Garissa to Mado Gashi.....Kenya

   In the last blog I had made my way from Mombasa to Garissa, Kenya via a dirty and barren route that give me views of typical isolated villages. Many citizens of these villages and small towns are aided by relief organizations since the land is basically desert with little to no water or vegetation. For us westerners it is a peak into the challenge that some humans have to endure to survive.

   Once I reached the dirty little town of Garissa I found a hotel on the main street and walked around for photo's. I got onto the roof of the hotel which was 3 floors (tallest building) and I could see that all of the land outside the town was desolate. My next plan was to find out when a bus would leave for the northern town of Mado Gashi some 200 kms ahead( I was told about 7:30 am). Once I solidified those plans then I was ready to walk among the locals and sort of "take it all in". Some aspects that I started to get used to were the yelling at markets and bus stops, disease ridden dogs wandering the streets and in this town a bloated dead donkey and camel laying on the street. The locals seemed very curious and many smiled, I could not help to notice that their feet and hands were like rough leather. Many people have bare feet while others wear these sandals that are made of tires, they cut a slab of car tire and attach a strap that goes around their ankle.

   At 6:30 am I heard a lot of commotion and went downstairs to find the 7:30 bus was already packed to leave at 6:30 and looked full, I raced upstairs to grab my backpack and dropped off my key before loading the bus, We passed a man on a donkey driven cart that had a mountain of green plants; I am not sure where he got them but it sure looked neat. About 10 minutes into the trip the bus was stopped by some men and some passengers got off. We sat there in the bus, that was already heating up in the early am, and there was a lot of yelling, I am not sure what the excitement was about but we finally moved on. We passed many villages where the bus briefly stopped; ladies were selling cooked goat meat and camels milk.....there were hundreds of camels being shepherd on the horizon.

   The next village we stopped in the passengers all got out of the bus; nearest I could tell we would be here for an hour (through gestures on a watch). This village was larger than the ones earlier, there were clay and mud buildings with tiny shops. I went into the one shop and bought all of the biscuits they had figuring I would give them to the kids. I walked out with 10 boxes and soon I had about 30-40 kids around me, how would I disperse them fairly ?. I found a wall and squatted down to open the boxes, there was some chaos but I decided that I would give a child a package and say "GO", they would then run off. That seemed to work fine, the kids were very excited and I had just enough for them. The whole time there were two large hands in front of my face, two old men also wanted biscuits, I kept saying "for the children". We loaded the bus, so many kids were yelling and waiving as they chased the bus for a short distance.

   Some passengers were on the bus since Garissa while others had changed in the small villages that we had stopped in, there were a lot of men and a few women with their children. About 15 minutes into this part of a drive the bus approached an area with scrub bush and it came to a stop, two men got on with rifles and were yelling at passengers while pointing their guns. I am not sure if they were speaking Swahili but they seemed to want to check peoples documents. I was nervous to say the least, I did not know which group these guys represented, could be military, police, or an extremist group. About 5 men got off the bus and I watched out the window as these armed guys yelled at them; slapping a couple of them across the face. Other men were looking under the bus and in the storage compartment, I found out later that they were looking for human smuggling. Either Somalians or Ethiopians often hide in the buses as they enter into Kenya...I had said in the prior blog how the citizens were taking on a different appearance in Garissa. The bus moved on and I turned my head to watch the 5 guys left alone with the armed men; out in the middle of nowhere.

   I finally made it to Mado Gashi and saw quickly that I would not be staying in this place, it was small and rugged with sparse mud homes and a couple of small shops; while still on the bus I decided I would try to head north east. I was swarmed with children when I got off the bus, they were very eager to approach but the younger ones were terrified; some cried. I made my way to the one room police station and learned that the bus I arrived on turns back to go to Garissa and there was no bus that leaves from Mado Gashi to go north or west. I was told that a truck might come through town at about 4pm.....this give me about 4 hours in this new town. I played with the kids (flicking bottle caps), the people were friendly; I was asked by a man if I could get him into Canada. This man told me his life story that unfortunately mirrored what is common in the world these days. He used to have a herd of about 40 cows and a farm that employed about 10 workers, then the drought came and within two years he had no animals or crops in the field'

   After only 2 hours an old Feed The Children truck came into town and the driver agreed to take me with him on the rest of his journey. I loaded into the truck and waved to the kids as we headed off out of town. We stopped at a village to unload 80 sacks of cereal that are donated by the organization, that give me more time with some kids. We dropped by several other villages as the truck weaved east and west along it's route, it was an incredible experience.

   I reached into the bottom of my backpack to get a snack and could not feel my money pouch, it was so hot that I was not wearing it around my waste; it was getting soaked. I frantically dug around and found that it was not there. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME........I left it in the hotel room in Garissa, oh my god!!!! Through the day I was using the Kenyan Shillings that I had in the front of my pack. In my money belt was my passport and about 25,000 Shillings ($500 Canadian), I was carrying enough to last me while touring places that probably did not have a bank. I quickly thought back to the frantic race back up to my room in Garissa since the bus was leaving an hour earlier than I was told. While sleeping I had hid the belt on top of the curtain box above the window and in my rush to grab my packs I failed to remember to grab it. What an idiot I thought, I was so angry at myself, my heart had sank to the bottom of my stomach.

  What was I going to do in such a poor area of Kenya with no food and no money ???