Weekend Road Trip in Kenya

We have officially made another step in our adventures in foreign travels… we rented a car! :) The weekend before last was our first time driving ourselves around in Kenya and Jason did an incredible job! (I was content to let him drive this time…) We wanted to go to Eldoret for the weekend and the only options were a very expensive taxi ride, or taking a bus. The bus schedule was not flexible and was going to give us very little time in Eldoret since we only had two days. So, we decided to rent a car.

Because we were able to get the car on Friday afternoon, we decided on a whim that if Jason got off work in time, we would go to Nakuru for the night and head the rest of the way to Eldoret on Sat morning. The town of Nakuru borders a beautiful lake and a game park / preserve. We stayed overnight at a wonderful lodge in the park and went on a game drive early Sat morning before heading out. Nathaniel seemed to really enjoy his first game drive – we saw water buffalo, baboons, gazelle, zebra, rhinos, impalas, water buck, all kinds of birds, and a lioness with her four cubs (Nathaniel slept through seeing the lions though :) ). We also drove up to a gorgeous waterfall at one point. It was sunny and slightly cool that morning – some of the best weather we’ve had since we’ve been here. All was going well until we got back to the lodge and were packing up our things…

Jason noticed that the key to the car was slightly bent so he gently pressed on it to straighten it - and it immediately broke in half in his hand. This was the only key for our rental car and we were out in the middle of nowhere. Unsure of what to do, and whether to laugh or be worried, we finished packing up our things and went to check out. We asked at the front desk if anyone had any ideas of how to get the key fixed. One of the maintenance people came and the best thing anyone could think of was to try and glue the key back together and then take the car somewhere in Nakuru to get another key made. When the maintenance man brought superglue, I heard Jason say, “I don’t think this will hold metal together”. We were pretty concerned about this plan because if the key broke off in the ignition, we had no way to get it back out or fixed. Seeing no other option though, we decided to try it. They superglued the key together and it seemed to hold for the moment. Jason said a prayer with the mechanic who responded with “You will get where you are going with prayer like that”. :)  Jason put the super-glued key in the ignition and turned it – the car started! We all laughed with relief and Jason said we wouldn’t turn the car off until we had to…

When we arrived in Nakuru, we stopped at a mechanic shop, and leaving the car running, Jason went to ask for help and advice. They pointed us down a dirt road around the corner to a “key shop”. I will try to attach pictures because it is difficult to fully explain, but this key shop was a tiny building made of scrap wood, surrounded by trash and other small “shops” of all sorts. There was a sign on the building that said “we make keys here", along with "Christ is all in all". :)

Jason told them the problem and they said they could fix it, so he turned the key and tried to pull it out. It broke in half again, but thankfully the entire thing came out and the half not in Jason’s hand landed on the floorboard of the car. Jason gave me a grin - which I did my best to return - as he went and handed the broken key to a young stranger. I got a little worried when the boy looked unsure of what to do with it. He told Jason that he couldn’t make the key here but that his brother had a machine that could do it just a little way down the road. I snapped another picture as the boy road off on his bike with our only key in his hand…

Riding off with our key :) 

We assumed this could take a while, so we got Nathaniel out of the car and found a bench to sit on in the shade. Jason bought a couple of sodas and bananas and we had a snack and visited with people passing by. It was probably only about a half an hour or so before the boy returned. He had two keys in his hand – a new one and the broken one. We put the newly made copy in the ignition and it worked! We both let out a huge sigh of relief and thanked the boy profusely.

The old and new key!

By this time it was after 1pm and we weren’t sure how long it would take to get to Eldoret. We were driving a small, two-wheel drive, Toyota corolla with over 200,000 kilometers on it. The white exterior was covered in mud even before we hit the rough roads. It was supposed to be paved highway the whole way to Eldoret, but there was a long section that had construction going on so for almost two hours Jason maneuvered our little car through mud, rocks, huge holes, and occasional gravel. We arrived in Eldoret around 4:30pm and checked into our motel. We took a friend and one of his classmates out for dinner at a small pizza place, and then headed back to our motel to get some rest.

When we arrived back at our room, we looked at each other with raised eyebrows. There was loud rock music that sounded like it was being played right outside our window. It sounded like a live band or a DJ and someone was speaking / yelling off and on in Swahili into a microphone. We put Nathaniel to bed in the pack and play that we had brought from Kijabe, and as it goes most nights, he started crying. Jason and I settled into our bed and smiled, “Was this the relaxing evening you had in mind?” he said over the noise of the music and baby. “Not exactly”, I responded with a grin.

We weren’t smiling anymore a few hours later. The music kept getting louder and more angry sounding, joined by lots of yelling, laughing, and general crowd noise. The speaker (DJ?) kept getting louder as well and whenever he yelled into the microphone the crowd would respond. A little before midnight, Jason called down to the front desk asking if a club had been built next door, or what was going on. The man said that there was a party and that he would try to contact the owner of the place. Nathaniel had already awoken at least 2 or 3 times by now from the strange noise and would take a while each time to settle. This continued until 4am… Finally all was silent. We had slept a little bit here and there from exhaustion I suppose, but now we settled in for at least a few hours of sleep. It was short lived when Nathaniel soon woke up again – this time for his usual early morning feed I guess. He went back down after nursing and we got an hour or two of uninterrupted sleep before it was time to get up.

When we got out to the car to head to church, we noticed that our left front tire was almost flat. We had realized when we started out on Friday that it had a slow leak and we had filled it with air once already. Jason decided to drop the car off to be repaired while we were all at church. Thankfully this went smoothly and we picked the car up a couple hours later with a repaired tire. We then had a nice lunch with several other friends we wanted to connect with. Although the trip was really short, we were glad to re-connect with people we had to leave so quickly before. It was also really fun to introduce Nathaniel to them.

Our drive back to Kijabe was fairly uneventful, other than realizing the car had almost no oil in it when Jason just decided to check it “just in case”. Thankfully he caught this before we started out. We arrived safely back at Kijabe Sunday evening and returned the car to it’s owner on Monday with two keys – one broken and one new, a repaired tire, and adequate oil and gas. All in all, it was a great trip!