Blogs we like

It’s funny how the world works. Having completed one of the most dangerous roads we’re likely to take, we arrived in a town full of the friendliest people we’re likely to meet.

Everyone we spoke to in Marsabit was relaxed, friendly and thoroughly interested in what we were doing. And since the town is defined by transience, its people didn’t seem to think that we were utterly insane for wanting to get back to London by car (many Africans we’d met along the way did). Travelling was in their blood.

Most people had lived in the town all their lives, making a living for themselves at one of the town’s two fuel stations, as drivers, or with local missions. They told us more tales of the trouble that blighted the Isiolo-Marsabit road – there had been trouble for the past four days; the worst of which resulted in a driver being seriously wounded from a shot to the face and his tan boy (a trucking equivalent of a cabin boy) blinded in one eye. The only happy aspect of this story is that we heard it after we’d completed the stretch.

Better news lay ahead. Though the road to the Ethiopian border was in similar disrepair to that which we’d taken, it bore no such security concerns. With this in mind, we spent the rest of our afternoon in Marsabit occupying ourselves with refuelling and repacking the car, and delivering a letter to a local pastor on behalf of the manager of the Bomen Hotel. Just as we were beginning to think our day’s duties were done, a car-full of Norwegian missionaries checked into the same hotel as us.

It’s long been habitual for us to strike up conversation with anyone driving a 4x4 – travel chit-chat concerning roads, routes and cars (we feign knowledge of the latter in the hope that people mistake us for real men). We thus got talking to the missionaries who, being good Christian folk (as missionaries so often are), offered us the services of their driver-cum-mechanic.

Andrew, as was his name, was a qualified aeronautic engineer (he couldn’t find a job in his chosen profession) who knew his stuff. But it didn’t need an expert to tell us that we were long overdue an oil change (we’d travelled over 6,000 without giving it a second thought. Oops). His disbelieving tuts and shakes of the head as he heard our engine stutter embarrassed us into action and we spent the rest of our daylight hours in search of decent oil – a difficult task given Marsabit’s limited resources.

While our search that evening proved fruitless, we managed to locate quality oil the next morning from the Shell garage. To his credit, the manager kindly informed us not to use his staff for the oil change, since they were useless. Instead, he pointed us in the direction of Mike the Mechanic, the best mechanic in town.

Not that we’d have known any better, but Mike the Mechanic appeared to know his stuff. He changed our oil quickly and competently, as well as being good enough to point out that the rubbers of our shock absorbers had worn away. Since the good people of Foley had equipped us with plenty of spares, we had Mike the Mechanic change these too. He did just this and, in the process, noticed that the brake disc cover on the rear left wheel was loose. Our good ship was in worse shape than we had thought. Mike the Mechanic told us that a loose cover would do more harm than good and suggested that he remove it and we buy a replacement in Addis.

Before we knew it, we were back on the road with new oil coursing through our engine, new shock rubbers and minus one brake disc cover.

Mike the Mechanic looked as though he knew what he was doing. Even if he didn’t, we probably wouldn’t have known, but we liked the cut of his jib. He will therefore be remembered favourably in the annals of this blog and not, in any way, be held responsible for the rear right shock that pinged out of place two hours later.


The sorry shock was removed and we limped forward, wincing every time a pothole jumped up and bit the underbelly of our wounded steed. Matters were made worse when we collided with a wall of rain. The road melted away and began to explode around the car in bright plumes of orange.

It appeared that if we wanted to reach Ethiopia, we would have to drive through a Tango advert first.