Mombasa, Kenya - The End of an Era

(July 16-19)It has been fun living in Nyali (3.5 weeks total) and seeing Mombasa and the area, but I am ready to move on to a new location and experience new sights. I also need a break from the large crowded city for some outdoor time. Saying goodbye to my Nyali home will not be easy though. I will miss JacyJoka apartments (pictured below), the kind staff (especially both Steves who always laughed at my comments and greeted me), doing my laundry by hand in giant buckets (hard yet rewarding work), and the random decor. The Nyali Nakumatt will also be greatly missed – bye Kenya’s Wal-mart. Where else will I get to see colorful signs for Obama Boyz Car Wash and TONS of matatus honking (one shown below)??


Friday was our big Old Town Mombasa sightseeing and shopping day. We started out with a tour of the famous Fort Jesus. It’s right on the water and was originally carved out of a giant area of coral in 1593 by the Portuguese in the general shape of Jesus with his arms stretched out. You just have to go see it I guess. It was actually really interesting (Portuguese, Arabs, and British have all occupied it at one time) and there was a small little museum with awesome artifacts etc. After that we did a walking/shopping tour of the city for a few hours. We managed to stop at “Mbwana Radio record store” (more like a car repair shop with cassette tapes), kanga/kikoe shops (wraps/nice cloths), wooden carvings store, and spice shop (for the record, guide books, there is no giant spice market like both books showed – local people looked at us like we were insane when we asked).

Being from the US and looking, dressing, and talking different apparently makes me appealing to the guys here despite sweating my face off and feeling grossie. Case in point we had numerous ridiculous things said to us as we walked along, but there were two events that happened to me in particular. Okay, those of you that know the “Nice Face” LA story are not going to believe this! Some random Kenyan guy gave me the SAME motion (hand in a circular motion around his face) and mouthed to me that I had a nice face and then said he liked it (creepy crawler alert). Then later in one of the kanga shops I was browsing through stacks of fabric the height of Shaq when an employee handed me a small piece of paper with a paragraph written on it (which there is no doubt in my mind he has used for others). What did the paper say?? Well I skimmed it quite fast and only got the gist, but essentially he wanted to talk to me, loved me, blah blah creepy blah. I quickly gave it back avoided eye contact for at least another 20 minutes as my friends shopped, and I tried to tell them what happened. He was not happy with my reaction or rejection; as I left he tried to grab my arm and get me to talk to him. No thanks – I’m gonna have to PASS on that (Jess Menaker that’s for you).

During our walk we also saw various temples and learned that one Muslim prayer time is 1PM and everything was closed for an hour. It was also extremely nice to enter the Catholic Cathedral and pray for a few minutes (it reminded me of the one I saw in Peru). We dined at Island Dishes, a legit hole-in-the wall Swahili place with amazingly hot green chili chili sauce as they called it. We also popped into a bar for some Tusker beers as a break to the crazy hot day, and we wrote a couple of postcards and mailed them at the post office afterwards. Later we stopped by the giant famous tusks (shown below) that go over one spot in the road, and Maki got her desired picture. We wrapped the day up by eating on the rooftop of Royal Court Hotel where we saw the whole city from above at sunset – nice ending to a very long hot day.


Saturday we had a slow morning with lunch nearby before we said goodbye to Liz. Then Maki and I decided we couldn’t mope around, so we headed to Nyali Hollywood Bowl (true story, real place, pictures below to prove it!). There were 6 lanes of bowling, 3 pool tables, US music (pretty updated – thanks for playing Apple Bottom Jeans for me – yes there is a video of me dancing/bowling to it – thanks Maki), air conditioning (really sorry you missed it Liz!), lots of teenagers, and Maki crushing me on lane 4 in 2 games (first score was me 47ish, Maki 70s). Our only real dinner option as respectable adults (unless we wanted popcorn at the movie theater or ice cream at the café) became Roberto’s (4th time for Maki in two weeks and 3rd time for me). I was in bed by 10PM after our “big Saturday night out”.


The plan is to meet up with John Jones and Ben Vannier (more Kellogg classmates) on Tuesday to spend a day seeing Nairobi. Then we head to the famous Masai Mara Game Reserve (the Kenya side of the Serengeti National Park) for a couple of days of safari to try and see the famous Wildebeest migration which has started. Finally the three of us will go to Tanzania for our week long Mount Kilimanjaro hike and then we are off to Egypt. I have finally provided a map of Kenya and enough of Tanzania for you to better see where I have been and will be going soon. As you can see Kenya is pretty large (about the size of California), and I have only been in one section of it this whole time. Okay, more safari stories coming soon…until then, I hope you are all doing well! Sarah.