Tuesday, October 25, 2011

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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