Tea Country & Lake Victoria Roadtrip

A belated update on New Year’s weekend: we jumped in the car on Friday with Miriam and David and headed west. We never made it to our intended destination - Kakamega Forest - instead heading south into tea country and then onto Mbita, Rusinga Island, and Lake Victoria. We drove, or rather David drove, about 1,000 kilometers over cratered roads in about two days, seeing some rather remote parts of the country.

The first day took us to the heart of tea country in Kericho. We spent a night at the famous Tea Hotel, built during the height of the Colonial tea boom and in a “slow decline ever since” (according to a very accurate description in the Rough Guide). So, feeling like we had been shot back to the 1950’s, we did as any good colonialist would have - drank all the Gilbeys Gin we could get our hands on. A musty slumber and some sausage and eggs later, we were back on the road heading west towards Kenya’s western fringe via Ruma National Park.

The plan was a good one, at least in theory. Upon arrival at Ruma many hours later, we met a very nice Kenya Wildlife Service ranger who dutifully informed us that only one person had successfully passed through the rain-soaked park in the past week. When we pressed her, she conceded that it might be possible to get through the mud-caked and river-swollen 22 kilometers, but only if we had “the perfect driver.” Fortunately, our perfect driver was perfect enough to acknowledge that the road - I mean riverbed - was impassible. We accepted defeat and, tail between our legs, pressed on around the park. We must get back to Ruma sometime; what we saw looked fantastically remote and untrammeled.

A few more hours through mud-hut villages, small subsistence farms, and undeveloped tropical brush and we arrived at Rusinga Island on Lake Victoria. The island, now joined to the mainland by a causeway that is said to be wreaking havoc on the local fish populations, is the home and resting place of Kenyan revolutionary Tom Mboya, who was assassinated in 1969. Mboya was a labor leader, elected official, and Pan-Africanist, who believed that politics and government should transcend tribalism. In a country with over 40 different ethnic groups, where people vote predominantly for their own tribe, that is an important lesson. Needless to say, we were excited to pay our respects at his mausoleum (shaped like a bullet to remind us of the way he died). But somehow we missed the turn-off, possibly distracted by the clouds of malaria-carrying mosquitos hovering above the washed-out roads. The drive was well worth it nonetheless, with the sun low in the sky, kids playing on the side of the road, fishmongers hauling their day’s catch, and the heat slowly subsiding.

We arrived at the banda camp just in time for - you guessed it - more Gilbeys and a fantastic sunset. The next day we hauled back to Nairobi for a Lebanese New Year’s feast and a very cheesy celebration at a club called Casablanca (which normally has a fairly chic and laid-back atmosphere). We watched the fireworks and headed home to bed before 1am. Check out more photos here.