We left Akot to head for Mombasa on Thursday. After five months in Sudan it was time for a trip to Kenya to get some logistical things done and to take a little R&R. Clarke and I, being missionaries, decided to take the cheap route to Mombasa which meant traveling for about two full days. The trip consisted of driving from Akot to Juba, spending the night in Juba, flying from Juba to Nairobi, and taking a train from Nairobi to Mombasa. Sounds relatively easy doesn’t it?
The first part of the trip was relatively painless. We left Akot at about 7:30am and knew that the trip to Juba would be about 7-8 hours. Clarke had asked a few people to go with us to Juba, there was a small girl who had a (probably benign) abdominal mass who needed to go to Juba to have it operated on so we were accompanied by the girl and her father. The day before leaving I went through the car and made sure that we weren’t going to experience any mechanical problems, I really wanted to just have a smooth and restful trip.
About 20 minutes after leaving Akot, the girl’s father started saying something in the backseat. I didn’t pay much attention, since the man was speaking in Dinka but eventually Clarke recognized something that he was saying. Clarke turned around and said “Angok? Angok?” This is a Dinka word with which I was unfamiliar. Clarke and I have very different types of exposure to the Dinka language, and when Clarke recognizes a word and I don’t, it’s probably medical. In this case, Angok means “vomit.” Clarke told me to stop the car, but before the car was stopped, the girl was vomiting in the car and out her window.
The trip to Juba took right at 8 hours for us and included stops about every 25-35 minutes for the girl to get out and puke. If you can picture a group of people who, not only don’t own cars, but most of whom have never even ridden in a car, and especially not for 8 hours, it’s not hard to see why someone would get ill.
We got to Juba, and after eight hours of driving, I was ready to find our room, shower, and get something to eat. As we entered the city we found out that the relatives of the girl lived nearby, so we took her to the house. After visiting with their family for a few minutes, we went to the Juba Teaching Hospital to check the girl in, which became a process. While Clarke was handling that, I left to go find us a place to stay.
Believe it or not, finding a place to stay was pretty easy. I went about 1km from the hospital to the ECS (Episcopal Church of Sudan) guesthouse and found that they had openings, so I took one. The next 16 hours or so were pretty easy, dinner and breakfast were available at the guesthouse, and some awesome guys at MAF (which was only about 2km from the guesthouse) let us park the vehicle at their compound while we’re gone. Not only that, they MAF guys volunteered one of their drivers to drop us at the airport (which was the only detail about the Juba leg of our trip I didn’t have figured out). Needless to say, the MAF guys in Juba are a great blessing.
Friday, after getting a ride to the airport from MAF, we left on JetLink to fly from Juba to Nairobi. That’s where the fun started. Prior to our trip I had organized all of our flights, train tickets and connections (taxi drivers), so naturally when we landed in Nairobi I expected to see a sign with my name on it. I didn’t. We always use the same driver, a Kenyan man named Patrick, so I called Patrick and asked him where he was. He said something about being in the wrong place (maybe at the other airport?) and then told me to hang on, then he hung up. After waiting for about 30-45 minutes (and fending off the taxi drivers who are always trying to convince us that we just need to go with them) someone finally showed up and found us. He took us to the train station where we were to make our next connection.
When we got to the train station it was about 2:00pm and the train didn’t leave until 7:00pm. I was exhausted and wanted to find somewhere to eat, so we decided to find the nearest Java House. After devouring my first cheeseburger in months, we found an internet café and then did some other…shopping. At about 5:00 we made it back to the train station and went into the office to check in. Easy enough? Well, not if your driver forgot that when he picked you up at the airport he was supposed to give you your train tickets. We called Patrick, who said that he was not going to be able to deliver the tickets because of traffic (He had two hours!?). Patrick went back and forth with the woman at the train counter for a while and eventually convinced her to write a letter to the train manager excusing us from actually having the paper tickets in hand. This was resolved at exactly 6:40pm, 20 minutes before the train left. Fortunately for us they had our names written on the log as having seats reserved and paid for, but that was a stressful 1:40minutes for me.
At 7:00 we boarded the train for Mombasa. I’ve never ridden on a train that included a dining car before and it was quite the experience. We shared a table with an Aussie working for “Doctors Without Borders” and a man from Kenya, and the table was just big enough for the four of us. Sorry mom, I had to eat with my elbows on the table…
Sleeping on the train was another unique experience. The train stopped about every 20 minutes, and was much louder than the trains I’ve ridden on before…this morning Clarke said “Well, we were in bed for 8 hours anyways, I don’t know about sleep.” We woke up around 7:00 when someone decided to ring a bell outside our door (literally, he had a bell in his hand and was ringing it). The bell meant it was breakfast time.
During breakfast we got an interesting announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll notice the train is stopped. Ahead on the tracks there is another train that has jumped the tracks. Don’t worry though! Our technicians are working hard to get the tracks cleared, and we’ll be moving again in about an hour and a half. That was at 7:30. While the train was stopped we met all kinds of interesting people from Britain, Germany, Belgium, Finland and Australia. We sat outside and watched people throwing money out of the train windows to the Kenyan children who were standing around (which is a terrible idea, by the way) and visited with our new friends until the train finally pulled out around 10:30am. When we got back on the train, the workers assured us that we would be in Mombasa in 2.5 hours (about 1:00pm). We finally pulled into Mombasa around 2:20pm and guess what? The driver wasn’t there waiting for us. After waiting around for almost an hour and making at least one guy angry with me (because he kept bugging me about a cab and I told him that if he asked me one more time I would definitely not ride with him) our driver finally showed up. We got in the car, and the driver pulled a sign out of his glove box with my name on it and asked “Is this you?” Perfect ending?
What I’ve learned so far is, don’t count on people to book your airport/train station transfers, just get a cab when you get there. There are plenty of cab drivers who are perfectly happy to give you a ride and the guys who are supposed to meet you are too busy to need your business anyways
