To The Bunduz: Part 1

 

It’s been ages since I last travelled upcountry. My time has been consumed chasing mostly my career and finding my ground with academics and other personal development issues… nice one huh! What, cut the crap, Nairobi just rocks and the thought of chilling out at the village with everyone on your case seeking this favor or that isn’t fascinating… ask me… in a total of less than twelve hours I was somewhere in the range of sixty thaoz poorer… serious disbursement I can tell you. Anyway, to put it simple, it was one of the most fun trips I have had in the recent past.

My journey, by bus commenced on a Thursday night with Easy coach, I have my spannerboy around office that I virtually use to run all errands, petty ones, like booking me a bus ticket and others. I was ok being told I had a seat somewhere in the middle of the bus but the idea of sitting next to Miss Mboch making her maiden trip upcountry since she ‘got employed’ was not funny at all. See, I laugh a lot, and I mean a lot, the only other person I know enjoys as much laughter is Maina Kageni and maybe a certain pal of mine called Pat… So Miss Mboch has come with all her other Mboch pals from whatever neighborhood she mboches to see her off… boy do they have accents or what… at the utterance of just a single word, I gathered half were from Kachmega and the rest from Kitui! So the girls’ mboch-giggle there at my turning nasty face for several minutes before the bus finally takes off… with one stupid enough to indicate to her peer that if a chance comes by she grabs me… silly, I didn’t even do our very own mboch when I was discovering certain very useful parts of my body!!!LOL! J

So we get to the highway, it’s finally great just to sit back and listen to my earpiece as the engine roars on… but what! I have stuck in capital for so long that the simple idea that I would be required to change the FM frequencies at some point had escaped my kind. So at the music turns to noise, I switch to my MP3 player… approaching Naivasha, Miss Mboch suddenly throws her arm over me huh? Apparently she has already fallen asleep and has no clue that she is throwing her hands over and turning with the exposure of her bust to a brother… he heee… believe me, at this point am not exited at all, it is totally irritating… but since am always a gentle man, I tap on her arm a little and she awakes to the obvious reality that that nothing is about to happen, not even in her wildest and passionate dreams….

Well, the rest of the journey is not as eventful; there is plenty of chewing after Nakuru. As I gather, most of the folk on board know that Naks is the place to get your little fries and sausages bite as you progress… my drunken head managed to pick some six packs… Tusker of course. So as the smell of potatoes drowned the bus, I sipped away on the EABL’s finest forgetting completely that I would have trouble with my bladder…  Thanks to the police checks, I hopped out of the bus at every single one between Nakuru and Eldoret… stepping on sorry passengers the same way I do to the sorry revelers at certain pubs in Westlands!

Well, I slept, at least until my destination. My bro delayed picking me up from the bus station. So the trend is just chilling out in the bust till activity starts: In this part of Kenya, things are not hurried I tell you, I swear I got into a matatu to run some errands within the day and I witnessed the most ridiculous of things yet. Imagine the matatu was packed by the road side full with passengers as the driver walked into a supermarket, shopped as they waited and came back and drove off without anyone making a sound! Then at the next stop, the driver parked by the roadside, told the passengers he will be back and walked to the hospital ‘to see his daughter’, came back and drove off… LOL! I couldn’t help getting pissed off with everyone, or was it just me! These good people don’t mind time?

Back to the bus, as we sat waiting for daybreak, trying to catch some quick sleep (as I listened to the promises Barack Obama was making to Americans) before the busy day ahead, there was this lady sited across, she just sprung from nowhere and unleashed a remix of some weird vernacular song and hummed through with a voice that is hardly on any key… even on a drum… still no one raised a finger!

The journey to the bunduz didn’t end at the bus stop, I happen to come from a place where people actually walk across the border to the other country to do their shopping, at times… Public service vehicles fill completely; have enough of the passengers standing and others on the top of the carrier… in the spirit of kila mtu afike nyumbani… Thanks to Amos Kimunya’s removal of tax on certain bikes, boda boda is sooo gone, motorbikes are the in thing, in fact for the few hours I spent there, I preferred to hike a bike than get on a mat, they are fast… really fast, they can navigate the poor roads Raila Odinga promised to fix (and has not even visited yet… bure kabisa!!!) very fast… besides you can actually tell the rider/ driverJ (he heee) to move at your speed… I guess someone should be unleashing a remix to Madtraxx’s bodaboda… to go like ….

“Nitaride pikipiki, nitaride pikipiki… utadu waaaaaaaaaar!”

If you doubt the nature of travelling, try these people here on this lorry, I tried figuring, were they also for sale?

 

Well… that’s part one of the trip… some really funny stories will make part two and three and four and…. Etc…