I stop somewhere else to refill my camel bag and check my messages. The other two are now past Lokichar, tackling the rough road. I give them the good news that the roads may not be as bad as we had anticipated. It’s also becoming clear that getting fuel will not be a problem at all. We initially had some crazy ideas about how to carry 30litres of extra fuel strapped onto the Ninja.

It’s hot on the road to Kakuma. Sections of the road are tarmacked, some sections still under construction are with diversions.

I get to Kakuma at about 4:15pm, exhilarated to have reached a destination I have never been to before in my life. I stop near the town’s sign post. A group of children on their way home from school gather to look at me and my bike. I have to keep reminding them not to go onto the middle of the road. I recruit one of them to photograph me.

I check on the other riders, and they are also on their way towards Kakuma. I do some quick mental calculation and realise they will arrive at Kakuma at dusk. I still have three hours of daylight, but if I go on to Lokichoggio they will have to ride at night to catch up. I ask them whether they want to stop at Kakuma, or ride on till Lokichoggio (since they love riding at night so much). Tintin has been messaging me, telling me to wait for them, but I chose not to. No need to wait for them, then be made to ride in the dark, I reasoned.

They tell me that they will stop wherever I will stop. I choose to stop at Kakuma, and look for a place to spend the night. My thought is that I can go through the hassle of finding a place to stay, so that when they get here, they will not have to go through the same hassle. I want them to come and find a place ready to shower and lay down. A little bit of hunting leads me to Tarach Guest House. I book them rooms, and the guest house allows me to pitch my tent on their compound. Turns out to be a bad idea. The tent is cooler than the rooms, but it’s real noisy outside almost whole night.

After parking my bike, booking rooms, pitching my tent, taking a much needed dump and shower, and ordering dinner for everyone, I decide to take a walk and have a closer look at this town. There’s a quiet vibe about it. I blend in well due to my height and shaggy hair. I begin to think I would blend in even better with a kikoi wrapped over my shorts. I walk along the shops for a while but see no kikois for sale.

I stop whom I think is a small boy of about 12. He has a really nice kikoi wrapped around his waist. I point at it and ask him in Swahili where I could get one like those.

“Nyo?” he replies… He doesn’t seem to understand Swahili.

I point at the kikoi again and ask, spreading out my palms to indicate “I want.”

“Nyo?” He puts his thin hands on his head, and looks up into my eyes with a large, pretty smile, his neat white teeth and red gums sparkling in the evening light. That’s when I realise this boy is actually a demurely beautiful small girl. It’s a girl, family, not a boy! I glance around nervously, suddenly conscious that pointing at the general area of a little teenage girl’s crotch and asking obscure questions with “I want” hand signals may not be a good sight. I surreptitiously scamper away from her before someone demands dowry…

I do find a nice kikoi at one of the shops, wrap it around my waist, and keep walking down to river Tarach. It’s a wide river, but dry for now. The sun has just gone down, but its last light still illuminates the landscape. A couple of young men stand around a hole dug in the sand. Inside the hole is another young man, fetching water from a small pool at the bottom. He has to keep waiting for the pool to collect from the surrounding sand, and it will take him a while to fill the opened up 20 litre container. I strike up a conversation with them.

They work at the nearby car wash, and are fetching water to wash up, after a long day of work, before they go home.

“Is that water clean enough to drink?” I ask.

“Very clean!” one replies. “And its better than that -” points at the shop-bought bottle of water in my hand. “If you drink that you still get thirsty. But if you drink this, it sorts you out completely! You won’t get thirsty again!”

I’m as skeptical as the Samaritan woman. Jesus – I mean, the young men tell me they have even drank water in which someone died, and never got sick. They have drank even water with faeces in it… I can tell they are now in an ego tussle to come up with the grossest situation…

“What does ‘Tarach’ mean?”

“It means something dangerous… Not really dangerous, but something that has a certain fame… Because the river has claimed many lives and destroyed many houses.”

I understand them, but can’t immediately quite get a neat English word to house it. It’s only days later that the word hits me: Infamous. Or something close.

I bid them farewell, and start walking away. One of them calls me back.

“Are you a journalist?” he asks.
“Oh… Why?”
“Just your outlook…”

I’m guessing it’s because of my many questions. He tells me his name is Justo, and that he has dreams of being a comedian. I tell him that I’m an artist for a local comic book, and promise to try and get the comic book company to pay the area a visit. “If we do come, I will come looking for you,” I promise. “Justo, right?”

Timam and Tintin finally arrive. We get to the guest house where they shower and change after braving and killing a couple of giant roaches in the rooms. We settle at some outdoor seating area and reminisce the trip so far as we have our dinner…

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PART TWO: Day 3 |To the border and back

Kakuma to Lokichoggio is about 90km of tarmac with a couple of gravel diversions. We have been informed that there’s no tarmac road after Lokichoggio. We have also been warned about the security situation beyond Lokichoggio.

Tintin is giving up. She feels she has accomplished enough by getting to Kakuma, and does not want to go on. She wants to chill and wait for us till we come back. It takes some cajoling to get her to go on. It’s a lazy morning, though, it’s not till 10:30am that we hit the road.

We are happy to see this sign. We stop to take photos and a group gathers out of nowhere to look at us, including some semi-naked men who were washing nearby.