The travel misadventures of a perpetual village boy

I’m afraid I might be partly responsible for the election of Donald Trump and I want to come clean before those United States crash and burn.

I met this middle-aged Latino man on W 42nd Street just outside Times Square in New York. “Give me One Dollar Or I’m Voting Trump”, his banner said. He was sitting on a foldable chair begging in one of the most creative ways ever. I gave him $2 because I wasn’t taking any chances but I now fear that he was a little economical with the truth.

He must have still voted for Trump; the equivalent of the Internet comment section getting elected president. It has emboldened people like the nice man we saw flying the Confederate Flag on a Galveston beach in Texas, the ultimate symbol of racial oppression.

What do you do when you end up in a new city in a country where you don’t speak the language and you don’t know where to go? I grew up in a little village called Barding deep in Siaya County but I’m often in these situations now because of poor life choices. In the years since I became a sheep in the big city, I have been chasing sunsets and falling asleep under countless foreign skies. One day I will write about the joys of travelling on an African passport but that would need an entire book.

I spent most of 2016 making it look like I work in Nairobi full time while actually living out of a suitcase. Mercifully, I didn’t lose my passport, laptop and other valuables in a lobby robbery in a supposedly high-end London hotel like I did last year.

What happened this year is ending up in Stockholm in the middle of summer, taking a train to where my friends were supposed to be waiting and finding that they weren’t there. In its endless wisdom, Safaricom has neglected to sign a roaming agreement with any network in Sweden so I couldn’t communicate on phone.

Despite its nickname as the Venice of Scandinavia, it is still the Dark Ages in Stockholm and most train stations don’t even have WiFi. The true walk of shame is having to walk to a nearby hotel to beg for the WiFi password so you can get in touch.

MATATUS OF BARCELONA

But that doesn’t beat the shame of grown men and women I saw weeping openly at Milan’s San Siro Stadium after Real broke their Madrid rivals Atletico’s hearts in the Champions League final. Much later that night, the world’s most drunk man was struggling to let himself inside my hotel room.

Somehow, the reception had given him a key card that opened my door but he was too drunk to actually come in even after the door gave way. If the Italians aren’t fighting with your door at 3am, they are trying to kill you with their atrocious driving in broad daylight.

For every strange experience like that, there are upright citizens like South African celebrity chef Benny Masekwameng, with his endless knowledge of food, wine and the Cape Town party scene. My crew and I spent a few glorious days in the Mother City and had to literally escape from the man to make our flight back home.

Speaking of clubs, Kenyans in Dubai should find other joints to hang out apart from Kiza. That’s the only way to explain how the place was teeming with dozens of Kenyans on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday night last month. Either that, or they are overwhelmed with their disposable incomes and are trying to spend it before the weekend sets in and brings in more oil money.

These are the kinds of problems I need in my life. Sadly, the only issues I have is going to a glorious island destination like Zanzibar but you’re only there for 16 hours because duty calls. That travesty still pales in comparison to being reduced to just 26 hours in France because a last-minute reporting trip to Amsterdam means a planned week-long stay is cut brutally short. I know, these are all first world problems, but who says a village boy can’t have them?

Sometimes, you end up at the wrong hotel and curse all your ancestors because a taxi trip in Barcelona costs the same as my entire four-year high school fees. Even worse, they have refused to allow Uber to operate in the city so that the traditional cab cartel can continue to rip people off without competition.

It is exactly like the matatu business in Kenya but well organised and a hundred times more expensive. I could recount tales from the impressive public library in Kigali, Rwanda, or the broken chair statue outside the UN in Geneva but they would be pointless. These are some of the back stories about being on the front row. Happy New Year!

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ANNUS HORRIBILIS

It’s been a horrible year for Europe

While this year has been relatively quiet for Kenya in terms of major terror attacks, attention shifted to Europe and the horrific year it has had.

The Berlin Christmas Market attack just over a week ago served to remind the world that nowhere is safe any more. Brussels, Paris and Nice have instilled fear in the hearts of anyone who aspires to leave their house to go anywhere at all.

Maybe Western governments will stop issuing travel advisories in 2017 because their countries are getting affected just as frequently as Kenya. Just pledging support for the country when terrorists attack shouldn’t be enough when you promptly advise your citizens not to visit. People haven’t stopped going to Paris or Berlin because they got attacked.

That should apply across the board, regardless of where the attack is. In an ideal world, people would be safe in their communities and none of these would be necessary, but we don’t live in that utopia. Just get rid of the double standards. That will be a good start.

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RECLAIMING THE STORY

Depictions of Africa by Africans

THERE WILL SHORTLY be some very epic images and video of African life from Nairobi and heading down south to the bottom of the continent and I can’t wait.

On Christmas Eve, and with just three hours to spare, the Unscrambling Africa Kickstarter was fully backed with some change. It was a crowdfunding effort by some of Kenya’s best photographers to travel through 13 African cities in eight weeks and some 15,000km or so to document “Architecture, public spaces and the people and cultures that exist within them”.

It is the brilliant idea of Mutua Matheka, Joe Were, Lulu Kitolo and Josh Kisamwa. They managed to convince 58 different “backers” to contribute £30,631 (Sh3,828,875) which is £2,631 (Sh328,875) above their target.

They promise to produce a Web series along the way, a digital photobook, postcards, a colouring book and some prints.

The obvious need for a project like this can’t be overstated; almost all the reporting about Africa is done by Westerners who are “passionate” about the continent and who quickly anoint themselves “experts” because that is somehow still a thing in 2016. It is splendid that some  Africans are deliberately starting to take on that narrative and are creating alternatives.

Godspeed to them!