Sleeping Around (31 page)

After dinner, the men discussed village politics. Or rather Mutisya did all the discussing while the others listened. Peter told me later that Mutisya was a budding politician and that one day he would be Prime Minister.

I was having a lot of trouble staying awake. I'm pretty sure I was in the advanced stages of CSFS (Couch Surfing Fatigue Syndrome). It wasn't even eight o'clock and I couldn't keep my eyes open. I even tried to write some notes, but I dozed off mid-sentence. I woke up almost an hour later with a long black pen line scrawled down the centre of my notebook.

‘Have you got a gun?' I asked Mutisya.

‘What for?'

‘So I can shoot whatever was making that “ERRRGGG-OOOHHH” noise at four o'clock in the morning.'

‘That is the cows.'

‘If William does marry Jasmine, you can keep the cows,' I said.

The moaning cows did bring the couch rating down a fraction:

Couch rating: 6/10
Con: The room was dark
Pro: The room was so dark that I couldn't see how dirty the sheets were

It was still raining, so we dropped into the ‘hotel' in the main street of the village, which was run by Mutisya's brother Francis. A ‘hotel' in Kenya is traditionally a teashop. Because of the rain the place was full of men drinking milk tea and eating
chapatis.
Francis's wife served us our tea and Mutisya told me that she got up at 4.30 every day of the year to milk the cows and then worked at the hotel all day serving tea.

‘Milk was our incentive to go to school when I was young,' Mutisya said as we sipped our hot tea. ‘We were given milk at the end of class and all the kids would come to school because not many families could afford to buy milk.'

Mutisya, Willy and Francis had a funeral to go to, but because it was still raining they decided to go to the pub instead. Although it wasn't quite midday, the pub was full of drunk men, including a few who had already passed out slumped in their chairs.

Just as we sat down, the chief of the village arrived. When Mutisya introduced him to me, he took off his hat. ‘It is a sign of respect to take off your hat,' Mutisya said.

‘Oh, should I take off my hat? I asked, reaching for my cap.

‘No, no,' Mutisya said, shaking his head. ‘He is taking off
his
hat as a sign of respect for you because you are a world-famous author.'

When the rain finally cleared we headed out in the car to see a ‘much nice view' from the top of Yatta plateau. As usual the ‘we' also included an entourage. Joining us this time were a young lady named Catherine and some old bloke from the pub. We drove for 40 minutes up a steep dirt road and then continued by foot up a narrow track through a eucalyptus forest that smelt just like the Australian bush and, very tentatively on my part, along the edge of a steep precipice with a sheer drop down to vast brown plains running away to a far-off horizon.

I was even more cautious when we shuffled out onto Thui Rock lookout, which hung precariously over a jagged rocky outcrop. It was worth it, though. The view was spectacular as the late afternoon sun cast long shadows that seemed to stretch right across the continent. We were so high up that hawks were circling far below us in the thermals.

‘This is not in any guide book,' Mutisya said proudly.

Mutisya pointed out a series of caves below where ‘men bring women for to have them'. These women were usually someone else's wives. ‘The women say that they are going out looking for firewood,' Mutisya said with a wink.

The old fellow said something to Mutisya who translated: ‘He told me that the last time he came up here was in nineteen-sixty.'

‘To help a woman look for firewood?' I said, returning the wink.

On the way back to the village we dropped into the Backyard Bar for dinner and
cold
beers. The bar was chockfull with locals watching an English Premier League match on a big-screen TV. When we went to sit down there weren't enough spare chairs, so Willy grabbed a seat, then grabbed Catherine and sat her down on his knee.

‘We call him Mr Smooth,' Mutisya said. ‘You know he once had sex with one of my couch surfers.'

After dinner Mutisya stood up and announced, ‘You must see a Kenyan nightclub.' I would have passed if I'd known getting to this Kenyan nightclub meant a 50-minute drive in pitch darkness on a rough dirt road, all the while getting tossed around in the back like a rag doll. I was exhausted by the time we got there just from holding on for dear life.

The busy main street of Machakos town was crammed with bars and nightclubs, including Hot Babe Nightclub and one rather subtly named ‘Drink Here'. Since there were plenty of menacing-looking youths milling about, we opted for the one place that I figured should be safe from any trouble: the Peace and Love nightclub.

Inside, a Kenyan UB40 cover band was bouncing around on stage while a big-screen TV was showing a video of various African animals copulating, or ‘animals getting married' as Willy described it. The old bloke from the pub immediately fell asleep in the corner.

I was tired and didn't really feel like partying, but I ended up having a fun night after a few beers and quite a bit of dancing. At one point I noticed someone staring at me. And no, it wasn't my terrible dancing. It's funny, but I hadn't even noticed that I was the only
mazungo
, or white man, in the nightclub.

Mutisya drove back at breakneck speed. And it wasn't because he was in a hurry to get home. He was just drunk.

‘The Kamba people are the best woodcarvers in the world,' Mutisya boasted. ‘Not just in Kenya, but the whole entire world.'

We were driving through hot dusty plains near the village of Wamunyu, which is home to what looked like just about every woodcarving workshop in Africa. ‘Most of the wooden giraffes in people's homes around the world comes from here,' Mutisya told me as we passed a fourth large gang of woodcarvers sitting just off the road, on top of a mountain of yellow wood chips, carving out wooden giraffes. In fact, all four workshops we'd passed were full of folk knocking out wooden giraffes and nothing else.

We stopped at the region's largest workshop, where around 40 old men were squatting in front of a long, open-sided tin shelter roughly chiselling out entire herds of giraffes (or corps of giraffes, which is apparently the correct collective noun). ‘Older men do the first and most important part of the carving,' Mutisya said as we negotiated our way over the wood-chip minefield. ‘It's because they are the most experienced and fastest.' Inside the shelter, long lines of younger men were sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor fervently filing and sandpapering. Although it looked like incredibly delicate work, they were extremely quick. Right at the very back of the shelter a giggling group of young women was painting the giraffes. ‘The longer and harder you work, the more money you make,' Mutisya said as we stepped around a massive pile of giraffes waiting to be painted. Everyone was so diligent because they all had a stake in the business. Each artisan was a member of the 3000-strong Wamunya Co-operative Society that owned and ran the workshops.

They certainly were devoted. Although it was Sunday the workshop was full and most of the workers had started at 6.30 in the morning and would work for twelve hours or more. Mutisya asked one of the carvers why they were so busy.

‘A huge order from America came in,' he said.

In the adjoining co-op shop was a large display of just about every animal you can think of carved out of wood, ebony and mahogany. There was also a small army of 2-metre high African Blackwood Masai warriors.

‘You can get thousands of dollars for one of those on eBay,' Mutisya whispered. ‘I'm saving up to buy a few.'

Mutisya really was quite the entrepreneur. On the drive out to visit his brother Vincent's farm he told me that he owned the farm. ‘The farm was empty when I bought it,' Mutisya told me. ‘But local people began moving in and cultivating the land, so I built a house for my brother to live in so he could run the farm for himself.'

I asked Mutisya if he was considered well off in Kenya and he said, ‘I am very lucky. Compared to other Kenyans I have a very good life. My family has a house, we eat very well and I have a car. The people in my village are shocked that I even buy a newspaper every day. Many people could feed their family for the day for the price of a newspaper.'

Mutisya had worked hard to get to where he was. After finishing his O levels in high school, he took a course in tourism before landing a job as a waiter in a Mombasa hotel. After two years he was moved to the travel desk and also began studying marketing part-time. This led to a job as a marketing manager and eventually general manager of a travel and tour company. In 2004 he set up his own travel/safari company and subsequently hired three of his relatives to work for him: a brother and sister in the Nairobi office and cousin Willy as the company driver.

Mutisya's brother Vincent, on the other hand, didn't have much work. He had planned to grow maize and beans on the farm, but the land had been too dry to plant. Instead he was hunting small animals with a bow and arrow to sell at the market. Vincent told me that a few weeks earlier Mutisya had sent him an Irish couch surfer who stayed for two days. ‘He went hunting,' Vincent said. ‘And he killed three doves and two hares. We had a very nice dinner that night.'

We had a huge lunch of
ugali
with cabbage and onions while sitting under the shade of a tree overlooking the parched yellow dust bowl that Vincent was hoping to cultivate. After I'd barely touched my meal, Mutisya gave me a lecture. ‘You don't eat enough like an African man. Your metal is much bigger and harder when it's heavy,' he said, gesturing towards his groin. Thankfully, before Mutisya could go into detail about his heavy piece of metal, he changed the subject.

‘Vincent's other name is Mutuka,' Mutisya said, ‘which means “It was dark” because it was dark when he was born.' Mutisya's older brother's name is Mutunga, which means ‘looks like grandfather', while Francis Wambua translates as ‘born in heavy rains'.

‘My name means “too long to be born”,' Mutisya said proudly. ‘Because my mother had very long labour pains.'

After lunch we headed west to Fourteen Falls, which was on the border of Oldonyo Sabuk National Park. Fourteen Falls only had twelve waterfalls, but I won't quibble—one of the major tourist attractions near Melbourne is called the Twelve Apostles although there are only nine of them.

To get near the falls we had to leap over a series of rock pools and clamber up and over steep ledges. This proved to be almost fatal. As I leapt onto a boulder I failed to notice a protruding rock ledge. A perilously sharp protruding rock ledge. I slammed my head into it with a sickening thud and blacked out for a few seconds. If Mutisya hadn't caught me, I would have tumbled over the edge. When I regained my senses blood was trickling down my forehead, but I didn't feel it. What I could feel, or more accurately
not
feel, was my back. It had gone totally numb and I could barely walk. I had to be helped to the car and on the subsequent long drive to Lake Naivasha the roads were so bad that I would squeal with pain every few seconds as we went over a bump.

We arrived in Naivasha town at nightfall and the main street looked decidedly seedy under the cloak of darkness. ‘This place is very famous in Kenya,' Mutisya said. The area did have a claim to fame, but I doubt if it would make a great tourist slogan. ‘This area has the highest amounts of rape in
all
of Kenya,' Mutisya said.

We were staying with a ‘sometimes friend' of Mutisya's who owned a restaurant and small guesthouse. After having a bite to eat we were shown to a few old lumpy and soiled mattresses on the floor in the back room. I decided, however, to pay 5 dollars for an upgrade to one of the guestrooms. Yes, it's not technically couch surfing because I paid for my bed, but I think my back would have disowned me if I'd slept on one of the lumpy mattresses.