Not right, nor orderly.

The road to Amung'enti

Joe was born on March 28, 1966, but by late September Mary was telling me that she was afraid that she wouldn’t get pregnant again.  So, we started a novena to the Holy Family.

At first we had some difficulty distinguishing morning sickness from the symptoms of malaria, but Dr. Cuneo (an Italian doctor at the hospital in Nkubu) finally confirmed pregnancy on October 12. Joe had been the first in the family to come down with malaria.  That's another story.  Now Mary had it, too.  Within a week of confirmation of pregnancy Mary started feeling stomach contractions, which Dr. Cuneo attributed to the malaria.  Mary spent the next three months in and out of bed, mostly in after she started bleeding in late November.  We had hoped to go to Nairobi to do Christmas shopping, but Sister Lavinia, the midwife who delivered Joe, nixed that idea.  We made it into Meru a few days before Christmas, but the rough ride put Mary back in bed again.

This is the background for our excursion on January 2, 1967 with Pat Speidel.  She was one of the Lay Missionary Helper midwives who ran a birthing center in the village of Igoji, about 16 miles south of Nkubu.  Pat wanted to go to Amung’enti and asked us if we would bring her.  Since Pat was a midwife and quite experienced in Africa, we decided it would be safe for Mary and Joe to go along.

Because of the wonders of technology unknown to us at the time, I have pasted a link at the end of this story to a Google satellite image of the route so that you can follow along, if you wish.    

Pat was a gregarious midwesterner.  So between her having to hitch a ride from Igoji and socializing with people in Nkubu, we didn't get off until about 9:15 that morning.  It took about an hour to get to Meru, crossing the equator as we did every time we went back and forth between Nkubu and Meru.  To contrast how the roads have changed, the 21st Century Google map of this trip gives the total travel time for our planned route to Amung'enti, including our eventual backtracking to Tuuru, as an hour and 3/4.  In 1967 it took us an hour to cover less than a quarter of that route.

We picked up a Pat's friend, Damien Gakunu, who wanted to go to his home in Tigania.  With that and more socializing, we left Meru about 10:20.  Tigania was both a mission near and the area around Muthara, north of Meru.  We reached Tigania by 11 in time for Pat to catch Zulu, a shortwave radio network linking the missions and other non-governmental outposts in the Eastern Province of Kenya.  Joe’s birth had been announced over Zulu, which broadcast at regular intervals.  That’s why Pat had to catch it on the hour.  She wanted to tell the people in Amung’enti that we were on the way and aimed to make it there in time for lunch with Fr. Baldazzi.   

As we were approaching Muthara, we got a good view of most of Tigania, stuck in the foothills of the Nyambene’s, a range of taller hills to the east.  At the time we lived there, Elsa the lion of Born Free fame lived in the Meru Game Reserve on the east side of the Nyambene’s, along with the Adamson’s, whom rumor had it lived apart. I loved Tigania—greener and cooler than Tharaka (the semi-desert area below Nkubu), but more open than Imenti (a more forested spot uphill from Nkubu, cool enough for tea plantations). 

In Nkubu we woke up every morning to a view of the snowy peak of Mt. Kenya, called Kirinyaga by Meru people and their cousins the Kikuyu.  From Tigania, we had a tremendous view of Kirinyaga because it wasn't right on top of us.  From high points in Nkubu and along the road between Nkubu and Meru, we could see the Nyambene's off in the distance.  From this angle on the road to Tigania there was something very cozy about the Nyambene’s (though we found to our chagrin that they’re not exactly “Home Sweet Home”).

We were heading north from our village of Nkubu to travel around the north side of the Nyambene’s through Muthara, Kang’eta, and Maua to reach Amung’enti, which lay on the east slope of these hills.