Quick Quiz - 1984

mzeiya

mzeiya

Elder Lister
Can anyone recognize this township in the shadows of Kilimanjaro, but on the Kenyan side of our common border with Tanzania?

The photo was taken by a visiting Australian in 1984.

Source: HistoryKE

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mzeiya said:
Can anyone recognize this township in the shadows of Kilimanjaro, but on the Kenyan side of our common border with Tanzania?

The photo was taken by a visiting Australian in 1984.

Source: HistoryKE

View attachment 23898
Click to expand...
I remember in 1990, it took 7 hours to drive to Oloitokitok from Emali junction. That evening we gave a middle aged Maasai gentleman wearing his traditional pleated red shuka, 2 inch steel nut through each of his ear lobs, a homemade machete in a red sheath through a raw leather belt around his waist. We picked him up in the middle of nowhere and dropped him off in the middle of nowhere. He filled up the entire car with a musky-smokey-cowshed-raw earthly-body smell as soon as he got into the car. Part of his shuka was caught in the door resulting him banging his forehead on the window while trying to untangle himself. He knew where he was throughout every portion of his ride. He disappeared in the darkness as soon as he got out of the car since we could only see where the headlight beams focused ahead. We did not know where we were until we got to Kimana.

That was a treacherous trip in pitch darkness on a rainy night. I have never experienced such night pitch darkness ever again. We reached Outward Bounds Center at 2:00AM with our souls and spirits crushed.

Today the same trip takes a quarter of that time. Oloitokitok is mostly peaceful town with dramatically changing altitudes as you move a few meters south towards the border. Worth a visit
 
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