Mombasa Weekend

This weekend I went to Mombasa, the second largest city in Kenya. Mombasa has a lot of history and in modern day still serves as a major port of east Africa. Kenya receives a lot of revenue from land-locked neighbors like Uganda and Rwanda for use of the port.

I took a large bus that left Kisumu at 5pm on Thursday. The bus was only about half full leaving Kisumu because we would be picking up passengers along the way. I sat next to a really nice guy and we talked about all sorts of issues. He too was going to Mombasa to visit with friends. He had a degree in natural resources management so we had a long conversation about pollution and sanitation. I brought up how dirty Lake Victoria is. In Kisumu there's one major path that leads down to the lakefront but a lot of cars and trucks drive directly into the water and then the drivers wash their vehicles. So as you can imagine all of the dirt, oil, chemicals, etc go right into the lake water. Lake Victoria is beautiful from afar but definitely nothing to get excited about at shore-level.

It was really great being able to meet someone on the bus because we'd watch over each other at all the different stops. The bus stopped after about an hour and a half in Kericho to fuel and pick up passengers. The bus then made stops in Nakuru, Naivasha and Nairobi. The buses sometimes leave arbitrarily and without warning from stops so it was good to have someone to tell them if I wasn't on the bus yet. The toilets are always an interesting experience in rural Kenya. Most of the toilets are squatters and have just about everything all over the floors and walls. If you can imagine your worst truck-stop toilet and then multiply it by about 5, you'll be getting close to what some of these toilets are like. We got to Nairobi around midnight and waited there for about 40 minutes. Some people bought some food at a roadside stand but I ate the chapatis (flatbread) my househelp had packed for me. I had way too many chapatis so I made friends and shared them. The road leaving Nairobi toward Mombasa was pretty bad with some parts resembling the lunar surface. It's always difficult to sleep on a bus but I was able to get an hour or two in at a time between fuel/bathroom stops.

I finally got into Mombasa at 8:30am, fifteen and a half hours after I left Kisumu. I ended up sharing a tuk-tuk (three-wheeled motor vehicle that carries max. 3 passengers) with the guy I met on the bus into town. I went to the GPO (General Post Office) because that's where some of the other students from my program were meeting with our one professor. I called my one friend and we met up and talked for a little before all the other students came. The meeting went very well and our professor treated all of us to breakfast. It was really good to see a lot of the other students especially since they've all been working on the complete opposite side of the country from me.

After the meeting I explored the city with some of the students. Got a little turned around but it helped me learn the city quicker. Rachel got into town in the late afternoon so we all met up with her at the hotel and then all laid under the airconditioning for awhile. I couldn't walk more than 15 feet in Mombasa without being completely drenched in sweat.

On Saturday we all met up again to go to the famous beaches of Mombasa. We had to to take a matatu to the end of the island and then a ferry across to the mainland. From there we had to take another two matatus to eventually get to the beach. We met up with two other girls from our program at their resort. The beach was nice but it was low tide so we had to navigate through all the coral (away from the sea urchins and sand fish) to even get anywhere close to the water. We of course encountered the beach boys of Mombasa (no, not the group). Beach boys are young men who will try to sell you things or offer to show you around for money. They are often very persistent, annoying and bother tourists. It wasn't very long into our walk through the low tide when the beach boys started asking us for money. None of us brought money with us to the beach so it was easy to be honest in saying that we didn't have any money. Some of them became quite angry and kept trying to negotiate a price while some of the others backed down. We kept insisting that we did not actively seek out their services so we were not obligated to pay anything. They eventually left us alone with none of us giving them any money.

After that beach, we took a matatu further south to Diani beach and had lunch right on the water. It was really a great experience - there was a band playing your stereotypical beach rhythms with the nice breeze off the water. Rachel and I headed back to town after that because we were getting pretty tired. I surprisingly only got a little sunburn on my shoulders which was a great improvement from my beat-red legs from our Nile River rafting trip.

On Sunday, we walked around town for awhile. We did some shopping on Biashara Street for some kangas (an African-patterned wrap with sayings on them). We did some good-natured bargaining and got very good prices for them. After Biashara Street we walked to the other side of the island and took a tour of Fort Jesus, a 15th century Portegeuse fort on the Indian Ocean coast. I managed to get in for the Kenyan citizen rate which was greatly reduced from the non-resident rate. The fort was really interesting. There is one passage to ocean called the Passage of the Archways which was carved completely out of solid coral! We got some really good pictures that I'll work on getting up on Facebook or here this week. A student showed us around the fort and was very nice and informative. He showed us around a little bit of Old Town which consists of buildings that are hundreds of years old. We asked him upfront at the beginning how much he wanted for a tour (because nothing is ever free) and he said that since I was a Kenyan "citizen" (I have residency status) to not worry about it (Hakuna matata). At the end of the tour he of course brought about the issue of paying him. We had already agreed that we really enjoyed the tour and wanted to give him something for his time. All of the guide books we read recommended 100-200 KSH for a tour of Fort Jesus so we were prepared for something in that range. He asked us for 400 KSH each person! We were pretty shocked to hear his price especially since it only cost me 100 KSH to get IN to the fort. We told him that there was no way we'd pay 400 KSH and we settled on a much more reasonable price.

Sunday evening I boarded the bus for another 15-16 hour bus ride back to Kisumu. I arrived at 9am in Kisumu. I went home briefly but went to work by 10am.