So what would we do? Some suspicious guys had already been passing, looking at us. And even if there are no houses to see among the trees, there are people living there. Not all of them with good intensions when they see a car that needs assistance.
But God is good, even when the car cannot be driven. Exactly where we had to stop, we found a sign (see picture below). It was a boarding school. The name of it is "Kimalel" which means "person with light complexion". The driver of the car surely was a person with light complexion, even after having gotten some tan. "Kimalel" was also one of the two names considered when Rune should decide for his African name. Instead of Kimalel, he chose Kipchumba. If you are curious to know the meaning of "Kipchumba", you can visit our web site www.henjum.net to find a link to an explanation of what it means.
So, there was a boarding school behind the gate. And even if it is school holiday here now, there was some activities there. It was a seminar. Could we request to leave the car inside the gate? That was our only option.
We were allowed to leave the car there after the watchman had checked what was inside the car and had also written down our names and id numbers. He could not take a risk; in his eyes we could be terrorists.
What if we had had to stop a few km further into the wilderness? A scary thought, actually. But God's grace is also present in the wilderness.
After having found a place for the car, we needed to find a place for us. We went back on the road to wait for a matatu. It was dark - dark in the meaning of seeing nothing except darkness. A flashlight helped us to find our way and to signalize to the matatu that came after about 10 minutes. We drove to the village called Marigat and found a place to sleep. It was run by a nice Christian, young man. One room for Sharon's parents and one room for us. Each room cost 500 shillings or about 37 kroner. It was small, about 7 square meters, and it had a toilet with just a hole in the floor.
After having checked in, we went to the little restaurant called Sun City - "where style meets comfort". We had dinner for about 8 kroner pr person.
Not everyone slept well. It was quite hot in the rooms and it was also noisy outside. In the morning, we had breakfast in the same place. It cost about 4 kroner pr person.
It was a sunny day. The picture below shows the main street of the village.
On both sides of the streets, women were selling vegetables and fruits
At 10.15am, the mechanic called and said that he had found the fan belt at Toyota in Nakuru. Now, he would take a matatu back and it would take about 2 hours. So about 1 hour later, we headed back from Marigat to Kimalel. When we came the previous evening, my light complexion was not visable in the dark. So the payment for me was like for Kenyans, 50 shillings. Now, in the sun shine, it was obvious for every driver that I was not a Kenyan, and the price for me suddenly was 100 shillings.
Back at Kimalel, we sat waiting for the mechanic; Rune in the sun and the others in the shadow. He had not found a matatu at once. Then he had to change to another matatu in Marigat, so instead of coming around 12.30pm as expected, he did show up until about 2pm. 15 minutes later, we could drive. We had been delayed for 22 hours and it had cost us 6,000 shillings (about 450 kroner) all in all.
It was a relief to continue driving. In Kabernet, we stopped to get something to eat. And then we stopped at a view point 5 km further along the road.
After about 20 minutes, we stopped again. This time to see what is called to be Africa's deepest gorge. Crocodiles live here, and it is not at all adviced to fall into it! One man did, and he never ever came up. His remains were found after a couple of days.
Later, we stopped along the road to buy some vegetables and fruits. When we stopped, the sales women came running toward our car.
Before we arrived in Eldoret, we also stopped by a family friend who runs a children's home.
We arrived home at around 8pm.
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