Week 15 - Getting a sense of perspective.

This week started I in Nairobi where I picked up my Australian passport which (thanks to the efforts of Megan) had just be returned from Australia with an Ethiopian visa added. For some reason only known to the Ethiopian authorities if you wish to enter the country from the south by land, you can only do it with a visa issued in your home country, hence the reason my passport had to be sent back to Australia (with courier fees it made for a very expensive visa). The rule seems even stranger since they don't apply it if you come from the north where it is easily available in the neighboring countries, or if you fly in by air you simply get it on arrival.

Nairobi proved an unexpectedly pleasant city. My preconceptions had been set by my guide book which said it was known as " Nai-robbery" but I saw no sign of that. It, in the city centre, was clean and relatively ordered with lots of new buildings and all the things you'd expect of a modern city. One thing that was obvious though was the security presence - the memory of the US Embassy bombing in 1998 and more recent acts is still lingers.

One of the guidebook recommendations of places to go in the city was the Railway Museum and it turned out to be a gem. The museum commemorates the building of the " lunatic line" the original railway line from Mombasa on the coast to Nairobi (which was originally nothing more than a railway junction) and onto Uganda. It was called the Lunatic Line by a politician with a nice line in hyperbole because of the territory it had to pass through and the resultant cost. Nowadays the museum is a time capsule of things colonial with random exhibits and outside loss of slowly decaying stream engines.

One of the huge, and gently decaying, Garrard Engines

During the building of the line one of the local lions developed a taste for railway workers. He took 140 of them- including one poor fellow from this carriage where he fell asleep when he was supposed to be hunting him

OH&S obviously didn't feature highly in their planning systems. 

From Nairobi it was then two and a half days solid riding north, on the way crossing the equator for one final time, to the border with Ethiopia. This was potentially one of the more dodgy parts of the trip as inter tribal fighting still breaks out periodically in this area leading to the road being closed (the last time being December when it was closed for a week). Fortunately all was quiet though in places a lot of police presence plus far too many individuals for my liking wandering around with an old rifle slung over their shoulder.

A further two and a half days saw me arrive in Addis Ababa. The scenery on much of that drive was beautiful including some spectacular volcano craters and I'd like to be able to show you some photos, unfortunately I can't because as soon as I arrived in Addis my phone (which is my camera)was stolen. My own stupid fault, I was tired and let my self be distracted by a smooth talking local and it was gone. At the time I was extremely annoyed (mainly with myself) but wandering around the city the next day put things in perspective: I'd lost nothing more than a phone and a few photos but all around me were people begging,  mothers with starving babies, rag dressed kids and in one place someone obviously dying on the pavement. I dispensed a few token coins to make myself feel better and then went and spent, what for anyone of them would be a small fortune, on a new phone. The ethics of travel are complex and probably don't bear deep examination. 

Week 14 - Kenya (plus musings on being rich and the impact of aid).

I sit here writing this over a coffee and a sandwich at a lodge off the side of the main Nairobi- Mombasa highway. It is the clichéd "oasis of calm" after the tumult of a few hundred kilometres of road riding. For what is on offer it is very cheap by Australian/European standards,  but of course beyond the means of most locals,  so it  seems a propitious time to make some notes on being rich.

Coffee, sandwich and a luxury environment. 

By first world standards I'm not rich, I am comfortably off; I own my house, I can afford my food and all the essentials of life and I have enough left over to get involved in my hobbies of travel, motorcycles and sailing. But by standards of most African I'm incredibly rich and I think sometimes it's important to acknowledge that and to recognise that the riches are to a large extent built on the deprivation of other people.  Is it going to make me change my lifestyle, give away my money? - no of course not, I'm too entrenched in my western consumer culture,  but it does gives me a new perspective and renewed appreciation of how lucky, more by accident of birth than anything else, I've been, (and hopefully it will make me more understanding when people demand a more equal share).

All the above is also tied in with an argument I've been thinking about since  I first heard it raised before I left and that is, whether economic and emergency aid does Africa (or any developing region) good or harm. The basic argument of the "aid does more harm than good camp" is that its provision distorts things and often creates unintended negative consequences.  A simple example of this argument on a large scale is that the provision of food aid and modern health care solutions has,  because of its short term focus,  led to the very high, and arguably unsustainable,  levels of population growth that most nations in Africa struggle with thus preventing the majority of the population significantly improving their lot. Similarly on a smaller scale it is argued that the provision of second hand clothes by us westerners via charity shops has removed many tailors incomes and stopped the development of indigenous business. Before coming here I was firmly in the "aid is good"  camp and felt that we should give more, now whilst I still believe it has an important role to play I see it is more complex than I realised and the situation is very nuanced (and as in most of life, simple solutions do not often exist for complex problems). Hopefully I'll have the time and inclination to read about this more when I get back.

On the travel front the week has seen me traverse the width of Kenya, from the Ugandan border in the west over to the coast in the east.  Here's the story in pictures.

First night in Kenya. Not the finest hotel room I've ever stayed in, but it was cheap, clean(ish) and most importantly. ..

...gave me somewhere to fix the bikes fan (a car park fall led to the blade assembly coming adrift - fixed with epoxy and some crossed fingers).

Further east, near Nairobi, was "Elsamere" the one time home of Joy Adamson who wrote "Born Free" and is now a museum and a place where you can have a very English colonial afternoon tea on the lawns (it was a bit of fun)

Lake Naivasha on whose shore Elsamere sits and where I camped (to the slightly worrying sound of hippo's grazing just outside the tent in the middle of the night, any thought of a middle of the night leak being quickly abandoned)

Alongside the lake is Hells Gate NP which had a few animals and a spectacular gorge and where apparently Tomb Raiders 2 was filmed (ok didn't actually mean much to me but the locals were very proud of this)

Using local logic it is too dangerous to ride a motorcycle around the park but a push bike was fine - so one was hired for the day (along with mandatory guide on his bike). 

After this I drove to the coast to catch up with friends and on the way followed the new Nairobi - Mombasa railway being built by the Chinese, one of the many bits of major infrastructure they are pouring into Africa (and impressively when I again passed this bridge 5 days later all the deck sections had been put in place)

Daphne and John,  fellow motorcyclists who I first met in South Africa and with whom I met up again for a few days at a resort in the coastal town of Kilifi (just north of Mombasa)

And our three bikes. 

And the lovely beachside where I spent 3 days sailing every afternoon (this overland travel is tough)

Week 13 - Ugandan wanderings

My second week in Uganda and I've zigzagged my way across the country.  From Murchison Falls National Park  I went slightly further north before turning south to head through the capital Kampala and onto the nearby city of Entebbe. If deliberately chosen not to stay in Kampala because I thought it would be too hectic but had to travel through it. It turned out to be as chaotic as I feared, in fact had some of the worst traffic I've experienced anywhere (though I think Ulan Batar in Mongolia still bests it, but not by much). Twenty kilometres out of the city centre things became grid locked and the bike became my saviour.  I had no option but to follow the example of the local riders; filter between lanes when you can, when you can't use the pavements and forecourts, when you get to traffic lights push to the front and then cut through the cross traffic whenever you can find a gap (irrespective of the colour of the lights and to the total unconcern of policemen standing there) - all in all behave in a way that would have me very quickly licence-less in all first world countries. Because it's the norm and expected of bikes its not as dangerous as it sounds, but still something I'd hate to have to do to regularly as the risks are definitely there.

Entebbe Airport - famous for the 1970s Israeli commando raid on hijackers holding hostages. Now the centre of aid efforts to the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Much needed first wash in many weeks

Whilst big city traffic is the place you're probably most likely to have an accident its not the only place where the risks are. Main highways are always a nightmare of constantly overtaking traffic and it continually surprises me I haven't witnessed any head-ons, when you look ahead and can see three or occasionally four vehicles wide where there should only be two you inwardly shudder but everything (so far) gets through and with no road rage or blowing of the horns, all the locals seeing it as perfectly normal. On that topic it is also considered perfectly acceptable to pull out and overtake even when a motorcycle (ie me) is coming in the opposite direction since obviously there is plenty of room  for all of us. Another challenging place can be roadworks, often they go on almost ignoring the normal traffic flow, you are left finding your own way around major earthworks and machinery with dust and thrown debris making visibility hard (and the overtaking is still going on). The strangest though is when they do sometimes  try and bring discipline by imposing one-way working; here as a bike you filter to the front of the queue to be confronted by a flag man who always waves you vigorously through even if it's into the oncoming traffic - the logic is the used as with the overtaking, ie there is always room for a bike to squeeze through,  and it seems to work cars and trucks are never surprised to see a bike heading the wrong way towards them, but it scared the heck out of me the first few times.

And suddenly with no warning the tar ends with a 6 inch drop and your onto the dirt

Not intended to stop you, just slow you down

Anyway back to the travelogue, after Entebbe I went eastward to Jinja to see one of the sources of the Nile - that great explorers dream only 150 years ago.

Lake Victoria enters the Victoria Nile river and stay is 6000 mile journey north. 

From there it moved on to Sipi Falls, Uganda's tallest waterfall - despite the impressive drop it is quite the match of the Murchison Falls in spectacle, but still very pretty.

Not quite the Victoria Falls - but the 100km drop is spectacular close up

The 100m ladder down didn't quite me European OH&S norms

Safely at the bottom

Finally it was on to the Kenyan border - visa a dirt road reputedly very scenic and an easy drive. My informant was right about the scenery but I suspect he's never driven it - places were a challenging ride.

No false expectations being raised

Week 12 - "The pearl of Africa"

The title is a quote from Winston Churchill who visited the country in 1910. After a week here I think he had a point even though it's always hard to choose a favorite or best out of many diverse, interesting and enjoyable places I have visited,

What Uganda most definitely has going for it is is scenery - in the south long flowing hills covered in tea plantations or terraced beautifully with crops from base to peak, in the centre it moves to mile after mile of  cane fields in the cultivated areas or savannahs grassland where it is wilder. All this dotted with some stunningly beautiful lakes, many formed in the body of extinct volcanoes. So with those thoughts it is mainly pictures this week.

Doing it tough at another lakeside campsite 

Hotel Masini - Uganda oldest hotel (1923) - a bit of colonial era luxury for one night. 

Lots of dirt roads ridden this week

There is a presidential election due in 2 weeks and I keep running into campaign rallies  (and because it's always a volatile time I aim to be out of the countrybefore it occurs)

The first highlight of the week was crossing the equator - for me the first time I've done it at ground level. (For me a bit of good kama came into play, a few moments before arriving here I had stopped to give a local motorcyclist a couple of litres of fuel, so in return he was more than willing to be flagged down to take this photo).

One down - two more to go (I cross back to the southern hemisphere when I enter Kenya before making the final crossing to the northern as I had to Ethiopia).

Another highlight from the week has been visiting Murchison Falls National Park. One of its main attractions is the opportunity to visit chimpanzees which turned out to be a great fun experience - on the hour you are alloted with the troop I saw the full range of them eating, sleeping, swinging in the trees, even copulating (as the guide discreetly put it). I also was especially lucky to see them hunting monkeys, one group high in the trees trying to drive them downward and another on the ground ready to catch and kill them - apparently chimps like to supplement their mainly fruit diet with some meat - this chase ultimately was unsuccessful and the monkeys got away. Not the easiest animals to photograph but here are a couple:

Not just chimps in the park - plenty of other animals too :

At one point there were 14 giraffes looking at me looking at them

And of course the falls after which the park gets its name. Not the tallest falls, but very dramatic as the whole of the Victoria Nile, not a small river,  forces itself through a 6 metre wide gap. Apparently described as the "most dramatic sight on the whole of the Niles 6000 mile journey north" (but this time I can't remember by whom)

Not the most spectacular photos - its one of those you need to be there places