Hewa, Hewa

4:00 am, Modern Coast bus, somewhere on the Taveta-Voi road.  From my seat in the fourth row, I can see out the windshield into the deep night, can see the thin grey tarmac stretching out in front of us into the dark.  Every few minutes, two high-beams come swiftly toward us from the other direction, lookin like a near-on collision, movin left at the last minute lest we hit it and trundling on toward its own destination, westward.  We’re driving east through the night to get to the Indian Ocean we love so well. This sub-genre of bus is called Oxygen, cause it has an air-conditioning system installed above the seats.  An “air-conditioning” system.  Five hours into our drive, we find we can’t breathe, can’t open the windows, are delirious on CO2.  At a gas station in Voi, we groan and grime our way to the toilets and back.  Caleb points out the word OXYGEN in massive neon across the bus: “It’s like the cry of the passengers,” he says.  “Oxygen! Oxygen!”  The driver grumbles at lethargic passengers to get back on the bus: arrival time’s gotta be 7:30 am, Mombasa.  I think that the city will be beautiful in the dawn.  We hit the road again, swerving across lanes to avoid rutted spots, the road a slim grey ribbon cutting across kilometers of close-grown sisal plants, mysterious and severe at night.  Headphones in, drifting between dreams and erratic headlights, hurtling forward through the dark.