BEFORE AND AFTER

crossing into kenya there is some 600k of frontier between the border and paved roads/civilization. i was advised to take a transport for this section as i was alone and you would have to carry as much as 12 liters of water in case you don't find a village before you get robbed by bush bandits or somali pirates or whatever. anyhow, the only transport available were these trucks loaded with whatever farm stock coming from ethiopia. mine happened to be loaded with 15-20 tons of tumeric (which made for a pleasant smell). it was pouring rain all morning but the truck left anyhow. the photos illustrate the before and after of us trying to cross what was the road but turned into a muddy river from all the runoff. miraculously no one was hurt. really a miracle, because about 15 of us were sitting on top of this truck when it went over. about a hundred villagers appeared out of the bush and helped unload the truck before we tried righting it to no avail. i caught a bus nowheresville and took a room for a night while waiting for transport. finally sometime the next day i made it onto another truck (loaded with beans) and was in for another long haul. that truck broke a center bolt and we were lucky enough to be close to a frontier town were it could be fixed, but that took some time. so, four days later i arrived at a paved road and showers, sorted out my damaged goods (as my whole bag went swimming in muddy waters), fixed my cycle, and prepared to hit the road...