Wednesday, July 25th: Adventures from Kilala to Nkoranga

Since Nkoaranga is situated a little ways up the mountain, it is necessary to commute up and down the 4km road to get to the main road. There is a Dala Dala stop called “Kilala” conveniently placed at the bottom on the main road.

There are three ways to get up and down this (thankfully) paved, steep road. Dala dala, cab, or piki piki. The Dala Dala both ways is 500 shillings, but they are annoying because you need to wait a while for the entire van to fill up. It’s cheap but slightly inconvenient. We usually take this up the mountain.

Cabs are the same price, hold less people, but also require waiting time in order to reach its human maximum capacity – which always astounds me. The cabs are 4-door sedans, but I’ve been in cabs with 12 people (4 in the front, 4 in the back, and 4 in the trunk) AND with 8 people and about 30 chickens in the trunk. Remember what I said about chickens? Yep – on market day, there were about 30 chickens in the trunk of our cab.

Our new favorite way is piki piki, which is essentially a small motorcycle. You just hop on the back of a dude’s bike and go. They are 500 shillings on the way down, 1000 on the way up. Piki piki are preferable on the way down because they are cheap, quick, and sometimes the driver won’t need to use gas until ¾ of the way down! Just make sure to tell the driver, “Pole pole, tafadhali,” and they’ll drive slow. One time I was taking piki piki up the mountain (I was in a rush) and about ¾ up, he ran out of gas, told me to get off, and then drove away! So I just kept walking up until another piki piki driver swooped to my rescue. Always an adventure.