel and then super at "Tipsy Restaurant" (not lisenced). Spent about 300/-, but it was damn good.

The Lonley Planet said that "The Wayside Bar" played live Kikuyu music. The music was not live and the place was not very exciting so we moved on. We went to "Club Coco Savana", whcih cost us 100/- to get in. Then the night got very sureal...

To start with we were acosted by two pretty drunk gay guys. We couldn't decide if they were trying to nick out wallets or feel our legs.

We were approched by relatively few women. We reckoned that all of them were probably prostitutes, since most of them smoked, as is apparently the way.

A while later this small white guy walked over with three black guys. We spoke to him quite a lot over the course of the evening. He said he was a horse jockey spending half his time over here and half in Sweden.

Initially, I liked him a lot. It was nont until much later in the evening that I came to the conclusion he was a pimp. Initially he just chatted with us and only talked about the ladies when we asked.

As the evening progressed, however, they became more and more draped over us and also Stu, the jockey, started talking more and more about the girls and saying how acceptable it would be to go with them or even just spend some time with them and he was saying how it would be no more risky than going with one in London or Edinburgh and all you would have to do is wear a condom. He also said that it's only 1000/-; nothing compared to London prices, he said.

He was basically a pimp hard at work (so I reckon). He disguised it very well, though. For instance he tried to introduce Johnny to this Indian bloke who is their pimp, but they "couldn't find him".

The rest of the weekend was less fucked up, but just as fucking brilliant. Johnny got many tens of mozzie bites, which can't have been so much fun.

The guy who was supposed to be taking us to Menengai Crater was 20 minutes late and we were more than a little convinced, that he'd done a bunk with our money.

It was amazing, totally huge, breathtaking, and awesome, even though Doug was puking up large chunks of chocolate doughnut.

The view from Menengai, without Doug blowing chunks in the foreground