A Trip from Moyale to Nairobi, Overland

Before you leave for Nairobi, from Moyale, get ready for the journey is quite an exciting one. I booked a seat, no. 37 on a Moyale Raha bus, and waited till the next morning for departure. Well, morning eventually came and I boarded a bus, along with my luggage. We started the journey at 7.00 am.

Moyale is at the border with Ethiopia and that means that you should have come in contact with skista, the Amharic dance. If you didn’t then no need to worry. The best skista dance lessons are on the way. There is no tarmac road for about 300km and there the bus jolts you this way and that and the driver seems to care less, being seated at the very front where there is no ups-and-downs, literally. We jumped here and there, at times for an inch, at other times for many several metres that would have made a pole-vaulter jealous. I remember after hitting a crater on the road – the driver often thought they were nothing but mere potholes – I was tossed so high in the air that I hit the roof and came landing on the wrong seat, or rather on a very beautiful creature, the species of mankind, of the opposite sex. I landed awkwardly such that I looked like I was her dear baby that she was holding in her arms. I did not want to waste such a precious moment that the lord hath provided for me. I kissed her sweet lips fast and then apologized, blaming the driver and even cussing him out loud, but deep in my heart I was blessing the same driver. After that I was in secret prayer, fervently praying, asking God to bring the whole Great Rift Valley at the next moment we got to hit a crater. I wasn’t very successful at this request, but we danced all the same.

And then we got to some desert, which I think was called Chalbi. My o my! I have never seen an area flatter than this, and all full of nothing except miles and miles of rocks covering the ground, and men with hundreds of camels travelling to a drinking hole, from a grazing place, carrying nothing but a stick to control the camels. They carry no water or nothing! And they survive. That is where our bus broke down and we made camp for about five hours as we waited for another bus from Moyale. The sun and the wind are involved in that epic battle for supremacy, as the wind blows with all its might and the sun shines with all its glory.

But the road is under construction at places and so you enjoy a short smooth ride that tricks you to believing that all is going to be well after that, but that is pretty much what you experience all the way. You experience a short smooth ride, and a looong one that makes you utter cusses you never thought you would utter. There was nothing else special except all the police barriers looking for illegal aliens, which they might as well have ignored – they were just as corrupt as Kenyan police officers are inherently supposed to be. There was a codename “Mahabusu” which in Swahili means “convicts” but this was used by corrupt officials to transport illegal foreigners to Kenya without the police disturbing them. It is a complicated network, and these police must be compensated otherwise they wouldn’t allow these aliens in without being bribed. I think the guys who do this are based high in the government, or at the immigration department. These “mahabusu” usually travel with some “official” who books them seats at the very back, usually, and he sits at the front. That way if there is trouble, he can deny them and they get arrested and jailed or deported or whatever happens to them.

There was nothing else interesting on the way except that the bus got a flat tire, it was safe, but while we were changing the tyre I lost my ID.