Mombasa!

We travelled over night via train to the coast from Nairobi several days ago. Mombasa is the main coastal city here - a major east african port, and quite a lovely walkable city who's center is an island. Our first stop was to spend some time in northern Tiwi beach on a working farm that was the home of Grace Akinya.



"Mama Grace," who is recently deceased, is the grandmother of an acquaintance through my friend Cathy, Hettie Hughes. A young Kenyan/Scot doing her doctorate in sociology (focussing on the sociology of HIV infection) in the UK, Hettie generously invited Hung & I to spend a few nights on her farm close to the Indian Ocean coast. It was a lovely spot (pictures to come) and the farm itself was rich with black loamy soil that was nurturing mango, papaya, cashews, cassava root, machengwa (oranges) and lots of chickens, cows and goats.





Here we all are eating a full English brekkie with our lovely young escort, Ngochi, who is a swahili rap artist in Mombasa.



We were dripping with sweat the whole time we were there - the coast is hotter and more humid than Nairobi - and much to our surprise, the ocean was actually hot as well!

We only ended up staying one night as Hung was anxious to get to Mombasa. We are both really enjoying the city - Hung seems to be a magnet for all types of communication. He has the opportunity when he walks alone to converse with the great mix of cultures that exist here - old and new, sacred and profane, high and low - overall the city is slower and friendlier - like Nairobi with the edges melted off.





The call to prayer has begun to punctuate our days here, as it will all along the coast of Tanzania. We are so far a bit "off" time as we keep sitting down for meals just before the call & thus miss out on food prepareed for after prayer time, but I guess we'll get on schedule soon enough. We went to a Kenyan bar last night & ended up causing a small stir just by being there - soon enough music and beer became common denominators through which people could hold forth on their life philosophies. Tonight we are going to head to a live reggae spot that a young Swahili speaking rasta-rapper named Ngochi told us was a good spot on Sundays. Tomorrow we head for Dar es Salaam and Tanzania. I have some great photos, but its hard to convert them here. Will try again from Dar.