Scenes from North Eastern Kenya- Part 1

One of the essential things you need to have when going North Eastern side of Kenya is alot of water.You never know when you might sleep under a camel

Every Wednesday is the Cattle trading day at the Garissa Market

I understand that the white cattle origins is Somalia while the Brown-whitish one’s originates from Ethiopia as seen in the two pictures below…

According to some brokers/cattle owners one bull here is worth only KSH.7,500 but by the time it reaches Nairobi or Athi-River’s Kenya Meat Commission it’s worth around Ksh.80,000 as seen in the pic below

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Highway to Garsen town and road blocks, jerrican laden lorries dot the road.

The Bura market doesn’t yield anything worth blogging but it’s a famous stop over for trucks plying the Garissa-Garsen-Malindi route

Donkeys are your friends here and you better be careful especially if you love speed. The road from Garissa to Hola is smooth and i wish all the roads were this smooth. But the shocker hit is when you arrive to Hola town..the road here has been under construction for the last 6 years as one of the locals told me.Mwisho wa lami…

Entry into Hola town…..

This road becomes a nightmare when it rains even if it’s a 5 minutes rain coz the soil here is the black cotton type and Japanese junk like Rita won’t make it through the muck….

It doesn’t more scarier than this…..

Hola’s Main street……..

a hearty meal of mbuzi fry/choma and ugali….goat meat is are plenty here…..

Hearty meal

The best hotel i saw…sort of a lodging but what the heck…its 200bob….

Best Hotel

HIGHWAY TO GARSEN

and the road never gets better ….

part of the road is in the bush…..

Enter Garsen

Guard post at the town gates…Declare you goods here…

Modest building in this town…the KCB Office…I didn’t spot any other bank here…….

sleeping quarters at the homeboys which we had booked 2days prior to arrival since its the only sleeping joint in this town…..

Sleeping quarters………

Water source and the showering joint…kindly note this are shared resources…the shower is the one u squat,cup the water in your hands,splash it on your back and if you miss don’t worry,the walls will bounce back the water on you……

Its adjacent to the constituency office…..

The only bus from Malindi via Garsen to Garissa then Nairobi….Miss it and you have to wait till the following day…

and the journey continues in part 2

 

Broken…

I wanted to do this post a few months back but due to commitments i couldn’t.

Its a boring saturday evening and I’m still yet to make up my mind about whether to travel upcountry or not.

I drove home and I immediately decide to hit the road to Kangundo(shagz) since I didnt want to travel to and fro on the same day.

I was intending to be at my upcountry home by 7:30pm latest since its a 45minutes drive to Kangundo from Nairobi.Driving at a speed of 120kph is normal for me along empty roads so this was no exception only that it was a bit dark and being a saturday,I was bound to meet with drunkards along the way so i exercised alot of precaution.

The drive was quite okay without any drama just the occassional hooting n slowing down.On reaching my home town called Tala,i decided to reduce speed from 120 to 50kph since i have always been warned of ox-carts being driven at night along this road.Little didn’t I know it was my turn to meet with one just 1km away from home.

There was an oncoming car on the opposite direction with its lights on full beam and it blinded my vision.Typically when one is approaching oncoming motor vehicles,you are required to dip your lights and being an obedient student of a reputable driving school,i dipped my lights and ofcourse expected the oncoming driver will do so his but alas! I was wrong,this guy wasnt dipping. I dipped again and again but the bugger won’t budge so I decided tuchomane and this is where i saw a black thing infront of me!

Breaking glass!

Metal on metal crumbling!

The car is heading to the 500metre cliff and I’m almost going for a head-on collision with the ox-cart!!

I swerved hard to my right and i lost control of the car,chipping the ox-cart with the left panel of my car and ended up doing a flip on the tarmac before the car settled on its roof.

This is the after math….

Rear Impact

Ox-Cart Impact

Left Panel and Ripped out bumper

Rear View

Missing Bumper

Missing Headlight

The Repairs

 

Round and About Garissa

This post is just for photos around the Garissa Municipality.

Lets start with the local banks…

Barclays….

Equity…

I couldn’t get a shot of the KCB one but will upload it once i get the close up.

Moving on…this one is along the Garissa-Mandera Highway

Another one along the same route.This one has a hotel facility for any kind of amount starting at ksh 500 to Ksh 2000 depending on the flexibility of your pocket.It has a hi-speed cyber on the ground floor

Farther along the highway,a private school.

An upcoming building along the route…

The Garissa-Mandera highway which has always been under construction. It got a lifeline during the campaign period.

Ohh by the way,from Garissa to Mandera is around 750 to 1000 km’s! under the scorching sun on bad roads!

another part of the road under construction..

Outside the town most of the residential houses are like this.. they build temporary shelters coz most of them are nomadic people who just check into town to trade at the local cattle market every wednesday..

other’s located at the old cattle market…. I understand if you try to cause any chaos,an AK 47 from one of this houses will shut you up! I took the two photo’s with great caution lest a borana wielding n AK chomokaaas

The local Goat market didn’t have much to offer for my lens but im so sure tomorrow i will have something coz tomorrow is the cattle,goat n sheep market day.

A visit to the local municipal council yielded a broken down fire engine.

and whoever said you can never find a merc in Garissa was dead wrong….

You got to give a congratulatory message for the residents of this place if the number of water tanks i saw is anything to go by…

The water supply source for garissa,the famous Tana River located one kilometer from the town .. this water is treated n supplied by the GAWASCO (Garissa Water and Sewarage Company).

I couldn’t resist having this photo left out considering the only government guest house i know is the prison

Finally food of the day….

Mbuzi fry,sembe,cabbz n dnegu kiasi for only ksh 60

Ohh by the way..Garissa has a total of 40 butcheries..only two sell beef. The rest sell Camel meat.

Food for thought

A resident of Garissa asked me why the country is fighting while it’s the same society that taught them how to live in peace and harmony ???

Did you know…

The residents here refer North Eastern Province as the Nothing Except Pleasure region

 

Road Trip (Nairobi – Garissa)

Three hundred and thirty nine kilometers away from the hustle and bustle of the capital city of Kenya,traversing along one of the most harshest,’bandit” infested highways..under the scorching 35+ degrees of heat! Yes,35+ degrees if the number of times i’ve been forced to take shower is anything to go by.Anyway to cut the long story short,I’m in Garissa town for the next three days on my official capacity and i can tell you this place is quite good if you have a refrigerator that can generate ice!

It was a ride worth it considering the kind of ride we are being chauffeured in is a Toyota Landcruiser II which is designed to handle this kind of terrain.The journey began with a top up of gas at the caltex petrols station in westlands

A few rations for the journey just in case we don’t reach our destination.Note the 5litres of water considering our destination is not user friendly when it comes to Hydrogen and Oxygen combined.

Then we were ready to hit the road..we passed several market centers like Kambiti (which ma mother tongue means Hyena)

Jumped several huge bumps…I wonder why we don’t have such in the city….

passed several funny looking road signs… like this one reading end of one way which to me ended at the Thika turn off!

Arrived at Mwingi North town and we had to take 15minutes break to stress our legs

Then we hit the road again this time passing through several police checks which i later learnt that they aint too strict with vehicles headed to NEP but with vehicles coming from Garissa because of illegal immigrants from somalia..some of them were the Ukasi,Bangali and the Tana river Bridge. This points are manned by mean looking Administrative Police whose looks just scares the living daylights out of you

and while one needs a security escort along this route,the escort was holed up somewhere in a dingy joint

So we decided to ambush an escort from this Kenya Army truck by giving them a run for their berets!

Save for the few camels…..

and abandoned homes coz of the nomadic life this sides…

everything else was high and dry..

A little stop over made us get a puncture and mark you the tyres were blue in color!

10 minutes later i had booked ma self into Hiddig Hotel ( so far the best rates(700 ksh) n standards(self contained,dstv,air conditioner that u have to pay extra for)

And after a “cold shower” i settled down for a hearty meal of fried rice,meat,beans n gravy.

By the way,the meal is only Ksh. 70 only….

Thus day one is over and i have to hit the mattress,im damn tired..

Watch out for Garissa – Garsen edition…..

 

The White Tiger

A pal of mine in India just sent me this pictures of the white tiger. I couldn’t resist uploading them here.

 

Sudan Sandstorm

I love taking pictures of all the event that happen around me and on a recent tour of Sudan this is what my faithful camera captured.

From Afar………..

As it nears…

More near……

Then finally….

I couldn’t get the rest after the sand storm finally covered me but it’s a sight to behold!