My blog - October 2004
O Canada!
October 29th 2004, 7:49am
To everyone waiting with baited breath for my Baltics photos and Africa photos to appear on this website: Sorry, but I haven't had time. I've been busy floating around on cloud nine since I got back, due to something to do with Canada. And doing some work. But I will put the photos up at some point in the not too distant future.
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It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times
October 18th 2004, 9:53am
Bujagali Falls, the world's largest "commercial" rapids (whatever that means). Grade Five rapids, officially described as "Extremely difficult, long and violent rapids, steep gradients, big drops, pressure areas". Lee Musson does stuff like this. I don't. And I'm signed up for half a day of rafting on it.
But come the morning when I arrive at the Nile River Explorers hostel, I'm told that the rest of the group has phoned in to say they're ill, so it has been cancelled. I sit back and relax for the day, glad that I won't have to go through with it after all. And then they say there's room on the following day's rafting, and like a fool I sign up. For a full day this time.
Where we start, the water is quite calm and the guys leading the rafting seem to know what they're doing. They teach us how to paddle, back paddle, get out of the boat and back in again, how to right a capsized raft, how to "hold on and get down", and the difference between a long and a short swim. I'm not a great swimmer, but at least I have a life jacket.
The first couple of rapids are pretty tame and I'm thinking this stuff is easy. And then we come to the first grade five. Our raft captain (or leader, or whatever the correct title is!) explains what line we're going to take, and which way to head if we become long swimmers, and then we head into the rapids. A few seconds and some furious paddling later, we're out the other side and I'm wondering what all the fuss is about.
We're then on to Total Gunga, another grade five. The leader explains what we're doing, and again we're over the edge and into the rapids. It looks like we're going over, but then we're flat again, and then there's suddenly a huge wave right in front of us and I take a deep breath as the raft turns over. I manager to keep hold of the rope round the edge and I'm dragged along for about ten seconds before I can get some air again. I probably could have breathed earlier, but my contact lenses get messed up and when I surface I can't see where the waves are and end up swallowing quite a bit of the Nile. I finally manage to get back into the raft once it's on calm water again.
We're through another couple of small rapids before we're onto Silverback - a series of four or five large waves, any one of which could flip us. We manage to turn over on the first wave, and I'm underwater again. After a few seconds the water seems to be getting calmer and I try to breathe but the boat is off again and it's about fifteen seconds in total before I catch my first proper breath. Darn contact lenses! (At least now I have daily disposables I don't have to worry about losing the things. Or cleaning them. Which is great in Africa.)
We then had a long calm stretch, during which we had some fruit and biscuits for lunch and could go for a swim, before it was back to the rapids. I chose to switch to the oar boat as I couldn't face drowning again! The oar boat is just another raft, but someone who knows what they're doing uses oars instead of paddles and manages to keep the thing the right way up - so that they're able to pick up any long swimmers if they need to.
I probably didn't need to switch as the second half seemed a lot tamer - but at least I could relax and look around at the rapids as we smashed through them instead of just concentrating on when to breathe. I wished I had a waterproof camera with me, because I could have got some awesome shots.
We all got off the river before the final set of rapids, known as The Bad Place - which is about a hundred and eighty metres of grade five rapids. Several of the kayakers went all the way through, before the rafters decided to try, although only from half way, and they hugged the edge of the river to make it easier. Still, only three or four of the team volunteered to try it. I stayed safely on the bank with my camera.
Overall, I would say it was a once in a lifetime experience. At least, I hope it was! I'm very glad I did it, as it was one of the most fun things I've done for a long time. However, it was also one of the worst things at the same time, and so I don't think I'll be doing it again. At least not until I'm a better swimmer.
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Comment posted by Maret at 9:53am on October 18th 2004
YOU ARE CRAZY!!!!!!
You would never catch ME doing that!!!!!!
Comment posted by Nomi at 9:53am on October 18th 2004
He might be crazy, but I'M CRAZIER!!!! I would have gone on the last rapids! And hopefully someday I can....
Mhuahahahahaaaaa!!!!
Comment posted by knobby at 9:53am on October 18th 2004
ah, that last rapid was a piece of p***!!! I laugh in the face of such rapids.
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The Lunatic Line
October 13th 2004, 11:37am
Travelling by train in Kenya is something well worth experiencing. The journey starts with buying your ticket. First you make a reservation at the enquiries desk. You then take your reservation to the tickets window, where you pay and receive a preprinted cardboard ticket, a receipt and a dinner voucher (if requested). You then return half an hour before the train leaves to collect your boarding card. The Kenyan's love their bureaucracy!
Nairobi Railway Station looks like something from the early twentieth century - probably because it is, and it appears not much has changed since it was built. From the painted wooden signs, the carved seating arrangements board to the station master's office complete with old black rotary phone, it is like stepping back in time.
On board the first class carriage it is nice, but not luxurious. Unless of course you compare it to third class - which is an open carriage with benches, and shutters on the windows instead of glass. In the rather cramped first class compartment there is a leather seat for three (although when converted to beds there's only room for two), a wardrobe, a sink and something which looks like a shaving cupboard, but turns out to be drinking water. I press the button, expecting it to be dry, but it actually works! (In Pole to Pole, Michael Palin seemed surprised by the lack of water in his taps. He obviously hadn't spent much time in Africa). I don't trust the water to be clean though and stick to bottled water.
When the train leaves it is nearly seven in the evening, and it's getting quite dark, although still light enough to see Nyayo Stadium, just down from where I used to live, as we pass it. A kilometre or two further on it is dark as we enter Kibera, Africa's first or second largest slum (depending on who you talk to). Despite Bill Bryson's dire warnings about not coming out alive, I'm quite happy going to Kibera during the day. You wouldn't catch me there at night though. So it was extremely interesting to pass through it in the safety of a train.
There are miles of tin shacks built right up to the edge of the line, many of them shops or restaurants, some lit by electric light, some by paraffin lanterns. The whole place is a hive of activity, and you can catch glimpses of people's lives through wire windows or gauze curtain doors. For several hours it is difficult to persuade myself to go to bed, as even after leaving Kibera I sit there with the lights off, watching the numerous mysterious lights on unknown hillsides, and try to image what is happening around each light.
After a while two ticket inspectors come along (and probably wonder why I'm sitting in the dark) and check my ticket. They ask me where I'm going and welcome me on board in the kind of friendly way you come to expect in Africa. Half an hour or so after that a steward arrives and tells me that he will cook chicken and rice for me, and will call me when it is ready, which turns out to be about half an hour later.
There are only two of us eating at the table with the white starched tablecloth - the rest of the buffet car is filled with people drinking the night away. I enjoy the three course meal of soup, followed by chicken and rice, finished up with a slice of pineapple. I then go to find the choo (toilet), which is just a hole in the floor. There are no lights in the room, so it is quite a challenge using the toilet on a moving train!
I eventually go to sleep, which is more of a series of dozes as each time the train stops, the clanking of the couplings and thudding of the brakes wakes me up. Thankfully the swaying of the train and the rhythmic clickety clack of the wheels sends me off quickly once the train is moving again.
I wake properly shortly before six while there are still a couple of hours left of the journey, in the hope that I might get some good photos as the sun rises. I'm not disappointed. There are actually two sunrises - I'm not totally sure why. Perhaps the first was as the sun rises above the distant horizon and lights up the sky, the second as it appears over the hills a while later. There was a thin mist hanging over the landscape which gave an extra dimension to the photos. I basically spent the last two hours of the journey standing at the window with my camera going "Wow - God, you are awesome".
It was interesting to see the kids walking across the fields on their way to school - as the fields were being ploughed by teams of oxen. At several places I saw groups of women collecting water at a pump, and I saw lots of mud houses - something I'd managed to not see during the year I lived here, although I'm not sure how.
We stopped at loads of stations at places I'd never heard of and couldn't find on my map. The stations signs always had the altitude on them, often to a rather absurd accuracy of nearest centimetre.
(No photos today, as I'm still in Uganda, staying at a backpackers place near the source of the Nile, and don't have any way of getting the photos out of my camera an onto the computer. I have some more writing about the matatu journey from Kisumu to Jinja, but that can wait for another day.)
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Comment posted by Maret at 11:37am on October 13th 2004
What a fantastic journey and experience!!!!
I love the account,well written-I felt I was there.
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Lake Magadi
October 10th 2004, 12:25pm
On Friday Andrew and I went down to Lake Magadi for the day. Andrew had a meeting with someone from the Soda company, so I went along for the ride, and to get some photos.
it was very hot and dry at Magadi, and very strange. It's a soda lake with huge salt flats around it. Large amounts of the lake have a thin crust over the top which makes it look like land, hence the sign which warns against walking on the lake surface. There are some places where you can drive across the lake. There are pools of pink and green water surrounded by expanses of white salt. There's also an overpowering smell of eggs at one place, near the soda factory. (That's soda used in making glass, not fizzy drinks).
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Comment posted by Rob Grace at 12:25pm on October 10th 2004
Hey James,
I've been following the African adventure from this end - must admit I'm very jealous! I live and work in Asheville, NC, USA, these days, as a systems analyst - what kind of work are you doing in Africa, or is it more of a vacation for you? Keep up the interesting blog - any chance of making the photos bigger, or linking to larger images elsewhere?
RG
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Just Working
October 7th 2004, 8:36am
Yesterday I was in the office working all day, so I didn't get a chance to take any more photos, so I'm posting a picture of Nairobi that I took from the top of the KICC.
I've not really got anything else to say. Except that I'm going to Lake Magadi tomorrow, so hopefully that'll produce a good collection of photos to add at the weekend.
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Jambo, How Are You?
October 5th 2004, 10:15am
This morning I took a matatu into town, where I was planning to go up the Kenyatta International Conference Centre to take photos from the twenty-eighth floor, but when I got there the lift was broken, so I went down to the Railway Museum which is reasonably close. Before I went to the museum I went into the station and found out prices for trains to Kisumu, as I think I'll go to Uganda via that town.
The Railway Museum is quite small, but they have about ten or so steam engines in the yard. I was looking into the cabs, wondering if I could get away with climbing inside, when the woman from the office came out and told me I could. In a kind of tone of voice which implied I must climb on them. And then she waited to make sure I did. Which is a change from most museums back home.
After I'd spent a good while at the museum I went back to the KICC and found that they'd got one of the four lifts working, so I was able to go up to the top and take photos. The lift was interesting; when it stopped at a floor it would stop, jerk three times, and then open the doors while still a foot too low, and slowing rise up to the right(ish) level. And I don't even like lifts when they work properly.
The view from the top is amazing, but I'm not going to post one of those pictures here because I'm going to wait until I've put the panoramas together - which show the whole of Nairobi, and the surrounding grasslands, and you can even see Mount Kenya if you look very carefully. So I've give you a photo of matatus in a jam on Haile Selassie Avenue instead, which I took from the bridge above it.
The most amazing thing about this morning was that, even though I spent over three hours wandering around the centre of Nairobi with my camera, there was only one person who tried to hassle me, while when I lived here I hated coming into Nairobi because there was always a horde of street children trying to sell me safaris, or a good time, or just trying to scam me out of my money.
The guy today came up to me and said 'Jambo, how are you?' and I replied 'fiti' which is Sheng (the local slang language) for 'fine', at which point he said 'Oh' and walked off looking disappointed as he realised he wouldn't be able to scam me.
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Comment posted by Nathan at 10:15am on October 5th 2004
Looking forward to seeing your photos when you get back. Did you get any of the steam engines?
P.S. I actually got something up on my domain at last, www.nathanhawkins.com - see what you think.
Nath
Comment posted by James Ots at 10:15am on October 5th 2004
Yes, I got about fifty or so of the trains. Over two hundred and fifty photos so far, although I expect to speed up once I start really travelling.
And your website's looking very good.
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Childish Fun
October 4th 2004, 8:02am
On Saturday Andrew, David and myself went boating on the lake in Uhuru Park. The picture you see isn't from inside a cave - it's taken through one of the the holes in the boat. ("This is a very good boat" is what the woman said when she gave it to us.) You had to be careful not to have too many people at the front of the boat otherwise it would start taking on water. When I was here before then I would always rush through the park to avoid getting mugged, but being in a group meant we were able to relax and sit around doing nothing much except chatting.
In the evening we went to the Twentieth Century cinema and watched Dodgeball. Because the cinema didn't have a poster for the film, no-one else had bought tickets for it when we got there, and when they played the national anthem at the start we sang over it, which is of course illegal and very immature, but immensely fun when you have the cinema to yourself! The film was very funny and well worth seeing if you want some mindless entertainment.
I've now eaten mandazi, Java House burritos, chevda, ugali and nyama choma, and drunk Stoney, chai and fresh mango juice. I still need to get my hands on some chapatis, bhajia, kebab, sukuma wiki and tusker to make the culinary experience complete.
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Fungua Mlango
October 1st 2004, 7:20am
Yes! I'm back in Kenya. That's a picture of Mbagathi Road, which I travelled down this morning in order to get to the BTL centre, where I used to work but don't any more so I'm now allowed to mention them on the website.
It's really good to be back here. Hardly anything has changed. They haven't even finished putting the street lights up on Mombasa Road. While I was away from Kenya it almost felt like this place doesn't really exist. Sure, I have photos of it, but it felt a bit like it never really happened. But now I'm back here, and it feels like I've never been away.
So perhaps Kenya didn't exist while I was away, which is why nothing has changed. It's probably a bit like Narnia, with time standing still. Except then England would be Narnia and Kenya would be England. Or something.
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Comment posted by Michael Ots at 7:49am on October 29th 2004
Hmm... I wonder what it is about Canada!
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