Change of Plans

By Marisa Notier

The Notier Notes

Our Sunday Scoop

Kenya just went under another lockdown yesterday, restricting travel once again. This is due to a new wave of Coronavirus cases, and we're currently not sure what this is going to mean for us to move to Uganda once our Kenyan visas expire in two weeks. But we'll hopefully get that figured out soon.

What this lockdown also hints at is the fact that this part of the world is no longer the best place for us to stay. The US and the UK have had a fantastic vaccine roll-out so far, and their cases are dropping as they start to get control over the virus. But poorer countries have been falling behind. This includes most of Africa.

Right now, Kenya has a plan to vaccinate 30% of its population by June of 2023. And since most of the world's supply has already been bought up for the next year, Kenya and other countries around here will most likely be unable to get much more than they already have. So the chance of us getting vaccinated here in 2021 is slim to none.

Another problem with staying here is that we can't travel easily at the moment, nor anytime in the foreseeable future. Most African countries have opened up to tourism, but you need to present a negative test before crossing a border, and each test costs around $100 a person. And they don't have the new tests here. They have the scrape-your-brains-out-through-your-nose-with-a-giant-Q-tip tests. Not fun at all.

As you can see, without Ethiopia, the route north to Egypt from Kenya is pretty much blocked.

Then there's the problem of not being able to go north. Ethiopia is the next country north of us and with the conflict and war in the Tigray region, in addition to the virus, it isn't necessarily an awesome option at the moment. But besides that, Ethiopia's borders have been completely closed down since the pandemic started. There's no way through.

Looking at a map, there really isn't a way to get north to Egypt. We could possibly go through Uganda to South Sudan, then into Sudan, but it's dangerous, and there are no official border posts or hotels along the way. Basically, even without the Coronavirus messing up everything, we're stuck. We've gone as far as we can go in Africa at the moment.

​So we've decided to move back to North America. We're going home for a year.

Africa has certainly been fun, but I think our time here has come to an end (for now).

We've thought long and hard about it, but we've come to the conclusion that the best thing to do is fly ourselves and the motorcycle back to the States whenever we can. This is for three reasons. 1 - We can't get vaccinated here. 2 - We can't travel through Africa. And 3 - If we're just sitting around waiting for the world to get travel-ready once again, we might as well be making some money while we wait.

​One of the best things about going home for a year is we get to see our friends and family. Once we're vaccinated and things start opening up again, we can possibly travel around the country, and maybe give speeches at events. (If you happen to reside somewhere in the States, send us a message, because it would be wonderful to meet up with our readers!)

We've covered a lot of ground throughout our travels, but there's still so much more of the world to see...

We can also get jobs and save up some money for our next round of travels. So what does this mean for our blog? I'll keep sending out our Sunday Scoops as long as our lives are interesting. If I do take a break for a while, we'll be sure to start up again once we get ready for our next set of adventures.

And where will that be? Will we wait until Ethiopia opens again and pick up where we left off? Or will we head straight to Europe, or start someplace totally different like Southeast Asia? We don't know right now. But it's going to be fun planning it all out.

​But I don't want to get ahead of myself. First we have to somehow get ourselves out of here, and that's not going to be a walk in the park. So stay tuned, and we'll keep you updated on what is to come.
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We're really going to miss these guys... But we'll be seeing new people (and new cats) in the future.