Planes, Trains, Donkeys, and Dhows

After two days in Nairobi, getting to know the city and finalizing details for the upcoming conference, we headed out for a seaside escape at the Kenyan coast before the arrival of the conference participants. The first leg of the journey – from the hotel to the train station by taxi – was the toughest, taking us over a half-hour to travel less than two miles in the Nairobi rush hour traffic, or “the jam” as it’s called here.

Our first-class cabin on the overnight train ride to Mombasa had seen better days, but the ride itself gave us a great opportunity to see some of the Kenyan countryside. The service on the train, however, was stellar. The train manager, the car supervisor, and the car attendant each came to our compartment, introduced themselves, showed us how to lock the window and doors, and practically tucked us in and read us a story. The dining car was a throwback to colonial days, with waiters dressed in all white, some with turbans; china bearing the “KR” Kenyan Railways logo; and cutlery and tableware (included covered butter dish) embossed with the crown. We dined with our neighbors, a French couple who had just come from safari, and the dinner conversation, a mishmash of English, French, and charades, improved steadily with the intake of Tusker beer. The greatest challenge of the somewhat jerky ride was the toilet – of the squat variety, but luckily with a handrail for stability.

By the time we arrived (only four hours late), we had less than 24 hours to spend in Mombasa, Kenya’s second city, so we started the sightseeing immediately. First stop: the Old Law Courts, which has been converted into a small museum with an exhibit on Swahili culture and dress. Next stop: Fort Jesus, built by the Portuguese in 1593, then overtaken by the Omani Arabs, then the British, and back and forth nine times until finally falling into British hands in 1875 and remaining with the British until Kenyan independence in 1963. We then headed over to the old town, but before we could get very far, we met Humphrey (“Call me Humphrey Bogart”) who became our unofficial guide. Winding our way through narrow back alleyways past homes with traditional wood carved doors, we learned to distinguish between the Arab doors, bordered with a chain that signified the slave trade; the Indian doors; and the Swahili doors. We wandering through the markets: the spice market; the Indian market; and the market operated by Mombasa’s newest immigrants, Somali refugees who began arriving about 15 years ago, and, according to Humphrey, offer the best quality and the lowest prices. We also made a stop near the old dhow port, now made close to obsolete by the huge commercial port on the other side of the harbor. Today this port is used by dhows transporting goods from Zanzibar, Somalia, and other ports of call on the Swahili coast, but in the past, it had been the last point that thousands of people would see before being packed into ships and sent off as slaves.

The next day, we flew to Lamu, which now vies for our title of “best place on earth.” We stepped out of the plane onto the sandy airfield; collected our bags from the thatch-roofed hut; and walked, with the rest of the passengers, to the wood-planked jetty to catch the dhow into town. After a quick crossing from Manda Island, we landed in on Lamu. The island has twenty thousand human inhabitants, ten thousand donkeys, and two vehicles: one belongs to the District Manager and the other is a donkey ambulance. However, with no paved roads, the vehicles get very little use.

We wove through the maze of small streets and alleys to Jannat House, an old Swahili home converted into a guesthouse. The central courtyard (which now has a small swimming pool and a bar) is surrounded by guestrooms on the first and second floors and a ring of terraces on the third floor. Each of the terraces is furnished with couches and daybeds piled high with overstuffed pillows. With midday temperatures well over ninety, we retired to the terraces for the afternoon activity: pretend to read, doze off, drink a beer, repeat. By four or so, the air started to cool and people and animals stirred back to life, with the braying of donkeys, the cries and laughter of children, the chanting of the Muslim call to prayer, and the insistent buzzing of flies.

The next day, we forced ourselves to make a move off the terrace and wander around town. As we did, we were greeted by hundreds of school children, all in uniform, with the typical greetings of “Jambo,” and “Hello, how are you?” In Lamu, however, we never heard the usual requests for money, pens, or candy. Lamu is a predominately Muslim island, with mosques at every turn, 56 in total, and only four churches. Life here moves very slowly, and we had little trouble falling into the rhythm of the island. We’d walk for a bit, stop to chat or a look at what the local vendors had to offer, have a cold drink, watch the world go by, and move a bit down the street for another drink. (And tried to get the donkeys to drink orange Fanta with us.)

For lunch, we stopped at a small place facing the sea for our first of several meals of fresh cracked crab. While we waited for lunch to arrive, the owner of the restaurant taught Laurel to play bao, a traditional African game involving moving small seeds around a hand-carved wooden board. Later that evening we wandered back to Jannat House, through the narrow backstreets filled with too-skinny cats and Muslim women, clad in all-black bui-bui’s, silently appearing out of the shadows.

After two days in town, we moved out to the Peponi Hotel, a swanky resort on Shela Beach. We had been told to come down to the main jetty at noon and that Abdul would find us and take us on a dhow out to Peponi. And, because Lamu is the kind of place that it is, we did and Abdul found us. Peponi, which means “paradise” in Swahili, is just that: a resort in the old colonial style but that treats its staff extremely well and takes an interest in the environment and local community. It’s the kind of place where you walk in at 10:00 a.m and the same old British guy is sitting at the corner of bar drinking gin and tonics and smoking cigarettes and has probably been there since before independence. But on the other hand, when the maybe-four-year-old son of one of the staff members sits on the floor of the bar tentatively approaching the hotel’s resident dog (a “stray-and-stay” who just wandered in one day), the British guy speaks to him in fluent Swahili and gently coaxes him to pet the dog.

We moved to the veranda and were immediately handed welcome drinks. Laurel took one look around and decided that we had walked onto the cover of Travel and Leisure: a white-washed porch with rows of hard-wood deck chairs overlooking the Indian Ocean, crystal clear and dotted with dhows sailing from island to island After a quick dip in the bathtub-temperature sea, we joined an excursion to see the hatching of sea turtles. Admittedly, we were both a bit skeptical that seeing turtles crawl from their eggs and make their way to the sea would be as thrilling as it had been made out to be. Two hours later, we found ourselves among twenty or so tourists, gasping in awe, clicking our cameras, and cheering the tiny turtles on. The proprietors at Peponi had actually convinced the main turtle poacher on the island (apparently, turtles or their eggs are used to make a traditional aphrodisiac) to become the main guardian of the turtles by paying him for each turtle egg hatched and a premium for each turtle to return for mating season. We returned for dinner: our second crab meal, this time with three kinds of melted butter, one plain, one with minced ginger, and the third with minced garlic. And for dessert, fresh mango ice cream with a nice glass of port.

On our only full day at Peponi, we started with an early morning water-ski on an inlet set among the mangroves, where the ocean is like glass. After breakfast, we waded along miles of pristine shore, collecting perfect sand dollars and watching donkeys carrying saddle bags full of sand move up and down the beach. For lunch, more crab, and that evening we took a sunset cruise on a dhow, the wooden Arab sailing boats that have plied these waters for centuries. Simple boats, with detachable sails that can move to catch the wind from most any direction, the dhow is a surprisingly efficient and stable vessel. Accompanied by Habib, Nawa, and Isaac, and with Laurel at the tiller, we sailed from Lamu to Manda, meandering through channels between the islands, before heading out to sea to watch the sun go down. When Laurel asked for advice on where to go or when to turn or whether we were going to hit a rock, a tree, or another boat, the answer was always the same: “Hakuna matata, as long as the dhow keeps moving, we’re just fine.”

The next morning, we had hoped to go out on a snorkeling expedition, but we were told that the tides were wrong. Instead, we decided to rent a kayak and paddle along the shore where we had been the day before. We started off in a dead calm sea, but when we rounded the point, the current started to pick up. We went a bit further and the waves started to break on the kayak. We decided to pull ashore, rest, and regroup. That was our fatal mistake. While we managed to get to shore with minimal incident, once we were on shore we realized that we could not get the kayak back out past the surf: not even after we had carried the (very heavy) double kayak 500 feet down the beach and not even when the poor donkey guy that we accosted tried to help us. We (actually the donkey guy) managed to push the boat out past the waves and Laurel managed to get in, but before Laurel could untie a paddle and before Mimi could catch up with the boat, not one, but two, waves hit the kayak knocking it, and Laurel, back to shore.

At that point, we gave up. Mimi parked herself next to the kayak on the sand, and Laurel walked back, announcing to the kayak rental guy: “You know something’s wrong when only one client returns and she’s on foot.” After some negotiation, Laurel hired a speedboat to come save us. After being towed out past the surf, we had no problems paddling back, but now we were escorted by a small armada – Salim in the kayak to our side and Bongo in the speedboat pulling up the rear. We arrived back at Peponi with just enough time for one more lunch on the veranda before getting back in the dhow for the ride back to the airport.