Page 255 - Demo

251it but there was a snag. The transport people needed an Operation Order to put us all as duty passengers. However, we could not write an Operation Order until we had our seats booked. This catch 22 went on until more or less the last moment. I eventually went with the course and one other QFI. We did some warm up walks somewhere to acclimatise. It was fun driving around in hired vehicles. It was all pretty similar to Zimbabwe. You had to be a bit careful in Nairobi. Walking round one evening we saw a group of men taking the wheels off a parked car for example. We ignored it. Eventually we were ready for the main expedition. We were due to start in a forest clearing. We sort of knew were this was, but it was not on our map. We were driven out to it in a bus but it turned out that the driver did not know where it was either. He stopped and asked various people, but they all said it was just around the corner. It turned out that the natives hate disappointing anyone and so although they had no idea where anything was a bit away from their own village, rather than admit it, they would say it is just over the hill or round the corner. It gets dark at 6oclock in Kenya and so after a bit of driving about I suggested we just get out, pitch camp and work it out in daylight. This we did, but as we were putting up the tents a chap came up to us and said %u201cwelcome to our village%u201d. This surprised us a bit as we had not seen any habitation. The man told us we were on someone%u2019s drive but that would be alright. He explained that he was a teacher and when questioned said that he taught about 60 children, the usual things, spinning and weaving and so on. He showed us some sugar cane and gave us some to eat. He just broke some off for himself with his teeth. I think if I had tried that it would have prised my teeth out. He also explained that most of the children had never seen a white man and that in the morning we would have an audience. He was right. Crawling out of my tent I was faced with a long row of little black children all smiling and laughing and pointing at us. They were intrigued with the tents and could not understand why we had them. I