Sept 2, 2010 – I know Joyce has already written about our trip to see Eunice, Michael and Mavine. I haven’t read it since I was there so I don’t know what slant she put on it. But here it is from my view.
My guess is Joyce concentrated on the actually visit part – so I’ll be brief here. The kids looked good, the place / home was great – green, clean and large. The grandmother seemed nice and like she liked the kids, but we were only there for a short while. The kids didn’t have many complaints and had fun with the other friends we brought for them to play with. Only thing not handled – the family has not decided on a school for the kids yet.
The rest of the trip:
Pretty typical Kenyan trip:
Started about a hour later then planned, no thanks to the goats that got into the shamba and needed to be officially handled.
This was probably the worst private vehicle I’ve ridden in in Kenyan. Nope, make that second worse – Father Charles’ car last year tops the private list. This one shook, rattled, jerked and creaked. I was expecting major pieces to be flying off, the windows breaking from banging into each other and doors to fly open since they didn’t close tightly to begin with.
30 kilometers long one way of which 2 km were nice paved roads, 8 km had been paved at one time but the tarmac was mostly not there and it was better to drive on the ever expanding shoulders of the road and leave the tarmac pieces to the pedestrians. The rest were dirt or a little dirt mixed with various sizes of rocks and small boulders – all qualities from ‘bumpy’ to ‘oh my word, I hope my eyes don’t shake out!’
We were headed to Rangwe, just to the left of Rodi as approached from the Homa Bay side. Not sure of the NSEW direction – that would be thinking to hard at this time. They are actually through Rangwe in the burbs on the other side. Through town, veer right at the first Y. This looks like a bike path that somebody turned into a road because they now own a car. Take a left someplace up this road. Oops, my mistake – the previous road was a road, this is definitely just a bike path the was recently turned into a bike path that 4 wheel vehicles try to drive on. The brush was slapping through the windows on both side at the same time.
As is normal, had a breakdown on the way – before we got to Homa Bay. Sound like metal slapping on metal – like a important bracket broke. We could not fine anything with a quick inspection, so decided to limp slowly into Homa Bay and have Paul (or we went with Paul (a black Kenyan) and Erin (his white Canadian wife)) go by himself to find someone to repair. Us white folks were dropped off because the bill gets doubled for each white person in the car – because all white people have lots of money.
First call to Paul said that it was a broken shock bracket – just a quick welking job, he’d be back in 10 minutes. Second call 45 minutes later – it’ll be soon. the first repair was done incorrectly and they were fixing it. Of course the fix of the improper repair always takes 4 times longer than the improper first repair.
Finally on our way. Just a quick stop to pick up one mattress for the 3 kids to share.
A nice 3 or so hours at the home – see above for details (or Joyce’s report)
Trip back started later then it should, because we arrived late. Got through Rangwe and Joyce commented on the smoke she was seeing. We thought it was just a little billowing around from all the fire out at the various fields and houses. Nope, it was under Erin. She was riding in the passenger seat up front, which the battery is located underneath. They were using a battery from their home solar system since the car battery was spoiled. It didn’t fit right, the car often didn’t start and the extra wires used to connect the ill-fitting solar battery often needed to be jiggled to get the car to start (which of course meant that Erin had to get out, Paul come around and dismantle the seat and metal plate and rubber covering – that was made from an old rubber tire – and jiggle the wires). Well something jarred loose – really? surprise surprise! So something shorted, caught the quite flammable rubber tire piece to catch fire and cause a great smell and a lot of smoke.
The fire was put out quickly and we were back on our way.
Rest of the trip pretty uneventful other than the girl and the cow we almost ran over – put skidded to a stop in time. And night driving adds it own aspect to the journey. Remember, we got a late start leaving, so it was dark about the last 45 minutes. The vehicle did have head lights, so that helped in seeing the potholes and larger rocks – not so much with bikes and cows.
From Mbita to Rangwe and back,
Paul
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