Nairobi turned out to be a pretty crazy place. This was not a big surprise, the whole of Africa, as far as I could see, was one big lunatic asylum. Some kind little bugger stole the Honda whilst I was getting drunk in the most dubious nightclub I’ve ever come across. A live sex show had quickly degenerated into a wholesale orgy with naked bodies humping each other like there was no tomorrow, which there probably wasn't... er, yes, motorcycles - I wandered out of there before temptation proved too much, not wanting to die quite so young from AIDS, started walking around in circles trying to remember where I’d parked the horrible Honda.
It took a while to dawn on me that the bike had been stolen. Things like fire and theft insurance are not known in Africa... not that it would have done much good as the documents I had didn’t refer to the same machine and I'd actually stolen the engine myself. Just desserts, more upright readers will insist. At the time I was so pissed off I threw up in the gutter and then kicked a scrawny kid up the arse after he’d tried on a begging plea.
Staggering three miles through Nairobi at four o’clock in morning is not conducive to good health, but I made it back to the flea-pit an hotel without major incident, although a couple of cops had started shouting abuse at me when I refused to let them search my body. I ran off at maximum speed, full of the fear that they might let off a few shots, but they were distracted by a fight.
I was sharing the room with two Krauts I’d met earlier on the trip, who had just fixed their broken Beemer. They had tracked me down and moved into the room without taking any notice of my complaints. They had paid out 200 notes to fix their shaft drive and were so broke they were forced to consume the terrible gruel the hotel manager offered as food. This food caused them to fart all night long and throw up every hour. The room stank of vomit and flatulence, which I didn’t mind really as I could do as good or bad as they.
In the morning it was agreed that I would buy the BMW off them for 900 quid. I had a pile of dosh in the bank, having off-loaded my supply of chemical substances on a credulous Negro pimp, who lived in the room below with half a dozen women. I didn’t envy him, as they were probably all full up to their eyeballs with the dreaded HIV virus. They wouldn't let me play with the R100 until I handed over the money, but I'd heard the engine turning over and given it a few revs.
Within seconds of grabbing the money, the Krauts disappeared, leaving me, somewhat belatedly, peering at the German registration documents and wondering if I'd blown it in a big way. The 1988 machine looked OK to me, the mechanics had cleaned it up to almost a mirror shine and the engine clanked into life without too much of a protest. But, god it was slow. Clouds of blue smoke followed me as I urged the engine up to 60mph. No easy thing in Nairobi, despite the general poverty of the vast majority of the people, huge number of cars, ancient and new, careered around the streets of the capital, all driven by crazed, macho peasants who would have had difficulty controlling an office chair, let alone something with a motor.
It was whilst trying to avoid permanent injury that I discovered as well as a naff engine, the R100 had hardly any brakes, neither disc having any inclination to come near to locking the wheels. Shoving the bike down two gears, feeling the back end hopping around like a camel dropping a load as the shaft caused the wheel to lock up, provided some useful retardation at the expense of having the back wheel add to the dents of a Toyota taxi.
The driver proved less than amused by this. A huge chap with bulging eyes, he pulled me off the BMW, causing it to fall with a loud clunk on one of the cylinder heads. He tried to flatten me against the taxi, but I managed to knee the yob in the balls. He screamed so loudly that for a moment it drowned out the incredible noise of the traffic. Before he could revive himself, I had leapt on to the R100, thumped it into gear and ridden off at a terrifying pace, through gaps so small I came close to taking the sides of cars off... I got the old heap of an engine up to all of 5000 revs in this mode.
When I'd swung off the main road, I backed off, not just because that kind of speed was suicidal but because the vibes running through the machine were more normally associated with a pile-driver... it would take a worker of such a device years to develop white fingers, on the BMW I thought it was just moments away. Back at the hotel, I spent an uneasy hour trying to balance the carbs but they refused to act in anything approaching co-ordination. I threatened the usual stream of beggars with the tyre wrench that came with the bike, but they didn’t seem to take the hint. I knew if I turned my back for a few moments they would half inch everything that wasn’t welded to the frame. Vandalism was rare, but that was only because everything was in a pretty wrecked state in Africa to start with, or if it wasn't it would fetch a good price on the ubiquitous black market. The BMW was usually parked inside the hotel when not in use.
I looked at my map, trying to decide where I should visit next. The sea beckoned, at the very worst I could ride the bike into the water or even dump it on a ship, heading for a more civilised continent. I’d heard weird stories about Mombasa, weird in the sense of sexual deviancy; and it was only 300 miles. Distances in Africa, though, are most deceptive. The roads are invariably terrible, the traffic homicidal and the heat so horrendous it reduces you to a slobbering wreck if you so much as poke a nose out of the door at midday.
I'd acquired a supply of ultra strong rum, decided that this would fortify me against the afternoon heat and that there was no point hanging around Nairobi. The manager’s daughter, a buck toothed bint with breasts so huge they made up for all her other defects, had taken to spending the evenings downing rum with me. After five days of such attention she had convinced herself that we were going to get married, so I was sure that running out on the hotel without paying my bill was a very good idea in every respect. This was helped greatly by the fact that I only possessed the clothes I stood up in.
Bad Karma, as the editor might say! I‘d made it about half a mile away when a huge lorry tried to crush myself and Beemer flatter than the British economy. I didn’t think that this was a good idea. Thus, I swerved off the road, up the pavement, a huge crunching tremor running through the machine as the undercarriage ground into the kerb. The pedestrians were as startled and disturbed by the sudden appearance of a huge motorcycle and mad rider into their midst as I had been by the proximity of death.
My mind suddenly flicked back to the time I'd knocked down a queue of bicyclists in Amsterdam. Their fluid denouncement was not matched by the almost inarticulate gesticulations of the battered African women, but the same sense of hatred was there. You would think that they might give the benefit of the doubt to a wrecked foreigner in their midst. But no way. Once these fat, fetid women had picked themselves up, brushed down their dresses (some not wearing any knickers) and comported themselves, they went into a frenzy of abuse which culminated in pulling me off the BMW and starting to lay into me.
It was only the arrival of the army that saved the day. In the fracas I had managed to burn a large hole in my trousers and to blister a painfully big area of skin. The soldiers didn’t take any notice of this affront to my dignity... I thought they could have at the very least shot a few of the women on the spot (the newspapers were full of stories of miscreants being shot rather than going through the expensive business of a trial). I had to hand out a few bribes until they would let me on my way.
I took the pain away by swigging enough rum to turn my walk into a very indecisive stagger. The BMW seemed to buck and weave all over the road, but this didn’t make all that much difference as the mad melee of vehicles was going on a very similar course of self destruction. I felt the occasional moment of exhilaration when I managed a movement that was full of co-ordination and speed, if you can call 70mph flat out speed. The Krauts had fitted a horn that would have been better placed on a ship lost in dense fog, so I took great delight in blasting away on this curious device with something approaching reggae rhythm!
As always in Africa progress was two steps forward and one step back - if you were particularly unlucky, the reverse! At about 50mph there was a terrible chattering noise from the shaft drive, as if the repair was on the verge of failure. Together with the vicious vibration and clouds of smoke, the bike proved to be the centre of attention wherever it reluctantly went. The heat was horrendous, forcing me to stop every ten minutes for a lukewarm beer, the rum having done a runner somehow, somewhere!
Well before I reached Makindu, which wasn’t even the halfway mark, I collapsed from the heat and pounding given my poor body by the churned up state of the road and well knackered condition of the suspension... luckily, in a bar rather than on the bike. When I woke up darkness had descended and I felt terrible, some kind of fever alternatively turning my body red hot and ice cold. Much to my surprise, I hadn't been raped, robbed or had the Beemer stolen. The Kenyans went way up in my regard.
When I staggered over to the R100, I cursed the Krauts for not telling me that there were any lights. I didn’t fancy hanging around the bar, that would have been pushing my luck as it was gradually filling up with the most dubious looking characters I’ve ever come across, who were casting glances of pure hatred at my slumped form. Riding about twenty miles to Makindu with only the stars to aid navigation is something I never want to repeat, not helped any by the minor fact that my vision seemed to be going as the temperature changes raced through my body.
I rode the BMW into the first hotel in the town that I came to. I almost rode it straight through the reception desk, various menials running away alarmed and screaming as we ploughed through the door. After they had assured themselves that I was not some ancient spirit out for revenge, they helped me off the Bavarian rocking horse and showed me into a room that turned out, three days later, to be clean, quiet and comfortable. It took me that long to come out of the fever, a dream-like trance prevailed in which I had all kinds of horrendous visions.
Wandering around Makindu, I found myself in some kind of voodoo procession, lots of wailing women, strumming bands and hard eyed men wearing only tiny G-strings. Once in their midst I found it difficult to disentangle myself, the weakened state of my body not helping. I was force marched around the town by these primitive peasants for about an hour, only managing to escape into a bar when an army jeep blithely cut through their ranks.
The bar turned out to be more brothel than anything else, lank eyed lasses strutting their stuff laconically in the afternoon heat. One old hag pounced on my trembling form, only moments away from pulling out my cock had I not violently shrugged her off. For an African bar it had one massive attraction, a working fridge and lots of beer so cold it hurt your hand to hold it. After about six of these I felt much better and the the gals seemed much more attractive than before. However, brewer’s droop stopped any consumation of sexual deviancy, so I staggered back to the hotel full of self hatred and a stomach that churned over like a cement mixer running wild.
The Beemer had left a huge puddle of oil on the reception hall's floor, which desecration I added to by off-loading my stomach in front of an indignant manager, who promptly threw me and the R100 out, cursing so loudly I thought I could still hear him as I rumbled through the outskirts of the town.
The next town on the road was Tsavo, this was about 80 miles away and I had about an hour before darkness fell once again to reach there. Just outside Makindu I loaded up with some petrol that looked suspiciously clean, it more usually being a murky brown with all kinds of things. floating in it. This helped the old Teutonic workhorse to previously unchartered excesses of speed... with 85mph on the clock, the vibes diminished to a tolerable level and the shaft drive almost smoothed out. Such speed also helped to dampen out the roughness of the road.
There was still the problem of all the traffic which didn’t seem to know where it was going, but I was in a pretty desperate state, so stuck the R100 in the middle of the road and kept my thumb on the horn button. Halfway there, I began to worry about how much oil was in the engine and just how much had been lost to the hotel’s reception. I had decided that I was going to stop for no-one and nothing, though, so just wrapped myself around the machine, everything full out, gung-ho, whacky, mad, crazy, full steam ahead, do or die for the last 40 miles.
God, when we hit Tsavo, the machine felt as exhausted as myself, clouds of smoke rising off the engine where blown gaskets allowed what was left of the oil to burn off. I could feel waves of heat rising up off the massive cylinders, one of the heads of which appeared to be rattling on what was left of its bolts. If I hadn’t been so blasted by the heat, I would have done the decent thing; pushed the beast the last few hundred yards to the door of a wooden shack that passed for the worst hotel in Tsavo; it was the only kind of place that would let me in.
I spent the next day using the toolkit to put the Beemer to rights, although I couldn't fix one of the cylinder studs that had stripped its thread. The battery was a molten mess, something to do with keeping my finger on the horn for 80 miles... a huge diesel truck’s battery was purloined in the depths of the night, the driver too busy humping whores to worry, and strapped on to the rear seat, there being little likelihood that I would be finding some nubile to take pride of place on the pillion perch.
It was only 100 miles, or so, to Mombasa, so I blithely set out early the next morning thinking I could do it in a few hours... the R100’s engine had other ideas, being unable to produce the goods for more than 35mph, even then growling like it was about to explode at any moment. Petrol was slurped at about 20mpg! Surely a record for a four stroke. The graunching vibes that rumbled through the machine were a sure sign that something was seriously amiss.
The battery kept falling off the side of the machine, giving the back end such a whack that I thought the wheel had fallen off the first time it happened. The engine instantly ground to a halt and didn’t light up again until the battery was almost exhausted.
I was determined not to stop for any bars this time, there were too many distractions and too much violence on my stomach for that. As the heat of the day turned up to full furnace blast, so hot that the petrol tank seemed to be burning holes in my knees and it was surely only a matter of time before the thing exploded into a huge fireball, I tried to imagine a cooling sea breeze running up the rotted road ahead, increasing in intensity as I neared the pubic delights of Mombasa. Some hope!
The scenery looked as blasted by the heat as my body felt rotting tree trunks, dilapidated shacks, hideous people turned a sort of cancerous black and vehicles that were dropping off rusted bits as they shook over the road, which was more craters than tarmac. What I'd seen of Africa appeared a good rendition of hell. Even as the Beemer croaked along on its last legs I was convinced that things could get no worse, but each hour seemed as endless as it was horrendous with the heat, physical abuse and weaving iron horse.
I stopped twice to take on petrol and oil, both disappearing so fast I couldn’t believe it. My bones seemed seized in position each time, I had to stagger around for ten minutes in the blistering heat to free them up... I appeared to be ageing by about a year every hour! My stomach had miraculously adapted to the diet of shit food, excess of alcohol and other stimulants... I only needed to go to the toilet once every three hours and hadn't spewed up for at least 24 hours.
Amazing!
Ever onwards we crawled, taking a full day, rolling up in Mombasa just as the sun was sinking beyond the horizon. My mind was so blitzed that all I'd concentrated on was the road in front of me for the last 60 miles, I could have been in any incredibly hot country for all the notice I took of the scenery.
Mombasa was an amazing place, but the details have no place in the UMG (I do have some friends and relatives in the UK who I still want to speak to me on my return) and the BMW was fixed up as well as could be expected in a third world country. After a month of lounging around, enjoying myself immensely, I was foolish enough to believe I was ready yet again to explore more roads by motorcycle...
Al Culler
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