Journal Entry 7: On the Nairobi Express 27th July 2007

And so the end is very nigh. In less than 24 hours, all going to plan, we will be en route to London, Heathrow and then our homeland will beckon. Should be home around 6.30 tomorrow evening. Weird.


Right now I'm sitting in my first class cabin on my bed/seat with Maria sleeping above me on the train to Nairobi. It's fantastic. The train was scheduled to leave last night at 7pm. We were informed that it's fairly unreliable though. It left at around 8.30 so it wasn't too bad. In the meantime we stocked up on Tusker for the trip and I learned how to play the Jambo song off a busker at the station. His name is Leonard and he was so cool. I watched him play and noticed his strings were really awful. Must have been about ten years old, tied to his guitar like! I remembered I had a box of those DR strings in my case so I grabbed them and gave them to him. I'm really glad I thought of it, he was really happy with them. And I think it's nice that they'll go to good use.


Then we hopped on the train and it left the station. There was no electricity so the only light we had was from these battery powered lights they handed out. They didn't help much and went out after an hour. It was unbelievably hot when we first got on and there were mosquitos everywhere! They were massive and for the first time I felt myself getting bitten. I looked down at my arm where I felt a sligh pinch and saw this huge mosquito biting in. Ew!! It was freaky.

We went for dinner on the train which cost 700 shillings and was disgusting. After the meal the train stopped. At first I thought it was just at a station or something but after a while we realised it was some sort of problem. We sat there for about, hm, 4 hours before we finally started moving again.

In the meantime I got the guitar out and started playing some songs only to be interupted by loud banging on the wall next to us. Obviously people weren't too happy. We moved down to where the others were and had a bit of a singsong there. After a while we moved back down to where we had dinner earlier and played cards til the remaining lights ran out. One by one everyone left for bed leaving Eileen, Avril, Maria and me singing our drunken hearts out and discussing films til 4. It was brilliant!! Singing 80's classics on the train to Nairobi. How very surreal.

So far today has been good. I didn't have a great sleep but I still woke at nine and felt fairly refreshed so I got up and hung out with Avril and Tom for a while. We should be in at about 3. It'll be so weird leaving the group tomorrow, one month can be a long time when you're living in each other's pockets - and it felt a lot longer than that.

A little girl we passed by on the train.

Tom poses out the window of train to Nairobi.