She is fatigued. Her head hangs limp to one side as she wearily walks through the mall’s hallway. She carries her helmet as if it weighs ten kilos. The moment we see each other, smiles break out on our faces. I go in to give her a hug, but she doesn’t just hug me, she puts her whole weight on me and we almost topple over, before I recover my footing and catch us. Tintin just rode alone from Nairobi to Kitale, and she has never ridden this far and long before. Timam and I are already in Kitale, having ridden over a couple of days before.

Our plan is to reach Nakodok, the border of Kenya and South Sudan. What we don’t know is that in the following couple of days, the three of us are going to ride harder and further than we all have ever done before. We have no idea what amount of thrill, pain, fatigue, danger and adventure awaits us. And spurs of boisterous flatulence, of which this shall be the first and last mention, for the sake of our dignities.

We have no idea how much the three of us will need and depend on each other for survival and strength. We have no idea how many times we will drop our bikes. We have no idea how many times we will disagree and get angry at one another. We have no idea that we shall find ourselves seated in an OCS’s office, producing our IDs and explaining ourselves. We have no idea that we will have to hire police escort for a section of our trip. We have no idea… Well, why don’t I just tell it all to you properly from the beginning? Grab a cup of coffee and sit down…

NOTE: This trip happened in July 2019, and I wrote this story immediately after.

Two years ago, my father, a brilliant high school humanities teacher, passed away. May he rest in peace. He did not just pass away, he was poisoned with insecticide, as the autopsy and lab tests later confirmed. There is an ongoing inquest into his untimely death that curiously happened just a few days after he received his pension, and withdrew a lump sum of it from his account. On Wednesday 3rd of July 2019, there was supposed to be a court session to hear testimonies. This was the reason Timam (my friend and lawyer) and I had to be at Kimilili law courts on that day.

Wakili Timam is a friend I made two years ago, a few weeks after my father’s burial, actually. I had been arrested for a minor traffic offense. I refused to bribe the arresting cop and refused to give his breakdown vehicle hooligans any cash, so he took me to Parklands Police Station and threw me into a stinky cell. Before my phone was taken away, I managed to post the happenings to a bikers’ Whatsapp group and ask for help. After about two hours, I was informed that my lawyer was outside, and I could see him. I had no idea who the hell that was. I had never had a lawyer in my life!

So I walked out of the dark cell, wearing one shoe (if you’ve ever been arrested, you know), blinking at the brightness outside, to be met by the sight of a stout dark man wearing a leather motorcycle racing suit, and official suit and tie under it. He looked really smart, a fact one of the police officers couldn’t help but point out later. That’s how Timam and I met. He says I looked pissed off, like I was having a really good time in there, and did not appreciate the rude interruption.

We have done many rides together since, including a dash to Moyale border. He is a brilliant chap, at least in the moments when he is not being painfully vexatious. He also can get loud, and his jokes sting with caustic raucousness. The introvert in me gets worn out real quick. But our friendship has miraculously stuck. When he snaps into lawyer mode, the instant transformation from dork to genius is startling, even a bit eerie. The lawyer is focused like a hawk. The lawyer cuts through muddle with brilliant clarity and conciseness, peppered with a passion for doing the best for his client, including a willingness to travel distances and remote places for the sake of his client, as you shall see in a bit. He is the kind of lawyer you want by your side. Once the lawyer is done with his job, the irksome braggadocio checks back in with vengeance.

He is also the kind that will do something everyone else says can’t be done. Like overtake speeding Landrovers on a rough offroad on his motorcycle. A sport touring bike that is supposed to be really awful at offroading. “It’s all in the mind,” he says… He rides a Kawasaki Ninja 400.

Our journey begins on Monday 1st. I pass by Parklands Snap Shot Kenya shop (Thanks for the huge discount!) to buy some SD cards, and also pass by Tintin’s workplace to bid her farewell.

As we approach Limuru, my bike loses power and starts spewing out puffs of black smoke. I struggle to catch up with Timam to let him know something is wrong. We stop somewhere, I get out my tools and begin tearing into the bike. We have left late. Our tentative plan was to ride to Eldoret through the Kabarnet-Iten curvy road. It takes almost two hours to get my bike in good condition. See, I usually work on my bike myself. But the days leading up to this trip have been really busy with work, I had to give my bike out to someone to work on. I gave him some directions on how to adjust the carburetors, but it seems I gave wrong directions, and the adjustment needed was the opposite of what I recommended.

Anyway, we get back on the road, but the Kabarnet-Iten road is now out of the menu.

We get to Nakuru past 7pm. A quick stop, and we choose to go on to Eldoret. I’m quite familiar with the road, my lights are good, and I have a new helmet with the visor still good. I’m good to do the night ride. I just pray we don’t get heavy rain. It drizzles a bit, but for most of the way, we are alright.

We get to Eldoret about 10:30pm, get invited over to dinner by one of Timam’s friends, and we spend the night on the floor of their living room.

The next morning we set off for a small town in North Bungoma County, the home of my late father. We have some business to do, including hunting down someone who had some dealings with my father. This hunt leads us into a busaa den, and the sight of our motorcycles makes the clients scamper away, thinking it’s the police who have come to arrest them. Later that afternoon we find ourselves in the living room of a rather ascetic elderly lady, listening to her tell stories of my late father and my mother, and intertwine them with stories of herself and her late husband.

It’s a rather emotive but productive day. I take Timam to my mother’s home, so they can know each other, and we spend the night there. It’s a calm and quiet evening, reminiscent of my mother’s calm and quiet spirit. We drink good tasting tea made with milk straight from her cow, and feast on her peculiar mandazis. But the day can’t end without Timam doing something asinine. After washing his hands in readiness to eat dinner, he wipes them dry on our (absolutely shocked) black cat…

Wednesday is court day. We run late. The hearing is not happening today anyway, turns out it was moved to November. We agree that the lawyer who has been handling this issue should be promptly fired. Most importantly, Tintin is riding today from Nairobi, to meet us in Kitale so we can head north together.

We had never heard of a place called Nakodok before. One of the things Timam and I do is have a phone conversation, each of us with Google maps in front of us, wanderlust teasing us. We wondered what border point has eluded us. Following the road north past Lodwar led to a point on the Kenya-South Sudan border called Nakodok.

“Let’s go to Nakodok,” we said.

It sounded far fetched. As far as we knew, there is no tarmac road all the way north from Lokichar. I had done Lokichar-Lodwar before, and the 90km took me three hours to cover. We have no idea what lies beyond Lodwar. We don’t know what the security is like. Some days after this discussion, we learn that two legendary Kenyan riders that we look up to are doing the same route, and onward into South Sudan. We look at the map and dates of their planned route, and the dates of our business in Kimilili, and make a decision to piggy back on their trip. Well, their trip did not happen, but it spurred us to do ours. Thank you legends.

Let me tell you a bit about Tintin Tin Tina. (Link to her account of the same trip at the end.) She is tall and built like a supermodel, with a delicate demeanor. If you met her on a day when she is all girly in dress and make up, you’d never imagine that beneath that deceitful veneer lurks an untamed gritty behemoth, drunk on wanderlust, complete with the resolve of a soldier on a mission. Mother of one, she is kind of an enigma. One moment she is nice and sweet to you, and the next she is burning a crater through your soul with original scalding sarcasm. One moment she needs your help, a damsel in distress, the next she is telling you to shove your manly cavalierly somewhere the sun don’t shine, she can handle things on her own. One moment she is looking into your eyes and asking if you are alright, and the next she is giving you the finger. She is gentle and kind, though, always sensitive to people around her, overladen with what some call emotional intelligence. Or conscientiousness. Or agreeableness…

Some weeks back, I found myself somewhere along Waiyaki way, seated at a restaurant table with Boniface Mwangi, waiting for other bikers who were late. We were waiting for them, so we could ride together to Naivasha to welcome Throttle Queens back from their East Africa tour. Throttle Queens is a group of lady riders that includes Boniface’s wife.

Two bikers arrived, one of them a tall regal lady. Now if you are a lady and you ride motorcycles, you know how difficult it is to be regal in motorcycle gear. I stood up to shake her hand, prompting Boniface to make a quip about how my mother brought me up well. Those who know me know that’s lies… This lady was Tintin. I still don’t know why I stood.