It was a fairly long flight from the north of Europe down the african continent, where Kenya is located at the equator. A short stop in Ethiopia, at Addis Abeba, sufficient to stretch your legs, a welcome activity if you are 203 cm long as I am.
Addis.
Being crammed into a airplane chair is not considered a desired activity unless I have booked extra leg space.
After landing comes the usual procedure of entering a new country. We where warned in advance that Kenya has banned the use of plastic bags and that the customs would be checking our bags for bags, plastic ones. If you are caught in town with a plastic bag the fines can be very hefty.
The process was rather straight forward and we entered Kenya without and difficulties. Some people went straight through without even filling in the entry card, and others had to rewrite the card and try again. There's a sort of randomness that is creating a atmosphere of antecipation. Will I get in easy or not?
Waiting for the transport.
Leaving Sweden where there is snow and temperatures below 0 and ending up at Nairobi airport the heat was right between hot and too hot. At least initially. 2 weeks into the trip the climate was fine ;-)
As any large city in the world, Nairobi has caught the traffic jam flu. More people are getting wealthy and everybody wants a car. The citys are not designed for this level of traffic, and our driver Francis, told us that going straight through town would take ages. It was better to drive around the city on the outskirts.
Arriving at the first hotel, The Sun Africa hotel Sovereign Suites, It was an old house to the style of it but had been built as a private house for a colonel in the kenyan army. He must have been rather wealthy because it was a very nice hotel.
Rolf and I shared a room.
Tomorrow we are going out to the western Kenya gold fields, to see the conditions there. No one is interested in getting sick in the stomach. And we do not know how the food situation will be out there. So we goes to a nearby shopping mall and buys food that are considered safe. Fruit that can be peeled, like bananas. Cans, cakes, bottled water etc. Cooked food will be present at evenings in the hotels or restaurants. but daytime in the goldfields is another story.
Back from the shopping we take the opportunity to swim in the pool. we are after all in a warmer country than back home. Any Scandinavian will drop their clothes and sunbathe or swim in the pool as soon as the temperature rises even the slightest over 0 degrees. The water was cold and as soon as the sun went down it went chilly in the air as well. but we did swim.
After the water activities we gathered for a nice buffet in the dining area. The trip and everything caught up with us and we went early to bed, because there would be a very long road trip tomorrow through the rift valley to Migori.
WE are a group of 6 persons from Sweden. Our mission here is to introduce modern equipment to the hard working gold miners that are ruining their lives with the use of mercury. They are also using ancient methods that loose a lot of the gold in the process of extraction. The goal is to show them how it can be done without mercury, with simple methods that can be made locally by themselves, without being forced to import expensive equipment from abroad.
Rolf is since way back an expert on gold mining. I have known him for many years and are myself a happy amateur with an inventor type of personality, Boine is a mechanical engineer and Hasse is a fixer, also an engineer. The both have a mine in Finland. Dimman is a beginner in gold mining but a very funny guy, super social. Can as well, who is also a music producer. Very social and funny him as well. Joseph is our manager, fixing everything along the trip and we have Francis as our driver in one car, and joseph in the other.