The Drive to Eldoret - 6/20

After some more fitful sleep and the inevitable 5 am wakeup time, we met up with Robert and Sandy, two students and collaborators from the University of Glasgow (PhD and MD respectively). Robert is Kenyan and is from the city of Eldoret, which will be serving as a base of operations for some of our research. These guys are mostly interested in running economy and physiology, whereas we are into anatomy and biomechanics , so we complement each other well. I should mention that Sandy just got off his flight from the UK and is now at about the 20-hour travel mark.

We have to drive to Eldoret in our junker, which I have named “Mbovo” aka broken or non-functioning. It is an 8-hour trip and about 1/3 of the drive will be over unpaved roads. I had a little bit of a flashback to my ridiculous 9-hour bus ride from Dar es Salaam to Lindi last summer that involved live chickens as passengers and barreling down unpaved roads in a 1960s-era coach bus at 80 mph. This trip will be even cozier because Mbovo is designed to hold 4 people but I am crammed in the back with Adam and Sandy, with one seatbelt pinning me and Adam together. My back is shattered for a variety of reasons.

People are driving like absolute maniacs and passing us at Mach 2 because Dan is wisely driving at 35 mph and taking it easy.
The scenery just outside the city is disheartening, consisting of pretty massive slums and very little development. After about an hour and a half, the landscape opened up and revealed very lush forest. It seemed like a good time to stop, so Dan thought about pulling over to the side of the road, but Robert held up a hand and said “it is not safe.” When pressed, he explained that a “thug has been making trouble in the woods. He has a gun, so when you pull over, he will rob you. And then he will kill you” (Robert emphasized this last point by pointing his index and middle fingers at Dan and making a firing motion). We decided not to stop for a while.

To avoid bladder implosion we pulled over at a rest stop and grabbed some petrol and some drinks for the ride. I chose some cherry soda-type thing to be adventurous, but it ended up tasting like pure grenadine and did not thirst-quench in the slightest. The rest stop had a picnic area nearby that was occupied by a horde of vervet monkeys and some huge heron-like birds which ran/flew around eating pieces of food left by previous patrons.
Our next stop was to take a few pictures of the awesome Rift Valley, which opened up as we drove up towards Eldoret. The road we were taking basically skirted the Eastern border of the mammoth plain before heading down the Eastern escarpment across the Valley to the western side. Along the way we passed a sign reading “EQUATOR,” which was pretty surreal. Adding to that feeling were the zebras and baboons along the side of the road, which seemed fairly little out of place next to a busy two-lane highway.

Props to Dan for making the 8-hour trip without killing us all.