Mombasa and Rain

April 29, 2006
Today was uneventful AND unproductive. We only ended up with two poops after having faithfully tracked them all day through all kinds of forest conditions. D'oh! We ate lunch at the Hot Point Café and although they had promised to have coconut soup, they did not, so chapatti and beans it was. We came home, ate dinner, and got to meet Colin's new dog, Bonga (zulu for "Thank You" and a "lion's roar"). He
was VERY tiny and cute!

April 28, 2006
Today was quite the rain day. We went into work and after about 2 hrs the rain came. We got absolutely soaked and just sat around the office reading a book and talking with each other waiting for it to clear. It didn't. At some point we decided to use our time wisely and get some much needed errands done in Malindi. We got to Malindi and there was no electricity making it very difficult to do our email
and get money out of the ATM. Fortunately, the electricity came back on about an hour after we got there and we managed to accomplish everything we had set out to do. We even bought some Swahili reading for kids in grades 1,2, and 4 (we already have grade 3). We got back to Mwamba early and found out that the rain had never let up, so we had made a good choice. Patrick and Leslie had also gone home. I
decided to study some Swahili and just relax. After dinner, the Mwamba folks played games until deciding to watch a movie. When the movie was about to begin the electricity went out. It has become much more unreliable now that the rains have come. We still managed to watch a movie on someone's laptop. We watched 'Mr. Deeds', a not-so-great Adam Sandler flick. Surprise, surprise. It was
entertaining, so it worked for me!

April 27, 2006
We had another morning of rain, and Scott was in no mood to get up. Monica had had some fun dreams the night before about huge 6" long caterpillars in Kilifi that were crawling around on the ground, and then it turned dark, so all she could do was feel them crawling around. We ended up walking to Turtle Bay this morning since the matatu did not show up until much later (i.e., as we were just arriving at Turtle Bay), and Scott was Mr. Grumpypants. The morning was rough, and our follows were not very successful for poop. We stopped for a 5 minute lunch of rock hard peanut butter and honey sandwiches … at least we had a bottle of our own homemade iced sweet
tea. After our quick lunch, things started going better, and we ended up with all of the follows and sample we had wanted for the day.

April 26, 2006
We could tell it was raining outside in the dark, as we tried to get ourselves up out of bed. We got ready but could not find our laundry, which we had left to be done while we were gone. Luckily we found a few things waiting to be ironed. Monica was the first to search for our clothes and ended up finding nothing except how easy it is to slip on the wet cement porch, which has left her with a massive blue bruise
on her knee. Scott had a bit more luck.

We ended up catching a ride to Gede from Stanley, and were able to make it to the office before it started pouring rain. A little while later we saw Leslie stroll in soaked through. When the rain stopped, we went to find our group, which has taken to foraging around in the extreme south end of the park, a 15 minute walk from the office. The area is overgrown with low-lying bushes and thorned vines – just the
type of place you want to be looking through. It was raining off and on all day, and right as the last big rain was coming through, Scott was following one of the monkeys who had decided to run through the forest away from the rest of the group. Apparently, the monkey went right through a bee hive area, because Scott walked straight into a swarm of bees and was stung 3 times before he was able to get out.

April 25, 2006
We had a great night's sleep on our new pillow!! It is amazing just how crappy our pillows here at Mwamba are! I woke up at 6am as usual, but forced myself back to sleep until 8am, when I decided to read my book. We handed our hotel room over to Leslie while we ate breakfast so she could enjoy the luxury of a bathtub. The bathtub had been her idea, but unfortunately she was unable to get a room that had one.

Scott and I had a wonderful breakfast! Unlike our usual breakfast of 'cardboard' toast with jam from a can, we had poached eggs with sausage and bacon, fresh fruit, toast, passion fruit juice, and chai (tea with milk). What a treat!

We checked out of our room after having taken some pictures of the hotel, called Nicodemus (our tuk tuk guy) and headed for a matatu to Haller (Bamburi) Park. The matatu ride was quick and uneventful (aside from the good rap music they were playing). The park is 35 years old and used to be a huge limestone quarry until they decided to create this park. We paid our 600ksh each for admission to the park and spoke with the woman behind the desk in Swahili. At the reception desk we got our guide and began the tour. First, we got to feed the giraffes, the main thing Leslie wanted to do. There were two babies, a 19-yr old male and 2 or 3 12-yr old females (Giraffes live 20-30 years).

They did a great job of creating the environments. They planted a specific type of evergreen tree, because it grows so tall so quickly. This tree also sheds some of its needles, which gives the ground nutrients, helping to create a nice (albeit very thin … only 5cm in some areas) topsoil for other plants to grow and thrive. It seems to have worked well! The vegetation is quite thick, and they've created
an environment where lots of types of animals can live. The river that the crocs live in has enough fish in it for the crocs to live on while the fish reproduce fast enough to keep a reasonably constant population (despite being snack food for the crocs). It has become self-sustaining! This park has become much more well-known recently as 'Owen and Mzee' have become famous. Owen is a hippo that was
stranded by the tsunami last year. He was brought here and made friends with Mzee, a 130-yr old tortoise! An email (one that I had thought was fake) has been going around about them ever since. We went to see them and managed to do so, although they were apart at the time.

Next we saw some Waterbuck and a vervet monkey (there were more of these to come). We entered crocodile country and saw many more crocs than I had ever seen before! We saw the 40-yr old big croc and several sunning themselves with their mouths open (they keep their mouths open to regulate their temp, not because they are hungry). We saw their aquaculture place where they breed tilapia (of which there are 70 species worldwide!). We had lunch at the park restaurant. Leslie had the Kenyan buffet (good, but a bit pricey for Kenyan food) and Scott and I had a chapatti each and the Tilapia Starter Fish Fingers. We eat light but didn't realize just how light until we saw the fish. It was only 1 fish finger that was 2" x 1"! We staying and talked for several hours and Scott and Leslie got into a rather heated discussion about building efficient houses. I was amused. We walked around until we found a group of vervet monkeys and stopped to watch the little ones play in the puddles of water. It was very cute and their behavior was very similar to that of our Sykes monkeys. We then admired the male and his robin's egg blue testicles! They are rather shocking, yet impressive! It also makes it easy to tell the males
from the females! We also witnessed a very familiar site: these monkey groups had all come together just like at Gede. We discovered it was not because the tourists provisioned them directly, but because the tourists fed the giraffes and what the
giraffes dropped, the monkeys took. The result was very similar behavior to that of our Gede monkeys. Interesting…

On the way to see the hippos being fed, we almost literally ran into a Waterbuck (?) lying right across the path! He was huge, with long horns and we couldn't decide what to do until he helped us decide by getting up and looking like he was going to charge. We decided to go back the way we had come and find another way. We finally got to see the hippos being fed. One was being fed separately and a cameraman was filming it (from National Geographic like his hat said?). We soon realized this was not THE hippo feeding and got to it just in time. It was so cool to see the two hippos surface in the water, get out (they were HUGE!) and eat while vervet monkeys and various birds walked around them also eating their food!

This ended our trip, so we headed back to reception. Suddenly, we heard what sounded like a large explosion and shook the earth. We ducked and tried to figure out what had happened. When we found other people no one seemed disturbed by this. Scott soon realized it was just a normal explosion from the now existing part of the quarry! We saw some large tortoises and were reminded of the sign we had seen
when we came in reminding us 'Do not sit on the tortoises'. We decided to make a short movie clip to remind us of this!

We took a matatu back to Mombasa to get an 'Express' matatu back to Malindi. We got on a matatu, which we were told was an express, but later discovered it was only express to Kilifi. From Kilifi we had to get out and were 'shooed' into a charter bus. While the bus was nice, no one would tell us how much it would cost. Luckily, it was the same price as the matatu and the bus had air conditioning so it was great!! From the Gede Junction we caught a matatu to Turtle Bay and sat next to a very drunk African who kept asking us why we couldn't understand his English (of course he was slurring way too much!). We ate dinner at Turtle Bay Resort once we got through the hotel guards who thought we wanted to eat at their restaurant, not their Pizza Garden. The place was nice, the prices were good, and the service was good, but security was strong. They escorted Leslie to the restroom and then told her to take off her hat once she had sat down. She kept saying no, until the waiter said it was restaurant rules. She did so hesitantly. Her hair was sweaty and crazy underneath! Scott and I started laughing. The waiter joined in and put the hat back on her head. He was laughing to himself about this every time he came back
to our table; she made his night!

The meal was great! The garlic cheese bread was to die for, my pasta alfredo was good and so was Scott's pizza. We will likely go again. We took a taxi back to Mwamba since the bodas were all gone for the night.

April 24, 2006
We woke up bright and early today to catch the morning matatu to Malindi. The object was to head onward to Mombasa. We had gathered several good tips last night from Lispa, Lawrence, and Ben about what we should pay, which matatus not to take, etc. It worked out well; we followed their directions and went down the street next to the market; on the side of the road are parked "express" matatus, which will only stop in Malindi and Mombasa. The trip only cost us 180KSh each, and it was smooth. We headed straight for the Provincial Headquarters, where the immigration office is located, via tuk tuk to start the process of extending our visas. The process is properly bureaucratic:

1. Arrive at the HQ and go to the help desk for directions
   
2. Go to the building next door, where the office of alien registration is located, and enter Room 2 for an alien registration form
   
3. After filling out, go to Room 1 where an official stamps and signs the form
   
4. Take the signed form back to Room 2 where they take your money, passport photos, and give you a receipt (no passport photos? Take a tuk tuk across town to a passport photo studio)
   
5. Take the receipt with you back to the HQ and go to the help desk where you can obtain a visa renewal form.
   
6. After filling out the visa renewal form, go through the hidden, unmarked door in the corner of the room, and go down the hallway to Room 3. Wait for the official to sign your visa renewal form. (no return air ticket? Unless the official is unusually nice, you will need to return with it before you can get the signature)
   
7. Take the signed form to Counter 6, where you pay the fee, get a visa stamp, and get a receipt.
   
8. Take the receipt, and stamped paper to Counter 4 to have the visa
   stamp signed and dated.
   

Congratulations, you have successfully navigated the Cape of Endless Bureaucracy! We saw Leslie, as we were just finishing Step 7. She had been the first person in line in the morning (since she had stayed in Mombasa over night, she was able to catch an early tuk tuk to the HQ), but she did not have the photos and ended up spending a few hours getting passport photos made. We gave her Sarah's phone to call us when she finished and left while she was just starting Step 6. Sarah, Jo (the new volunteer), and we left to find food, which of course meant that as we stepped out of the HQ, it started to rain hard.

We wandered for a few blocks looking for a restaurant and getting completely waterlogged in the process, and finally went back to a café at the trade school next door to the HQ to grab lunch. The café had a limited assortment of food (i.e., 6 slices of bread and a few eggs + matoke), so we ordered what they had and split it among us. We received a call from Leslie while we were waiting for our food, saying
she would be with us shortly. After finishing lunch and waiting a while, we finally gave up and started to leave. Just then, Leslie pulls up, and says that the driver had to run a "quick 5-minute errand", which had taken him 1/2 of an hour to finish. We walked to Fort Jesus, saw the fort from the outside, saw the price, and decided
that there are other cool things to see in Mombasa for a lot less. We hailed a tuk tuk and somehow fit 5 people in it (amazing if you know the size of a tuk tuk) then went to the Nakumatt.

What is Nakumatt you might ask? Well, it is a grand shopping complex that looks exactly like a Wal-Mart without the clothing section and with a furniture section added in. It is the largest shopping complex in Kenya. Normally, we would be unexcited, but after months of haggling at tiny kiosks and running all over Malindi to find things we could not find in Watamu or Gede, it was heavenly to just browse a few shelves and find what we needed. We even found ice lolly (i.e., British for "popcicle") moulds! We left our shopping orgy at Nakumatt to take a matatu to Biashara Street (oh, silly wazungu). We ended up
being dropped off blocks from where we needed to be, and had to make our way to the fabric district. We made it finally and Sarah and Jo decided to do some shopping while the rest of us headed towards the Jain Temple. We asked someone directions, and he told us where to go (while his friends struggled to keep from laughing) … we decided to get a tuk tuk instead.

The Jain Temple was a much needed sanctuary from the crazy streets of Mombasa. We looked at the interesting Jain sculptures then regrouped and ate coconut fingers and Chevda (Indian Chex Mix) while deciding to forgo a trip to Diani Beach to see the Colobus Trust in favor of staying with Leslie in Mombasa. It was too rainy to enjoy a resort experience and we thought we were trying to fit too much into this
trip. We took a tuk tuk first to Lotus and then decided to compare it with the Royal Court Hotel. The Lotus was very cute and had a lot of character but didn't have bathtubs (something we were really hoping for); the Royal Court Hotel was very Hilton-esque, and while fancy, was a bit too expensive and American for our liking (i.e. we could easily stay at a similar place when we get back to the states). We
decided to stay at the Lotus, were able to bargain down the price and when we were shown our room, we discovered it even had a bathtub in it!! How perfect

After enjoying the luxury of the hotel, we called Nicodemus, our
reliable tuk tuk driver friend and we went to Galaxy Chinese Restaurant for a tasty meal of sesame chicken, fried rice, cashew chicken, and tea!! While we were there, we had three power outages (just to remind us we were in Africa) but our food was still good as ever and we took it all in stride. Nicodemus collected us after our
meal and after discovering that the Bollywood (sp?) movie Leslie had convinced us to join her at wasn't playing, we returned to Lotus for drinks. The Lotus had a great friendly staff and a great bar area (although they kept having to ask whether they had some of the stuff we were requesting). Monica had a Malibu and Coke (well…two) and Scott had a Smirnoff Ice and a Guiness Malta (a non-alcoholic
barley-based malted beverage). He's hooked now and will be bringing some home from Africa for sure. We had fun talking and unwinding, but Scott kept dozing off. We made it an early night and resolved to sleep in.