Monday before we took off for Eldoret I got a phone. So far I haven't been out on my own at all other than running, but we decided it's a good for me to be able to get a hold of people in case I end up lost on my own. This will be a more important issue now that Flo will be heading back to Nairobi and I'll be on my own a little bit more. With that and the overall relaxed nature of the morning we didn't end up leaving town until around 4. As we were heading into town I was somewhat worried we'd end up in a crowded matatu for the whole 2+ hour drive to Eldoret. We ended up in one of the matatus, but this was more a shuttle, and we only put 7 people in but then left. It was still cozy, but not as crowded as the matatus, and much more comfortable. I wanted to take some pictures on the way to Eldoret, but I ended up in the middle seat of the back row, so it was basically the worst place for taking the pictures in the whole vehicle. I still took some, basically operating on the premise that if I took enough pictures a couple would turn out. I've been frustrated about taking pictures for the whole trip, because I have pretty much no photographic ability, and I would prefer to just see things and experience them but I know it is valuable for sharing the trip with others and remembering the trip, so I'll soldier on. I was surprised that there wasn't really any area on the way from Kisumu to Eldoret where we were completely away from people and settlements. There weren't any major towns along the route, but it was dotted with shacks and roadside markets and occasional sections where a crowd of storefronts, usually made of concrete, corrugated metal, and wood, appeared to comprise a small town. All the way along they were people walking on the road, sometimes bunches of school kids. I wondered how far these kids were walking to get home from schools. There were some good scenic views along the way, but nowhere was there unbroken wilderness, always a mixture of forest and farmland. I got car sick, I think partly from taking pictures, partly from the incessant speed bumps, that at times came four at a time, so I was eager to arrive in Eldoret.
We got out of the van at the central bus port in Eldoret, and it seemed to me just as crowded as Nairobi. As we took a taxi to Uncle Roger's house, we left the crowded downtown almost immediately. I would come to find out that the actual "town" of Eldoret is pretty tightly packed into a relatively small area, with sprawling fields and endless dirt roads beyond. We had to wait outside for a minute before Allan, Roger's son, got home. The temperature here is much more pleasant to me than in Nairobi and Kisumu, where it was a little bit too hot. The temperature probably rarely gets above 75, and seems to me to usually be in the 60s or low 70s during the day. Uncle Roger's wife died some years ago and his daughter is off at school so right now the place is pretty much a bachelor pad, which I was looking forward to after spending my trip so far in homes that had majorities of women. Talking with Allan, I found out he's on break from college, where he's majoring in IT. We talked some more, and I'm pretty stoked to be spending the next couple weeks with him, he seems like a super cool guy. My plan for my time in Eldoret, which should be until almost the end of the month, is to spend a decent amount of my days heading with Roger to his school, but for the first couple days I'll probably just relax and see what I can around Eldoret.
The next day Flo and I headed into town. I needed to find an ATM or bank where I could pull money out of my bank account from home, which I was kind of nervous about because if I couldn't, for whatever reason, it would be a lot more of a hassle to get money, so I was hoping this would go smoothly. The first two banks we went to couldn't make the transaction because my card was Mastercard, which I hadn't considered at all before I left. The third bank we went to had a ATM that could perform the transaction, and I was surprised with how smoothly it went. Before we left town we stopped at a local café (I don't think that's really the right term for it, but that's the best word I can think of to describe it) to get lunch to go, and Flo was appalled that a fairly large lunch for her, Allan, and I was 575 schillings, about $6.40 US. When I told her that one of the popular lunch items in the US was a subway sandwich that cost $5, she couldn't believe that anyone would buy that. It rained pretty hard for a little bit, but cleared up nicely in time for me to run in the evening. I didn't get too far from the house before the side of the road I was running on opened into a field probably over half a mile long and at least a quarter mile wide criss-crossed with trails and with several crowds of kids playing soccer at the other end. Outside of the main part of the city and the main highways it seems to me that most roads are dirt and that an even larger portion of transportation is on foot, bikes, and motorcycles, partly because a lot of the side roads are fairly rough. I ran around this field some and then explored down a side road from there that headed toward the hills. There were several areas along here that looked like an open landfill, stretching several hundred yards of piles of trash, with a decent number of people walking across the piles, picking through the trash. I saw one too many groups standing around burning mounds of trash staring at me to feel comfortable heading too far down that road, but promised myself I would venture farther when I had more daylight. I could feel the thin air, especially climbing the long hill to get back to the main road, but overall it was a great run, I can't wait to have another couple of weeks of exploring all the great places to run around here.
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