Our friend Beverly Resnik-Dezan is visiting for two weeks and we are taking some time to visit more of the country. Our first outing was a four-day excursion to the coast—to Mombasa and points north along the Indian Ocean. We began with an overnight bus ride Wednesday night and returned on a daytime bus Monday. The trip is billed as an 8-hour drive, including a 20 minute rest stop halfway—in fact it was closer to 9. There was a road diversion on the way and heavy traffic in Nairobi on our return. There are six or eight bus companies serving this route, and it’s the way most Kenyans travel, since it’s a lot cheaper than flying (less than $20 each way, compared to $110). The folks at Daystar we consulted about our trip had lots of advice on which buses to take, and one of them said we must be sure to use the company that hires Muslim drivers, because they are much less reckless than Christian drivers. (We tried both, and we would agree.)
David got quite a bit of sleep on the way to Mombasa, though the air conditioning wasn't really working, and the bus driver and attendant favored us with a loud and very badly made American post-apocalypse film to while away the hours. Beverly and I got caught up on sleep in the car that met us at the bus in Mombasa and drove us north along the coast.
We spent Thursday exploring the ruins of Gedi, a Swahili city built in about the 13th century and abandoned in the 15th. There were dozens of such cities up and down the coast, but when the Portuguese took most of the coastal trade away from the Arabs, their residents moved on. Swahili culture is identified with African Muslims on the coast who built cities and lived by trade, in sharp contrast to the surrounding African peoples (Mijikenda and Giriama), who cultivated the land and lived in villages in the forests.
Next to the Gedi ruins was a community development project to collect butterfly eggs from the adjoining coastal forest, raise the caterpillars, and export pulpae. The knowledgeable guide enjoyed talking with Beverly, an expert on butterflies. We recognized several of the butterfly species they export as ones that we’ve seen at Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids.
Our driver (hired for the day) was somewhat nervous about our plans because our destination was the home of some friends of a friend of Beverly’s that none of us had ever visited, and our directions included only a few notes I had jotted down about looking for a signboard after two speed bumps. But everything worked out smoothly and, as he helped us unpack the car he murmured to me, “You are very lucky people.” Lucky indeed! We had come to a lovely sprawling bungalow in a clearing in the coastal forest, near the beach, surrounded by beautiful flowers and flowering trees. The wonderfully hospitable owners, whom none of us had ever met, welcomed us with such warm hospitality that we felt as if we were their own long-lost children. They had insisted, when Susan first contacted them by phone last week, that if we came all that way we must stay three nights with them—no trouble at all, they assured us, and they seemed truly sorry that we held to our plan to return on Sunday.
And what a treasury of memories and stories they provided! Peter is a third-generation Kenyan, but he attended boarding school in Britain and then went up to Cambridge. His wife Carissa moved to this seaside property in 1949 when she was about 5 and her father was already 60. The family was living northwest of Nairobi at the time but had purchased a completely untouched tract of forest that the colonial government had just decided to open for settlement. Her stories were amazing--slashing their way through the brush and camping out for the first year in a clearing in the forest while they built the house. There were elephants, leopards, Cape buffalo, hordes of monkeys, and half a dozen varieties of venomous snakes in the forest, with no roads and no paths to the water’s edge. Moreover, the local residents insisted that they could not begin building until the local deities, who lived in the caves, had given their approval—and the first two times they went to inquire on their behalf the gods were not ready to agree. At last Carissa’s father insisted on accompanying the elders and talking to the gods himself, and this time they were ready to work out an arrangement (an arrangement that includes—to the present day—permission for the Mijikenda to use the caves for prayers whenever they wish to).
The family’s ties to the past were particularly evident when we visited the Moslem merchant in the nearby village whose father supplied Carissa's parents with needed goods. And also when we were supplied with a proper cup of tea before breakfast every day and every afternoon around 4! The drawback of being on the coast is that it was extremely hot and humid--very hard to sleep at night, brutal at midday. But what a place to live! In addition to the caves, which we explored one day with their gardener, there's a 15th century Swahili ruin on their property, baobab trees many centuries old that six of us could not begin to reach around by linking arms, fountains of bougainvillea flowers and flamboyant trees, and, at the end of a short path through the woods, a beautiful white beach on the Indian Ocean.
Mainly we relaxed, but David and Beverly got in a morning of snorkeling on reefs at the Mida Creek Marine Reserve near Turtle Bay. The minute they leaped off the boat into the water, they reported, they were surrounded by fifty varieties of brilliantly colored tropical fish, including zebrafish, parrotfish, angelfish, trumpetfish, gobies, large groupers being groomed by tiny wrasses, and more, over beds of anemone and coral.
On Sunday, we joined our hosts for the Eucharist at a small Anglican church in Nyali, just north of Mombasa island. It’s a small congregation, mostly African, and we were surprised to find that both the dynamic young vicar of the parish and the deacon who delivered the sermon were women. The Kenyan prayerbook, revised in 2002, has some beautiful responses and prayers that have a contemporary ring and yet are formal in tone. We bought at copy at the church.
Then we caught a taxi onto the island of Mombasa, left our luggage at the hotel, and went out exploring. We toured Fort Jesus, a coastal fortress built by the Portuguese in 1597 that has an amazingly bloody history. A popular revolt in 1631 killed every Portuguese soldier or officer in the fort; but the Sultan of the town soon abandoned it to the Portuguese again. At the end of that century Omani Arabs raised a siege that lasted 33 months, until nearly all the Portuguese soldiers and 1500 loyal Swahili residents were dead of starvation. Control of the fort changed hand six more times in the next two centuries. Finally in 1875 the British leased Mombasa and the coastal strip of what is now Kenya and Tanzania from the Sultan of Zanzibar. They used the fort as a prison until 1953.
Wilting with heat after our tour in the noontime sun, we found a coffee shop with low tables, cushions, and strong ceiling fans and enjoyed spiced Swahili coffee, flavored with cardamom and cinnamon bark. Then we wandered through the narrow lanes and back alleys of the old town, soon joined by several eager young men who brought us to shops selling bright printed cloth, spices, and luscious tropical fruit. They offered their services to bargain on our behalf, which of course meant that they would quietly get a minimum price from the vendor in Swahili and then add their markup. Beverly proved to be an even more determined bargainer than we are. We’re sure the merchants are still scratching their heads wondering why they sold to those tourists at half their cost.
We stayed in one of the oldest hotels in the central city, newly restored and reopened, which had very helpful staff, a memorable buffet breakfast, and very clean and comfortable rooms. Well, some of them—Bev’s was fine. In our room, the air conditioning made lots of noise but did absolutely nothing. After two different experts visited our room and confirmed that, indeed, it was doing nothing, we were moved to another room—very cramped, insufficient light for reading, but an air conditioner that brought the environment from steamy to frigid in minutes, and could not be adjusted. We did sleep pretty well in our cold locker, thanks to the thick blankets provided.
We were struck by the strong Hindu presence as well as the Arab and Muslim influence that were visible all along the north coast. Mombasa feels very different from Nairobi in culture, climate, and pace. It was a good visit, and yet it felt good to return home to Nairobi’s cooler, drier days and cool nights.
To see the photos again, go to:http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/MombasaAndVipingo?authkey=Gv1sRgCP6EmqOsycDKZA&feat=directlink
To see the photos again, go to:http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/MombasaAndVipingo?authkey=Gv1sRgCP6EmqOsycDKZA&feat=directlink
