Kenya (Kitale) - Easy Coach

We negotiate between police blockades of spiked hurdles and ascend through the Rift Valley, a segment of a continental fault spanning from Jordon to Mozambique. Low-lying clouds bathe a mesa of agriculture in mist, and my lungs inhale relief abandoning the dark haze that is Nairobi now a memory. Below the hills of golden savannah and spire trees is Lake Naivasha. On the horizon, the Mau Escarpment lifts the prevailing winds and gives birth to cotton candy clouds checkerboarding the mountains with light and shadow.
The driver slows the Easy Coach bus to a crawl and slips through the narrow arch of an abandoned toll stop. A baboon crosses the 100 highway ahead and shoulder checks us as we accelerate past him and several others loitering on the shoulder. Herds of Zebra graze the shrubbery plains peppered by sharp contrasting farmhouses and shanty hawkers. Steep green cliffs feed into Lake Elmenteita and blankets of cornfields around weathered sheds. The bus stops, and picks up an Easy Coach employee. He gnaws on a toothpick checking tickets before dropped off again on the side of the road beside sporadic bouquets of red daisy-like flowers and thickening flattop acacia trees.
Passing the flamingos in Lake Nakuru and its respectively named city, we cross the equator and continue along the geographical divide into the north Rift Valley. The road tightens and rides like washboard over pits and seals of dirt. Outside the window, three smoke billows blend and disappear into a milky-blue broken sky. An old man follows a dirt trail weighing heavily on his walking stick towards the village stop at Muserechi. On my right, a boy leans on his staff under the shadow of a tree watching cattle pick off the pasture, and not long after, a late middle-aged woman dressed in a long purple and white floral dress sees to the needs of her goatherd.
The driver shifts into 2nd and then 1st gears powering his was up flowing verdant hills of deep green short and tall pines rooted from the red earth and cut by an asphalt highway rivaling a forest service road. Locals say the red earth is stained from the blood spilled in Africa. A sad allegory for a beautiful land.
Rising ahead and peaking behind poached thunderheads is the broad slope of Mount Elgon and the Ugandan border. The terrain is a fertile sub-tropical paradise of vivid flowers and acres of plantation land. We have arrived in Kitale, a small quiet town where boda bodas (bicycle taxis) grossly outnumber gas-guzzling four-wheelers and the air has a sharp humid chill that is thick with the sweet scent of a botanical garden.
The low-hanging sun shines around frayed cumulus and glistens through beaded raindrops atop petal ferns. First on the agenda: one-on-one soccer barefoot on the soft earth against the guest home caretaker’s nephew. Final score: Amos-6, Mzungu-4.