Long weekend in Lamu and Ukambani Kenya 1.11

So I had a feeling my Sudan visa would come through. I was at the top of the list of people and everyone was pushing hard to get some visas approved. That meant that within a few weeks I’d probably be heading to Juba for a couple of months. So I started planning to go to Lamu for the long weekend. I then found out I’d be doing a drought assessment in the coastal province and the neighboring areas the following week... so it all worked out like kismet.

I departed my house on Friday afternoon and zipped through mercifully light (for Nairobi) traffic. I sped through check-in relatively quickly and had time for a coke light while I cleaned the dust out of all 4 of my camera filters (on 2 lenses). The flight was called and the waiting room emptied out. With minimal security, free seating and a small plane, boarding’s a snap!

A few hours later I landed in the small airstrip servicing the Lamu archipelago. It’s not actually on Lamu Island, but is just across the bay on a separate island. I was met by a representative (read helper) for Kizingo—the hotel where I’d be staying. I chose Kizingo based on the recommendation of the guy I sit next to at work. He’d described it as a quiet place where you could either be with other people, or by yourself, but that it was in a more secluded spot. Sounded perfect for my needs. Not being able to convince any of my friends to come for the weekend, I decided that some alone time with some books and the beach sounded just fine!

To get to Kizingo from Lamu’s airport you have to ride in a motorboat for about 30 minutes. It’s in a rather protected inlet/bay area and you ride between mangrove forests for 95% of the journey, passing other small inlets and a few small communities or rental homes. About 30 seconds after we started off on the trip I realized that a) it’s been ages since I’ve been to a beach and b) I love it. I love the salt-water smell. I love being in a boat. I love the animals that live in coastal environments. I love the beach. I just love it all. I felt all of the stress and worry melting away as we bounced and cruised through the small waves while we passed the mangroves by. For those that aren’t familiar with mangroves up close, they’re bizarre. When the tide is low, which is was, you can see the roots of the trees heading down through the water. It’s as though the tree has a mirror image, one with leaves and one without. They have bizarre twisty branches both heading down into the water and the up towards the sunshine…fighting with other trees to get the best spot, resulting in some strange shapes and leaning configurations. We passed a few other slowly moving boats, some local dhows full of fisherman coming and going, a small beach town and the local bus connection to the mainland where drivers park their cars or people off load before getting onto a boat to take them to the appropriate island location.

There were also birds, white cranes or herons of some sort, stalking the mangroves for fish. They would hold themselves totally still and then smack their beak down for a tasty bite. I saw a fish eagle perched in a tree—which looks very much like a bald eagle. There were a few dug out canoes left about –waiting for their owner to return. And some of the fishing dhows back from their morning run were listing to the side in low tide. There were few people swimming or fishing on the banks which just heightened the sense of calm and peacefulness on the river.

Eventually, my ride came to an end. I think the captain was trying to scare me as he zoomed up to another moored boat and then did the ship equivalent of slamming on the breaks leading us to a smooth landing on the beach. I jumped off to the warm sand and was handed by bag, which was promptly taken by a hotel staff person, and then led to the main lounge/bar area. I was looking at the photos and options of activities on the wall and was handed a welcome mango juice. In that five-minute period my bag had been whisked away to Banda 3…my home for the next three nights. After a mere signature I was taken to my banda which is built much like the traditional homes on Lamu, though thankfully bigger and with running water.

The banda had a front porch with a table and sofa as well as a hanging “bed” set up. It's bigger and more sturdy than a hammock, but still hanging by thick ropes and able to swing back and forth. Through an open doorway was the large main room with a small desk and chair to the left, a table and two chairs to the right and a large bed surrounded by a mosquito net smack in the middle. Instead of a headboard then had designed a bit of a ledge that had his/her lights and a small area for your book and clock. Behind that was the closet and bath area—accessed on either side of the bed. The shower and toilet were on opposite sides with a sink in the middle. There was no door or window to close and the open air plus the high thatched ceiling gave it the air of a serene tropical retreat. Exactly what it was. It took me about 1 minute to unpack my things and set myself up on the front hammock bed thingy with my book.

I fell into a routine for those days: an activity in the morning, and then some reading and an afternoon nap. The first day I was there I joined another group going out snorkeling and to look for dolphins, who, if in the mood, would frolic about while we flapped around in the water. We did see two dolphins who were slightly curious but not totally interested in swimming and playing with us. Fair enough. It’s their house, they can do as they please. But we did have about 20 minutes of snorkeling around and watching them zoom around and down. It made me feel about as quick and graceful as a seal heading down main street!

So, having had a bit of fun with the dolphins, who left us for some squid, we headed off to the little island of coral for a look at the tropical fishes. And they did not disappoint. There were lots of fishes I’d seen at the Baltimore Aquarium growing up and on other snorkeling excursions…but there were definitely some new ones I’d never seen. By far the weirdest experience was swimming through these huge groups of benign jellyfish. Each one was about the size of a tea bag but you would swim through hundreds of them. Even knowing that they wouldn’t sting didn’t allay the creeping feeling of getting through them. Ugh. I shudder just remembering. I imagine it’s a bit like swimming through jello cubes. We stopped briefly for a stretch on the coral where we saw lots of crabs and some strange fish that can hop around on the rocks. It looks like a fish but can be out of water as much as it’s in water. Very weird and slightly disturbing. Then, back to the boat for the return trip. Despite a sun shirt and layers of sunscreen I did miss a few spots and now have a patch of bright red skin on my right hip where I wasn’t totally covered by the canvas roof of the small motor boat. I am still, weeks later, recovering. This close to the equator it only takes minutes!

The second morning I headed into Lamu town. I took the boat over and was met by a guide. I was never really clear on his name. I was supposed to meet Abdul but he was apparently not answering his phone, so his brother showed me around. From the moment we landed on shore, my guide was off. He sped from one place to another. “These are construction materials that come from X, Y and Z for A, B and C”. “This is the donkey clinic where people can bring their donkeys for care” (As an aside, one of the donkey’s looked about 2 days from death and had to be brought in in a special donkey ambulance—one of four cars on the island.) The tour continued—“here’s where they teach carvers, he’s an example of the old style of building, and here’s a new one. It’s being rehabilitated by a foreigner.” And on it went through a maze of narrow pathways where I had to jump out of the way of donkeys carrying construction materials X, Y and Z through the pathways or shimmy past women returning from market. Despite being told that Lamu was Muslim and to dress conservatively, I found that many of the island's Swahili inhabitants had no qualms about wearing sleeveless shirts or short skirts and I was longing to not be in my heavier sleeved t-shirt and longer pants. After two hours of walking through the streets and sweating my brains out I downed almost an entire liter of water and had a coke. My guide dropped me at the Lamu museum for a quick tour around. I can’t say it was the best museum but it definitely wasn’t the worst.

I returned to Kizingo and banda 3 and had a dip in the warm, but not so warms as to not be refreshing, waters of the bay. I did walk along the beach but there just wasn’t that same stretch we get in the US where the sand is kind of firmly packed and easy and enjoyable to walk on. As a result, 2 minutes of walking anywhere led to profuse sweating and the need to bathe in ice water.

Everything in Kizingo was made locally and mostly by the British owners with some local help. All of the materials are local, and the hangers are made out of branches. The loo (aka toilet) uses only 1 liter of water per flush and the electricity is principally solar with a generator back up. Many of the veggies are grown on site and the owners also have a chicken farm and are starting a quail farm. The exciting news while I was there was that the male quails where making foam balls…a sign that they’re ready to mate and fertilize the much-coveted eggs! Basically, you could enjoy yourself, eat well, and not feel as though you have sold your soul to the devil for destroying pristine land and beach with your presence. Just the way to pass a long weekend.

Unfortunately for me, all too soon my weekend was up and I had to take a 20 minute flight from Lamu's airport to the coastal mainland town of Malinidi. I got in early enough to mosey around my hotel and look for a nice spot to finish my book (the third of the trip) while I had a late lunch. The ideal spot—in terms of food availability and temperature—turned out to be beachside where a constant breeze kept me cool from the coastal heat. This also afforded me an excellent perch for people watching. Make that Euro-watching. Almost everyone at this place was Italian…and let me tell you, not all Italians show taste in their swimwear choices. There were small Italians in relatively “normal” suits, and fat Italians in hardly any suit at all. There were all shades of tan and burn and not a sun-screened person in sight. The was a person in a speedo that I had a hard time identifying as a woman and an effeminate person with long hair who I had a hard time identifying as a man. After a mind-boggling hour, I headed back to my room and repacked for the next four days of a work field trip.

This year Kenya had poor rains during the October –December period. That’s resulted in limited water and pasture in areas where pastoralists live and a failed maize harvest in the areas I visited. The areas really can’t support maize even when there are maize but most Kenyans feel that if they don’t have maize, they haven’t eaten. But slowly, after several years of poor rains, people are starting to be convinced that other cash-generating options and crops that will produce even in years of poor rain, might be the better choice. All in all it was a good four days and I got a good understanding of what that part of the country looks like and can support in terms of our programming. Hopefully with some of the upcoming activities, families will be able to focus on goats, poultry or cash crops so that in times of water stress they have some livelihoods options.

Now I’m off to Juba, South Sudan for a few months and will take memories of my long weekend at the beach and the scary visuals of the Italians in Malindi to take with me. More soon from a burgeoning new country……

Hopefully some of these links will work....

Some pictures from Lamu and Kizingos:

https://picasaweb.google.com/jane.e.strachan/LamuLongWeekend?feat=directlink

Lamu Long weekend

Some pictures from Ukambani:

https://picasaweb.google.com/jane.e.strachan/UkambaniKenya111?authkey=Gv1sRgCMDj3cmtw9bq7gE&feat=directlink

Ukambani Kenya 1/11