A New Dawn

The bus from Nairobi to Mombasa rolls on into the endless night. The sky above is filthy with stars, and I become increasingly relaxed as Nairobi grows ever distant in the rear view mirror.

I arrive in Mombasa on the cusp of dawn. I disembark to find myself on a street somewhere in the ever increasing light. I light a cigarette and breathe in my surroundings. Happily, the vibe in Mombasa is much different than Nairobi. People say "hello" and "welcome". As they pass I feel a weight slowly rise from my shoulders.

At last, I am in the Africa that  I came to see. I finish my smoke and hop in a tuk-tuk, making my way to Nyali Beach and my ultimate destination, Nirvana Backpackers Hostel.

Unfortunately, I am dreadfully early. After overpaying my driver the man at the gate lets me in. The guard proceeds to wake up the manager, a lovely young lady by the name of Jane.

My room is occupied, but I am graciously offered a bed in the hostel area, which I readily accept.

As I drift off to sleep a smile comes across my face, buoyed by the overwhelming feeling that the road before me is finally unfolding as it should.

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Zipping Up, Zipping Out

Two caveats of African travel are that one should avoid dangerous areas and that the risks of night travel raise the the odds of perishing exponentially. In Tanzania, travelling by bus at night is forbidden by law.

And so it was that I found myself in a post dusk Nairobi taxi hurtling towards the heart of a place that the Lonely Planet refers to as "the most dangerous city in Africa" (no small feat on a continent that contains Joburg, Lagos and Mogadishu) so that I could catch the red eye to Mombasa.

Even my cab driver mutters the words "very dangerous" as he drops me off at my rendevous point. I put on my best tough guy mask and saunter in to the bus station.

The street outside is a whirling dervish of nefarious activity. Unfortunately, I left the hostel very early due to the reputation of Nairobi traffic, and much to my chagrin,  I find myself in this perilous cauldron with a lot of time to kill, or vice-versa as the case may be.

I hang in the doorway, smoking and striking a menacing pose as if I'm doing a photo shoot for the cover of some CD that will never be released. Yeah, I'm bad, I'm nationwide.

As I'm patting my badass self on the  back, I look down at my shirt and notice BBQ stains from my hastily consumed dinner. I consider the fact that in all the movies I have ever seen, the toughguy has never once worn a BBQ sauce stained shirt.

An instant later, I notice a young guy glancing over at me. I sneer back. He looks down at his crotch and mimes doing up his zipper. I glance down at my own crotch and meekly do up my fly as I hear in my minds ear the thud of my tough guy mask shattering on the muddy  sidewalk.

I switch to my sad sackmask in the hope that the predators around me will take pity and understand that I am clearly out of my depth.

As the bus pulls out into the tattered Nairobi night it dawns on me that this town is no place for a weenie such as myself. As we rumble towards Mombasa, I quietly hope that my next destination will have a kinder face, because if it doesen't, I may have a heart attack before this is over.

Damnit, I knew I should've purchased travel insurance.

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Where Is The Love?

Surely the person who coined the term "Mean Streets" must have lived in downtown Nairobi at some point.

Though I cannot say that I experienced anything specifically untoward, the vibe in the downtown area is such that I'm fairly certain that I could have been knifed in the back and relegated to a garbage pile to die a lingering death and not one passerby would stop, lest they suffer the same fate.

The unease that permeates the core is palpable. There are plenty of white people living in Nairobi, but I did not see one of them as I nervously scurried about, and I got the distinct impression that the people I did see would much rather be somewhere else.

Certainly I've been intimidated many times throughout my travels, but that was due to a lack of familiarity as much as anything else.

One of the reasons I like to travel  is to prove to myself and others that fear of the wider world is mostly irrational.

However, Nairobi is a place where one should carry a healthy sense of fear, and if you're in downtown "Nairobbery" and you're not at least a little bit frightened then there is something deeply wrong with you.

Either that or you're Spiderman.

And if you wonder why there are no pictures with this post it is because I decided that I wanted to keep my camera with me for the rest of the journey.

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