Saturday morning came very quickly. I slept badly. It’s hard to know what the problem was with the toilet in Room 205. It broke up and started shouting all night long. When I checked it in the morning, the floor of the toilet was full of water and yes, you guessed it right, it was running from the sink into the floor. KK was asleep and he didn’t mind, he was so tired and could hardly hear anything. After I had my morning cold shower, I walked to the reading table to check on the regulations. KK was still asleep. I read on the mart that: If there are damages in the hotel during the visitor’s stay, he/she should pay and no visitors allowed in the hotel room. The list was endless and I decided to call the hotel reception to report the problem and no one was picking up the phone.
The Kisumu hotel has no hot water because they switch it off during day time, return it at 7pm and switch it off at 11pm and they switch it back at around 7am for morning shower and the switch it off at around 9am. I walked out of room 205 and headed to the reception where I reported the faulty toilet. They promised to fix it. From here I walked to the restaurant to have my breakfast which was included on the hotel residence fare. As I was there, KK also came. We had several morning goods to take, from Coffee, sausages, tea, bananas, eggs, and bacon. This bacon surprised me so much that I danced. The waitress looked puzzled why I was so happy when I saw it but, hey I just love that. It reminds me a lot of time I spent in Nairobi with a friend in 2003.
We finished breakfast and it was now time to see how the day goes. At 1pm, KK was to travel to Nairobi and leave me in Kisumu .Still he had not shared with me about what kind of business he was up too. As we walked on the clean streets of Kisumu, we spotted rally cars. It was a motor rally organised by Kenya Commercial Bank. This was the starting point. So I and KK chose to spend some hours just enjoying the cars. This is another game, apart from football, that never attracted my attention. It was lovely seeing Kenyans of all walks of life enjoying this huge game. We took several pictures and am happy to share them with you.
From here, we chose to climb a tuku-tuku ride that cost 50 Kshs for both of us, like those ones you see in India to Impala animal sanctuary. Within seconds, we were at the gate animal reserve. It's very big and modernised now--compared to what I saw there in 2003. We both paid 200 Kshs to enter. They have also exchanged the ostrich for two buffaloes and Zebras. Nothing much was there to be seen, we also went to have a hippotomus spot, and we paid 500 Kshs for a round-trip 10-minute boat ride. I felt like were being cheated by this guy but KK said it was ok and we enjoyed the boat ride very much.
Mr. Hippo spotter told us that hippos are the second massive killer in Africa. I have read these claims by Peter Moore in his book “Swahili for the Broken Hearted” and now the guy was affirming it again. It may be true that hippos are so dangerous but it cannot kill more people than wars and conflicts in Africa, it cannot overtake road accidents and HIV/AIDS. Writers claim that malaria is the number one killer in Africa. I find all these arguments very disturbing. Roads in Africa are death traps, how can hippos overtake them?
We left the park at around 12pm. We were very tired and KK decided that we should walk back to township. We hardly knew the roads but KK insisted walking. After walking for a very long puzzling distance to almost all directions and unable to walk more, KK decided to have a bicycle boda-boda take us to Kisumu Museum. We arrived there in ten minutes. The receptionist demanded us to pay 400 Kshs each. We told her that under the East African Community policy, we are supposed to pay 100 Kshs as local people, she said NO, and I told KK what was there to be seen anyway? We looked at the items they had inside which included snakes, crocodiles, and tortoises. Unimpressed, we choose to call it a day, walked to the market and found superstitious woman trying to extort money from ignorant Kenyans by driving curses and strong holds from them using spirits. We continued to the park. Its here that KK bought his ticket to Nairobi and he was leaving in two hours time.
He gave me 3000 Kshs to travel me back to Kampala on Sunday. We spent the next two hours just walking within the interiors of Kisumu, admiring it and its cleanliness; we even went to the public park and found Kenyans celebrating more of the KCB motor rally. We had our lunch here and walked to the around the park.
It was now time to depart. With saddness, I waved to KK and returned to the Hotel. It was now 3pm and now my own. I certainly enjoyed KK's brief companionship, our discussions--all while being outside of Uganda. What will I be doing through out the night? I didn’t know.. Simply wait for my next segment of this trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment