Foreign aid to Somalia, Intercepted by War Lords

We are in Nanyuki, Kenya, very close to the equator.  Tomorrow, we will cross into the southern hemisphere!  A lot has happened since the last update, which wasn't too long ago.  We cycled by Mount Kenya today.  Two more days, we'll be in Nairobi.  


Stage 42 - Marsabit was a tiny town with unpaved roads.  Muslims and Christians live side by side.  You can tell which shop is owned by a Muslim or Christian.  After the two consecutive hard rides, I was on the hunt for meat.  We eat on our own on rest days.  James, our chef, recommended a place in town.  In Kenya, they kill the animals on Mondays, so our meat was fresh.  A plus sized lady with even larger personality runs the restaurant.  They brought seven kilos meat freshly roasted for eight of us.  It was delicious.  I was starving for proteins.  I also found some good patch kits for my tubes.  Everything is possible in Africa.


Today's ride was also tough, but it was the last day on dirt.  We crossed some interesting tribal people all day.  They were very dark and wore beads on their head and chin.  Some wore the same beads as a top as well.  They all had marks, like branded dashes, on their body.  I shook hands with a few of them, very friendly people.  We were warned to not to take pictures, because they think people might take away their soul.  Last year a rider had a spear thrown at him for taking a picture, yikes!  The ride was on deep sand and terrible corrigation.  115km seemed to last forever.  I rolled into camp around 4:30pm and had to rush to change my bike tires.  We start the pavement again tomorrow!


Stage 43 - This was the day that we all looked forward to, tarmac, finally!  Today was 158kms (about 100 miles) with some climbing.  We were all excited to get out of the horrible dirt road and on to the paved.  I started a bit slow, after four days of hard pounding from the corrugation, my body was slow to warm up.  Everything felt good for me and kept riding until the 35km mark.  I stopped to take a Vitamin pill and put on sun block.  A couple of locals stopped and talked to me.   I saw Marelie, Sarge, Eric, and Kendra coming up the hill.  "Kendra was shot! Someone got shot!"  I heard Marelie yell.  I thought it was a joke.  Marelie stopped next to me and said "Someone shot Kendra."  Kendra yelled out "Are these people friendly? Are these people friendly?"  This was serious!  Kendra looked distraught.  I said, "Yes, these guys are fine."  They pulled over.  I saw a blood spot on Kendra's left shoulder and realized the seriousness of situation.  We took Kendra on the side of the road under a tree.  I took her pulse and Marelie counted her breath per minute.  She was also coughing up blood.  Eric and Sarge went back to the road to look for a passing car.  We unzipped Kendra's jersey, and checked out her wound.  She was concious and of clear mind.  The wound was a skin puncture.  Kendra said she was hit by a big rock, the size of a brick.  Eric and Marelie hear a gun shot as well.  Accourding to them, there were three men, one of them had a rifle.  The shot was fired into the air.  We flagged down a car told them the situation.  The people in the car said this area was well known for bandits.  They were so nice and took Kendra back to the town's health center they came from.  Marelie went with her to make sure everything was OK.  Sarge, Eric and I decided to ride in convoy to the Coke stop, about 8km away.  About one hour had passed during this whole time.  It was strange that we saw no other riders and our trucks in that hour.  We realized something must had gone wrong back there.  The driver of the car also let us used the phone call to call TDA, but no one picked up the calls.


We waited at the next Coke stop for about 30 more minutes and finally saw some riders coming.   Kendra was taken to the health center in this town.  Daniel, Peter, Ruth, Pierre, Christine, Kim and Megan came up.  The next thing I heard was shocking.  They were robbed at gun point by bandits.  About four men took money, camera, water, energy bars, and whatever else they thought was useful.  Christine's left ear was covered.  When she pulled up, I gave her a big hug and asked how she was and comforted her.  She would not let go of me.  Shaken from a bullet that went by her ear, she said a bandit hit her head with a gun.  Peter from South Africa is a really tough guy.  He was really sick a few weeks ago and toughed through some really hard rides, a real man's man.  I saw him shaken by the experience.   


Sarge, James and I decided to go to our lunch stop, about 45km away to inform TDA.  After about 30kms, we finally saw our truck with Sharita and Paul.  They already knew what happened.  I noticed there were several men in military uniforms with sub machine guns sat in the back.  We kept on to our lunch stop.  During the ride, thinking about how my fellow riders almost lost their lives, emotion got the best of me.  Everything seemed meaningless. Then, I realized that if I was the last person to pass the bandits before all the things happened. 


When we got to lunch, Adele informed us that everyone was OK and today's stage was cancelled.  More facts came out at lunch.  People were robbed at gun point.  The bandits made people lay on the road and they looked through everything and took whatever they wanted.  Kim said one of the bandit was really nervous, any wrong moves, the situation might turned out different.  We finally saw our trucks pass us.  We rode our lunch truck to camp.  We found out the Kendra might have a cracked rib.


Here is the official press release from TDA on the incident:

Armed robbery in Kenya. All riders are safe.

In Kenya earlier today, six of our Tour d’Afrique riders were robbed by the side of the road by armed bandits.

All riders and staff are safe.

The stage was cancelled so that all riders could be brought safely to our organized campsite by the town of Isiolo.

We are contacting the family members of the riders involved in the incident.

All proper authorities have been contacted and are dealing with the situation.

The Tour will continue on schedule tomorrow.

Please contact Mike Coo in our Toronto office for any further information: +1 416-268-1040

Thanks.
The TDA Team.

Stage 44 - After the incident yesterday, all of us wanted some normalcy.  It was a short day, only 72kms. We will go around Mount Kenya today.  It was definitely a strange day for cycling.  It was all climbing in the morning.  On what appeared to be a down hill, I was only going 10kmph.  Right before lunch, I was going over 40kmph on what appeared to be an uphill!  The optical illusion played tricks on us all day.  It was a beautiful ride.  We saw barley fields as far as the eye could see and evergreen trees along the road.  A Canadian rider remarked that this was like home.  Tomorrow we will cross the equator!