Journey to Mumias: The Road Trip

At the heart of the purpose of making the journey to Kenya was to attend the memorial service for my uncle's parents who passed away several years ago. We also planned a safari, and a trip to the eastern coastal town of Mombasa for some fun on the beach, but these excursions were just fluff, mere touristy vacation in the eyes of my uncle Edmund. On July 11, we left for Mumias, a town in western Kenya near Marach, my uncle's birthplace and the villiage in which he grew up. We left Nairobi at around 8:45am and reached Edmund's cousin Tim's home in Mumias at 8:30pm. We were supposed to arrive well before that hour, but we were road tripping through Kenya, rural Kenya, mind you, without a map and battling potholed, gravelly, red dusty roads which worsened the closer we got to our destination. There was one stretch of the trip which found us driving over bumps and potholes for about three hours, and stopping to ask for directions more than a few times. What made it all worth it, however, was driving through the Great Rift Valley a vast drop in the earth that stretches on seemingly endlessly in both directions. It was absolutely fantastic. After several hours of sitting in our white, beat up, junk yard van, I felt an overpowering urge to get out and run, run, run!! I had fallen behind on my exercise routine since arriving in Kenya so when we got to the valley lookout point for a closer look at the dramatic drop below us, I ran as fast as I could from one end of the lookout to the other for a much needed release of energy! I was in awe of the myriad shades of green all around me, shades of sage, shades of the depths of the deepest forest shades of the light, cool and calming, and then there was the sky above us, as high as the valley below us was long. I was feeling small, so spectacularly small up there and the air, oh, so clear and pure if I could drink it it would taste like water from the the cleanest mountain stream. It was cool and brisk and bracing, and I could feel the life force within me.