Kenya: Is this the bus to Cartegena?

To get to Muhuru Bay, we took a local bus. Unfortunately for us, our preferred bus line (Easy Coach) was completely booked. Quality of buses appears to decline rapidly after that option. We ended up taking the Guardian Angel Line, which was a less than pleasant experience.

As Henry mentioned, the bus was wet on the inside and outside (confounding). Every seat on the bus was full, and Henry and I had to sit in the very last row. There were absolutely no shocks left, and Kenya is full of large speed bumps. We got launched into the air multiple times. We could tell it was coming by the way the bus slowed down, and the entire back of the bus would brace for impact. After 8 hours of riding, it got pretty painful. There was loud music (of all kinds) playing constantly.  There no seatbelts, and Kenya traffic can be terrifying. The temperature alternated between chilly and molten lava. Astoundingly, at the times Henry and I were dripping with sweat and on the verge of passing out, local Kenyan's were wrapping their children in puffy winter coats and refusing to open windows (also confounding).

Our bus dropped us off in Migori, about an hour and a half away from Muhuru Bay.  At this point we were picked up by a private car that we had hired for the duration of our time. The car was way spicier than we could have imagined.

Many members of the team stayed at the school's headmaster's house, but a few of us stayed at a the Genasa guest house in downtown Muhuru Bay (called custom).

 

Like Nairobi, a lot of places had gates and guards because of the high crime. 

Although the rooms (and especially bathrooms!) were pretty rough, the landscaping outside was very nice.

Can you find Henry?

I think I failed to take a picture of our actual room, but it was just larger than the bed. It was quite a squeeze to get two suitcases in there. The room was adequate, but had no frills. The place had power about 60% of the time. Unfortunately, part of that time was due to the generator running right outside our window. The day we checked in, the window had been closed all day and the temperature was even hotter than the bus had gotten.

The real adventure of the guest house was the torture bathroom, as we dubbed it.

After one shower, I was ready to tell the authorities everything. This toilet situation (not that uncommon), is the worst of both worlds. The traditional system is to use a squat hole. However, I found several places that had toilets with no toilet seats. This required the most uncomfortable kind of squatting, and was pretty awkward to use. You can't see it, but there is a shower head that extends just to the right of the toilet. The spray mostly missed the toilet, but water ended up going everywhere. There was no working light in the torture bathroom, which really added to the mystique when using it. That meant that we had to have the door open when showering, and water would run quite far into the room. The floor was also really rough, which meant that pockets of water would form in the quite large grooves and never dry out. This is perfect for mosquitos and the dank smell that never quite left. When we did shut the door, it would stick quite forcefully. I had to have Henry get me out on several occasions.

We really only slept and showered at the room. Even though it was only about 3 miles away from the project site, it took between 20 - 25 minutes to get there. So we would leave early in the morning and not return until 9:00 - 9:30 at night. It was really nice to be able to charge our phones and other electronics some of the time, which truly was a luxury.

Despite the inconsistent power, one thing the guest house did have was an outside TV. It was obviously a very social thing, and one evening there were tons of people gathered to watch a soccer game (the commentary and cheering of which we heard quite late into the night).

Another treat: almost every night without fail we heard a cat sacrifice. We have no idea what was going on, but at least once we would get woken up with the sound of the most horrific cat screech/wail. It was quite the rude awakening and quite a regular occurrence.