Now, what do we do?

When Njenga, the motorcycle taxi driver said, “Now, what do we do,” we were standing on a small island of land surrounded by flash flood waters in the middle of a newly formed and quickly rising river. The fact that he was asking me - the passenger - made my stomach lurch.

We had made an afternoon run to Ilkiloret, which is located a little over an hour from Ngong town where I live. We left at 2:15pm for what should have been a 3 ½ hour trip, down and back to deliver food to the fundis at the construction site.

It started raining about 35 minutes into the trip. Despite my best prayers, the rain continued off an on for the rest of our journey. The road to Ilkiloret is full of rocks and potholes and four very steep climbs over mountains (they call them hills – but they’re much bigger than hills). When it rains it usually becomes a muddy mess. But Njenga said he had never seen water rushing the way it was today. Maybe because it’s been raining so much lately the water tables are full so it rushes down from Ngong into the Rift Valley.

We had made it about half way back when at the bottom of hill number two we encountered a river that covered about a third of a mile of road and it already had a swift current. The fact that we had passed that way about an hour before and there was very little water was not lost on us. This area could become very dangerous very fast. We pushed the bike through knee deep water and then rode it through the bush until we reached a place where the water was too deep for the bike to pass and the water was rushing too fast, thus the “now, what do we do,” comment from Njenga.

We first tried to throw some rocks in the river so we could roll the bike across the rocks but the current carried the heavy rocks away. So we backtracked and tried the opposite side of the road. I ran in front of the bike to test the depth of the water. At one point the side of the road was impassable and we had to go back onto the road. It actually wasn’t too deep, so we were able to make it out of the river. But while I was wondering around in the thigh deep water looking for the best escape route for the bike, a man was yelling at me from behind Njenga on the side of the road. Njenga told me later he was the area chief and he was yelling, “Stop playing in the water. Get out of the water.” Too funny. Not playing chief – just trying to find safe passage for the bike.

At this point I should mention that my almost knee high mud boots were almost full of water. As we were leaving Ilkiloret, I had but the canvas bag containing my camera, wallet, water bottle and phone under my raincoat.

With the river forged we thought we were home free until the mud of Kimuga, which is legendary! But there is one more area that usually becomes a muddy mess and it too was covered in water. It is basically two big ruts in the road with some very large potholes. We walked it first and then I ran ahead and Njenga walked the bike behind me.

The next challenge was the mud as we got to Kimuga. It was indeed slippery and I had to keep getting off the bike so Njenga could navigate the mud. By this time it was dark which made finding the best path difficult.

There is a big hill (mini mountain) that you have to climb to get from the rift valley up to Ngong. They have worked on it a bit in recent months but the repairs have actually had the opposite effect. At this point we could just about taste home, so maybe we were distracted, so when the bike slipped in the mud and leaned too far to the right there was nothing we could do. We both ended up in the mud. Fortunately, we were creeping up the hill so besides hitting my right knee on some stones and having a fanny full of mud we were fine and the bike started right up.

When we were wading around in the first river the water was warm, but now we were both soaked through (even my undies were wet) and the air temperature in Ngong was down right frigid. So as we streaked along the tarmac road in Kibiko, a suburb (if you can call it that) of Ngong, my teeth were chattering. Njenga checked his cell phone when we arrived home. It was 7:39 p.m. We had been on the bike or rather pushing the bike for 3 ½ hours. The whole trip took us 5 hours and we had only spent 20 minutes in Ilkiloret.

I fumbled with my keys and opened the gate. The lights in my house were on - Grace must be there. I knocked on the door and called to her, she opened the door and took one look at me and said, “You, went to Ilkiloret, thank God you’re home safe.”

I stripped down in the kitchen and Grace put water on for me to bathe. After my bath, Grace rubbed my back with icy hot and commented on how cold my skin was. Even after a hot bath my skin was still cold.

I did a lot of praying on the back of that motorcycle. Njenga did too. If there had been any pedestrians out on the road when we were passing through Kibiko, they would have heard very loud shouts of “Thank you, Jesus!” And “Hallelujah!” When it began raining on the way down, Njenga said, “You pray that we have a safe trip, I know God listens when you pray.”

I got a text from Njenga a couple of hours after we returned:

u r a hero Jassica i could not have made it if it wasn’t 4 u. enjoy ur night.

I’ve never been happier to be home. For a few minutes standing on that little island in the first river, I wasn’t sure we would make it back at all. God is good!

(For obvious reasons - there are no pictures with this post...I'm thinking if you've got any imagination at all, you'll have all kinds of images floating around in your mind.) :-)