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Kenya get internet here ? ........

11/2/2012

 
yes you can......

So here we are passed the equator and safe and sound in Nairobi. I bet you can't guess who's here???? Henning arrived just after us with his broken motorcycle. He mashed his bike really good on the road from Moyale. If you want to read all about it i'm sure you can check out his blog linked on my links page.

Theres a lot to talk about and theres possibly months of stuff to tell. The story of the broken shock absorber and the broken clutch. The shock is, well, almost broken and in need of a bit of fix it attention and welding and re-shaping. The clutch was fixed in a field in Thomsons Falls Lodge (campsite) and was the result of a fault slave cylinder but of course i had a spare. The two lots of dot4 clutch fluid were resting nicely in the bottom of the housing and released when i took out the wading plug. Released straight down my arm and over my face. Dot4 is toxic and not the best thing to end up in your mouth !

We also have a bit of a problem with the tranfer box so i'm going to remove it and take it apart in an attempt to prevent additional problems later. Land Rover parts seem to be available here so if i can get the bits i'll take it out. We also need a partial service doing so oil change and gear box oil change, grease the propshafts and do the normal checks on the car.

The road from Ethiopia to Kenya is bad and i'm not talking about the road from Moyale into Kenya i'm talkign about the "better" way of going via Lake Turkana. It was 4 days of off road with rocks, sand, (dry and sandy) river crossings and hundereds of kilometers of widerness. It was not enjyable. It was hot dusty and long. We drank 20 litres of water and I was very tired. The tyres have taken a beating and now look like they've done the distance they have. They have bits missing....

The Ethiopian tribes in the south are lovely. They've not been touched much by the tourist and they still wander about with almost no clothes on. The children are completely naked and they hide when they see a car. They have almost nothing but theres a lot of EU and US money pumped in to those areas. Clinics, Wells, Schools and the like. They are thankful for an old plastic water bottle which they use for milking cattle and carrying water (strangely) during the day. They all seem to carry orange 4 litre contrainers that used to contain vegatable oil which are recycled for water use and they have to buy them! There are shops all over Ethiopia selling old plastic water bottles and oil containers. Everything is reused. When i say water bottles i mean the normal ones we get Coke in and Water in the UK and then thro away. These are used for months as their only way of carrying water which they carry for miles. There are queues at the wells,,,,,,queues of cattle and of people. Hundereds of them both.

The Ethiopians pedestrians have no road sense at all. I'm not talking about the modern types but the ones that wander out infront of the car repeatedly and look the wrong way when crossing the road. They'd be OK in the UK but not in a country that drives on the right. We met a couple who paid $3000usd for an accident involving a woman and child, both were OK but obviously its a good souce of income for them. Its a lot of money for them. We even encountered children playing chicken and rolling old tyres infront of the car across the carridgeway. These are the ones with no common sense but its the pedestrains who cross without looking that cause the issue. You'd be convinced they had seen you coming,,,they must have,,,,they are walking straight towards you,,,,,but no they haven't.....they will stop to shake hands with a freind in the middle of the road. They are just senseless. This applies to all ages.

More tomorrow and hopefully some photos.
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