Getting Out Anyway We Can

Four days after the election, according to NTV news the votes were still not counted, rigged ballot boxes were found, and polling station managers had gone missing it was a mess! The people in the Rift Valley are for Raila, ODM party and he was wining by over a million votes then that morning the lead was down to 20,000...suspicious to say the least!

Yancy and I wanted to check out other parts of Kenya and try to go on Safari for a few days so we opted for the bus to save money…thinking we could splurge a bit more later on. We had booked tickets on the night bus back to Nairobi the night before because it would be cooler, and we could sleep for the 10 hour ride and hopefully I would not get as car sick, and the smell might not be as bad, BO and heat is horrible! So in the morning two of the people we had met took the 8am bus as one was flying out the next day. The compound got a call that they had been stopped about half and hour out of town there were road blocks set up by the people (not official in any way) and the bus was waiting. Then an update later that they were moving on. A while later someone called them and they had made it up to the next little village a huge road block was up and people came on the bus with stones told them they were going to stone them to death. Then they pulled them off the bus and smacked them around a bit. Finally they got back on the bus and were waiting for a police escort and about 20 hours later they did make it to Nairobi...shaken but safe.

So we were on the night bus and we were waiting to decide if we would go. We asked Kenyans, other white people who have lived there and the bus company about a million times and they all thought that the bus would be safer at night. The thought was that rioters would be sleeping and it would be safer. No one had any idea when this would get any better and we thought if the violence got worse, and all signs pointed to that, we weren't sure how or when we would get out. So we got on the bus with only Kenyans...all the tribes who were on the side of fighting, but our bus driver was Kikuyu...ODM supporters have turned there frustrations on those innocent tribe members.

So we were driving and there were branches in the roads and tension was high on the bus, people were nervous. Then smoldering ashes in the road and the bus driver chugged along. Then in the distance was some boulders set up as a block with a strip of shacks on either said with just one person standing on their makeshift sidewalk. The bus driver waited, and another man from the back came up to make suggestions and then we were off, foot to the floor and off the road, I swore we were going to tip getting off the pavement (and I use the term pavement loosely). The guy threw some stones but we were out over it. People were happy there was clapping and we kept going. We get to the next make shift road block, a BIG fire in the road with a few guys both side throwing stones and again we plowed threw. Third was an oil fire on the road and I thought we were going to run over the guy who was standing in the middle of the road trying to stop us, and I think I would have honestly been OK had we done it, it was pretty bad by that point.

We made it to Eldoret a scheduled stop about an hour from Kitale, and it was supposed to be a quick stop to pick up others. The driver stalled and we waited a few hours. Finally he told us that we were waiting for the bus to come from Nairobi, if they made it through then it would be a sign that it was safe for us to go. So we waited while he went up to a hotel (another loose term) and slept. At 4am the Nairobi bus came, then another and another about seven in total and we honked the loud bus horn, people went up to the room, he refused to come down.

I had made a few bad choices earlier in the trip that made this night unbearable and I had a full on mental breakdown at about 2am. Poor Yancy woke up to me sobbing but I just couldn’t stop between the stress and the chapters of books I had spent the previous weeks reading were going through my head. I had decided to read some really fascinating books about the violence in Africa, Eastern Africa to be specific and how it had turned on Aid workers, missionaries etc. The innocent who were there helping had become soft targets and easy to attack…great books, interesting read….HORRIBLE TIMMING on my part!

By 10am the bus company had been open a few hours and people were tired which quickly turned into pissed, the bus company let us get 1 hour from Kitale, where we all had places to stay and they never mentioned sleeping on a bus to wait, nothing! And yet there we were but the driver was nowhere to be found. We were left on the side of the road, we had driven into the epicenter of violence and left! Of course people were pissed.

Finally he came out people were pissed and he said he was scared for his life to drive on, actually that was fair, but why drive us from a safe city to one of the epicenters!?!? He drove us about 100 feet down the road to the police station and we were told that we would be waiting for a police escort to the next area and we would hop back to Nairobi trading in escorts at each districts police station.

The police station was full of everyone waiting for escorts and not a whole lot of police doing much of anything. After a few hours of being left alone and not really knowing the situation Yancy and his chatty self found a safari car full of Norwegians. I thought we had a pretty bad night but then we met them! You never would have known it though, Yancy met them juggling in the open area in front of the police station just waiting patiently to get out of Eldoret, this group of guys impressed me! They had been robbed and surrounded by a group of 300 men with fire, knives, stones etc. They held the windows shut and sat a prayed they said. They thought it was all over. It was a missionary and his 4 friends who had just arrived in Kenya that day to visit him! Two of the guys visiting are in the Norwegian Special Forces and they said it was the scariest situation they have ever dealt with. Their driver got them out of it by paying off the meanest, angriest looking in the bunch with 17,000 Shillings, about 300$. They had gotten a flight out of Eldoret and were waiting for a police escort. They gave us the number of their travel guy who got us tickets too and they let us hop a ride with them. For being almost killed they were hilarious and fun people.

So, taking advantage of high paying westerners, two random police guys get in the car with us armed with grenades, smoke bombs and their high powered rifles. We drove along the main road towards the airport then a person on the side of the road told us that there was a road block so off we went on the longer but dirt and bumpier roads. There were a bunch of road blocks there too but we got around them after stopping at some random house and piling another person into this over crowded van who hopefully knew the safe way. Finally, we got to the airport, Yancy goes for a soda...no drinking for me I was still pretty shaken up...my nerves are not Scandinavian! And the Norwegians pull out their juggling balls and proceed to wait, just hang out! I got all our tickets and we said our “thank yous” and exchanged numbers and we were off.

We made it...the plane ride was the bumpiest, hottest ride ever...I was holding on to my puke bag and so were others. But I kept telling myself it was better then the bus. And after our hour up there everyone got off, we were happy but kinda green looking! We made it. And the next day took off for our Safari.

Turns out we had gotten the last two tickets out that day. The other airline that services Eldoret had canceled some of their flights so people were on stand by waiting but somehow the man on the phone got us ahead of the rest and we were able to get out. By the time we arrived in Nairobi NTV was reporting that domestic air travel was being shut down, we were really lucky!