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By now, Eric needs to get back to his job and the combi is throwing fits. We decide to cross the Aberdares and go to Nyahururu where Eric can catch a ride to Mweiga.

For my part, I had a few more ghosts in mind. Ghosts from 1952. Back then, the town was named Thomson Falls and was Kenya’s most northern colonial town. And it was smack in the midst of Kikuyu lands.

When the Mau Mau rebellion broke out in, one of the servants who worked for the Rusk family let in a party of raiders who brutally killed the father and the mother. Then they hunted down the six-year-old boy who was hiding under his bed and macheted him to death. In a macabre twist, one of the killers played the family piano, leaving bloody fingerprints on the keyboard.

I think, perhaps, up to that point, both sides could have talked their way out of the war that followed, but once those fingers played the piano, neither the settlers nor the Kikuy showed charity. I ask around but nobody remembers the Rusk name or where they might have once lived. Some people give me peculiar looks and ask why I would care. To be honest, I don’t have a ready answer.

I walk up the road from the Thomson Falls Lodge towards town. Maybe somebody there will know. To my left, in a low-slung building, stands a Roman Catholic charity. As I stand looking at it, a woman stops, as Kenyans do when they see a puzzled stranger, and asks what I’m looking for.

“Oh nothing,” I said. “Just wondering what that building was for.”

“That is an orphanage.” The woman seems dissatisfied with my lack of response, so she goes on. “It is an orphanage for the children whose parents have died of AIDS.”

“Jesus,” I muttered, forgetting that Kenyans take religion seriously and don’t care for that sort of talk. “What do the children do when they get out? Do they get an education?”

“Oh yes, they are educated and are free to leave at age twenty-one. But not one has ever left.”

“Why?”

“Because the children also have AIDS. They die before they get that old. We just try to give them a happy childhood.”

In the U.S., children with AIDS take drugs and lead normal lives. In Kenya, with the coffers pilfered by corruption, they die, a point made by the U.S. ambassador a few years ago. Looking at 18 corrupt government contracts that were part of the Anglo-Leasing scandal in 2003-2004 and siphoned $751 million out of the Kenyan Treasury, the ambassador suggested a bitter way of looking at it. He said the money lost would have been enough to supply every HIV-positive Kenyan with anti-retroviral drugs for 10 years. Certainly, the money taken dwarfed the $521 million Western countries poured into Kenya to build up the economy.

Maybe that’s why Kenyans forget their old ghosts. There are always new ones every day.

Nyahururu’s home for orphans with AIDS.

***

The next day, Peter and I load up the combi for the run down to Mweiga. It’s sunny with puffy clouds floating about. The long rains should have started by now, but it’s clear they won’t come today.

We set off, running up the side of one Aberdares foothill and speeding down the far slope. The road is cut into the sides of the foothills and the government, not surprisingly, didn’t have the money needed to put in guard rails. The drop offs tend to catch your attention.

The government also didn’t have the money to fill any of the potholes which is why Kenyan drivers sometimes drive on the wrong side of the road. They are dodging the potholes on their side.

Peter in the foreground, his brother Kefa in the back.

It’s one of these potholes that nearly kills us.

Peter hit it going about 70 on the downhill run, and the combi’s moaning engine goes dead quiet. In an older model vehicle, like a land rover, it wouldn’t be too much trouble. But the combi is power everything: power brakes, power steering, and we're without power.

In the sudden hush, we’re still going 70 down a twisting road without guardrails but now Peter can’t steer very well and he can’t really stop. He’s pounds the brake pedal and his muscles bulge as he wrenches the wheel around. We hurtle past uphill drivers, sideswiping them.

For my part, I’m having a tough time believing it all. For some reason, all I can think of is how ridiculous the situation is.

Peter lifts the hand brake, and we begin to slow. He manages to ease the combi onto the dirt shoulder and the tires dig into the loose gravel. He pulls up harder on the brake, and, finally, near the bottom, we stop.

Peter, who is nearly always laughing about something, jumps out and walks to the side of the road and sits down. He doesn’t say anything but sits there for what seems a long time

We work on the engine, but I’m not much help. I don’t know a carburetor from a tortoise, and I’m not sure the combi has one or both installed. After pinging about with the wrench, Peter announces it is the fuel pump. The jarring from the pothole knocked it offline. No fuel, no power, no engine. He whacks it back into position with a wrench. Even I know that’s not a good thing.

But we’ve still got cross 50 miles of foothills before we reach Mweiga. It’s a long trip, and a slow one, creeping down the slopes at 20, but we make it.

Two fewer ghosts for Kenya to cope with than otherwise, but who would notice?

The effing combi.