Fail.

Activity at the Kenya-Uganda border, at Busia.

Entebbe, Uganda – I must have seemed illiterate as I presented my immigration documents to officials at the Kenya-Uganda border town of Busia this afternoon.

As I had attempted to fill out the various pieces of paper on the bus, the wavy scrawl of ink had risen and fallen with each pothole etched into the road that carried me from Kisumu. Road crews had mounded entirely insufficient cones of dirt along the road to fill the gaps, but they were of little use just sitting there.

The border featured a slouching metal fence painted in the chipping colours of Kenya’s flag. Buses and trucks alike bunched up as we cleared customs, walked across no-man’s land and into Uganda’s immigration office. Once cleared, we wove between jaggedly parked vehicles to find our bus, navigating through salespeople carrying boxes of beverages and snacks on their heads. Impoverished children slapped at the side of the bus and called up through the open window, making hand gestures that mimicked eating.

Pulling into Uganda, the sky became a watercolour of mottled greys and my nausea increased because of the bus's 1.5-hour late start this morning – and the tight deadline I faced for my plane home. Donning sunglasses, a boxer jogged along the road with taped hands, jabbing at the wind. Each time I checked my watch, I felt as though I had taken one of his punches to my gut.

Farther along, a woman raked the dirt out front of her house with a paint roller that had no sponge. A rural field was speckled with scarecrows whose heads were made from black garbage bags. Clever. In a larger town, a giant billboard featured a man with two women draped over him under the banner, “Be handsome, and fair.” It was for fair skin cream for men. What?

My unanticipated home in Entebbe for more than 24 hours.

It was a pleasant ride I enjoyed with my head hanging out the window at the back of the bus. As we pulled into the hills of Kampala, however, the road was stitched with a knot of traffic. The city has a reputation for slow travel on Friday nights and, true to form, we trudged five kilometres in two hours. At the same time, the hands on my watch seemed to hasten their pace as I twisted my wrist. I still needed to find a taxi to take me the additional 40 kilometres to the airport in Entebbe.

Finally arriving at the bus park, I haggled with the taxi driver out of respect, but hit the road soon thereafter, hoping to eke in under the wire. Naturally, he needed to stop for fuel now that he had a fare. Reaching the airport at Entebbe, heavily armed police pulled us from the vehicle to do a thorough search, and the ill feeling in my stomach rose into my throat.

The city is on edge given recent strikes and violence related to the re-election of President Yoweri Museveni, who was sworn in yesterday. I, too, was on edge – but I had hope.

Unfortunately, that is all I had: I missed check-in my 15 minutes.

Hashtag: Fail.

Quite a Rift.

A man rides his bicycle through the Rift Valley.

Chekalini, Kenya – As we coursed along its tongue, the cavernous jaw of the Rift Valley appeared to swallow us, its pebbly walls rising as we wound down serpentine switchbacks into dry pastures of scrub and stretching acacia.

Cacti lined the road, standing sentinel with spiny paddles.

The road at the head of the valley, which leads to former President Daniel arap Moi's home region, is well-paved, but silent. As so few vehicles pass by, locals quip it is best known as a resting place for goats and cows.

Sure enough, around the corner lay a goat, nonplussed, chewing on a long blade of grass.

Crossing the equator and descending farther, however, we rattled across pocked roads as the ground blushed with the red of clay, its lips whispering small puffs of dust. Termite hills as tall as I rose from the landscape like stovepipe hats.

Yet, even as the sun threw blazing rays earthward, motorcyclists remained bundled in down coats – the concept of heat obviously dependent on the climate to which one is accustomed. The whole way, we waved at wide-eyed children in school uniforms who double-took at the palour of our skin.

Toward the end of the day, rain set a local market into motion as tarps were drawn like curtains over stick-framed kiosks selling everything from shoes, to fruit, to suitcases. Weather had signaled the end of the show.

We had been on the road for nearly 12 hours, setting out from Lake Naivasha to see the splendour of the Great Rift Valley and to visit Eric's family in the Western Kenya village of Chekalini.

With a thud in Eldoret, though, we heard the now-familiar snake-like hissing and, for the second day in a row, were roadside – covered in ochre – changing a punctured tire.

This is becoming a habit.

Fuelling Adventure.

Creative means for fuelling a car.

Nairobi, Kenya – After five hours spent waiting for our vehicle to arrive, the orange fuel light menaced us with a winking eye.

Choking on the few fumes remaining in its tank, the large van carrying us to Lake Naivasha would soon be left breathless from the standstill traffic. We looked for a modern-day Moses.

The fuel shortage is currently so serious in Nairobi that people queue on foot for hours, clutching jerry cans even as they stand in suits. Despite the lack of petrol, traffic is chaos as an increasing number of vehicles creep through belching clouds of exhaust.

It takes hours to get anywhere.

Radio chatter alerts listeners to gas stations that have received a new supply, which leads to an immediate rush to the pumps. Soon thereafter, yellow tape is pulled across the tanks like a curtain signalling the end of a show.

As the day’s heat rose, we found a barren station where we could siphon gas from the smaller car we had previously rented, and watched the attendant empty it into a large green garbage can. Using an old plastic oil jug as a scoop and a water bottle fitted with a rubber tube, he cautiously fed the precious fuel into the tank’s gaping maw.

With its thirst quenched, the engine sparked to life and the fuel gauge slowly tilted east, even as we headed northwest through the Rift Valley, looking over Longonot Crater and onto Lake Naivasha, which is ringed by the shiny tarps of flower production.

Hamna shida: after yet another hour, we were back on track.