I found myself in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, planning on making a trip down to Nairobi overland. Some friends had gone before me, so I knew the journey was a rough one. They told me it took five days which dragged on for 8-12 hours each, travelling across the hot northern desert of Kenya.
The border crossing was considered one of the most dangerous in the world at the time. Once you made it over to the Kenyan side, you entered a region that was generally described as lawless where armed rebels occasionally robbed trucks that made the journey.
I decided it was best if I didn’t make the trip alone, so I put a sign on the travel board in the lobby of my hotel.
‘21-year-old Australian making the trip to Nairobi sometime in the next week. Dates flexible. Msg [number] if anyone wants to join.’
Within a few hours I received a reply from another Australian who was staying in the same hotel and we made plans to meet in the bar later that night.
As soon as he sat down I didn’t like him. His name was Ben and he had long hair that was tied into a man bun. While we were talking, he undid his man bun, waved his hair like a woman in a shampoo commercial, and then tied it up again. He was also suspiciously friendly, but not in a way that felt genuine. I didn’t like the first impression but I figured it would be fine so I explained the situation.
‘So this is basically my plan,’ I began. ‘We can get a bus from here that will take us to the border town of Moyale. It takes two days to get there and the bus spends a night in some random town before continuing the next day. We’ll then have to spend another night at the border. From Moyale we can go to Marsabit and spend a night there. The next part is Marsabit to Isiolo. Last is Isiolo to Nairobi. Each part is at least eight hours and there are no buses from the border to Marsabit so we will have to get a ride in the back of a truck. Some friends did it a few weeks ago and they said it’s easy to find a truck. They leave in the morning and are used to taking passengers but it can get hot because there’s no cover from the sun.’
‘That sounds okay,’ he replied. ‘Is it true that it’s a little dangerous?’
‘There’s been some shootings and robberies in the past,’ I admitted, ‘but it’s not too bad at the moment. I think the police cracked down a lot because truck convoys used to get targeted but now it’s okay.’
‘What did your friends say about it?’
‘They said it’s rough but manageable. They were laughing about how bad the roads are. If they were laughing it means they were really bad. But I’ll guess we’ll see.’
‘When do you want to leave?’
‘Whenever really, but sooner rather than later. I’m ready to leave tomorrow but I can also hang around for a few days.’
‘I’ll be ready to leave tomorrow as well,’ said my new ‘friend’.
‘Let’s go tomorrow then. There’s only one bus and it leaves at 9 am so how about we meet in the lobby at 8 am and get a taxi to the station?’
‘Sounds good.’
We finished our beers and then I went back to my room and got my bags ready before going to bed early.
The next morning we began the trip to Moyale. The bus was uncomfortable but I was used to it. Ben and I got to know each other for the first few hours but nothing he said interested me. He had a kind of dopey shallowness to him that irritated. Most of the foreigners I’d met in Ethiopia had been interesting and this was the first person I’d met in the country who bored me. I think he would’ve been better suited to a yoga retreat in Bali… There was nothing to him at all and something about his man bun continued to annoy me. It seemed so damn douchey. But I was stuck with him for the next few days and with little else to do, I tried to make the most of the situation.
In his defence, Ben never complained despite there being plenty to complain about. On the third day, we were in the back of a truck and the road was so bad you couldn’t see the bottom of the potholes. None of it was paved and when you hit the holes you would get thrown a foot in the air and then come smashing down on the hard floor of the truck. The sensation was similar to being on a trampoline and getting double-bounced. The guard rails around the truck burned in the midday sun and you’d have to choose between holding on and scorching your hand or letting go and getting thrown around when the next hole came. This went on for most of the day. By my reckoning, it took us 12 hours to go a few hundred kilometres. The road was made from rock-hard dirt the colour of sand and I doubt we reached a speed above 30km/h the whole time.
For the final two days, the road was paved and we managed to find a bus. It was like a dream compared to what we had endured and so we sat in silence, relishing the calm. We had absolutely nothing in common and nothing to talk about. Neither one of us was being rude, we just couldn’t find any sort of connection between us. Our mindsets were completely different. When we finally arrived in Nairobi we checked into the same hostel but I think we were both glad that we would no longer have to be in each other’s company. We shook hands and went to our separate rooms and that was the end of the five-day trip. The Man Bun was gone.
I’d been in Nairobi for a few days when I met Uri and David. They were two Israelis who were volunteering at a school in a giant slum called Kibera. They told me it was the biggest slum in Africa and suggested I should come see what it’s like. I didn’t really want to purposely seek out poverty but I also didn’t think I should shy away from it so I made plans to meet the next day.
The following morning I was waiting out the front of the hostel when only one of them turned up.
‘Uri is sick,’ David announced. ‘So it’s just men and you if that’s okay?’
‘Yeah, no worries. That’s fine.’
I noticed an awkwardness in David when he told me Uri was sick. He almost seemed uncomfortable and couldn’t look me in the eye. I dismissed it as nothing and we made our way to the train station that would take us to Kibera.
As soon as we got off the train we were in the slum. The road was a reddish-yellow dirt and busy with people. We walked for 10 minutes and I tried to look around as much as possible. It was one sprawling shanty town with tin shacks a few metres wide and barely held together. There was no plumbing, so people made bathrooms of the dirt in the streets leaving an overwhelming stench. There were also no addresses meaning people technically didn’t live there according to the government. Most of the trash was dumped in slightly out-of-the-way places like the railroad tracks. You could get electricity but it came from illegal power-lines that tapped into a source somewhere else. It surprised me how normal it all was. Everyone was casually going about their day. It was early in the morning and it looked like most people were on their way to work.
When we arrived at the school David introduced me to the head teacher who was a local woman no more than 30 years old.
‘Where’s Uri?’ She said, almost immediately after I said hello.
‘He’s sick today so he stayed home,’ David replied.
‘Oh, what about his class? Who is going to teach the children?’
They both turned to me and waited a few seconds without speaking. It got a little awkward and suddenly it clicked that they wanted me to volunteer as the replacement teacher.
‘Should I teach them for the day? I don’t really know what I’m doing but I can supervise them,’ I offered.
‘Oh, that would be great. Thank you. We can’t leave them in the class by themselves so you just have to keep an eye on them.’
‘No worries, it’s fine,’ I shrugged.
Within a few minutes, I realised why David was awkward and uncomfortable when he told me about Uri not coming. They knew I would be roped into teaching the class. It almost seemed coordinated. I later learned that the pair came to the school every day but didn’t enjoy it. They had committed to teaching for six months but secretly wanted to get out of their promise whenever possible. The only way to escape the school for a day was to convince someone else to take over. They had conned me to come and saw it as a perfect opportunity for one of them to take a day off.
The head teacher showed me to a small dirt room. It was like being in a mud hut barely bigger than a dinner table. There were ten kids around the age of 11 or 12 and sitting on wooden benches. I introduced myself as their teacher for the day and tried to figure out what I should do. I remembered from TV shows that a substitute teacher would go around the room and get everyone’s name so that’s what I did. They all had Kenyan names that I didn’t understand so I forgot them as soon as they were said. This killed a few minutes and then I went back to wondering what I should do next.
‘What do you kids normally do in the morning?’ I asked.
‘Maths!’ A few of them shouted.
Maths it was then. They had their books ready to go and they started straight away. Most of them were enthusiastic and I didn’t even have to try and get them to work. I’d never seen such excited children. They opened their books and started doing the equations and every now and then they would bring the book to me so I could check the answers. Luckily it was just basic stuff like multiplication and division because my understanding of maths didn’t go much further than that.
A few of the kids were different. There was one girl who just sat in the corner and stared and didn’t say a word. She had a thousand-yard stare and it seemed like everything that went on around her barely even registered. Almost like she had checked out of the world. She didn’t seem shy or nervous like some kids can be. It was something different. She seemed to look right through you. I wondered what could be wrong with her but then decided against it. Sometimes it’s better to not think too much about the things that can happen to little girls in a slum like that.
Before long it was 3 pm and school was over. I barely had to do anything all day because the kids had completed their work all by themselves. It was sad how they were probably some of the poorest kids in the entire world but they made the best students. Education was seen as a privilege that not many children had the good luck to receive. I was left with the feeling they knew education was the only thing that was going to offer them any chance of getting out of the slums.
After saying goodbye to everyone I began walking through the slum when I saw Ben the Man Bun and a girl I knew from the hostel. Her name was Jessica. I’d also seen Ben around the hostel, but had done a good job of avoiding him as much as possible. They saw me and I went over and said hello.
‘What are you doing here?’ Jessica asked me.
‘I was visiting the school where Uri and David teach. They’re the two Israelis from the hostel.’
‘Oh yeah, I know Uri and David,’ she replied.
‘What are you guys doing?’
‘I volunteer in this orphanage here,’ Jessica said. ‘And the Man Bun came down and kept me company today.’
She didn’t actually refer to him as the Man Bun but I couldn’t be bothered using his proper name.
‘Would you like to look around?’ Jessica asked. ‘I’ve heard you write stories, maybe you could write about this orphanage.’
‘Sure, I’ve got nowhere else to be.’
She showed me around and told me some of the stories about the children. Most of them were orphans from the scourge of aids. A lot of the time both parents had died from the disease while some of the kids contracted it because of a terrible belief in parts of Africa that having sex with a virgin could cure it. This led to rampant child abuse and another cursed generation.
The owner of the orphanage was a kind old lady and she wanted to introduce me to some of the success stories. She had children under her wing who hadn’t died and were doing okay in school. There were a few teens around 15 or 16 years old and she paraded them out with a sense of satisfaction. I could tell she was proud of them.
While talking to the owner a young boy around 3 years old attached himself to my leg. He was hugging it and wouldn’t let go. I laughed and the old lady looked down.
‘Oh, that’s George,’ she said. ‘Once he gets hold of something, he holds on tight.’
I laughed again and tried to remove him from my leg but his eyes filled with tears and he started crying.
‘What’s the matter, buddy?’
I picked him up and he buried his head in my chest. He was swaddled in grey rags and every part of him stank from the filth of his surrounds. I looked around for Jessica because I wanted her to come and save me from the crying child. It was her job, after all. Instead I saw her standing across the road talking with the Man Bun. They were laughing and flirtatiously giggling. I caught a few words and felt sick to my stomach.
I put George down but he started crying again and tugging on my pants. He needed comforting. I needed a cigarette. The smell of the slums was all over me.
I felt anger rising inside me and my mind started ranting as I fumbled for a smoke. Is that Man Bun really flirting while in a slum with aid orphans? I only came here to exploit the situation for the story. They’re supposed to be volunteers who help, not pick up the locals for sex. Do these shallow volunteers ‘help’ so they can score a shag? Every single one of these ‘volunteers’ has an ulterior motive, but instead of admitting it, they walk around like saints pretending to care so long as they can post their efforts on Instagram. God, they make me sick sometimes.
I could not dump the young crying boy on the ground so I walked over to the happy couple and interrupted their giggling.
‘Hey, Jess can you look after George while I go up the road and have a cigarette? I don’t want the kids to breathe in my smoke.’
‘Yeah, sure.’
George cried as I tried to remove his arms from around my throat but stopped when he was safely with Jessica. I made it 20 metres and sparked up a cigarette. I can still smell the filth of the slums on my hands but I don’t care.
As if those kids have to worry about lung cancer, I thought while smoking. The owner of the orphanage made it pretty clear that a lot of them don’t make it. That’s why she was so proud of the ones who did. That’s why she wanted to parade around the survivors.
I looked up again and George was happily in Jessica’s arms. The Man Bun was smiling like a guy certain his flirting might pay off in the near future. I don’t feel like going back. I crushed my cigarette on the ground and started walking towards the train station.
