I lost my passport. Long story, I'll tell it later. Anyway, on my 4th day of traveling to Nairobi, I was able to trade in my cattle truck for a bus! It was way over crowded, so they told me I could wait another day in Wajir, or stand in the aisle. I totally underestimated how uncomfortable this leg of the journey would be.
A group of students and i jumped off the bus at a bathroom break. We were somewhere in the middle of northeast Kenya and there were a bunch of giraffes about a 1/4 mile up the road. We only saw about 1 vehicle every hour and a half, so it was quite an isolated area. I told them I wanted to get closer so they willingly accompanied me to get a better look. We were about 100 yards up the road when the bus driver starting honking; the signal that the bus was about to leave. "Don't worry about the bus," the students said, "He will stop and pick us up." I wasn't so sure because the driver had been grumpy the whole trip. The bus honked even more and finally started driving toward us. It didn't slow down and drove right by us. This picture was taken just as the bus drove by. As you can tell, all the boys are poised to start running after the bus! I snapped the picture and started running with them. The bus kept going, and for a moment I had fears of being left in the middle of the wilderness with a bunch of kids, warthogs, and baboons. Luckily, the driver only wanted to give us a scare and teach us a lesson. He stopped after making us run after a couple hundred yards, then gave us a lecture about the bus rules. I took my seat on the over packed bus. My seat was sometimes a crate full of empty coke bottles, with the bottles upright, which made for quite an uncomfortable seat, but it was better than standing in the bouncy bus. There were 7 of us boys crammed into the front area of the bus, we rotated positions during the day and nights whenever someone got cramped from their position. Some were leaning on railings, some spread out across the dashboard against the windshield, my particular favorite spot was on top of the engine cover because it was covered in carpet and softer than the other places. sometimes I would nod off and accidentally lean against one of the very conservative Somali women on the bus with us. They were quick to push me away and give me stern a look. This bus trip was a day and a half and I greatly preferred my ride across the dusty plains in the back of a cattle truck the day before. I'll write more on that experience later, we smuggled in an Ethiopian political refugee who said he was tortured in prison in Adis. We hid him in a tookbox on top of the cattle truck and covered him with jackets and bags. We crossed more than a dozen checkpoints with armed guards. then I lost my passport after stopping at a wreck in the desert and was asked to pay a bribe in order to get permission to travel to Nairobi or else I would be put in jail; I didn't pay, and lucked out by getting some local help. Quite a story, more on that later.


The Video here is of a bunch of elementary kids playing in a field next to where we saw the hippos at lake Naivasha. Their teacher was giving them exercise by playing jump rope. When I walked by, they all started practicing their English phrases on me. I was impressed. Their teacher was so proud of them too, he asked me to take some video and pictures. He asked that I take a group picture of them, and when I knelt down to show them the picture, they eagerly huddled around me like football players and blocked out the sun. A dozen tiny fingers smudged against my camera's screen as they laughed and made fun of the faces they were making.