Rum, Coke and Anti-Malarials
Back when I was in training hell in the UK, I happened to meet Patsy an ex-volunteer who had stayed on to an ex-pat and had been living in Kenya for years. She also happened to be based in Mombassa and so was the ideal person to ask for tips and locations to visit during my week at the coast.
"What's your budget?", she asked
"As little as possible", says I, "I just want to chill out for the week"
"In that case", she replied "Get yourself to Tiwi Beach, south of Mombassa. Find the Lodge, continue past the office and just before you reach the campsite on the right hand side you will find the Mozambican woodturner. Ask him if you can borrow Cath's tent."
Well, this was too utterly bizarre and random for me not to try! As soon as I could get out of bed having recovered sufficiently but not altogether from my flu, I headed south in a taxi. I hadn't realised but Mombassa is an island and rather than bother with bridges, they use ferries to cross the small inlets to the mainland but they took quite a while to get moving and meanwhile I was baking in the car. We got to the campsite and as my luck is as good as ever, Enriq the Mozambican woodturner was nowhere to be found - February is very definitely hors saison on the Kenyan coast. However Habib the beachboy appeared to know where to find him and left me with the camping ground guardsman to enjoy the seabreeze while he ran off to find the man with the tent. I watched two other campers, collecting wood, building a fire and preparing to cook some seafood in it. I marvelled at their energy, I could barely wave my hand without getting heat exhaustion.
It could have been an hour or two later when a short, heavy set man arrived with sweat pouring off him and a tent strapped to the back of his bike. He didn't appear to speak much English and neither my Portuguese nor my Swahili was up to conversational level, so Habib translated. I was very thankful that the lads even put the tent up for me, although this meant I didn't have a choice on its location. I had to move it the next day as the tent had no shade in the morning and by 730am I was already baking.
After the rigours of travelling in the heat, I had just enough energy to get a drink before crashing out. A few hours later I had just about enough energy to cross the campsite (approx 20m) and introduce myself to the two other campers. They were just finishing a meal of kingfish and stingray and offered me a taste. With them was an American lady staying at the Lodge, we'd chatted a little earlier in the afternoon. This was how I got to know Daniel, an Italian nearing the last stage of 9 months travelling and Fred, a German who'd gotten fed up with the grey skies of London and was hoping to find work as an electrician in and around Mombassa. He was staying at the beach to save money while his work permit application went through. Well, that and the fact that it was totally gorgeous at the coast.
The next day I was awake early from being baked in my tent, soon Mr Mango Man came along. He was an old guy with a bike who seemed to make his money from getting a nice selection of fruit and veg somewhere in the locality and selling them to the campers. You might think it was a little lazy of us not to go looking for the stuff ourselves but it was over 4kms to the main road and any civilisation, and the temperature was hovering about 35C with high humidity.
Anyway I wasn't hiking anywhere if I could help it - I was confined to strict shadebathing as I had left my sunblock in Nairobi and a mere 30 minutes under the sun was enough to fry me. I even went swimming fully clothed. That is to say, we went swimming when we could, which wasn't in the morning when we most needed it, as the tide was out. The beach wasn't swimmable until about 2pm so instead we went sneaking into the pool of the Barracuda resort, just 15 minutes walk down the beach but an entire world away in all other senses. Me and Daniel made the trek down to the pool in the morning after Fred had gone off to Mombassa for the day. I think we must have stood out amongst the better dressed resort people, most of whom seemed to be German or French. We were approached by one of the staff who welcomed us most warmly even after we'd said we were from outside the hotel.
By that time Fred, Daniel and I had formed our own mini hippy colony, buying, cooking, eating and everything together. I'd estimated that between bargaining for the fish, bargaining for fruit and veg, finding food, building the fire, preparing the food and cleaning afterwards at least half of our days were occupied. As I looked around at the hotel dwellers with drinks on tap and buffets available, I began to wonder what did they do to fill their time?
I wasn't long in the dark, soon there were multilingual announcements that aqua-aerobics were about to start in the pool. Daniel and I were roped in to make up numbers, it was a pretty weird experience, doing all sorts of (not very athletic) nonsense in the pool, the chief effect of which was to leave me with a burnt nose. Some of our number went dashing off at the end of the class so as not to be late for volley ball - there seemed to be a different activity every half hour.
Fred arrived back with a bottle of rum from Mombassa and I was in the mood for celebrating. It was the first time in a month I had absolutely nothing to do and you couldn't knock the smile off my face. For a whole day I reveled in the utter euphoria of simply being. And things started to make a bit more sense, perhaps I had come all this way just to regain a bit of me. And that was reason enough for anything...
Notes
Mozambique is one of the few former Portuguese territories on the continent. Angola is another and both are terribly poor, even by African standards. I heard tell that the Portuguese took everything that wasn't nailed down when they left their colonies, right down to the lightbulbs! . Return to story
"What's your budget?", she asked
"As little as possible", says I, "I just want to chill out for the week"
"In that case", she replied "Get yourself to Tiwi Beach, south of Mombassa. Find the Lodge, continue past the office and just before you reach the campsite on the right hand side you will find the Mozambican woodturner. Ask him if you can borrow Cath's tent."
Well, this was too utterly bizarre and random for me not to try! As soon as I could get out of bed having recovered sufficiently but not altogether from my flu, I headed south in a taxi. I hadn't realised but Mombassa is an island and rather than bother with bridges, they use ferries to cross the small inlets to the mainland but they took quite a while to get moving and meanwhile I was baking in the car. We got to the campsite and as my luck is as good as ever, Enriq the Mozambican woodturner was nowhere to be found - February is very definitely hors saison on the Kenyan coast. However Habib the beachboy appeared to know where to find him and left me with the camping ground guardsman to enjoy the seabreeze while he ran off to find the man with the tent. I watched two other campers, collecting wood, building a fire and preparing to cook some seafood in it. I marvelled at their energy, I could barely wave my hand without getting heat exhaustion.
It could have been an hour or two later when a short, heavy set man arrived with sweat pouring off him and a tent strapped to the back of his bike. He didn't appear to speak much English and neither my Portuguese nor my Swahili was up to conversational level, so Habib translated. I was very thankful that the lads even put the tent up for me, although this meant I didn't have a choice on its location. I had to move it the next day as the tent had no shade in the morning and by 730am I was already baking.
After the rigours of travelling in the heat, I had just enough energy to get a drink before crashing out. A few hours later I had just about enough energy to cross the campsite (approx 20m) and introduce myself to the two other campers. They were just finishing a meal of kingfish and stingray and offered me a taste. With them was an American lady staying at the Lodge, we'd chatted a little earlier in the afternoon. This was how I got to know Daniel, an Italian nearing the last stage of 9 months travelling and Fred, a German who'd gotten fed up with the grey skies of London and was hoping to find work as an electrician in and around Mombassa. He was staying at the beach to save money while his work permit application went through. Well, that and the fact that it was totally gorgeous at the coast.
The next day I was awake early from being baked in my tent, soon Mr Mango Man came along. He was an old guy with a bike who seemed to make his money from getting a nice selection of fruit and veg somewhere in the locality and selling them to the campers. You might think it was a little lazy of us not to go looking for the stuff ourselves but it was over 4kms to the main road and any civilisation, and the temperature was hovering about 35C with high humidity.
Anyway I wasn't hiking anywhere if I could help it - I was confined to strict shadebathing as I had left my sunblock in Nairobi and a mere 30 minutes under the sun was enough to fry me. I even went swimming fully clothed. That is to say, we went swimming when we could, which wasn't in the morning when we most needed it, as the tide was out. The beach wasn't swimmable until about 2pm so instead we went sneaking into the pool of the Barracuda resort, just 15 minutes walk down the beach but an entire world away in all other senses. Me and Daniel made the trek down to the pool in the morning after Fred had gone off to Mombassa for the day. I think we must have stood out amongst the better dressed resort people, most of whom seemed to be German or French. We were approached by one of the staff who welcomed us most warmly even after we'd said we were from outside the hotel.
By that time Fred, Daniel and I had formed our own mini hippy colony, buying, cooking, eating and everything together. I'd estimated that between bargaining for the fish, bargaining for fruit and veg, finding food, building the fire, preparing the food and cleaning afterwards at least half of our days were occupied. As I looked around at the hotel dwellers with drinks on tap and buffets available, I began to wonder what did they do to fill their time?
I wasn't long in the dark, soon there were multilingual announcements that aqua-aerobics were about to start in the pool. Daniel and I were roped in to make up numbers, it was a pretty weird experience, doing all sorts of (not very athletic) nonsense in the pool, the chief effect of which was to leave me with a burnt nose. Some of our number went dashing off at the end of the class so as not to be late for volley ball - there seemed to be a different activity every half hour.
Fred arrived back with a bottle of rum from Mombassa and I was in the mood for celebrating. It was the first time in a month I had absolutely nothing to do and you couldn't knock the smile off my face. For a whole day I reveled in the utter euphoria of simply being. And things started to make a bit more sense, perhaps I had come all this way just to regain a bit of me. And that was reason enough for anything...
Notes
Mozambique is one of the few former Portuguese territories on the continent. Angola is another and both are terribly poor, even by African standards. I heard tell that the Portuguese took everything that wasn't nailed down when they left their colonies, right down to the lightbulbs! . Return to story
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