The Milgas Adventure..

Okay, I am finally sitting down to finish and post my promised story of a Milgas Adventure!  In mid-February, my husband Reuben and I headed to Ngurunit for the weekend to see our village home and do a bit of work here and there as we went.  The decision to use the Milgas riverbed route was made.  The Milgas river is a wide sandy riverbed that passes between two mountain ranges in Samburu; The Ndotos and the Matthews.  When it is raining, it is filled with water, dangerous and impassable.  When it is dry, it is as good as a wide-open freeway.  That way can be a lot smoother and faster than bumping up the rocky way through Baragoi.  When all goes well.  That is the key statement here.  On this trip, even though it was very dry in February, all did not go well.  And yet in the end, it did.  Life is funny that way.  We get into trouble and struggle and struggle, but at the end of it all, we find that the so-called trouble led us right to the place we needed to be.  That was the case with our experience on this Milgas river trip. One of Reuben’s current projects with his government job is providing camels for pastoralist families Samburu County.  To this end, a group of camels was being trekked in February towards the different distribution points in Samburu North.  One purpose of deciding on the Milgas route was to see if we could intercept them on the way and see how they were doing.  The first part of the journey, about 2 hours, went well, up over a mountain to get to the Milgas, then driving through the riverbed with no problem to a point adjacent to a town called Latakweny.  We had not found the camels, so we just decided to carry on to Ngurunit.  From this point, one has a choice on the way to Ngurunit.  To get out onto a regular road or to keep driving in the river bed.  As the road is rocky and round-about, the decision was made to continue in the river.  Challenging choice, it turns out.  As I said, the climate was very dry in February.  So dry that the continuing section of the river had very heavy, very deep sand.  Too dry.  We managed to go for only about 1 kilometer when the car bogged down in this sand.  With only 3 of us in the vehicle, it was a stomach dropping moment.  Oh no!  How do we get out??!!  With no choice but to try pushing, the struggle began.  Reuben drove while I and the driver pushed.  And pushed.  And pushed.   The car broke free of the clinging deep sand and charged forward to a harder bit where Reuben stopped to let us catch up to the vehicle and climb in.  We continued.  Only for a kilometer or so and the deep sand sucked in the vehicle and we bogged down again, unable to move forward.  Again we pushed.  And pushed.  And pushed.  Free again.  Continue.  Bogged down again.  And the cycle repeated. Over several times till I lost count.  Finally, we who were pushing started to lose strength.  The sand seemed deeper.  The car sinking deeper.  No forward movement.  The light was going as the sun started dropping towards the horizon.  Despair that we would get out of the mess we were in started to grow.  The thought of giving up for the night, starting a fire and hunkering down for a night stuck in the Milgas started to cross our minds.  Though thoughts of elephants and hyenas circling us all night kept us looking for options.  That is when the Samburu warrior walked by.  Saved.  We asked him if he had friends nearby to help push.  Yes, they would be by presently.  We asked if there was a way out of the river onto a firm road.  Yes, look over there on the other bank of the river, between those bushes, a way out with a road straight to Latakweny.  Joy.  We had a chance of actually getting out of the wide river with the dragging sand and finding safe haven for the night, even if we were backtracking a bit.  Of course, it still took a mighty effort of pushing and pushing and pushing, even with 6 guys helping, to get the car moving forward onto firmer ground so Reuben could then race across the river and get out at the place we were shown.  On that last effort, I found myself face down in the middle of the riverbed with sand everywhere one could imagine from the hard push and the spinning wheels as the car broke free and dashed away.  I followed more slowly by foot across the riverbed with the warriors and driver, wiping grit from my teeth, weary from the fight with nature that we had been having for several hours.  As I walked, the sun was setting and nature forgave me for thinking I could conquer the mighty Milgas that day.  Red streaks blazed across the sky behind beautiful waving palm trees in a dazzling sunset, filling me with peace.  It seemed to be saying to me, it is okay you didn’t get to where you are going, look at the beauty of where you are!  The funny thing is, that when we did get to Latakweny to stay the night instead of trying to continue to Ngurunit in the dark, it turned out that this was exactly where we needed to be.  Reuben’s office colleagues found him as they were passing by and were able to give him good news about the camels. We had just missed them earlier in the day.  We also found friends and a comfortable place to sleep which we appreciated so much.  We were being taken care of by the Universe.  The next morning, we continued our travel to Ngurunit, this time using a road, which had its own challenges, but more passable than the riverbed way.  All worked out as it needed to.  As it always does for me in my life of adventure, working and living here in Northern Kenya.           

Here I Am..

Here I am.  Almost 2 weeks after I mentioned on a Facebook post that I would write about our adventure trip to Ngurunit and back.  Since then life has had some other surprises too.  It was school midterm break time from February 24^th to March 3^rd.  So I suddenly had 4 students arriving at the house for a place to stay and assistance to get home for a few days to pick up important papers.  The Form 2 students were required out of the blue to provide their parent’s ID numbers and original results slips.  This is easier said than done for kids who live 200 km away from their Maralal schools in places with few transport options.  But as always, we managed to send on their journey the 3 kids that needed to make the dash home and back during the break.  I had plans for a quick trip to Nakuru so I decided to take the 4^th student, my niece Rameli, along with me to see the big city!  That turned into a quick dash too, leaving on a Monday at 1 pm and being back to Maralal by 8:00 pm the Tuesday the next day.  In between we traveled the 4 hours down to my friend Anne’s house in Gilgil for Monday night.  Had dinner out with her and her son so we could meet a couple Rotarians from the Rotary Club of Gilgil.  Woke early on Tuesday morning to head for Nakuru to drop off my dog Acacia at the vet, Dr Cran, for spaying.  Rushed into town to do errands and shopping before a Rotary Club of Nakuru meeting at 12:30 for lunch.  I got a call from Dr Cran at 10:30 to inform me that my dog was actually expecting puppies so wondered how to proceed.  I made the decision to let nature take its course, but please hold on to her in his kennel until after the meeting.  Attended an amazing rotary meeting handing out certificates of participation to their many Rotary Community Corps, some of whom I had met last August.  Had a nice lunch.  Then the rush to finish up shopping, pick up the dog and head back to Maralal by a reasonable hour!  Exciting but exhausting trip.  Through all this, Rameli followed me around wide-eyed at all the hustle and bustle of a big city of more noise, people, pollution and traffic than she had ever imagined possible!  It is good that we got back to Maralal quickly because by the next day, the whole student crew had returned, with a few additions, back to Maralal to organize for going back to their studies this last weekend.  This involved several days of shopping, hair styling trips to beauty parlors, watching tv for entertainment and catching up on sleep.  Acacia is back in her place with the other dogs the same as she was when we left.  Definitely starting to look more expectant every day.  It is a mystery.  We thought we were so careful during her first heat cycle in December.  It appeared to be over by the beginning of January, but apparently not as the estimate is that she conceived sometime in the middle of that month, thus puppies expected to arrive within the next couple of weeks.  We never noticed her leave the compound.  No intact male dog came in.  It will be interesting to see what the pups look like.  After she has them and the challenge to find good homes has been accomplished, I will try the spaying trip again.  I’ll count this one as a practice run.  It did go better than I had expected it to.  Acacia has never been trained to leash and she has ridden in the car only a couple times around town.  She is about 10 months old and very sweet, but a little wild.  I took Mouse along with us to help keep Acacia calm, which helped.  Though a couple times they had a little control tiff.  This is my bed.  This is my car.  This is my human.  But overall they get along well.  Acacia wasn’t so sure about the leash.  But it helped to see Mouse on one and with a tug here and there, she would follow along and not fight it too much.  A quick learner.  Riding in the car was no problem at all.  Acacia just lay in her bed sleeping most of the way with Mouse sleeping on the seat beside her.  It surprised me how calm she was. 

Wow, here I am having written a lot about nothing really and never did get to the Ngurunit trip adventure we had in the middle of February.  I don’t want to go on too long so will end here with another promise to tell the story on my next blog.  This time I will try to not let time pass by so fast.  I will make another excuse as to why so distracted from writing because it is a happy one.  It started raining heavily last week here in Maralal! Yay!! I have heard it is all over the country, including in Ngurunit!!  That is so wonderful as water was becoming very scarce.  The side effects of this rain are several.  One is that power has been off about 50% or more of the day almost every day since.  That really disrupts work requiring electric powered equipment.  No power at the moment so trying to finish and post this before computer battery runs out.  I fortunately have a solar phone charger so will be able to get a hotspot for internet.  The other side effect is flooding.  Nairobi inundated.  Pictures of submerged cars fill my social media.  I had a challenge last week even crossing the small rivers between my office and home!!  The old adage of flood or famine is playing out.  Such is life.  But water is life, so we will just have to deal with the difficulties.  My garden is thriving.  That makes me happy!!  Time to go.  I will have to be patient until the power comes on again for another quick battery charge before disappearing during the next rain storm.  The fickleness of technology.  Incredibly useful when working well.  Incredibly frustrating when something not right.  Until next time:  May your lights stay on and your feet be dry….