In addition to working as a freelance copywriter, David Harfield has also written and produced a series of illustrated children’s books, entitled Oddtails. In May 2010, The University of Sheffield commissioned him to travel around Kenya with the first book in the series, ‘Roy the Eagle’, documenting his adventures along the way. Here are a few excerpts from his travel piece; for the full, published article, please click here.
Day 1: 2nd May 2010
So, first day down and we are finally here! No amount of flight delays, sleep deprivation or grumpy air stewards can keep us away from our destination and
after a nine-hour long haul flight we touched down in Nairobi; Roy the Eagle was allowed to travel with us as part of our hand luggage, which he was happy about, as, ironically, he is a nervous flyer…
After a lot of furtive eye contact with strangers at the arrivals gate, we met our contact, Cecelia Rachiard, who is letting us stay in her apartment right in the heart of Nairobi, and who has been integral to us planning this whole trip. One educational taxi drive later and we are hauling our many, many bags up the stairs to her top floor apartment which is a beautiful, spacious home with amazing furnishings and a guest bedroom prepared just for us. As penniless writers, we are not used to such luxury!
The kindness and generosity of total strangers never fails to amaze me, not least when I am half way across the globe and someone whom I have never met has travelled to collect us from the airport, after only an hours sleep, (I think Cecelia likes to party!)
The African ethos is effusively present in every place that you look, from the ready smiles of children on the street at the sight of a ‘Mzung”, (white person), to the surly, ‘Simpson’s teamster-esque’ attitude of the security guards at the housing block gates, (“I ain’t sleepin’! I’m resting my eyes…”) to the simple feel of communal unity that washes over you wherever you go. We are visitors in their country, but the Kenyans will go out of their way to make us feel at home.
We have set up some schools to visit this week, including a trip to the coast of Mombasa later in the week; as for now, we have just woken up from a jet-lag recovery nap and are preparing to explore the city, which, from our peering out of the taxi’s window, seems to be a vibrant and lively place for us to begin our African adventure…
Day 11: 12th May 2010
A little shaky after yesterday’s follies, we began our day by returning to the Muslim school where we were met with less enthusiasm than the last
time,probably because the class was twice the size of the last ones, unsupervised except for an IT man who seemed to revel in his self-appointed job of turning the projector off and on when I was trying to talk to a group of children about being a journalist and flicking through the holiday snaps on my flash disk for all to see.
Feathers a little ruffled, (no pun intended Roy, I leave them for Kate), faith in our mission was restored by a generous and vivacious head teacher called Nancy, who took us all to her orphanage school, after stopping for lunch, which consisted of an entire roasted goat served with salsa, bread and maize, followed by a soup made up of the leftovers. If Kate was holding onto any last hopes of being a vegetarian, they were washed down her throat with the warm, fatty broth. To be fair though, this is a country where most of the population teeters on the poverty line and everyday is an uphill struggle to afford food for their families, so to fuss over eating preferences when offered a complimentary meal would be seen, (by us, rather than them), churlish and ungrateful. I feel that when we return to the weight-watching and calorie-counting that often borders on obsession amongst many young Londoners, the memories of hollow-eyed babies and begging children still seared into my memory, I will not be able to conceal my feelings on the ridiculousness of the size-zero ideal.
The school visit was fantastic, culminating with an open-air performance of ‘Roy the Eagle’, followed by a song and dance routine by the children that left us breathless. We promised to return to the school and have secretly planned to buy a laptop for the kids as soon as we return to England, giving them the opportunity to practice their IT skills and thus have at least a fighting chance of finding gainful employment once they graduate. We then visited the mall to try and find a charger for my laptop, (found a shop but our card was rejected, oh the shame!), so instead tried to woo the main children’s book shop in Kenya, The Text Book Shop, into ordering our book for the dozens of parents who have asked where they can purchase a copy. A date set up with the manager on Saturday, we treated ourselves to more than a few drinks at a local bar, before stumbling home to find the entrance to the flat covered in what appeared to be flying cockroaches, soaked from the rain. Becky informed us that these were actually a local delicacy and that you could eat them live or fried. This was to good an opportunity to miss, so, armed with a tupperware box and lid, I set about catching our dinner, (well, starter), while Kate committed my efforts to videotape. Just as I was putting the first termite to my lips, the thought that Becky was having us on flashed through my mind, but she helped herself to a few of the juicy insects, which turned out to be quite tasty. Unsure as to whether this constituted meat-eating, Kate took some persuading, yet she eventually sampled the delight and, after much screaming, admitted that it tasted pretty good, a bit like, wait for it, chicken. Every day, a new surprise, a new challenge and a new attempt to catch food poisoning.
Day 20: 21th May 2010
Our final day in Kitale was supposed to consist of a presentation at Kitale Academy, followed by a brief stint at Sports Day, then home. This being Kenya,
however, things didn’t exactly go to plan. The presentation went well, with more demands to get ‘Roy the Eagle’ published in Kenya and another discussion about what the school needs in terms of help an assistance from the UK; then we had a typically boozy, ‘teacher-style’ Friday lunch in town, before deciding that it would be a good idea to pay a visit to the special deaf unit in Birunda school, seeing as these were the only kids in town not at Sports Day. This went better than we could have imagined, with the children reading the book from my laptop and signing to us how much they enjoyed it. So far, so good.
As we were leaving the school, Pius discovered that our vehicle had suffered a puncture and, with 50% of the wheels being flat, it really should get a service. So, off we trotted in the baking midday heat, Pius waving away my half-hearted attempts to help him push the bike all the way to the nearest service station. When I say ’service station’, it was essentially four sheets of corrugated iron balanced together on the side of the road, with some fairly tough looking ‘mechanics’ resting in the shade. Had we been on our own, I would have attempted to ‘wheelie’ on up the road rather than stop here, but Pius seemed to know them, in that way that all Kenyans seem to know each other, no matter where they are in their huge country, so the mechanics set to work. After an hour of what I can only describe as painstakingly slow work, the wheel was fitted with a small rubber bandage and re-inflated and we roared away from the road side, full of children that had turned up to see what all the fuss was about.
We arrived to Sports Day three hours late, (although nobody commented), and it was here that I discovered Kate’s passionate vehemence for such an occasion. I suspected that the reason for this anti-Sports Day rage was due to the fact that, as a child, she was probably too short to represent her school in anything other than debating club, however, I kept my Freudian analysis to myself…
After Kate had dragged us away from the dreaded event, we visited Paul’s house and met his family, who were very welcoming and insisted that we had to return as soon as possible. Then on to the house, which had absolutely no electricity, and seeing as our schedule had slipped into the evening hours, we had to dress for our night out in candle light. Kate could therefore be excused her outfit, (joke!), and we hit Kitale’s hot nightspots, dancing the night away to Karma Chameleon mixed with Afrobeat, all accompanied by top shelf whisky at ridiculously low prices. Thank God we don’t have to get up tomorrow at 6.30 to catch our bus back to Nairobi…
Day 30: 31st May 2010
We woke up today both suffering the effects of cheap whiskey and little sleep to go on our early morning drive, which consisted of watching two very lazy lions
decide whether or not they wanted to pick off an injured buffalo from the herd. After two hours of watching this culinary courting process take place we left them to it and returned to the camp, where we said our goodbyes to the chefs and helpers and began our torturous journey home, hungover to Hell. Six miserable hours later, my body had just about recovered enough to stop at the local Nakumatt and pick up four more bottles of whiskey and a bottle of brandy as gifts for friends and family; well, most of them are gifts…
After a very useful meeting with the Kenyan Institute of Education, (I say useful, I was outside ‘watching the bags’/dozing off in a hungover haze while Kate worked at securing a place for ‘Roy the Eagle’ on the Kenyan curriculum; I knew that I brought her along for something…), we headed back to the flat to bid farewell to the family that we now treated as though they were our own. We packed our bags with many more items than what we had come with and seriously debated what we could get away with as hand luggage; if we fake a limp and say that we are musicians, can we bring the giraffe-shaped walking sticks and elephant-painted banjo that we had bought as souvenirs? Cecelia was going on a business trip to Zimbabwe the next morning, so we decided to share a taxi to the airport and spend a final few hours with the woman that had helped us so much on this trip, asking for nothing other than stories about our adventures in return. We said emotional goodbyes to Manuel and Becky and promised to meet them again, whether it be in Nairobi or London and I really hope that this is one promise that we can keep.
We honestly have had the time of our lives on this journey, falling in love with the country time and time again, with more experiences to fill our head for some time to come…and when the memories do start to fade, we have made enough friends who will welcome us back to their beautiful country so that we can bring Kenya into our lives time and time again.
There are far too many people that have made our trip as special as it has been to thank individually, so all I can offer is a huge wave of appreciation to everybody who has fed us, driven us, housed us and most importantly talked to us about Kenya, bestowing upon us an education that we would never have got had we not met you. Asanti and Kwahari!!!
Thank you as well to everybody to has been following our blog and to everyone who has helped us back in the UK, whether it has been in the form of sponsorship, donating to/buying things from our Jungle Sale, giving us somewhere to stay in the weeks proceeding our trip or just generally supporting our crazy adventure from start to finish.
If you still haven’t got a copy of ‘Roy the Eagle’ and would like to see what all the fuss is about, then you can get your claws into a copy through Amazon or by visiting the Oddtails website.
We have also recently released an audio book of ‘Roy the Eagle’, which can be sampled or downloaded at CD Baby by clicking here.
Thank you all and goodbye! (For now…)
David Harfield
To read the full, published 30-day piece, please click here.
If you can, forget about Special guest Tom Jones performing ‘Praise & Blame’ at midnight In The Woods. This year, it’s all about the spray-painted sheep. No, that’s not a poor taste Welsh joke, (sorry Tom), one of the main pulling powers of Latitude festival that has kept festival lovers returning time and time again, and what R13 is really excited about seeing is the plethora of muti-coloured sheep ambling around the fields, intermingling with the weekend’s guests.
