Leaving Kasigau for some R & R at the coast

Leaving Kasigau was even more sad and hectic this trip than it has been in the past. Interns finished up their teaching in Bungule, and a few days later the Jora group completed their orphan project.

Our work was done for this visit, but it is the people of Kasigau and the mountain itself that makes us feel so connected with the place.

In Bungule the caterpillar was broken and parked in the town center as a jungle gym for children when we were saying our good-byes and wishing for more time with close friends. This visit we were very sad to say good-bye, even as we were anxious to get to the coast for some R&R.

On our way out of Kasigau Ken and I stopped to visit Chris Klaus and

his wife Christine, on her birthday. They are a Kenyan couple who have a lovely plot of land near the base of Python Rock at the Kiteghe end of the mountain, and are building a very nice set of bandas for visitors of all sorts from corporate trainings to volunteers working in the area. As yet unfinished, the lodging needs a name, so any readers who want to make suggestions can do so in the comments here on the blog. Chris also has a very innovative operation for making interlocking bricks from the local red dirt but with a small measure of concrete. The structures built from the interlocking bricks need no mortar and are much more durable in the Kasigau weather than just red dirt alone.

In Jora there was a combination going away party

and birthday party for Macaela's birthday, and as you can see from the photo, half the town turned out to "give a push" to the group as they left for the coast.

A bit of rest and relaxation at the coast has been the perfect follow-up to the hard work schedules and sparse living conditions of Kasigau. Mombasa is a laid back city with a reputation as a party town. After being here for over a week, I'm thinking maybe it is just too hot during the day, so people come out at night and do nighttime things revolving around food, drink, music, and dancing as it cools off.

We have a roomy 4 bedroom house right on the Indian Ocean south of Mombasa, complete with constant and reliable phone signal, internet access, lights, a small refrigerator, running water, flush toilets, and two supermarkets within a few miles and a few minutes.

We are on the south end of Diani Beach in an older compound of 2-4 bedroom cottages amid mostly empty small, exclusive luxury accommodations, and private residences that are also very luxurious and seem empty. April is the month for renovation on the beach, because apparently all the sun-seeking tourists are going home to nicer spring weather. It is nice because there is a balance of tourists and local fisherman working on the beach.

It seems like an especially luxurious life after living the banda life in Kasigau. We kept the Toyota Probox for a few days, and then sent it back to Nairobi in favor of cheap local matatu transportation up and down the beach. Life is good at the beach, where the major activities have tended toward photography, making sand castles, playing cards and games, and early morning and late evening walks on the beach. It took some time for each of us to relax, but now everyone seems to have the hang of just hanging out.

Tara, Liesl, Katy and her family left for Nairobi and their journey home on the 26th. Keenan just left on the 2nd of March for a few days in Nairobi with a friend (everyone is asking where February went).

Jenny Mae and Macaela, Molly and Jake, and Sara are here with Ken and me until the 7th. Keenan and Sara are flying out that same evening, and the rest of us are staying until the middle of the month.

Interns have been compiling their performance data on the specific skills they taught in Kasigau and it is very impressive. Of course we have no way of telling how much permanent advantage the learning will support, but we can say for sure that many students in Kasigau learned many basic skills in math, reading, writing, and studying/test taking.

The weather is very warm and humid here, and some of us are getting used to sleeping without even a sheet cover. Drying time for laundry and hair is much longer than the speedy dry we were used to in Kasigau.

It is especially hot and sweaty in the early morning and late evening when the wind is still and changing from off shore to on shore or vice versa. The ocean is beautiful shades of turquoise and green, and there is constant movement of small fishing boats, sailing dhows, and wind surfers, and the infrequent pleasure craft.

Seafood and produce merchants come right to our door a few times each week, so we started out eating healthy with fish, fruits, veggies, and all manner of whole grains we brought from Kasigau. The produce includes fresh mangos, pineapple, carrots, onions, tomatoes, squash, and the like, all of which we have inadvertently shared with monkeys.

The fish seller takes orders and fillets the fresh fish right outside our door. He is much loved by the resident cats, as well as by those of us who can't ever get enough fish to eat.

As we discovered at Tiwi Beach to the north in December, this part of the coast is home to many, many monkeys. There are reserves along Diani for endangered Colobus monkeys, which are quite definitely fewer in number than the verve's around our house.

Entire families of vervets hit the metal roof en force as soon as the sun rises at 6am, and spend their days casing our house for momentary lapses in vigilance regarding food. So far we have lost a bag of pasta, two jars of peanut butter, a box of digestive biscuits, quite a few fruits and veggies in various successful forays by monkey bandits. At first we found them enchanting and engaging, but soon came to realize they were watching us more closely than we were watching them, which is an eerie feeling.

Lately we have strayed to treats of gelato, iced coffee, cold beer, and alcoholic beverages with ice. Sort of a theme to our vices, a combination of the heat, humidity, and lack of even a cool drink of water for 2 months in the bush.

We have a favorite local beach bar and a couple favorite tourist hang outs when we get tired of the water and the beach house.

We had a wonderful seafood dinner the night before the first group of interns left: lobster, crab, prawns, coconut rice, rosemary potatoes, salad, and of course Tusker. This small place is our favorite on the beach because the local fishermen's cooperative is right next door and the supply of fish is so fresh that sometimes we see our meal coming up from the beach.

One unsettling aspect here at the Kenyan coast is the fact that the ocean is to the east, so the sun rises over the water and sets over the land. Despite having grown up on the east side of the US, I never did get my directions straight on our last trip here. When we were in Lamu in 2010, I was amazed every day about where the sun and moon were in the sky.

Here it is the sunrises that light up the water in the morning, and look amazingly similar to the sunsets in Washington. One thing for sure is that whether going up or coming down, the sun is more dramatic over the water than behind the trees!

This is a nice time to be on the beach because there are no big crowds but still enough people keep the full range of places open to eat, drink, and shop for souvenirs. We have met very few, if any, Americans at this end of the beach. Our fellow travelers are mostly European and African, and the beach boys are impressive with their mastery of English, Italian, German, French, and of course Swahili. Being here at this time of year has changed my notion of Diani beach, because at any given time at this end of the beach there are as many locals, most of them fishermen, as there are tourists.

The beach is very interesting for just hanging out, with a variety of strange and exotic birds, constantly dynamic high and low tides, unusual and beautiful objects of all sizes and shapes for beach combing, people from half nude Europeans to Masai in full warrior dress (with shades), parasailers riding the waves on boards harnessed to colorful sails, paragliders jumping out of airplanes, camel rider, ice cream carts, and even dog walkers.

Everyone took advantage of the available tropical ocean trips. Liesl, Tara, and Katy with family took a 1/2 day glass bottom boat and snorkel trip, the high (or low) point of which was a sea snake sighting. Jenny & Macaela, Molly & Jake, Keenan, and Sara went on the full day trip to Wasini Island that Ken, Claire, and I took with David in December, snorkeled with beautiful fish, and saw dolphins.

Ken and I went south to Chale Island for a snorkeling day, with three awesome Kenyan sailors on a small boat carved from a mango tree, sort of a combination sailing dhow and double outrigger. It is very restful and stress free to be in really warm water, because even if you fall overboard or capsize, the saltwater is like a buoyant bath, just cool enough to take the edge off the heat.

The coast is the heartland of Swahili language and culture in Kenya, and few people know of Kasigau or recognize the Taita language we have become accustomed to using. Everything from stairways to houses is built from coral, much different from the dry red dirt of Kasigau. And it is as damp here as it was dry in Kasigau. Instead of drying quickly, it seems our clothes, hair, and skin never dry completely.

So we are all practicing Swahili again and becoming expert at fending off the beach boys that are selling everything from coconuts to jewelry to carvings to scuba tours. We have also been soaking up all the walking on the beach, swimming, snorkeling, reading, writing, and shopping we can manage, and generally living the restful beach life for the last few days.

Our last outing as a group at the beach was a visit to Kaya Kinondo, the sacred forest that was the traditional home for the Digo people when they first migrated to Kenya. There are sixty some Kayas in Kenya, each a sacred trust for the local people who have moved out of the forests to the villages. The Kayas are all that is left of the long stretch of forest that once covered the coast of East Africa, and Kaya Kinondo is one of the few designated as a World Heritage Site.

The strip of forest along the coast was once underwater, which is evident from the coral covering the earth and the resultant tree roots that snake along the ground for lack of dirt for rooting.

Our two wonderful Digo guides, Juma and Abdul, provided a wonderful history of the place and the people, including the practice of hugging ancient trees in the Kaya as a way of hugging their ancestors who were buried there. We all tried it and can attest to the fact that it does provide a measure of comfort, relief, and well-being.

We also got to swing on a natural swing, and learned a bit about traditional medicine from the forest plants, and current rituals that are still practiced within the forest when there are personal or community problems that warrant intervention of the ancestors.

Kaya Kinondo was full of life of all sorts, rare and ancient trees, medicinal plants, owls and many other strange and wonderful birds, snakes, small antelope, and of course people from different parts of the world. It was a wonderful morning as we finished up our visit to the Kenyan coast.