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Africa » Kenya » Rift Valley Province » Turkana
November 5th 2008

Published: November 8th 2008

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Dawn at Athi River

There are many good reasons to go to Kenya, and normally I would not count playing cricket among them. However, when I received an invitiation from Adrian Radcliff to play in one of his Nomad matches, it was hard to refuse. Like all of the Nomad cricket matches, this one would be special - played on the shore of Lake Turkana, in remote northern Kenya, to raise money for a local school and health clinic. So I jumped at the opportunity.

Of course, the best reason to visit anywhere is to meet people you like and admire, and when you return to a place where you have lived for three years, it is a chance to catch up with those people that made your stay in the country special. In Kenya, there are many such people, and this visit was a wonderful opportunity to revisit the warmth of the company of some of them. Dinner with friends and news of their adventures and their lives revives the spirit, compresses the time spent apart, and reminds me that relationships are the basis of happiness.

For fun, there's game drives and the wonder of diversity in the animal kingdom. First I

Dawn at Athi River 2

went to Lake Nakuru and the surrounding national park. It is famous for its flamingos and rhinos. From a distance, the mass of flamingoes is a pink fringe on the lake. Up close, you hear their distinctive crowd noises, and marvel at their individual grace. I saw only one rhino. Driving around I saw the outline of a grey bus, and knew it was a resting rhino. From a few metres rhinos seem to regard cars with the disdain reserved for the weak by the powerful. Indeed, a car seems flimsy by comparison. What I didn't see in Nakuru - giraffe, lions, ostriches - I caught up with at David and Carol's game ranch at Athi River.

Then it was off to the cricket, a three hour flight to Ileret, on the shore of Lake Turkana, that otherwise would have taken a three day drive. Adrian had promised a place where cricket had never been played before, and he was right. We brusehed a strip clear of bones and other flotsam, and laid the mat for the pitch. An irregular circle at 70 metres radius marked the boundary, and we were off. 30 overs each side in 35 degrees

After dinner chat

At home with Bobby and Trevor

of slightly uncomfortable heat. It was a great match that was decided in the second last over, with the Commonwealth Nomads, of which I was part, winning over the Nairobi Nomads. I scored a lucky, and unbeaten 28, including a six and four fours.

The match was followed by a black tie dinner on the verandah of the Turkana Basin Institute's main building in the camp, overlooking Lake Turkana. Talapia, wine, and the roasting of team mates made for a delicious and entertaining dinner. But the reason for the whole adventure was raising funds for the local community, and the following morning we tasted dust all the way to the new school that needed desks and equipment. The local community came out to greet us, probably more out of curiosity than anything else. The kids, of course, were wonderful. They treated the Australian pilot, Ryan, like the Pied Piper, and he was at the centre of an adoring scrum wherever he went. Not far from the basic school building were the small, circular, one room huts that are the typical homes of the Turkana.

'Desolate' hardly describes the environment the Turkana people live in. There were splashes of

Livingstone & Stanley

Dining with David and Jane Stanley in Karen

green when we were there, as we had timed the match with the cooler wet season, and it had recently rained. The people themselves seemed keen to have a school that their children could attend, and the TBI people, Samia, Sarah and Dr Louise Leakey, are committed to making it a reality. It just takes money, and not much of it, as a little bit goes a long way in Africa. Together, the Nomads raised over 300,000 Kenyan shillings (around AUD6,000), which will go a long way to equiping the school. During my short stay I was touched by the Turkana people, and impressed with the commitment of the TBI team. Illeret is a long way from my life in Hong Kong, in many ways.

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