Control

Martha and I waited at the bus station for 45 minutes, only to discover that Faustin, Salome, and Pelagy had been waiting for us for 30 minutes in a different part of the bus station. Martha Garcia joined us a day ago. She is the daughter of Faustin's supervisor at Biola in the foreign languages department (Faustin teaches a French class). She is a young army officer with a heart for the Lord and for kids, and now that Ed has taken off for Malawi, it's nice to have another American as a part of our group. Martha and I decided to just sit in the waiting room and let them find us, because we figured that we'd be a little easier to find than they would be. Then the busses started to board. "Uh... little help please?" Of course they found us, African style (i.e. in the nick of time), and our fears were alleviated. When we got on the bus, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. 8 hours is a pretty long ride. Would I have chickens in my lap and pigs at my feet? Would there be 50 poor travelers shouting at each other in many languages I don't understand? Would we have to stop every 10 minutes to push a herd of wildebeest off of the road? Somewhat to my dismay, the answers were all "No." The Easy Coach line is about as posh as it gets in Africa. Basically a tour bus. They wouldn't have allowed livestock on board, there were 50 people on board, but they were all pretty quiet, and we didn't really stop for anything... for 8 hours. There was one 20 minute stop and one 10 minute stop. Lunch was a pack of chocolate chip muffins. About an hour and a half before we got to our first stop, nature was on the phone for me. I asked Faustin how long we'd have before a stop. "We have continue for 45 minutes or we could have to travel for an hour." I thought I could hold it. 45 minutes later, I discovered that we were still at least a half an hour away. Nope. Not going to happen. Faustin graciously asked the driver to stop, and I dashed out into the African wilderness, not knowing what perils awaited me behind those bushes. I was relieved (I know, I know, ha ha ha) to find when I got back on the bus that I had not been the only one. A teenage girl came running back to the bus shortly after I had returned to my seat. I don't really get embarrassed, and even if I did, I'm usually too cool to find myself in embarrassing situations, so this would definitely have to appear on a top 10 list of my most embarrassing moments. Speaking of embarrassing moments, we did pass a herd of zebras, and I was too slow with my camera to get a shot of them. I had my camera pointed out the window for about 7 hours and 45 minutes, and in the 15 minute window that I wasn't ready to go, of course we pass zebras. We arrived in Bungoma, Western Kenya, and walked through town to our hotel. And I missed the zebras. I was painfully aware of the fact that I had no control over the 8 hour bus ride, nature's call, and the appearance of zebras. I missed the zebras.

"We cannot stay here." Faustin confirms what the rest of us already knew. "Here" was the Hotel Tourist, Bungoma. Well, I didn't know we couldn't stay, because it's Africa, and who knows where you'll stay on any given night, but I had a pretty good hunch. "The rooms are not very accommodating, there is no window in the bathroom, and I can hear some bad smell." I would have to agree with him. Actually, to say that the rooms weren't accommodating was a significant understatement, the lack of a window wasn' that the bathroom was lacking a view, it's that it was lacking a pane of glass (so when you stood in the bathroom, the rain gave you a shower whether you liked it or not), and the smell was bad enough that I think I could hear it too. So we have to go somewhere else. The trouble is, that the next somewhere else is 2 hours away. And it's raining. It's really raining (so that hole in the bathroom wall gave you a shower whether you liked it or not). In Limuru, we had a drizzle, but this is different. I should have saved "The Wet Season" as a title for this entry. Not only is the next somewhere else 2 hours away, but it's two hours back in the direction that we have come from. And where we have come from is 8 hours away. So there's a bit of a fatigue factor. If we were anywhere else, I'd probably suggest another option, but here, I don't know what that would be, and it's already Africa, so flexibility is a bit of a must.

There's nothing like racing down a very poorly maintained, very slick road, very late at night in a very poorly maintained vehicle in a foreign country at 60+ miles per hour. Maybe I could think of a few things like that, but in a life that has been relatively adventure-packed, I've never done any of them. That's because those things are all really really dumb. Yet, that's what we were doing. I didn't have much say in the matter. It's amazing how being here in Africa heightens one's awareness that most of life is beyond personal control. Things rarely go as planned here.

So now we're staying in the Sirikwa hotel in Eldoret. This must be the nearest Kenyan approximation of the Ritz, even though it's in a town in the middle of nowhere, at least 2 hours from the next nearest town in the middle of nowhere. The food is as good as any I have had over the past two weeks. The shower is hot and the water pressure is good (I was beginning to think that, while in Africa, I had to choose either temperature or pressure, but never both). The beds are nice, the internet is free, and the TV has all three channels. Tomorrow morning, we will have to drive 2 hours back in the direction from which we came, but the morning after, our 8 hour bus ride will be only a 6 hour bus ride. It just goes to show you that sometimes you get blessed when life is beyond your control. Maybe we don't have to cling to it with knuckles quite so white.