My Unforgettable Penniless Journey in Kenya (ep.1)

#Hi guys! As I was thinking about what to write about for my first story in Steemit, suddenly some reminiscing thought came up and stirred my inner feeling. It was about my personal experience in Africa 6 years ago, one of the greatest life moments of mine that I always love to share with others.

Back to 2011, I was working as an oversee volunteer in Kenya and for that one year I had several chances to explore some East African countries.
And The penniless journey is my favourite story and I feel so much lively to recall them again.

After spending just one month there, I was quite new and still struggling to adjust myself to the foreign environments, unexpectedly this mission was assigned. It sounds like a crazy task , but its purposes are to overcome one’s own limitation and outreach to the local people. My company was another 4 volunteers (none of us speaks Swahili) with whom I was supposed to travel together for nearly one month. The trip was so urgent that we packed everything on the night and departed in the following morning. I tried to carry less but everything seemed to be in need including tent, mattress, mosquito nest, and of course some dried food. Besides, we also prepared some stuff for organising activities for children. I remember how much excited I was as putting things in my backpack. Each group was given some small money for an emergency but it was used up for food in couple days.

We were free to decide the journey and our first destination was the second biggest city called Mombasa located on the eastern coast of Kenya. There seemed to be only a truck that can carry all five of us so we aimed to hitch any truck on the main street leading to the right direction. No need to wait for hours, a fair truck stopped and agreed to take us en route. He was happy to have foreigners keeping him company though. The truck driver also treated us a lunch (roasted goat with potatoes).

We knew that we would not be able to reach there in one day so we decided to stay a night in a small city where we knew someone who can give us accommodation. The city called ‘Void’ and it is as void as named. Walking 2 km to the house in a complete scene of darkness gave me a real understanding of a blind person. All of a sudden!! I fell down on the road and badly hurted my ankle, which made me limp for that whole week. It was not a good starting of the journey though.

The next morning, we aimed to arrive Mombasa which is about 3 hours away by car. The road where we were hitching was incredibly empty, so we decided to divide into 2 groups in order to be able to commute by general cars.

Finally, we arrive at Mombasa in the evening. For a brief history of the city, it was controlled by several foreigners, such as the Arab ( since the first century until 16th century so its influence still remains prominent in many areas like food, language, architecture, and so on), the Portuguese, and the British who established the city as the capital of the British East Africa Protectorate in the end of 19th century. The town is charming for me due to its mixture of many cultures.

However, on that day I didn’t yet see the city and was exhausted from the pain in my leg. One friend in our team visited here before and knew a friend who was kind to give us accommodation. I didn’t remember quite well what was happening but seemed like the friend couldn’t come to pick us up on that evening. Finally, we ended up sleeping one night in an unfinished house ( like where people who did construction temporarily live). It was not bad as we brought a mattress, mosquito nest and sleeping bag and the night was short enough for long-day travellers. In the next morning, a family who was living there even prepared us a tea with bread, Kenyan simple breakfast and it is always tasty for me.

Then, we headed to that Kenyan friend's house. Luckily, my ankle got better, probably because of the smell of the sea haha. Well, a lot of more stories of this crazy journey are to be continued..

P.s. This seems to be a quite long story, so it will come after another post and so on.
P.s. Unfortunately, I didn't have many good pictures but I tried to find some of them :)