In 1998 my wife, an IBM AS/400 programmer, was made an offer she could not refuse, to come to the UK and save civilization from the year 2000 bug.
Around the same time there was a story circulating on the Internet about a guy called ‘John Titor,’ a time traveller from 2036 who had been sent to get software from an IBM 5100. They needed to debug various legacy computer programs as they in the future were due to have a similar year 2000 bug problem with UNIX machines in 2038.
Let’s hope he got what he came for.
Or we’ll all have to go through this, ‘End of the World,’ nonsense again.
So off went the wife to work on her, “Save the world from the YK2 AS/400 bug program.”
While I marched around West Byfleet with our kids, looking to offload them to the various schools.
In we go to Fullbrook School and up to the administration office.
“This is Max,”I said, “an A level student. One of the top Danish competitive swimmers for his age.”
They were not interested and turned him down.
No room at the Inn. Maybe next year.
A Danish A level student, a top-sports student and he gets rejected.
Thought, ‘Welcome to the UK, land of the Educational Numpties.’
Max was very upset, he needed to be in school. He needed to learn.
Next up was Bishop David Brown in nearby Sheerwater.
On the way up the drive to the school offices, we spotted a swimming pool.
Where I again pitched Max’s academic achievements.
“Exactly the people we are looking for,” was his reply.
Max chirped up at this. We met Mr. Knight, the acting headmaster
Bingo! Max was setup for school. One down one to go.
I off loaded Jack to West Byfleet junior school. So job done.
Both of the boys enjoyed going to school.
Helped in part by the fact, they could speak better English than most of their comrades. And academically, because of the Danish teaching system, they were ahead of their peers on everything except written English.
Max was in a class with super clever Asian kids who pushed him to excel.
And he was adored by the school because he was a super athlete.
So both a Jock and a nerd. Which was unusual in English schools back then.
Jack had his gang of chums and started playing cricket.
A game, as one wit put it, were the cricket audience loses more weight than the players.
I landed a job in a new Internet Service Provider. Just 5 minutes from where I lived.
Wages were rubbish after Danish standards, but I figured I needed to learn to work in an office. Having never done so before.
They were charging £39.95 plus VAT per annum for a standard dial-up internet connection.
And then the bottom fell out of the ISP market, when Freeserve gave it away for Zilch.
My boss locked himself in the office and snorted larges mounds of a white Colombian happy powder.
Then came out with all sorts of ridicules instructions.
I remember they were trying to sell the company to ‘Tiny Computers’ at that time, one of the biggest sellers of PCs in the UK.
The Tiny team looked around and then noticed our, ‘Linux For Dummies,’ book on our desk. That sale fell apart.
Another big company came in, sat in the office and they were ready to make a deal.
We, at that particular point in time, had no Internet Connection to our own systems, from our office to the outside world.
Panic was the operative word, as we watched the group through the office windows and knew they would come out and want to go online.
We had no idea why we could not connect to the Internet, using our own Windows Network.
Around the office was lots of Computer Magazines, Dot NET – Linux World etc.
I grabbed one and it had, like all the rest, a Setup Disc for connecting to Freeserve.
So we bunged it in a PC and it setup a free account and we were back on the Internet.
Just as the group of potential buyers arrived at our desks.
They stood back as I browsed the Net. Going to their website and back to ours.
Happy, they went back into the office and continued negotiating.
And nobody was the wiser.
Welcome to the,‘Bat Shit Crazy,’ early days of the UK Internet.
I cannot say I was impressed with the UK office work ethic.
But I joined in the boozy lunch’s that went on for hours.
And went native, so to speak.
Jack eventually moved on up to the big boys Fullbrook School with his chums.
Fullbrook had been sending a group to Marich Pass in Kenya for a few years.
Helping the schools in the area.
And Jack came home with the invitation to go with the school on their annual trip to Kenya.
Parents were needed as well.
So the wife, in the interests of integration, decides myself and Jack needed to go on this trip.
I was all against it. Wanted no part of it. Did not want to go to Africa.
She paid the ticket money and said it would be a good bonding experience.
We flew out on an Air Kenya jet loaded with stuff for the local schools.
The leader of the Kenya party was a chemistry teacher, Mrs Gibbons.
A big woman who would not take no for an answer. So she got thing done.
I kept my views to myself, around her.
But she was someone I’ve always liked and admired.
The local natives called her Mamma Mattress. There were a couple of parents like myself and the rest were teachers. And of course a bunch of middle class Surrey kids.
We loaded up our vans in Nairobi and set off for Marich Pass.
What struck me back then about Kenya was the vast amount of people on the move.
Everywhere, hundreds of people on the move.
Walking, biking or just standing around.
Mostly young guys just hanging around. Waiting for something to happen.
Out on the pothole filled roads, the walking droves of people continued.
It struck me then, what a waste.
If these people could be harnessed into something productive, Kenya could be an African power-house and take off.
We stopped off at a Hotel on our way to Marich Pass. For tourists, it had the works, swimming pool and clean rooms. We drove through the amazing Rift Valley and on to Lake Nakuru National Park where we watched the Pink Flamingos do their tang. The aroma was, to say the least, very interesting.
We finally arrived at Marich Pass and met Dr David Roden and his wife Hidat.
He leased the area from the local Pokot County Council.
Marich Pass is situated within a deep, rocky cleft, carved where the Moruny River emerges from the Cherangani Hills onto the dry plains of the Lake Turkana Basin.
The Huts were all built with eco-friendly material and reflected the Pokot traditions.
It was rugged, it was bare bone. But the views were amazing.
We headed up, to check out the Church we would help repaint.
The idea was to get some empty cans from the rubbish tip and pour the paint into them.
Bad idea. The rubbish tip was empty. Nothing, Nada.
The Pokots recycled everything out of necessity it seems.
We met the local school headmaster and a load of kids, all sparkling in their clean cloths.
It staggered me how they could be so clean in such a dusty area.
They had no desks and sat on the floor with reused paper for writing on, with their pencils.
The teaching material stuff we brought was a treasure trove. And much needed.
Mamma Mattress had arranged a clever way of transferring some of our wealth to the natives who lived in the area.
A flea market where our kids would swap second hand Surrey junk, for whatever the Pokots had to hand. Which was usually old spears, bows and rusty arrows.
The flea market did not go so well. As word went out a bargain was to be had.
A set of Nike trainers or a T-Shirt for a bentrusty arrow.Sounded like a deal made in heaven.
The crowd went nuts. A stampede started and a lot of argy bargy followed.
We managed to calm things down and we were cleaned out of T-Shirts and Nike trainers in pretty short order.
The boys had souvenirs of bent spears, bows and rusty arrows. The girls not so much.
Next day we were busy painting the Church, when someone ran up all excited and said, one of the girls had been shot with an arrow.
The boys were shooting arrows at a tree.When the girls yapping, and not taking any notice, walked through their line of fire.
Panic stations all around. We raced back and took her to the local hospital.
Luckily the rusty arrow had hit her on the side of the head. Missing her eye by millimetres.
She would forever be left with a nasty scar, as a souvenir of her Kenya school trip.
My next thought was,‘Who the fuck was so stupid to do this.’
I was convinced it was Jack. It’s a Dad thing.
When we got back from the hospital I stormed over to the boys hut.
I went in hot, “Who’s the fucking idiot who fired the arrow?”
Jack immediately shopped the culprit,pointing, “It was him, Harry.”
I turned and shouted at Harry, “They’re not fucking toys. The natives use them for hunting Baboons.”
Then I turned and left. A much relieved Dad.
The girl’s parents were informed. But the reality of the moment had not, unlike the arrow, struck home.The shit didn’t hit the fan until we got back to the UK.
We were still living in the moment, of our wondrous Kenya safari trip magic bubble.
Sitting in the darkness under enchanted trees after a great excursion and a fantastic meal, drinking a cold Tusker beer.
The lamps on our tables turned the whole experience into a magical scene from,‘Lord of the Rings.’
The Hobbits and Dwarfs of Marich Pass, plotting the fall of Saruman.
Next morning up early, so the adults could go and look for Wild Elephants.
David had told us they were very dangerous. Having recently killed a villager.
But I was up for having a look. An out for adventure.
I was in a bus with Chris and his wife Clare. All of us excited about seeing a real live, ‘Wild Elephant.’
I sat chatting with the driver.
Whose main gigs were on the much safer tourist trail, of the MasaiMara.
He was shaking. I naively assumed it was from the early morning chill.
He started whispering that there was a big,‘Bull Elephant,’only meters away.
I couldn’t see a thing through the razor sharp bush. Then I spotted him.
He blended in perfect.
I looked at the driver, His shaking had dramatically increased.
So I asked him, in a very low whisper,“Do we have a plan B if the Bull attacks?”
I could see now, he wasn’t shivering from the early morning cold, he was shit scared.
He whispered back, “No, we’ll have to make a lot of noise to scare him away.”
Now I was shit scared.
A seven ton, ‘Killer Bull Elephant,’ smashing our van to bits was not exactly a touchy feel, “Swimming with Dolphin’s” experience.
Besides,we couldn’t run away, as the razor sharp bush would rip us to shreds.
This was more, ‘The Suicide Squad Get Squashed,’ than, ‘The Famous Five Go Adventuring.’
Our only hope, it seemed to me, was to get Clare screaming as hysterically as possible. Not a pretty sight. But you do what you have to do, to survive.
I whispered to the driver, “Get us the fuck out of here.”
Which he happily did.
It was the Wild West up there near the Ugandan border.
Bandits coming over the border. Looting and killing the natives.
Killer Elephants. Killer Crocodiles. Lizards the size of small children
The local townsin looked like old pictures of Tombstone. Minus Doc Holliday and the Wyatt Earp.
The roads where a killing ground for car accidents. No right or left side driving. Just dodging enormous potholes and pedestrians.
David was tragically killed in a car crash a few years later. But his wife still runs Marich Pass Field Studies Station with her son.
I remember telling one of the young Surrey student girls, she should marry the guy who owned the local petrol station. She’d at once become a real Princess Pokothuntas. She was not impressed.
The toilets at Marich Pass,back then, were gravity helped holes in the ground.
European ceramic toilets were plopped on top. So all good.
Except it seems for the Dutch.
Who preferred to stand on top of the toilet seat and then do their download.
This, as you can well imagine, caused quite a mess.
On our stopover in Amsterdam, on our way back. I suggested we return the favour by swinging out of the lights while downloading in the Dutch airport toilet’s as a form of payback.
Our return to the UK was dampened by the meeting of the distraught girl’s parents. Whoops! It was suddenly back to reality. Our Kenya safari bubble well and truly burst.
We returned to an empty house, as the wife and the other two boys had gone off to Denmark.
Opening my case, a bug flew out and disappeared through the window.
The next week, the UK was infected by a mysterious ailment.
I am saying nothing.
My journey to Marich Pass was a magic trip for myself and my son.
It took me to a wild place I still think off.
It changed forever my perception of Kenya and Africa.
And I promised myself, one day, “I will be back.”
