Every year as part of their science curriculum, the eighth-grade class goes on a field trip – usually to a dormant volcano across the valley, and the surrounding caves. This year, we’ve had a late rainy season of torrential rains, rendering Mt. Suswa out of the question for anything less than four-wheel drives – of which we don’t have enough.
Sam was part of a scouting trip out there a couple weeks ago, to gauge the feasibility of the field trip – here’s what they found…
So, the junior high science teacher, Meredith, jumped into backup planning and found an option just outside Naivasha, in the valley about an hour and a half from Kijabe. After several more nights of rain – including the night before we were to leave, when the heavens opened in an utter deluge for several hours – and much wondering and texting with the organization that runs the camp, it was decided that we would go.
Sunday morning, we loaded 46 eighth graders and nine adults, plus all our food, camping equipment, personal luggage, med kits, etc., into three four-wheel drives, a school van, and a coaster bus, and we were off.
Right from the get-go, it was an adventure! We hadn’t started loading before a group of students realized they’d forgotten their ID cards and ran screaming, as if chased by a herd of wild buffalo, up the long hill to their dorm. Halfway through packing, the rest of the students returned from breakfast, raising the volume ten-fold with their shrieks, yells, squeals, guffaws, and screeches. By the time we’d taken attendance, double checked IDs, sent them to the bathroom, filled water bottles, and sent the ones who hadn’t been listening earlier to the bathroom, the noise was deafening. We prayed, then began dividing into vehicles – which was when we realized that we were two seats short! With a bit of adjusting, we had the student sorted out – then I squished into the fully loaded van between David and Meredith, and we were off.
Oh, our poor little van. I wedged myself into the middle, trying to stay out of the way of the gearshift, as we made for the road up the hill – which we traversed ever so slowly, loaded down as we were with 600 pounds of water, half a dozen tents, 50+ sleeping bags, scores of backpacks, and two days’ worth of food for 55 people – approximately 46 of whom eat like vultures who’ve been flying over the Sahara Desert for a month.
Our next adventure materialized as we pulled off the main road onto the dirt tracks out to the campsite. (I won’t mention the police check where we were stopped, then told to go, then frowned at, then gestured onward – it was a bit confusing!) It had rained there too, and our van flew through puddles (and I do mean flew – there were times we were airborne!) like you wouldn’t believe. I’m only sad that my video doesn’t do it justice, as I missed the first enormous hole where we plunged nose-first into water so deep that a sheet of brown murkiness engulfed the entire windscreen and completely blinded us! (Warning: this video may make you car-sick)
(Please excuse the maniacal cackling in the background – Meredith was clutching onto the handhold over the window for dear life, David was determined that we were not going to get stuck and was driving thus, and I, with no handhold in the middle seat, was bouncing around like so much Jell-O, along with every unattached object in the van – my water bottle and travel mug, any of the luggage in the back that wasn’t wedged into a crevice, pillows and tents and sleeping bags and hats and sunscreen and boots and who knows what all else.)
Once we were through the puddles, there was a strange sound of something dragging on the ground, so we stopped and hopped out to check, discovering that one of the bolts adhering the spare tire to the undercarriage had sheared clean off, dropping the tire somewhere behind us, and leaving the chains dragging unceremoniously on the ground. While David jogged back to scour the puddles for our spare tire, Meredith walked ahead to check the other ramps off the highway as options for the bus.
With the spare tire wrangled onto the roof rack at last (not without much giggling and mud and dropping almost onto David’s head – I did help him after I filmed it), we faced our next adventure: getting the bus off the highway onto the side road. Our options were:
- A gentle slope with potholed puddles of unknown depth.
- A slope that was steep and slanted sharply to the left, towards the road below.
- Nose-down on an even steeper slope than above.
None of them were great options, but after much pacing, eyeing of options, and discussion, it was decided to bring the bus down option two – steep and slanted sharply to the left – after getting all the students off. Just in case.
From there, the adventure only continued. With every significant jolt (of which there were many!), the back door of the van popped open and luggage tumbled into the road behind us. The cars behind us hooted frantically to get us to stop and load it back inside, then slam the back door with great gusto. Black mud oozed and squelched under our tires as we fishtailed and shimmied along the track.
The bus got stuck on a hill, so students piled out and walked – some to the crest, others more than a mile to where our van stopped at the fork of the trail to wait for them. Eventually, we were all in one place, and our hosts met us to guide us to the campsite – the only problem was, with the bus and van unable to make the final part of the road, we didn’t have enough vehicles for everyone and everything. We made do with a sort of shuttle – some of us waiting at the fork, where we hung out, told stories, and played games, while the others went on to the campsite and started setting up. Eventually, we were down to five students and two adults with no space in the car, and we voted to hike the last couple of kilometers in, rather than sitting and waiting again.
On we went, and I had a great conversation with Caleb and Simeon, talking about everything from my time as a student at RVA, to places we’ve traveled, to our favorite types of dogs, and more. It was delightful – until I stepped sideways to avoid a particularly swampy bit of mud and dropped calf-deep into a hole, spraining my ankle. Thankfully, we had a doctor along, and once I limped into camp, he wrapped it tightly and set me up with the students who had come along despite their injuries – two with sprained ankles, one a sprained knee, and one on crutches with a significant foot injury.
After the chaotic flurry of lunch, unpacking, setting up tents, and carting all our supplies down a long, winding, half a kilometer, slippery hill, students filled their water bottles and lathered on sunscreen, preparing for the afternoon hike. I perched on a bench with the other invalids, watching with a bit of sadness as they clambered up the hill into the forest. Those of us who were left behind looked around woefully, but it only lasted a moment before we pulled out the cards and settled at the table to play games. It was a sweet time – we played cards, ate cookies, took pictures, and laughed a great deal, relishing the time away from campus in the sweet fresh air, with the sound of the river rushing by below us.
Though we missed out on the hikes the first afternoon and the next morning, spent a lot of time with at least one leg up, and hobbled everywhere we went, we made our own adventures – swaying out over the river on the vine swing (very carefully, of course, with much support from the less crippled among us!), lounging on the rocks by the riverside with our feet dangling in the freezing swirl of waters (which will certainly do in place of ice packs to keep swelling down), drinking chai by the mugful, talking about every subject under the sun, tossing rocks into the stream, giggling until our sides ached as we fished crocs from the brown eddies of the river.
Despite the chaotic escapades of the trip’s beginnings, its most memorable parts were really born in those quiet moments together, while birds called in the trees and the sound of the rapids drowned out the world beyond our camp.
