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Blog: Africa Attraction - 9 November 2009

By: Olli


We’ve all seen them, you know, the films where a group of young, good-looking (guilty as charged), chancers head off on their dream holiday or into the unknown or something along those lines; and while they’re having a laugh and a half, a shadow lurks... foreboding looms... unbearable tension builds... Then everything goes rather wrong. ‘Tits up’, if you will.

Now be assured that metaphorical mammaries have not ascended, I simply allude to the above scenario since the three of us have been rather surprised – pleasantly so – by how smoothly our journey has gone thus far. So, are we in the same situation as those hapless protagonists populating so many formulaic Hollywood horror pics? Does disaster await us around the next corner? I think not, but if there was ever going to be a tragic turning point to our tale, it would lie north of Nairobi.

There’s a stretch of road beyond the Kenyan capital infamous for bandits, brigands and assortment of scallywags hell-bent on making mischief for humble travellers such as our good selves. If this wasn’t troubling enough, it appeared that negotiating a safe passage through Nairobi wouldn’t be as straight forward as we first thought. Our friend Natalie, who has lived there for the past two years, warned us of a recent spate of organ robberies – organs of the internal variety; not the wind instrument so often found in places of Christian worship. Apparently, a number of people had been drugged and kidnapped, only to wake up with a missing kidney. If they were lucky...

Happily, we managed to survive Nairobi with all our organs intact – save for a sore liver and a few less braincells – more the fault of rip-roaring revelry than a rogue surgeon.

Tags: Africa , Kenya , Nairobi , Roads

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