From Nairobi to Moyale
I am finally in the "motherland". It only took about 2 day of travel on top of a truck though. We left Nairobi on Thursday night (10PM) and arrived in Moyale on Saturday 10pm after traveling day and night, LITERALLY. We mostly traveled at night because it is really hot during the day and never really made any stops, except for a quick lunch twice.
The buses leave from a suburb of Nairobi called Eastleigh, which is where all the Ethiopian and Somalia immigrants made their home. It makes you doubt if you are really in a Kenyan city. It seems "qchat' is the primary food source. Initially, I was told there was a bus the goes direct to Moyale and even got a ticket the day before. But when I arrived the next day one hour before the bus was suppose to leave, they said there was no bus and I had to take a Lori, a huge truck with a cargo loaded to its max. After a lot of drama about the price, which Lori to get on and how much to pay for Delala (broker), we left at 10pm. Four of us were on top of the truck, completely exposed to rain, heath and dust. The two guys are technicians and help the driver whatever he makes a stop for Diesel and when he has to stop at the dozens of Police Stops (Kelas). The other guy is Ethiopian coming back from South Africa, after scouting the route for "customers" and he is suppose to smuggle 10 people to Mozambique next month. This is guy is not even any older than my age. Are we really this much despirate to leave our country?
Crossing the border was very simple, just showed my password to the friendly people on both side of the border. One of them asked me to open my bag and I had to show her everything in my bag. She didn't say anything except asking what kind of Camera I was caring; She asked if it was Sony and I replied 'yes'. I also had to change some money from Kenya shilling to Ethiopian birr and this was very simple since there are many people at the border that want to change for you.
