Good Morning

When you are holding a quarter of a million of Kenyan shillings in your hand, you feel like the king of the jungle and yes, you kind of have the right to think that this is where you are.

You only have a little worry that behind the first corner that you have passed after leaving the airport money exchange office in Nairobi, there will be a chap greeting you in the local language and disappearing into the darkness on a motorbike with your wallet in his hand, faster than you could ever possibly react in Swahili.

Because of very pale skin, you start to feel a bit lonely walking past the military base full of armed soldiers, nevertheless, you safely manage to buy a sim card for your phone to reinstate touch with the outside world.

The shop seemed to be empty, but after a few minutes of waiting about behind the door and loud shouting, a nice young black woman appeared behind the counter looking as if she had just got up and she willingly started to help us.

Good morning, she greeted us energetically. Even though she probably hadn´t closed her eyes for a single moment, we could not recognize a single trace of tiredness.

Then we found out that she had stayed there overnight along with a younger, even prettier colleague of hers.

However, instead of comfortable bed they had only very thin sleeping pad separating them from the floor – tough for our standards!

The first summer day arrived surprisingly soon and caught us unprepared. Our high boots, warm socks and jeans which we used in our frozen, covered-by-snow Europe didn´t exactly suit the very warm African morning and the sharp, almost haunting sun. So, first of all, it was necessary to adjust our clothes to the subtropical climate.

The flight to northwest of Kenya was being gradually effected by constantly increasing temperature and was spiced up with a local flight during which I made sure many times that the belt was fastened properly. I had queasy stomach and I couldn´t get rid of the impression that the plane was powered by just one engine whereas the other one was running on idle speed or had broken down long before take-off.

Landing reminded me of a rollercoaster a little bit, the shaken airplane was a bit slowed by flaps, used too early for my taste, and not being it for the magnificent sight of the landscape around, I would probably have a problem to get the flight out of my head. Despite this experience, the Kenyan airlines had it all firmly under control and none of the passengers (of the dark skin) seemed to be worried at all.

A little town in the mountains called Eldoret, with reminding name of American El Dorado, welcomed us with the town buzz and absolutely disorganized traffic. Luckily, we found a flexible taxi service focusing on confused tourists and we managed to get to our destination without serious financial loss.

A small running village called Iten welcomed us with a style of its own and we started acclimatization in the altitude of 2400 m. Very soon did we realize that most of our Czech routine had to be quickly forgotten.

Interesting matters

The second African chapter Good Morning was written on Friday of 13th January while travelling from Nairobi to Iten (Kenya). However, publication of this chapter had to be delayed from the technical reasons. My phone had been out of battery for the second day, so I had to be careful about using it. We were also surprised by an unexpected power outage and it seemed for a while that managing my blog would be in danger. Let’s assume that this is not going to be the last surprise and next article will be released the latest on Monday of 16th January.