Travelling to the Bathroom of the gods

The lushness of Gusiiland

I travel to Kisii often. Every Kisii worth his salt travels to Kisii often.  It is my home. Somewhere within those green bushes that cover those tiny hills, my umbilical cord is buried. I am a country boy.  I feel happy and lapse into a stupor of inactivity, lack of deep thought and randomness every time I am at this place. Life is so simple and familiar. And food, there is always food. Visit a friend, they offer you food, or tea. Visit a relative, they start preparing something for you. Well, not always but you get the drift.
I started doing the Nairobi-Kisii journey when I was ten years old. Back then, we used to meander through Nakuru, down the green lushness of the Kericho tea bushes and then to Gusiiland.

Kisii is in Nyanza, folks; South Nyanza, South-western Kenya.  I know most people’s interest in Geography ended in Form two. We now speak of places the way we speak about ideas; add-ons and props to complete our conversations, to prop up our lame jokes loaded with tribal innuendo, or to help us make light of heavy situations. Like Tharaka- Nithi and elections. But it sucks every time I have to correct someone who thinks Kisii is in Western province. I know; we love our ugali, never vote for a presidential candidate as a block ( Nyachae does not count) , we speak endlessly even when we are not supposed to and we have an accent that many people hear and assume their mother tongue is better. There is also that small aspect of being Bantu, but folks, that’s it. We may be distant cousins with the Luhya but I swear that ended in the hills of Goma in the Congo.

Now, we use the Narok route to get to Kisii. The Nakuru route has its lakes. They were nice to see as a kid. Watching what you learnt in class come to life, experiencing the wonders of the Rift Valley that you had only read about. From the distance of the bus, they still maintained their aura. But they were real, now. And my respect for the Rift Valley and the secret contents of its belly grew.

The Narok route has the escarpment. The road balances perilously between a steep wall and a deep drop into the floor of the valley. It is sandwiched by a dense forest. But there are always people by the side of the road, selling fruits, roasted maize and manning a viewing point. There is also a police check-point where the only checking that goes on is drivers going towards an old battered police Peugeot packed by the bushes and dropping something.

But this section of the road is intimidating and scary. It is beautiful in the dangerous kind of way. The kind of thing that gets your heart racing but you can’t take your eyes off, or you can’t stop wanting; the allure of the unconquerable. You stare at it from the window, you take it in, and nothing goes on in your mind. It doesn’t allow you to think. It is so intimidating that it hushes everybody in the bus. And that is a big thing if you are in a bus that is full of  Kisiis and Luos.

If you happen to be in a bus and you don’t know where it is going, you can easily tell if it is headed to Kisii. There are the calls when the bus takes off.

“Ndio tumetoka. Nimepanda Transline bus, sio shuttle.”  Is a common sentence. There are also voices loudly and rhetorically wondering how long the journey will take. But before the phone calls and the bus taking off, there is the buying of edibles, mostly juice, fries and crisps. Bear in mind that there will be a stop-over at Narok for a whole meal, and a bathroom break. The drivers always stop, because they get free meals and very few Kisiis, unless they are Adventists, can pass a chance for free Nyama choma.  Narok is a nice place. It is the entry into the Maasai Mara. If you are lucky, you might see a herd of zebras or gazelles browsing ( Maasai mara herbivores browse, they don’t graze).

You’ll suddenly be assaulted by a certain level of greenness some distance from Narok. You will know that you are in Kipsigis land. Apart from the change in the hue of shrubbery, there is nothing noteworthy, especially after the beauty of Maasai land. This greenness will continue and increase in intensity until you enter Kisiiland. You will see several houses built on thin strips of land. We have run out of land. You will be equally assaulted by a high concentration of people when you get to Kisii town. I am sure we are the town with the highest concentration of people in Kenya. If you try to evade bumping into someone, you will probably knock someone who was evading bumping into someone else.

But there are good things, like a very vibrant club scene, and bananas and traditional vegetables whose vendors will try to convince you to buy if they think you are travelling out of Kisii. Just buy them, especially chinsaga na managu, you won’t regret it.

The countryside is green. The lushness of the place will seduce you, at the peak of the rainy season, everything is normally green, the dark rich kind of green. It is very rare for the greenness of Kisii to disappear. It is equally rare for even the poorest of the poor to go without food. Even the plants that sprout by the roadside are edible. It also rains all year round. Some people believe this is the place where the gods used to come to take a bath. That is why it is called the bathroom of the gods.

PS:  If you want to use a public toilet, there is one at the bus park that has a 21 inch flat screen TV, and CCTV. The last time I was there, a Mexican melodramatic scene was showing and the guy manning the toilet seemed immersed (pun) in it. I don’t know the radius of the cameras. I stopped wondering when I didn’t get the logic of having CCTV and a TV in a public toilet.