The morning is thrilling to see as we drive out of the city with the mountains rising before us and the warm and musky  air fragrant with the the smells  of wood smoke and ripe mangoes.   We will bump along these mountainous roads for ten hours and I want to curl up inside, but I feel it is necessary to engage in conversation.  Oh, this is the kind of ride an introvert hates.

I keep adjusting my tiger print scarf that keeps the sun off my shoulders and face as I glance at the driver.  The sun is a bright red ball hovering outside the open window.  The man’s eyes look weary as he keeps up a look-out for the police that maybe waiting just over the horizon.  The driver gives me a friendly enough smile and hasn’t looked me over since we have been on the road, so I am more relaxed.  He likes to eat and has already eaten three of the sandwiches and I regret I didn’t prepare more.    Every so often he stops to run strange errands in small villages where he raises his hands and talks to other men in  rickety stores that don’t seem to have anything for sale. Raised in Chicago, my first thought is that he must be a “booky” taking bets and collecting money.  I find it difficult to like him and wonder why.  The closest I can come is that there is a shifting quality about him, like what he says about himself and who he really is, is very different.  He tells me about the large family he must support, and about the children he has taken in to care for.  I write about him because I’m not sure what is at the bottom of my dislike.  I think I find myself harden a bit because I must resist his tales.  I don’t believe him.   I  have very little money with me (my credit card kept being denied cash even though I informed them I would be traveling in Kenya) and can’t afford to give him any extra than what I’ve already paid.  But what I really feel, is that he tells me sad stories because he sees me as a rich American.

Everywhere I look there were women lugging jugs or baskets while chickens and children follow.  I blink as I stare out at the dust and men swaying faintly like trees as they sit on the side of the road and  imagine this is what riding in a stage-coach might have felt like as we bump along the unpaved roads.

We are now crossing the equator and the only official notice is the small sign off the road.  No great fan fare on this side of Mt. Kenya, but I hear that on the other side in Uganda there is a bunch of shops, souvenir stands and hoopla.  I like the simple moment myself and would have missed it if my driver didn’t point out the sign.  It was the one time I think we were able to travel about 30 miles per hour. 

I appreciate the breeze that came in the open window for the odor of my drivers perspiring body grew along with his stomach as he ate the last of the bananas.   Still, I’m so thankful that I’m not sitting packed close to other people in a Manitoo without room to breathe and contracting every kind of germ that might be lurking in the small space with closed windows that I finally give the man twenty of the forty dollars I had left after he told me of the orphans he was supporting.  My woman’s intuition told me that he wasn’t telling the truth, but I couldn’t take the pinch in my neck from the stress of not giving him something.

The road, curves and the continuous bumping never stops.  I fear I will never reach Kilgoris.  The little mud houses beside the red snake of dirt road seems endless.  The land around the huts is cleared of trees and my driver tells me the land is cleared to make it easier to spy and kill snakes.  Every now and then we pass a small village where a woman pokes a stick  into the fire and children throw stones while men sit and stare at a lone woman as she saunters down the road, a bundle of sticks balanced on her head, looking like she can defy gravity.   I wrap my scarf over my head to keep the sun off.  It is a distant round dot in the white hazy heat and am suddenly happy at the thought that I haven’t seen a McDonald’s for weeks.