While we were in Kenya our expedition started to unravel a little and we ended up spending a LONG time here getting everything back on track. It was here that Ishtar left the team, Matt was forced to resign from his job to be able to continue the expedition and our route also needed to be changed due to an outbreak of conflict in South Sudan. While we were sorting out our finances and next steps we were fortunate enough to have some very kind people put roofs over our heads, namely James and Claire Clark as well as Naomi, Sammy & Chui Mutua. Thank you so much to you all for kindly opening your homes to us - if it hadn't been for you the expedition would not have been able to continue. We are eternally grateful.
While in Kenya we also spent about a month camping, mainly at the Nairobi Scouts Camp. This camp was an incredible find and we by and large had it to ourselves the entire time (except weekends when day visitors flocked to the beautiful spot for picnicking). Set in the Ngong Forest even though the facilities weren't fantastic, the surroundings more than made up for it - oh and the fact that the site cost only $1 a day a person didn't hurt! It was here that we lived in $1.25 a day for a week - a perspective altering experience that you can read more about here.
At this stage of the expedition we were really impressed at how well our camping gear was doing - even after 6 months of hard use on the road and a month of solid use in Nairobi - particularly since most of it was second hand when we left South Africa! Our Cadac tent had literally been bent in half during storms in Tanzania, beaten by the wind in Namibia, soaked over and over again in rains across Southern Africa and yet still somehow kept standing and barely even leaked. This tent, by a gas bottle company we didn't even know made tents, was the most reliable and strongest piece of equipment we've had on this expedition and in fact ever before! Sadly when we tried to find out more about the tents we discovered they are no longer made, so your best bet for finding one is second hand - ours was anyway! If you're in Tanzania I'd recommend you check out these free online classifieds. You're bound to find everything you need for an adventurous weekend away here!
The variety of places we stayed while in Kenya gave us the opportunity to meet some amazing people, and having the time to really get to know them was a gift. We ended up with not only an incredible support system across Kenya but also a bunch of friends for life. For just this everything else we went through in Kenya was worth it.
All these experiences, from the way we were living, the people we met, to the issues we faced, changed us from travellers to nomads. We changed from the people who freaked out at a 3 day delay because of a broken windscreen in Namibia to the people who were prepared to not only give up everything to keep the expedition alive but stay in a campsite for weeks on end and love every minute. We learnt to roll with the punches and we learnt that, as cliched as it sounds, everything really does happen for a reason - if we hadn't been delayed in Kenya we would have been in the middle of the Sudanese desert when the conflict broke out and Juba shut down! In Kenya we threw away our timeline and recognised that it was going to take as long as it was going to take, there may be delays, there may be stops but we'll get there in the end. And that's ok, in fact it's exactly as we want it, because that's the real adventure and that's where the life-changing lessons are learned.
All in all Kenya was a tough time but we toughened up, got to re-explore the country we used to live in, and from here were truly ready to embrace all that T2T has to offer us.
Posted by Tracy Angus-Hammond (@T2T_Trace)
