Day 30 – Maungu to Samburu

I took breakfast slowly, I knew today was going to be long so wanted to make the most of my time with Lore and the kids before sadly saying goodbye I hitchhiked to my spot and moved onto dirt road by the railway, going alongside it till I hit Mackinion Rd not much had happened until I sat down under a tree by the railway slightly tired, to have my sandwich. Sudden I heard the sound of stones moving off the railway track, as I looked up I saw two armed guards with guns pointing at me, moving at pace right in front of me. WTF…. he told me to identify myself and not to move, I was just about to tuck into my sandwich and now I had to identify myself and deal with this. After handing over my ID telling him what I was doing, I was then asked if I was in the country illegally, still with the other guy pointing his gun at my face, clearly not showing him my visa. Then I was told to unpack my bag, one item at the time. What’s that he asked, “one sock”. And that? “One pair of pants” and yet he continued to go through everything one by one, gun still pointing at my face, only after all my stuff was emptied onto the dirt road was he satisfied I wasn’t carrying a bomb!! I asked him if he had ever come across a terrorist wearing running gear and eating lunch under a tree looking like me. He tried to claim he had!!They only left when I name-dropped the vice president and my meeting with him, after that they claimed they were just doing their job and left.

I got going as soon as I had finished lunch and headed back onto the main road. It wasn’t too bad, because of the road works I had a hard dirt track all to myself for the next 15km when a car sneaked up behind me as I was listening to Harry Potter and out popped my father and Simon…. after a little break and a catch up he very kindly took my backpack and ran the final 10km of the day free of the weight of the backpack. We finished around 5.30 and now I have 91 km till I reach the finish line Simon is very kindly relieving me of my backpack for the final two days so I can run free