Left Nairobi on the 8 a.m.; I had prebooked my seat the day before when I arrived from Naivasha. The guy didn’t really like to do it; I think in case of no shows it complicated things. Anyway, 10 mins after I arrived, we were on our way. There seemed to be a lot of stops along the way, so the 7 hours or so journey, was a bit longer than usual. At least we didn’t go into Voi.
Wamgoi wasn’t around so I tasted the Bushra food and I had a couple of kiti motos at Mwangaza. In the 3 weeks in Taveta I also splashed out a couple of times and had the very delicious chicken biriani from Coast Dishes. The briand was 400 (less than £3 ) whereas I usually paid around 100-130 for dinner.
Fri 15th I queued up at the hospital with mainly older people, for my 2nd covid jab. After initially not being recognised on the system, I was able to get my certificate printed and laminated.
There was one visit to the Sunday mbege. Didn’t go again after Joseph was attacked by his girlfriend…the lady who hosted the mbege. Found another place in the town though, where the mbege was probably better.
I sold my Redmi phone to my friend Kristin; was happy to help her, and at least I got over £70 back towards my new Samsung.
29th Oct. The most exciting thing I did in that 3 and a half weeks in Taveta was to hire a boda boda and get Joseph to take us to Voyager Ziwani tented camp. Fun trip passed Chala and across the Ziwani farm. It’s all maize now, but went passed Dad’s house when he was manager of the sisal estate.
We rode for 7 kms along the Tsavo West game park and saw giraffe, zebra, wildebeest….all very exciting from the back of a motorbike. Stayed a couple of hours relaxing at the camp, by the dam. Lots of hippos and a few cross. Expensive drinks but worth it. Stopped in Chala at HQ for a much cheaper drink on the way back. Nice memories of Dad….
So, that was that. The countdown had begun for my return to the UK. I decided, for a bit of fun to cross into TZ, but entailed me getting a PCR test in order to cross over the border. The test was done at the hospital at a cost of 6,000..over £40. The negative result came through after a couple of days. Once I had decided to keep my rented room in taveta, having negotiated a 1,000 monthly reduction with George, it was a matter of sorting out what I was leaving in my room. Not much really, but I terms of my rucksack it made quite a difference to volume (books) and weight.
So, over a period of a couple of days I said goodbye to my friends, and on Sun 7th I headed the few kms up the road to TZ.