A Small Odyssey

The alarm went off and pierced both of our ears with it's shrill noise.

"It's 4:30 Felix, time to get up. I'll just go to the kitchen and prep a snack for the trip. See you in a minute." I said to Felix who was still rolling about in bed. He stood up straight after I left the room and I hear him packing a couple of last things into his already overloaded backpack.

"Ok, I'm ready. You got the food? Patrick should be waiting outside to bring us to where the bus leaves from." Felix asks me as I pack the scrambled eggs with onions, garlic and some rice into a tupperware box.

"Yes, let's head off!" I reply, Patrick was supposed to pick us up at 5:20am at the front gate of the ICM (International Christian Ministry, the place where we were sleeping) compound. We arrive at the gates with our heavy backpacks and and they turn out to be locked. We hit the gate a couple of times and look for the guards but no one is to be seen anywhere. They were probably just sleeping away in their little guard room we thought however we didn't know where that was.

"Ok take my bag and throw it over once I've climbed to the other side." I said to Felix as I put down my backpack and start clambering over the metal bars of the gate, luckily this seemed to be one of the few gates which was not covered in glass shards which made it quite a bit easier. After the two of us get to the other side we notice that our watched shows 5:30 already.

"We've got to try and walk, at least we can say we gave it a shot." Felix said and made the two of realise how we could lose all the money that we had spent on buying the tickets. Luckily after walking for about five minutes in the complete darkness we hear a motorbike drive up behind us. We manage to stop it and the driver was luckily on his own so the two of us somehow managed to squeeze ourselves and the two big bags in addition to our two small bags onto the motorbike. After a few minutes of driving and just turning around a strong bend I feel a strong pulling of the straps of my backpack.

"Oh man man man, I am slipping off. My backpack is pulling my down right now, I don't really think there is enough space for the two of us on here." I hear Felix cry out and feel his hands wrapping tightly around my backpack for support. We manage to continue in this precarious position until we get to the bus station for the bus to Mombasa. We had made it in time. Now it turned out that the bus was to arrive a little late, which we should've known as 'kenyan time' was simply a little different to 'german time' but nevertheless it was good that we didn't take the risk of missing the bus. After waiting for about 20 minutes Patrick comes cruising around on his motorbike to apologise about having overslept. So we said our goodbyes to him and then went on the big bus to travel to the coast of Kenya.