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| Scenes on Kenyan roads |
Tarmac roads in Kenya are reasonably good however you need to clench your teeth over certain stretches to prevent chattering teeth in your vibrating jaws from biting off your tongue. John, our safari guide and driver, said that the road building had in the past been given to a Korean company but had rapidly deteriorated due to poor workmanship and materials. The latest road construction programme had been given to a number of foreign contractors.
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| Village scenes along Kenyan roads |
As we passed construction sections, John reeled off the nationality of the contractor for each section, Italian, British, Austrian, Chinese...
At each section very little work seemed to be going on, either the earth moving equipment lay fallow, or a few local workers listlessly shuffled some rocks about, or the site lay ocmpletely deserted for miles and miles, until we came across one dusty section charged with vigorous activity.
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| Road-side scenes |
Unlike other sites, where the supervisor seemed to have absconded to the nearest watering hole, at this particular site, hundreds of miles from the nearest human habitation, we found a solitary Chinese manager at the centre directing local workers and inspecting the works in the heat of the midday sun. This image stayed with us as we pondered the increased Chinese productivity, wealth and influence in Africa and the rest of the world.
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| Majestic Mount Kenya rising from the plains |
As we receded further and further North on the A2 highway from modern Nairobi, the urban sprawl gave way to green farms, then on to large areas covered in framed plastic tents where Kenyan flower exports flourish at the foot of rolling hills and Mount Kenya rises majestically from the plains. Seeing the clouds up on that rocky peak had my head resounding with that inspiring spiritual Up to the Mountain by Lexie Stobie.
As we swung around the wide base of Mount Kenya, the landscape gave way to arid and rocky expanses with a sparse population of acacia trees with strange fruit suspended from their branches. We turned to John, our guide, as to the meaning of this and he revealed a most intriguing ritual that explained the strange fruit borne by the trees.
