To Lamu and back

This weekend, we went to Lamu with A and I (the primary investigator of M’s research who is here for another few days). There are two options to get to Lamu: fly or take a bus. We were all up for a little adventure (and way too cheap to pay for flights) so we choose the bus route which was estimated to take around 7 hours.

The bus was to leave at 9 AM according to our tickets (bought in Mombasa the previous week) and like good wazungu, we reported as instructed at 8:30 AM after a harrowing ferry ride (there was a stampede and a fight but neither of those are particularly uncommon, they’re just stressful for us because it gives people the opening to pickpocket). We had paid extra (read: we’d been duped into paying about 4x what we should have) for guaranteed seats. M needs leg room and of course we didn’t want to stand for 7 hours. At 9:20, the people told us “oh, your bus just went by but it’ll come back to pick you up.” We thought that was a little odd but followed a Kenyan across the street to catch “our bus”. They hurried us onto a bus and herded us toward the back away from our assigned seats upfront. We protested several times only to be told “this isn’t your bus so you can’t have those seats. Sit DOWN” by the conductor. We looked around to protest to the ticket broker but he was of course long gone. Damn. Well, we lasted 8 weeks in Africa before being taken for a ride so I think we’re doing pretty well. Plus, not to spoil the story but we did actually make it there so it wasn’t a complete loss.

The seats we were given were the aisle and middle seat of a 3 seat row. I and A were seated behind us at the window and the middle. We were fuming both because we’d been duped and because it was 90 degrees on the bus. All the seats were packed (2 seats to a row on the left, 3 seats to a row on the right) with at least the 2/3 people designated for that seat though there were often more. A family of 5 shared 2 seats next to A at one point.

Our pace was painstaking and it took us over an hour to even leave Mombasa. We stopped many times to load more people and more goods in the bottom of the bus. People now packed the aisles as well as the seats. The air coming from the windows was hot and choked with dust.

We rode for about 3 hours until we got to Malindi, a large town to the north of Mombasa. Here we stopped “for 10 minutes” (that’s 45 minutes if you’re an American) to have a bathroom break and lunch. Townspeople swarmed the bus (and would do so at every stop) offering everything from cold water, to Indian delights like Sim Sim and Samosas, to Kenyan street foods like cassava and roasted maize. Our favorite though was the woman selling live chickens and indeed later someone did board with a live chicken who squawked for quite a while before going ominously silent. We hoped that some people were getting off in Malindi and we could spread out more but it was not to be.

You’ve got to hand it to the Kenyans, there are absolutely no inefficiencies in travel. We stopped probably well over 50 times on our journey and people getting off were always replaced by people getting on. It’s not that they had some magical computer system that accurately booked people into slots, it’s that the average Kenyan is much more willing to put up with transportation inconveniences than the average American. The idea that you could pay for a seat on a bus and then be forced to stand for multiple hours while others who paid the same price were sitting, is completely foreign to an American but the Kenyans uncomplainingly do this.

We believe that we got into some trouble with the bus inspectors because at one point the bus stopped abruptly and all the aisle passengers were hustled off. The bus drove on to a checkpoint and was boarded by an official who yelled in rapid fire Swahili for several minutes before disembarking. The bus drove on and then sat for ~25 minutes while the aisle passengers circumnavigated the checkpoint to reboard the bus.

In fact, there were numerous checkpoints that looked like this:


See the spikes welded to those little barracades? Those are for the bus tires if the driver is stupid enough to ignore the checkpoint. Sorry the pic is bad, I was sneakily taking it from our seats on the way home. Each was manned by a single, uniformed person. The conductor would usually get out, “make small business” and then get back in thus ensuring our passage through the checkpoint. I’ll let you form your own opinions about these checkpoints but I will say that the Kenyan passengers seemed utterly unfazed by their appearance in random spots on the roads 25 miles from the nearest towns.



It was also in Malindi that we acquired an armed guard holding an AK-47 (pictured above). (Don’t be alarmed, AK-47s are fairly common in Kenya and you see them on almost every officer or policeman). Buses have (very rarely) been attacked between Malindi and Lamu by armed robbers looking for money. The area is pretty remote and very poor; there is no electricity for much of the stretch which you can see from the lack of electrical poles. Buses are supposed to travel in armed police convoys but the police seem pretty busy with the checkpoints so we didn’t see any convoys. Since we were traveling during the day, we weren’t that concerned and other than nearly sweating to death, we arrived just fine.

While we melted into our seats as the day wore on, the Kenyans began closing the windows because they were getting cold. Riding with the windows open on the dusty roads while sweating gave us all a dirty, grimy look but the Kenyans didn’t appear to ever break a sweat.

We rode for 3 hours after Malindi on paved road (or tarmac to a Kenyan) before switching to a dirt road for the last 3 hours. Yes, our 7 hour journey actually took over 9 hours. The dirt road slowed the driver to 40 km/hour (previously they’d been going 80 kmh while swerving to avoid potholes) and we were very sore by the time we arrived.

It was an adventure though and you realize why overland travel in Africa takes so long. The roads are difficult (or impassable in the rainy season), there are tons of checkpoints, and lots of loading and unloading since the bus will absolutely not drive on until it’s full. This is why tourists usually fly to Lamu but it was a good story and one that we won’t soon forget.

I have to admit though that we were relieved that our trip home was less eventful. We arrived 30 minutes before our 8 AM bus which of course left Lamu at ~9:30 (a full 2 hours after we arrived). This time though we purchased tickets directly from the bus company and insisted on decent seats (not difficult when you arrive 118 minutes before the rest of the passengers). The journey home took only 6 hours and we were thrilled to drink a beer and sleep in our own beds. Since this is already excessively long, I’ll leave it here and let M tell you about our actual visit to Lamu tomorrow.