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"Glimpses" extracts from Leah's journal.
Rift Valley.
Back on the bikes at last. Kenya. Lush, green, friendly. A few waves and a few songs, "a Mzungu...a Mzungu," the children chanted and danced, some even accompanied by bongos. Tarmac roads made the going easy and when we rounded a bend we were left breathless, partly due to the high speeds we were doing but mainly because of the sight before us.
We screeched to a halt. A cool breeze rippled through my hair and all was still. The land dropped sharply revealing the escarpment. The Rift valley. Immense and beautiful. Cloud shadows marched across the landscape. A haze hung lazily above the distant mountains. Toy huts peppered the ground below. Time for a photo shoot before a troupe of baboons thundered down the hillside alongside us, snatching away our transfixed stare.
They sat, nonchalent, thronging the road in front. No imminent engagements, no traffic to hurry them to the safety of the trees. There was nothing else to do other than bend over the bars of our bikes, lift our legs from the ground, release the brakes and race through them. I dodged a scratching male, swerved a nursing female. We spiralled downwards, eyes crying in the wind, crashing to the bottom, "How fast?" I gasped. "Sixty five." Still not my personal best but it was fun trying.

Three in a boat.
We arrived at Lake Naivasha early afternoon and cycled around to Fishermans Camp, known for its resident Colobus monkeys and wandering hippos. A little green oasis.
We pitched our tent overlooking the lake and settled down for a few lazy days. The hippos were obliging, venturing out to graze on the banks, feet away from where we sat. The monkeys, vervet and colobus,came to take raisins from our outstretched hands.
	The morning arrived for an overdue adventure. The men, lounging by the boats, let the three of us, myself, Simon and an Englishman, Guy, take out a rowing boat to get a closer view of the hippos in the water. "Don't get nearer than 200 metres, from here to that tree," one man pointed, grinning. "The hippos are very fast," laughed another.
	Enthusiastically, we rowed forth, gliding alongside the lakeshore. Nearing our quarry, we upped oars, smoked, drank beer and ate our crisps. "They're there," I garbled, remembering why we were on the lake. We each took a turn with the binoculars. Snouts, followed by tiny ears, protruded from the depths. They loomed large, magnified, and at once excited and terrified us. We rowed closer, someone piping up that hippos were responsible for killing more people per year than any other wild animal.
Suddenly, they were flipping their jaws and diving. Terrified, we began to back paddle, only stopping when our hands hurt (about two minutes). Sanity prevailed. We had been almost twice the safe distance all along, only the binoculars and the beer had hindered our judgement. We zig-zagged our way back to the jetty. Buzzing from our escapade, we gratefully planted our feet back on terra firma and giggled our weary way to the bar.

Simon's Kenyan Experiences.
	Guns and Samburu Tribesmen.
	It was always going to be an early start. Convoys always meet early and depart late. They need the time to impatiently rock in the dust, producing clouds of diesel fumes and choking sand. It's a good time to make sure that the horn works. Repeatedly. At some unseen and unarranged signal we roll forward. As soon as the town's border is escaped it's like 'Wacky Racers'; in a large orange truck we are more Penelope Pitstop than Dick Dastardly. Vehicles vied for position. Road boulders are cautiously navigated. Giant ruts in the road make vehicles tilt and lean. Overtaking is a slow and hilarious looking process. Cattle in the back of the truck in front have a plumb-bob ability to stay vertical, giving them a strange swaying appearance as their transport bucks underneath them. Then, the instant marginally flatter terrain is reached, plumes of acrid smoke and heavy sand are thrown into the atmosphere, indicating that a driver has put his foot down. In about an hour we are steadfastly refusing to be anywhere other than the rear.
The convoy to cross the Baiou Desert is supposed to be for self protection. The concept being safety in numbers. Cattle rustling Shifta attack and steal. Whilst we have no cows, we are carrying mazungu armed with cameras, money and shoes. Two weeks after we made this two day crossing, a convoy was landmined and a driver shot. To me the Shifta were literary ghosts, a Kenyan Somalian Ethiopian boogeyman, and I'm glad that I learnt this later. Distant mountains trundle past as we crawl South, slowly making our way to Nairobi, rolling with the road and swaying like the cattle we can no longer see.
Nearly three hundred kilometres and an entire day later, the half way stage is Marsabit. A rubble filled, paint peeled, no horse town that defies existence. Its only saving grace is that it has cold beer and today is convoy day so the bars are raucous and the fridges stocked.
The next day is spent sharing the driver's cab, smoking menthol cigarettes and my feet on the dash, away from passenger's chatter.The horizon is visible in all directions with only an occasional, incongruous pile of mountain in the far distance. The two soldiers in the rear sometimes let their weapons clatter to the floor whenever the truck rocks unexpectedly. I hear both the crash and the fright over the engine noise. We spend the entire day crossing this scrubby green-shooted land, with only a flash of red as a Samburu is passed. Sometimes tartan, usually plain, red robed figures appear in the near bush. Gold and beads catch the light. A stick or rifle complete the ensemble. All wave as we pass.
After two days we hit tarmac. Tomorrow we will be surrounded by the speeding matatus and towerblocks of East Africa's biggest city - Nairobbery.

BumBum Part 4 - Parting Company.

"If this is the end of my journey, then it is the end of yours." Six and a half foot of German anger; one arm in a sling, a good hand searching a pocket for a knife, was advancing loudly towards the Truck Driver. The same Driver who had rescued us from Ethiopian stonings, driven us across a desert and dropped us in Nairobi, was now backing towards his vehice in search of a baseball bat. I follow, sit, and watch the unfolding pantomime. A red faced one armed man pointing a small knife at a wood weilding figure. It's farcical. There is not enough room in the truck to swing a cat; and the wood holder is hunched over as the roof is so low.

But, the pair of them seem to be taking it seriously. Accusation and slanders fly, to be met with counter remarks and instruction to get off the vehicle. The reason for a rematch of WW II? Tyre wear. In order to accomodate BumBum's bicycle, it had been lashed to the front of the Bedford truck. Three days and hundreds of kilometres had caused the side walls on the tyres to chafe and wear slightly. This was the cause of the friction.

There was no question that BumBum was being unreasonable. His demands that new tyres be couriered to Kenya were ludicrous. Not only did his broken arm mean no cycling for a few weeks and therefore no need for new tyres in the next 48 hours; but the actual damage to an already used set of tyres was negligible. I had no explaination for his behaviour. Had his pride been broken along with his arm? The regimented, prepared and organised person we had drunk coffee with in Tunisia had descended into some kind of madness. Maybe it had been the hardship. Maybe having to spend weeks in self preservation mode. Maybe it was the inability to hold flexible plans. Maybe the feelings of fated impotence; the realisation that his dreams of pedalling every kilometre were in tatters. He was no longer in complete control. It was quite tragic; to watch the gradual decline of a human being. To see the progress from confident and self assured to salivating, knife weilding babbler.

I'd had knives and worse waved at me before. Irrespective of the friendship, we had no desire to stay in the immediate vicinity of this man. We packed and relocated as swiftly as possible.

I still wonder if we behaved appropriately. Should we have stayed and supported? At the time it felt like the right decision. But with hindsight?

For a long time afterwards we heard traveller's grapevine tales. A German on a bicycle. Somewhere in Africa. Yes, he'd had his arm broken, do you know him?

Hippos.
Did you know that you can hire boats here.
To go hippo spotting of course.
I think that it would be cool, shall we go tomorrow?
Come on, it'll be fun.

We don't seem to be getting any nearer.
I'm sure the current is taking us backwards.
I know it's a lake.
Bloody Hell, they're huge.
Did you know that hippos are the biggest cause of human deaths in Africa?
I meant death caused by animals..
Pedant.
They're diving. I thought you said they couldn't swim.
Walk?
Kind of like Jesus then, but under.
Shit. I hope they aren't coming this way.
Are we too close?
We're too close.
Start paddling.
I know I'm looking through the binoculars.
But they're just over there.
I need a drink and a smoke.
Pass me a beer.

Sugar.

Cane forests had accompanied us for weeks now. Lorries transporting huge quantities of the stuff trundled up and down the roads. The roadside was littered with the brown blood and green tissue of macerated cane. The sweetness of it hung in the air. Occasionally there would be a waft of treacle and sure enough, somewhere nearby would be a rising tower of steamsmoke coming from a refinery. These were the gentle roads of the Kenyan highlands, carrying us towards a two day distant Uganda.

Next to us, a roaring fire. Outside, driving rain. Just above our heads, a picture of a bare breasted woman on a vintage motorcycle. She was biking over a sand dune, and grinned as two Arabs with tethered camel looked on.

It is while we were learning the picture's history; that it had been found in a spy's camera in North Africa, and used as the Allied troop's Christmas card; that we meet the Sugar People.

They lived on a sugar estate near the Ugandan border. The scale of it defied belief, an acreage greater than the interior of the M25. Whole communities lived, worked and died amongst the cane. Schools, churches, roads and villages all surrounded by sugar.

It's here I learnt how the stuff I put in my tea is made.

Imagine a factory sized coffee percolater, not being fed with beans, but freshly pulped sticks. It's a sugarstick chomping beast, its appetite is endless. A constant stream of laden lorries rolls into the yard, depositing freshly harvested lengths of cane into the maw of the machine. Its teeth are flailing chains and spinning knives that shred the woody twigs, releasing the sweet interior. All of this is digested with hot water, the mixture ruminating and rumbling. Two products are finally evacuated from its bowels; a viscous liquid thats good for covering marram roads, and the crystals of sunlight that we all take for granted.

Would you like to read more ?

Before here we were in Ethiopia. After here we were in Uganda.

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