At 6am, armed with 25/- and a bicycle, the son of soil remembered he had forgotten a handkerchief when watery mucus caused by the chilly wind while descending at Iguhu flowed to the mouth. The ears were diii and the tires ziii. The sun rose while I was past the crying stone.
Drizzling started long before Malava which was good. I stopped for a banana and picked the thinnest for 10/-. It was at Webuye that I spent another 10/- to buy airtime. As I told the shopkeeper about Nangili, the place I was heading, he seemed not informed. Mistake. It paid the Okoa Jahazi and I borrowed 20/-. I called mzee Ogova and he was well with me going. I have a weakness of telling people, 'I will come tomorrow'. Had I known his home he'd have seen me in.
59 kilometres to Kitale. Had I done a single kilometre so far? All that! It was not yet eleven. Determined, I was ready to cycle on all the hills. But after Kamukuywa, there was little energy left. I descended well but ascending was painful for the sting of unexpected hunger stung. I was sitting for a minute when I saw lantana camara violet fruitings. As kids we had satisfied ourselves on that. A woman passed by with a paper bag,
'What does somebody eat when he is hungry?'
She saw my agony and she would have walked away. That is how I got one mandazi. 'Take this,' she offered. That lead me to a home for water refilling. My bottle had run dry. And in the household owner's querry, I said where I was from. 'Nakutakia kila la heri,' he pitied. Thinking that he was just like any other person who saw suffering in such a deed, I took off strongly.
Some people when asked about directions to a place say how long it is. Some say how not far it is. I have come to dislike neither of them. One prepares you for a tough journey psychologically by lengthening it while another gives hope that it is possible. And sometimes without bothering they weren't greeted, people give directions where roads split. Agony is in finding no one near a junction.
I asked a lady who was roasting maize that I really needed maize yet I had no money. She asked how I wanted to be helped in that way. When I showed her the 5/- I had, she said she had no maize for that. I asked her to add 5/- for me. Pitifully, she gave me a sweet tasting roasted corn that when I branched from the main road at Sikhenda, 28 kilometres remaining to Kitale, it helped me cycle speedily.
'You needed have not followed Webuye,' a man told me at Sikhenda. You have travelled long unnecessary. Nangili is near Kitale if you are in Kitale. I was therefore going to cross the large Tongaren constituency from Naitiri to Brigadier to Mawe Tatu. A lady at Tongaren and another past there offered maize unwillingly when I asked. I promised to pay them some day. Water I refilled again. Mzee Ogova was becoming impatient. Was I but lying to an old man? He knew not I had a bike and I was by river Kiminini that I confused to be the origin of Nzoia river.
At Naitiri, having wrongly pronounced Nangili for Nyagi, or the guys at motorbike repair thinking it was the only near place, I was told I was about. At the branching, a man who pushed a bicycle heavy with sacks of maize gulped saliva and found it hard to speak to me. He may have travelled long, ate not, talked to none, he strained. He stressed that to Nyangi I would find self in Lugari. What to do was not to branch. I still had a long way.
There is another Lugulu before Mawe Tatu. Rainy clouds formed. And I called Ogova, exhausting the twenty borrowed airtime. It would be a hundred bob to be carried on a motorbike. I was however determined to end the distance on cycle. Asking where to turn, maize and water, music in the ears, I was going fast. Rain fell on us as we rode. Mudguard less is my bike and I was saved. It was past five. Here is Nangiri, I was told.
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