#backtohomebase

Our final journey home it felt like. We were returning to Nairobi and civilization after 3 weeks working in western Kenya and it wasn't going to be an easy journey. We started at 6am with a piki piki ride to the ferry. I thought I wouldn't make it with all my luggage, but managed to hang on and it was quite the core workout. We made it in time for the ferry and started the journey back to the island, it was a nice morning and an enjoyable ride. The next step in the journey was going to be a dirt road matatu ride. To give you an idea of what a matatu is, picture a 7 seater van with up to 15 people in it. We lasted about 10 minutes with people sitting all over our laps until we just paid the driver an extra 200 shillings to only sit 3 to our row instead of 5. It made the hour and a half long journey more bearable as we bumped along we only had to worry about smashing our heads into the roof and not into the people sitting on our laps. We were dropped off in the a little town and needed to get to a town called Kisii to catch a shuttle to Nairobi. We opted out of another matatu and tried for a driver instead. We found a guy who owned a probox and started working on a price with him. We started at 3000 KSH and ended up at 1500 KSH, which was reasonable. As we walked over to the vehicle we realized he was already filling it up with a load of people. They can fit about 10 to 12 in one of these. He walked over and kicked them all out and we got some bad stares from the to-be passengers... It all felt very colonial. On the ride our driver got stopped by the cops and had to pay 500 KSH for some reason or another and I felt really bad because it meant he wouldn't make any money on our journey. We gave him some more money to cover part of the fine.

The next leg of the journey gets interesting. Kisii is a very busy town and we were dropped in the heat of it. Pushing and shoving we made our way to a shuttle and bought all the remaining seats so that we could leave and not have anyone sitting on our laps. Before we took off Elias spotted some weird looking plant that was being sold, he went to inquire and it turned out to be Khat. He bought some at a mzungu price and brought it back to the van. I had heard about the stuff only through a book I had read about Somali pirates who spent all their time and money chewing Khat when they weren't pirating. I wasn't too sure about this. The ladies behind us were giggling at the sight of us with a bag of khat. We decided that T.I.A. and with instruction from the lady behind us, we went about chewing and swallowing this plant. It was a seriously unpleasant experience. The plant was bitter and it sucked all the moisture out of your mouth until you felt like you might choke on your tongue. Just horrible. We later found out that we did it all wrong chewing the stems and swallowing it all. Anyways, once the stuff kicked in it was like I had 3 cups of coffee and I sat alert in my seat staring at all the people and wild life passing by. We were the comedy show for the whole van as we pointed out gazelles, baboons, mountains and maasai farmers. I would point and shout, "Dude look left man! Look at those gazelles! Holy shit this place is wild", In retrospect it was nowhere near wild or amazing. The sunset was pretty spectacular though.