Plato's Cave

Having climbed to the top of Menengai crater, and had a wonder at the view of Nakuru and it's lake, elevated and elated in spirit - you will find that your journey is not yet done. You must then make your way down again via a precipitous, slippery and frankly treacherous natural ladder of twisted tree roots into the very bowels of the caldera. On the way you'll be asked to repent your sins. This is a “Holly place”.

View from the top

At the base is a vast circular cave, pitch black even after your eyes adjust, and inexplicably smokey. It is a site of pilgrimage. Just as my pupils strained to adjust to the dark, so my eyes also began to widen to the spirituality of the place. Even stranger things began to materialise, though the true corners of this religious sanctuary would always remain dark to me. Scattered around outside I was surprised to find unobtrusive little lean-to's, consisting of nothing but a scrap of potato sack pinned in some fashion to the walls of the crater. More surprising still were the feet poking out of one such barely-a-meter squared dwelling. I realised that there are actual people sheltered more or less efficiently beneath each such construction. Apparently they live there, fasting and praying for months at a time. Is this living of a very extreme kind, the kind of intense rarified existence that approximates oneself to God? Or in fact it's exact opposite? Does the process of approximation to death make one  in reality more, or less alive? You are at least, more acutely aware of your mortality when enduring such a degree of discomfort and hunger. And yet certainly the beings beneath each little annex exhibited worryingly minimal vital signs.

The place is decidedly beautiful, and I thoroughly enjoy the few hours spent within the crater. However, the vibrant green that contributes so much to the beauty of the place when passing through, is the consequence of a the sort of bone penetrating dampness which is already seeping under the seams of my Oasics waterproof. 30 days and 30 nights of slow disolution did not appeal, even to that most competitive side of my nature, which is so often the most persuasive.

The hight of the crater, the depth of its caldera, it's beauty, the fact that it's the only place where you will find snakes in Nakuru... it all feels very biblical. Aggressive graffiti telling me to “Trust in God and Fear” disturbs me slightly whilst I inoffensively and innocently contemplate my empty tummy and potential lunch. All this thought of fasting made me worry that I hadn't packed enough food. I wonder that I am vaguely amused and maybe slightly irritated by the sign, rather than profoundly moved. Maybe I will return some time in the future as the prodigal daughter to be redeemed, that would be more than alright with God so they say. Right now however, I feel more like the blissfully ignorant, errant sheep of the flock, obliviously munching through a pack of salt and vinegar crisps. The greater good's and bad's and terrors of this world passing without notice comfortably over my head.

'And Plato they say, could stow it away, I drink therefore I am!"

An even more surprising discovery still was an empty bottle of vodka in the centre of the cave, being filled drip by drip by natural spring water trickling from the ceiling. The deliberateness of the scene was striking, the brand, the hollowed out dint where it stood just in the right place to catch each drop. I wondered whether God was now being sponsored by Smirnoff, or whether I hadn't in fact accidentally come upon the Holy Grail. I remembered Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and though I'd better not drink from it, else I might disintegrate into dust, or worse still, achieve immortality and thus still be alive to see the End of Days.   

Missing my beautiful people, from a beautiful place - Menengai Crater

Whenever I catch a sight of Jamie, or Nina, when I am not expecting, nor they - when they are busy looking so much like themselves, so much as I know they are and love them to be, they seem to take on the qualities of almost a symbol or cartoon. How can the strength and depth of someone's reality for one, afford them qualities of fiction?

Part of the reason my heart lifts for the sight of them so is that they are the few I truly recognise, I see them really, and that is so much of why one comes to love someone. To share in the realness of each other, no superficiality or pretence or self-delusion. Sometime I realise they see me better than I see myself and I am overwhelmingly grateful that such a real me does exist, and that they can abide it.

But why is it that the better one knows and loves the more caricature like such a vision becomes? I suppose one could argue about the nature of 'realism', that wholly elusive and subjective concept. As soon as we see something as real, it almost immediately becomes too much of itself to be so, especially in memory, that astigmatic mirror of reality such as it is. I miss my Mum and my sister so much. I remember the last time I saw them as I left them at the airport. They have a dimension and a colour for me which is so much more than real.

I think of the fantastically beautiful plants I saw in Nairobi, in the palatial estate that Amy's grandparents inhabit. They looked so so beautiful to be real, too large and bright, my Nina's and my Jamie's. Was it any different in this case? These 'real' flowers were after all, deliberately placed and manicured. But then again they do actually grow that way by nature, they bloom and photosynthesise and wilt in this efflorescence of exaggeration. And then what else is the inside of ones head, other than such a garden in which you nurture and care meticulously for those that you know and love?

Kenya Premier League - Muhoroni Youth vs AFC Leopards

Me and Freshy from my Mabadiliko Youth group

Peter and Shosh just outside the Devil's Bedroom

Amy <3

Naibei, and Joseph with my shoes (Masai)

Peter defying gravity, spectacularly

Lake Naivasha (full of hippos!) the morning after camping 

Hell's Gate national park

Me, Peter, Josh, Lauren and Doug after a Masai guided tour 

False start

Wake up freezing cold and tired, but have a rush of nervous excitement about the day ahead. It's ok, I've done all I can myself to prepare. Lauren and I have designed our first lesson around getting to know you activities, combined with the slightly more frivolous of educational exercises proscribed by our curriculum, such as the spaghetti challenge. I imagine on the one hand a modestly sized, happy bank of receptive female faces ranged in front of us. Lauren distributing our marshmallows round the class,  whilst I scrawl islands of assets and aspirations across a whiteboard, meticulously picked out with palm trees and frolicking dolphins.

Then the alternative rears it's nonplussed, utterly unimpressed head. An intimidating posse of 20 surly old year old Kenyan business men wondering what these faintly ridiculous mzungu kids are doing prancing in incomprehensible and irritating circles in front of them. I am suddenly very glad we decided not to include the 'let's all create playdough alien's!' exercise at least before we've met each group. All I can do is make like Lucy and trust to God rocking up at the 11^th hour, and giving us a receptive and enthusiastic class.

It feels too early when I wake up. As I crawl out of bed I become aware of the water pump roaring, as though for a shower, only louder than usual. I cast around feebly for a victim to hang my pissed-off hat on, but I know no one is really up and having a shower at this time of night. An investigation of the hall and shower confirm what I already suspect. It's just the house doing what it does best, royally screwing us over with precision-planned timing.

The sound of rain is deafening, it seems to be inside the house. In and out of the thunder I hear squealing. I prepare myself for the worst.

I return to my room and open the door to a scene from Jumanji. I seem to have rolled 'monsoon' on the magic dice. The deluge is confined exclusively to the area over my bed.

Lucky? To have got out of bed in the nick of time. My midnight melodrama of mood dwelled grimly on my narrow escape from certain death. To be fair, the water tank had actually just exploded above my head.

Thank the lord for my laptop being down stairs and not on the floor. Money, hairdryer, straighteners, ipod, all in my suitcase which now looks like a miniature ornamental pond with murderously floating electrical devices, all plugged into the plug rank I bought for a mere 400 shillings.

Someone turns the power off, and sorts the tank out. I lift not a finger but sit downstairs unhelpfully weeping. Josh lends me his hoodie and I sleep on a too short sofa under a couple of Amy's scarves, all very pretty but not particularly distinguished for their thermal qualities. Amy's bed is already soaked from the reservoir of water dripping down through my mattress from the top bunk. We both get a little hysterical, she is good at diverting a potential psychological breakdown into a giggling fit. Tomorrow, or next week, maybe next year, I might find it genuinely pretty funny. It's not even 2 am yet.

The nightly canine cacophony strikes up on queue. It's finally quiet circa 3.24 am.

After about five minutes peace, a tiny yap from what must be Satan's chihuahua. Like the first nervous clap of a controversial applause, started by someone who normally does not dare to initiate such things, there's a wickedly expectant and self-satisfied pause before the barks begin to roll round the neighbourhood once again.

Lucy

This morning I have tea with lucy. I pass her every day at least a few times and I miss her when for some reason she's not there. Every morning it's 'Jambo', a wave, some fruit for 5 bob and/or a chat about something inconsequential. I look forward to this exchange of friendly noises in a way I would never do at home. At home I rush around hoping against hope I don't bump into anyone I kinda know and am forced into inane chat about the weather. I like Kenya Anna much better.

Today though she asks me to stop. My tea cup gets filled from from her own cup and her daughters as there isn't actually any left. Her daughter gets up to offer me the only stool at Lucy's stall, and some fresh mdazi.

We talk of her morning and laugh over shared and unshared vocabulary. She is generous with my toying swahili and pretends to understand my often frustratingly skitty and mumbling english, which even my mum often has difficulty deciphering. Her morning involves going to the market and stocking up on produce, I see that she has bought much much more than usual, due to the mzungu presence down the road? She stays in a room in the house opposite us, our regular avocado and tomato based lunches must have meant a substantial boost in trade for her. I ask her about it, brashly inured to asking such indelicate business questions from my work so far on the program. She doesn't directly respond, I think due to embarrassment this time rather than my enunciation. I wish I hadn't asked, she is modest an shy with regards to our 'business' relationship. I am her friend and guest and take an mdazi and another cup of tea to make up for my insensitivity. The tea is typical Kenyan tea, thick like cream with at least 5 sugars, builders eat your heart out. Mdazi are kenyan donuts, their gilded caramel casing giving way to a sweetly disintegrating eiderdown interior, when done well. Usually they tend to be slightly yellowing and flabby with grease. Lucy's are the best I've had.

She talks to me about her brother's sons who want her to move out of the house she stays in but which is technically theirs. Patriarchal inheritance laws. She cooks and cleans and gives them her money, she cant save anything for herself. Where will she live with her daughters? As she confides her hardship her talk shrinks to a whisper, I have to strain with all my auricular and mental faculties to piece together what she's saying. It's a painful while before I perfect a method of responding in a way which prioritises expression of sympathy, whilst temporarily deferring full understanding, and thus prompts repetition. I begin to be able to replace the frequent 'loom's' I hear with 'room's', etc until the articulating bones of her story animate themselves in my imagination.

Why is shy confiding this to me? She is generous to me with her secrets and troubles as well as her hospitality. That disagreeable and decidedly western sensibility I felt stir its ugly head inside me from time to time in Lalwet, is suspicious that she wants something from me. Is that the only reason she is treating me like this? How selfish of me to think so. What do I want her to want from me? I want her to like me for 'myself'? What on earth does that mean?! Nothing but western egocentricity, mixed with equal parts of MEDCentricity (more economically developed country).

What is this ambivalence I sometimes felt in Lalwet, feeling pressure and sadness that I couldn't respond to their exorbitant hospitality with a guarantee of a scholarship to an english university that they so covet. The painfully uncomfortable awkwardness I felt in the market when the woman I bought my plimsoles from aggressively insisted I become her friend and take her back to england with me goes some way towards both understanding and excusing it, but you can't generalise like that.

What is it exactly that makes me uneasy and suspicious? Do I think I am being put under obligation by her kindness? Why should I think this? It is an unpleasant sensibility which does not exist in other societies, in ancient Greece and Rome such ties of 'obligation' underpinned interpersonal relationships, strengthened the fabric of society and did not necessarily diminish one iota the 'authentic' ties of love and affection between friends. It is different with Lucy. I find myself thinking of the bible just as she would, 'do unto others as...' I am very suggestible, not a great quality usually, but on this occasion at least I am am grateful for the empathy it affords me.

Perhaps she thinks I might be put here to help her, I know that it would be within my power to so. To do much more than she might even hope for, not that I should of course. I could help any number of individual Kenyans. I struggle to hold in my rational mind that this is an inherently flawed approach. This entrepreneurship course is specifically designed to help in a sustainable and still meaningful way. But what about Lucy? She 'only' needs the one off 5000 deposit on top of the first months rent for a new room, (she can keep up her rent easily after that if it weren’t for the advance).

I have to move the conversation into less fretfully treacherous waters. Shy, generous woman, I try to explain my new found taste for roasted maize, she misconstrues and thinks I mean gidethi which is a dish of maize and beans boiled to within an inch of their lives, and boiled again till they finally submit their bullet carapaces to being chewed. My heart sinks a little as she says that it's her speciality and she would like to make me some, I tell her that's a really nice offer, and think no more about it.

Lauren and I are working together on our first session with a Kenyan group. We spend the rest of the day drawing up a pretty comprehensive lesson plan. Josh comes through the door with ingredients for our dinner and informs me that Lucy has made a pot of what transpires to be more like a vat of beans and maize. I feel terrible. I decide that I'm going to bloody well eat them, and bloody well like it, but does she want me to pay? I wish I understood Kenyan etiquette better. It could either be terribly rude to offer, or terribly rude to not. Dougie and Lauren come with me for moral support which is lovely. Doug also shoulders responsibility for untangling the question of payment. I'm so, so grateful.

She wont let me pay, 'I am her friend'. She won't meet any of our eyes when she says this and I go a little bit crumbly. Caleb, our Kenyan in residence adds potato and tomato to the mix and it actually tastes fucking fantastic.

Lauren and I finish planning our sessions for tomorrow. Absolutely terrified. Two lessons of 2 hours with 2 groups, one at 10 and one at 2.

Go to bed.

A weekend in Lalwet.

After cutting/letting the devil out of our cake, we notice a fellow customer throwing in his own unique contribution to proceedings. His effluvient greeting and subsequent intimate conversation with the fat, plastic cook mascot of 'Gilani's', the restaurant we are in, is pretty funny at first. The interchange becomes slightly more uncomfortable when the poor ol' innocuous Mr. Gilani statue succeeds in mortally offending this interloper. Just as well plastic statues tend to be pretty tolerant as a general rule. Exhibiting the patience of a saint Mr. Gilani stolidly refuses to rise to the bait, thus managing to successfully diffuse the situation.

My birthday cont...

I had just settled into my section of the pitch, a walk-through of our creative process, when a sound like a harpooned baby seal punctures my concentration. The sound gets louder and more insistent, and for the third time in the past 24 hours I feel like I'm involved in a life threatening emergency. I was certain that something was about to die, it took a good few minutes to work out that suffering creature was human, and it was Emma, one of the girls from the room next to us.

Before all this has had a chance to sink in for me, and as I stand with my back to the white board and marker raised in my hand, Pankaj, Peter, Josh and Doug and Shosh have made a mass exodus upstairs to where the noise is coming from.

Emma is having a panic attack because she can't breathe. Shosh is great and knows what to do, she suffers from asthma which brings on panic attacks herself. Josh is on the phone and a matatu comes almost immediately to take Emma to hospital.

The rest of us wait. I look down at the doodles I'm scribbling all over my pitch notes and discover I've drawn an elaborate panorama of a country church fit with extensive grave yard.

Having broken open our birthday Tuskers (by 'our' I mean Shosh and I, we share the same birthday and year!) and discovering that Emma is safely ensconced in hospital, we decide to persevere with our plans to go out for dinner. Seems pointless and even counter productive for us all to stay home and mope.

Shosh puts on her music, it is loud and it is Kesha mainly and uh, artists of a similar ilk. She has long straight hair which she can sit on and watching her straighten it whilst jigging around and singing immediately cheers me up. She warns us and tells no lies when she says that she is drunk after two Smirnoff Ice. Having slept all night she has enough birthday spirit for the both of us, I'm sulkily dragged along on the coat tails of her excitement. She has the most hilarious sort of old man chuckle, complete with santa claus style 360 degree torso rotation with jolly shoulder shrugging.

We get a Tuk tuk to the best food in town. We have an option of 'baridi' or cold beer at last, warm beer is the best one can usually hope for. The menu is bizarre, it consists of things like shepherds pie and tandoori chicken and spaghetti bolognaise along side the more traditionally Sukuma and Ugali. We ask our waiter for his recommendation, and amongst all the more Kenyan dishes on the menu he suggests cordon bleu/maryland chicken. Having been warned against what goes for 'cheese' in this country, I get a chicken curry with Kachumbari and other veg. There is running water and flushing toilets here. Halleluja.

The waiter comes over and inquires of the whole table what he should do with the candles with respect to the cake. Up till this point it has been painstakingly and successfully sheltered from mine and Shosh's attention all day.

Still a very lovely surprise none the less.

After a whispered discussion with Josh he returns with candles sans cake, lays them on the table looking pleased with himself and asking for a fee.

When it finally materialises and with lit candles, it's as good a birthday cake as I have tasted, 4 days Kenyan wages apparently. I feel a rush of warmth and gratitude towards Josh and Doug who arranged it for us. Finally feels like it's been a really good birthday day, despite the fact that it categorically was not.

My birthday

Toilet paper has run out. Water has run out. No tea then this morning. Some one says happy birthday, bright and smiley. Turns out most everyone else slept through this night of constitutional cataclysms.

I am in a bad mood. The sort that precludes any ability to dredge up even a fake enthusiastic response to birthday wishes.

This mornings class involves brainstorming certain preliminary problems we suppose ourselves to have already observed around Kenya. We mock up a series of questions to ask locals in order to test our assumptions about this issue, and discover if there is a potential business idea there. Our task is to design a vending machine to address this problem. As we have learnt from yesterday's alien making, it may or may not have to do what a vending machine does/look like one in anyway.

Identifying perceived problems

One issue I had identified in the market yesterday was a general lack of small change amongst stall holders, having to borrow off neighbours to break notes. We had been warned to keep small coins to pay the 20 shilling matatu fare also, as the conductor would find it hard to break large notes. We noted that supermarkets give pennies in sweets when they run low on change. Change seemed to be an issue. We identified a few other percieved problems, but it soon became clear, after testing our assumptions through interviews, that this change issue was a universal and pressing one, and one that could present a desirable and feasible business opportunity.

We return home enlightened and enthused by our idea (not before stocking up on bathroom cleaning products from Wool Matt [Walmart?]). We design the Mighty Machine of Change and get ready to pitch it to the rest of the group. Really enjoyed our task today, and working with my roomies Amy and Shosh. Shosh has no inhibitions and has a great talent for communication with Kenyans, putting them at ease after their initial suspiciousness of our seemingly inconsequential and random questioning. Amy, despite her terrible night soldiers on with remarkable stoicism and we bounce ideas off each other in a creative and rewarding way.

It's raining heavily again, we got drenched on the way back. We soggily sit through the pitches of the two other groups, one has created a vending machine for condoms, malaria pills, morning after pill etc, one has created a machine for putting money directly into ones M-Pesa account, a mobile-phone based money transfer service for Safaricom and vodacom.

Despite being exhausted and soaked, I'm excited to start our pitch, my pride and confidence in our idea mean my stage fright and self-doubt seems to temporarily evanesce, an unprecedented occurrence. I was hoping such an intrepid adventure as this I've embarked on would do something towards building up my confidence, but not within the first week. Amazing!

Our Mighty Machine of Change
(bearing in mind we have unlimited resources to design and manufacture this thing)

Amy wakes me up at about 1.30 am. I'm immediately alert, scared and upset for her, I can hear by her tone the degree of her distress. 

She tells me she thinks she is about to faint, which she promptly proceeds to do. She falls away from me and in between the narrow gap between sleeping Shosh's bed and the wardrobe. Extracting her is somewhat of a logistical effort. When I manage to organise her limbs in an upright position on Shosh's bed, the poor thing does not seem entirely aware that she has been collapsed on the floor for a good minute. Shosh also is completely oblivious to proceedings, sleeping like a baby, a talent for which she has no idea how grateful she should be this night. 

Amy is burning up and clammy, I tell her forehead feels fine. I open to door to our balcony to get her some air, forage for water, of which our only resource are a couple of steadily depleting bottles in the kitchen, administer pain pills for want of any other idea of what to do, and try and convince her that she isn't going to wake up dead, a process of persuasion which is as much to convince myself as Amy. I tuck her back in bed with water and ginger biscuits and lie awake. It's not long before Vickie bowls into our room, door flinging wide, on a mad dash to our en suite. Turns out she has filled up the other toilets and is too ill to be able to manage to flush after herself. I get up and try and talk/help her but she seems in a bit of a delirium. The room is a thoroughfare for the rest of the night. Doors slam  open again however often I hopefully close them again. All the lights are left on, there is absolutely no sound proofing between our bed room and en suite.  It's 5.22 am when I realise how I have spent the first few hours of my birthday.

Sept 4th

Our first full day of lessons. Theoretical stuff interspersed with fun hands on activities. We are introduced to the question of what makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial. Research conducted by Sara Sarasvathy proposes a dichotomy between traditional strategic or managerial methodologies and the played out practices of successful entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial talent is not innate but can be taught. Thus why we are all here. Causal vs effectual reasoning is also introduced. Interspersed with all the theory are more fun practical exercises like the spaghetti challenge. This time we make aliens out of plasticine which are subsequently challenged due to the fact that many have made creatures based on parts of existant animals. We also hop around a lot whilst word associating, and use the results to mock up a pseudo business plan to implement in Nakuru.

I share a room with Shosh, a lovely, rather batty girl from North Hampton, and Amy, a fellow Oxford graduate. Turns out she went to Hertford for geography, literally opposite my college. I already feel happy and at home in our room together.

Vickie, one of the North Hampton uni girls faints over lunch and is ill for afternoon lessons. Little did I know that this would spell the beginning of an epic collection of calamitous events. As people begin to notice the insistent and unapologetic retching from upstairs Amy mentions she also feels a little under the weather. I feel a sense of intense foreboding, compounded by that tensity of air about to rend with rain and electricity. The squeamish notes of vickie's failing constitution from upstairs ominously change timbre. Poor thing is violently ill from both ends. At this very moment we get our first water cut. The whimpering sounds an unfilled cistern attempting to flush slope out from under the bathroom door. 

Electricians at work

With limited resources, enterprise and teamwork is key!

Nakuru Market

The point of this morning is to orientate ourselves around Nakuru. We catch a 'bus' or matatu to the main market.

Matatu's are small decrepit vans which provide an unofficial sort of bus service to and from town, people hop on and off for 20 kenyan shillings, they are run by an organised crime gang, which is incidentally improving the infrastructure of the city. This I will learn to be a very Kenyan sort of irony.

I've never felt so crowded and precarious with regards to the definition of my personal space as here. The sky stretches wide and open above my head and the market sprawls, yet I am having to perform impromptu pirouettes around customers, squatting stall owners, errant kids and livestock. The most terrifying of these various unpredictable and vigorous moving obstacles are juggernauting potato-men with 25 kilo sacks of produce on their shoulders. Their loads seem heavier than black holes, even their faces concertina up into a concentrated grimace, this is the first and only time I have seen a Kenyan look unfriendly. The urgent and seemingly aggressive 'shhshhshh' they rasp as they descend upon you however is not hostility, or anger. Their momentum makes them utterly unstoppable once on the move, the load they carry knows nothing of patience or civilities. Get in their way you will - the paths are just over a foot wide at best - avoiding them entails taking massive liberties with my centre of gravity. I find myself on tip toe leaning at apologetic 45 degree angles over obese mounds of swollen avocados.

We visit Hope and Vision Alley that is run by a Kenyan cooperative BK works closely with. It recently won best youth cooperative in Kenya. No small thing. I get to make my introductions to some of the business men there. Also have a beetroot, avocado, mango and passion fruit drink for about 10p. Innocent smoothies eat your heart out. We have lunch in a 'mumma's', which are little improvised huts owned by a woman, or mumma serving regular customers lunch. Our regular is called Helen who serves the typical sukuma wiki (kale), udengu (lentils), chapati, ugali (a stodgey maize mixture which is THE staple here), and kachumbari (spicy salsa).

Today we start our business/entrepreneurship syllabus. Our afternoon lesson is the spaghetti challenge, which involves building the highest construction out of dry spaghetti and string/cellotape as possible, whilst still being able to support a marshmallow on the top. My teams is 2^nd highest by about half an inch, but by far the most aesthetically pleasing.

Horrendous thunderstorm, buckets and thunderclaps. I knew it was rainy season but I wasn't prepared for this gigantomachy of atmospheric agitation.

Tucked up in my top bunk after a long day. The neighbourhood dogs begin barking. It sounds like 101 dalmatians have gone missing in Nakuru and they're all sounding the alarm. At first. My patience wanes as the night goes on and the violence of their communication increases. By 3 am it sounds like the most distressing kind of dog fight imaginable. Snarling bodies slam against corrugated Iron. No sleep tonight.

Our balcony in the rain.

Sept 2nd, morning...

We are enough of a spectacle as it is; such a large group of mzungu's bewildering themselves around Nakuru. We shuffle around in a confused gaggle on seemingly incomprehensible missions, (mzungu literally means aimless wanderer) talking and pointing, sometimes writing stuff in tiny black notebooks, a subtitled comedy of manners. 

Five of us had decided to go on a run the previous night. By the time we reach the gate of our estate we've all twisted ankles. One has decided to quit whilst she's still... well, whilst not ahead, at least still able to circumvent unilateral organ failure. We are 1850' above sea level and the effect on our collective fitness levels is dramatic. 

I can only imagine what they make of the sight of us. Heaving as we are our pale carcasses around the mechanic sector of town just as everyone is opening up shop. I see their curious and faintly alarmed faces attempt to process the image of this new apparition - 'When a mzunga looks like he is about to die, a miraculous phenomenon occurs, he is no longer white, but beetroot red, and puffy round the edges. He hunches and sags, and yet perseveres in straining onwards, running to meet his doom.'

The generator cuts out with 10 mins left of the game. I suggest hunting for beer, I think social anxiety might be making me brave, somewhat of a paradox? We wander around trying to find an establishment. It seems to me that nowhere looks in the least bit likely. However, on closer look things pop out. Places huffily materialise in front of you, with the defensive stance of the overlooked and self-consciously shabby. We nose deeper between the corrugated iron garages and breeze block frontings covered in adverts for car parts or car washing. It's like turning over a bland and unlikely looking stone in a rock pool, only to find a teeming efflorescence of surprising events taking place.

We accidentally wander into an illegal gambling game, the room is doomily dark and candlelit. Josh seems interested joining in, I'm a little nervous, my skill at gambling rests entirely upon my skill at cheating rather than strategy. I do not rate my chances or the consequences of cheating at cards in Kenya.

You seem to be able to wander through any doorway and into any building/home, which may or may not cater your needs, probably depending on nothing more than whether they happen to have in any of what you are looking for.

We finally find an actual 'bar'. It has a bathroom style china white sink next to the bar where the waitress clad in tight red crochet rinses her bar cloth. No sink at all in the toilets. Also the toilets are holes in the ground, there is dripping from the ceiling of uncertain origin. The beers are beers however, called Tusker, sometimes one's lucky enough to find Pils, although not today. As soon as we enter the bar we are spectacles, there is a pool table and we're challenged, one by one the boys lose and we are hustled. One fully baked man transpires to be rather more skilled, rather less baked, and rather more eager for a beer penalty per loss once he's gotten the best of Josh, Peter and Doug. I am glad at this point that Kenyan women are not expected to play pool, I feel distinctly out of my pub depth.

Our actual house

After lunch I feel not much better and so tired. Josh wants to watch the Arsenal game which manages to just trump my desire to nap. Apparently we can watch it at a pub. 'Pub' transpires to mean glorified  wendy hut. Wendy hut yes, but glorified in the highest. There is a cinema construction composed of three walls, a wide screen attached to the far side, 4 ranks of benches ranged in front. The dimensions are not more than 10 by 6ft. I've never used the phrase, 'a bit village' before, as soon as I find myself in a situation where it the phrase can most perfectly be applied, Kenya, it becomes tautology.

It's now afternoon so the rain sets in, as the benches are full our backs are getting wet. We get invited to watch the rest of the game in the living room of the big dog in charge of this set up. It seems white people, or mzungu's, Are treated like royalty here! We meet a group of men already watching from elaborately upholstered, (imported, I discover, a point of great pride) sofas. I admire a splendid trophy display and we discover that our host is a champion at Kenyan volley ball. He looks slightly surprising for some one professing to be such an athlete, a little gone to seed, slightly sun-dried looking, with a pot belly which belied any special speed or agility.

One man is mechanically working his way through a capacious brown paper bag of uh, roots? They appear to be slightly more organic looking Mikado chocolate sticks, hallowed with a fuzzy fringe of dusty rootlets. Turns out its a natural sort of drug which acts as a stimulant, as innocent as coffee? Or as noxious and potent as opium? I have no idea. I kind of want to try one. The Arsenal game skips across the glazed face of my attention, but my peripheries are going crazy with seeing and being surprised.

Our neighbourhood, Koinange Estate

Next 12 hours –

Just kidding. Our house is NOT a shack at all, although it does lack a reception unfortunately. It has two rooms of two which are to be inhabited by the boys, two rooms of three for the six girls, and one servants quarters for the two organisers Douglas and Josh. They've really taken one for the team, the rest of us have beds and curtains. It's pretty lovely, I manage to bag the best room with en suite and balcony, and the top bunk. Massive win. I notice the stone floor is inset with a perfectly rendered Triforce pattern on the landing and decide that now is too early and risky to gage whether there might be a closet Zelda enthusiast in the group. I imagine shooting Deku nuts at Skulltula's from the out-sized, bear-armed embrace of my sofa, with my unfriendly, half-shaved cat and cousin Nin. From here even the memory seems prohibitively far away to think about.

After dumping our stuff we head for lunch to the Hygienic Butchery, I am unsure whether to be reassured or concerned by the need for such an eponymous qualification. I got beef fry with rice as it was what Josh got, I figured he'd learnt from experience. The gaunt, yellowing beef carcasses hanging in the window didn't do much to raise expectations. In the end it tasted exactly the same as the plane food I had, lamb stew, salty and meaty, what more could one want?

I soon realise that the species of meat served is far less important than the specific organ being cooked or the type of cooking. Emma was asking what sort of meat was in the spaghetti special, the first answer was 'meat', when pressed further the answer was specified to 'leg' meat. This would have to do, a steaming pile of offal was busily and ostentatiously being weighed out in the front of the shop.

American Peter ordered chicken fry which arrived looking like a jaundiced leg of Alien from Alien Vs Predator. It was at once scaly and feathery, it could not be cut with a knife. I feel so sorry for him, we were all pretty starving. We've eaten nothing since our plane breakfast of 75ml of yoghurt and one of those weird plane croissants which look like a clip art picture of what a croissant should be. That was 8 hours ago. I give him some of my beef fry. 

Home sweet home

Our destination.

Day 2, still travelling

Next 24 hours...

Matatu journey from Nairobi to Nakuru, predicted journey time is 3 hours. I get my first lesson on the meaning of African time. The journey both seems, and is interminably longer than that. I'd gulped down an entire bottle of coke in the last 20 mins and KNEW at the time I would regret it as soon as I got into the coach to Nakuru. I sure did.

Once I was led at last by a commiserating and welcoming Douglas to our coach, I was too tired to think about whether I was relieved, or excited, or wanting to go home, or what. I was just happy to be told what to do.

Once again I needed the loo as soon as we had set off on our 3hr journey, I doubted there would be any easy stops but was too tired to feel anxious about this. We sat four in a row just shy of 4ft wide and with less than an inch of free board above our heads. I fell into a black hole like sleep for about 15 mins which was enough to give me the little spare energy I needed to feel desperately uncomfortable again.

I eventually plucked up the courage to ask if we could stop for a loo break. Was slightly embarrassed by the production which ensued trying to communicate to the driver a need he didn't seem to understand, through a pile of 30kg bags of luggage at least two foot deep.

THE GREAT RIFT VALLEY - We stopped for the view which I tried to enjoy but couldn't. I was elaborately led through a plethora of opportunist souvenir vendors to a toilet, and to my gratification I saw that the majority of the other girls were also grateful for my call.

Sigh.

I well enjoyed the view of the Rift Valley! It is vast, the convex of its dimensions allowing me to take in the most extensive swathe of land I've seen, cut smooth as undulating silk. The heat ocre-d soil seems to haze upwards from the ground, softening all to a shadowed oyster, mother of pearl laying dusty over a fireplace.

Nakuru is somewhere laid out in front of me, we are c. 1850ft above sea level. This is where I will be for the next two months. I heard my first Hakuna Matata, and felt happy for the first time since reaching Kenya. We clamber back into our battered tin can of a vehicle. The rest of the journey compounded the pain in my bum and back. However, I was now cheery enough to drift off fantasising of the roaring trade sardine chiropractors might have, were their potential customers not already pickled. When I awoke we had arrived at our destination.

1st day cont...

We have two hours to go when I begin to feel the turbulence. I didn't notice it at first, but it was met with the sort of insidious and spiteful travel-sickness I haven't experienced since I was about 8, and sick bags were a travel necessity. I felt awful, but the waves of sickness seemed manageable, at least while we were landing. On disembarking the plane however, a degree of urgency presented itself. I wanted to wait for the others to land, it was about time I made myself known (I'd felt bad about my cowardice the whole plane journey, and anxious that everyone was bonding without me), I had no choice in the matter. I found a bathroom quick-sharp and was violently sick. I was sure I was running behind again. I rushed myself through the visa check, anxious that I'd be holding up everyone I hadn't even met yet. The queues were very confusing. I picked one and stuck with it, which I think is generally a good approach to a few things in life, like football teams, and the one hair-style that actually suits your face (although according to what I am learning on this program, exactly the opposite of what one should do when setting up a business!).

I whizz through semi-aware of having flamboyantly skipped the queue, but with the kind of accidental innocence which requires a certain amount of self-delusion at the same time. No one was at baggage reclaim. I called Doug but it didn't connect, bad sign. I had committed at least half and hour to waiting for my bag before there was a resurgence of heaving nausea, and I bowed out to the loo again. It was only when I couldn't physically be sick anymore that I feel ok enough to trust abandoning my cubicle. The Kenyan lady who looks after the toilet and had nothing to do but stand there listening the whole time, looks at me like I am a vaguely disgusting, and alarmingly alien apparition, pretty spot on.

Less people rather than more around the baggage reclaim. They were petering off! Where on earth was everyone?! It had been over an hour!

My bag arrived, but no people. The number of the phone I have for Doug doesn't appear to work in Kenya. Text Text Text, No luck. Fuck.

My phone is almost out of charge. Is now the time to cry?

Our baggage belt sign had been turned off. The whole plane has got their bags and gone off their respective destinations. I call upon a dejected sort of resourcefulness and sniff out a power point. Kenya uses English outlets, which was just as well as I typically had not thought to bring an adapter. I feel a tear-welling swell of gratitude to the same God I'd only just felt utterly abandoned by. I charged my phone surreptitiously, unsure as to whether it was allowed, hiding my illicit power hijacking by sitting cross-legged on top of my suitcase, a bemused and dejected Buddah the fuse of whose enlightenment has blown.

I desperately needed water, I left reclaim to search arrivals for some sort of vending machine. Immediately regretted this as I wasn't allowed back in. I felt my eyes prick in panic as I was unsympathetically, incomprehensibly but unequivocally told 'no' by a gun-wielding Kenyan security guard. I knew all I could do was wait and there was no point in crying about it. Controlling my emotions involved probably less self-control and more embarrassment avoidance at the beginning, and resigned depression towards the end, I was utterly dehydrated, dejected and at a loss, there was nothing to do but wait a little longer. Then I just got bored. It was two hours and 15 mins before I was found.

Kenya 1st 12 hours

I feel like the bit part that's left the play forever. I wish I were going home with Mum and Jamie, where my story is. This is someone else's and it's frightening.

I'm waiting at the cafe at terminal 4 with Jam and Mum. I have a bottle of coke and a glass of wine. The coke, as I'm feeling a little queasy after a seeing-off/birthday lunch at Browns on the river. The wine, not because I want it, but because it seems absolutely necessary. At the moment I feel that this sort of decision is the kind that might make more sense drunk. Rosemary was right, this is not like me, at least not yet. Maybe my drunken alter-ego will actually end up responsible for something productive in my life.

I thus manage to induce myself leave Mum and Jamie outside duty free - in a slightly bemused daze of disbelief. Wine has turned my frantic 'What the fuck?!' question into a jovial 'What the fuck...” statement of acceptance/resignation.

I walked around duty free and picked up a bottle of Dewars, seemed legit. I conscientiously avoided the eyes of everyone. I'd peripherally clocked a few other people on the program whom I wish I hadn't already stalked, and would never admit having done so. I get a missed call from Douglas, the team leader, and assume that everyone had already met and I was running late for the party. It had to be now. I wish I was a more naturally social creature. I feel very scared that they would become immediately aware of the horrendous mistake they'd made accepting me onto this course.

I get to the gate and people are already boarding, but there seems to be no BK peeps in sight. Panic. Were they already on the plane? Was I in fact at the right gate (a mistake I had made before, my 16 year old self's New York adventure almost ending inauspiciously in Austin, Texas)? Or was this not even an elaborate prank or scam? I'm getting overly paranoid even for my standards.

My seat is a window as always, I HAVE to see take off and landing, I hate being sandwiched between foreign bodies, and I don't like to be easy to get at. Like a mafioso I also have to sit with my back to the wall in a restaurant. Like a mammal who's taken to the trees to while away the dangers of the night, I much prefer to sleep on mezzanines, sitting away from the aisle in a plane holds a similar degree of necessity for me. I've spied Douglas walking down the far aisle, my more extreme paranoia monster skulks off in defeat.

Two rather large Kenyan ladies sit in seat B and C to my A. They seem friendly enough but my heart sinks as I realise I already need the loo, not because it is anatomically necessary, but because the prospect has suddenly become all the more challenging. My heart sinks as they dive deep into intimate discussion about something which sounds both intense, intimate, and important. I shuffle around a bit and point my eye-line in their direction in as un-invasive a way as possible. They are utterly unresponsive, probably because they haven't noticed. I suck it up and eat one of these 'Oddities' I found in Smiths. It was salty and dry and helped. What's more they are all different shapes, literally cheaper than chips (in the American sense of the word crisps) only 100 calories, and even taste of cheese. So much bang for your buck!

I hear the younger of the two women next to me talk to her kid on the phone, my heart immediately warms, she is lovely and motherly. I soon realise that their reluctance to move was rather more to do with the fact that the dimensions of Mrs C did not bless her with excessive mobility. The fact that neither went to the toilet once on the 8 hour flight meant I eventually forgave both of them for their inertia, especially once I had discovered that they did not mind me vaulting over the top of them in order to escape my seat. My friendly feeling towards Mrs B increased still further whilst we were commiserating over how uncomfortable we both were. She confided with an awfully pained expression that she was suffering from trapped wind, news I received with sympathy and some degree of alarm. I suggested that a walk down the length of the plane might be just the thing to help.