Kenya - Marsabit

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Many passengers bought locally made brushes for "five bob" each (five Kenyan shillings). I felt I'd missed out on a bargain but realistically I didn't have any waiting relatives or market stall to take them to. As we set off it was raining hard and once again we all sheltered under the tarpaulin. Inevitably I had taken someone's place, which caused an upset. Discussions about the rights, wrongs went on for a while, mostly in Swahili and some of which I understood, at least enough to enjoy the humour of it all. Anyway it was not long before I was back outside enjoying the sights and smell of Kenya's northern territory. We seemed to have left without the convoy so presumably we had passed the dangerous section.

During the day we saw many dik-dik, a stoat, three zebra and many beautiful blue necked guinea fowl. As we were approaching Marsabit the tribe had changed to the Rendille. Proud, tall, distinguishable mainly by a head ornament that reminded me of something out of Star Trek, and ladies with not much on top apart from an arrangement of beads the size of a dinner plate. Also about this time we were treated to a close view of six elephant, not far from the road which I made a conscious effort to savour rather than fuss with the camera; sorry.

It had taken about 9½ hrs of driving to cover the 262km from Isiolo to Marsabit.

In the evening I met a schoolteacher who was proud to be Kenyan and said he had declined opportunities to go to USA or UK as his time would not be his own.

In these days I had many conversations with people. About the British Government, the great things they had done for Kenya, terrible things in the Muslim world. The worthiness of giving aid, development, dependency. If the west feeds someone today - who will do it tomorrow? Or worse still in ten years time when this "orphan" has five children of his own? Populations expand when conditions are good. I'm often asked why I don't have children? Since my childhood world population gone from 4000m to 5000m, quite enough people already. I'll leave my wealth to the UK's homeless and Africa's thirsty.


Kenya - Marsabit

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