Beautiful Mombassa

July 20th, 2009 by Ruth Graham

Hujambo?!

So, we set off for Mombassa early Friday morning and had a very lengthy and at times extraordinarily bumpy ride to Mombassa. I think in total it took about ten hours, door to door. I was sat at the back and there were many parts of the road that are ‘under construction’ or just rubbish, and it was very funny being sprung about all over the place. The busses are really cool looking here, with crazy paint and signs and stuff. We get horassed by people trying to sell us stuff through the windows when we stop, they lift up boxes of drink and food to our window. I got quite annoyed, for some reason they felt that if they grabbed my arm when I was leaning against the window ledge SLEEPING, they would get some service from me. My open mind to the different cultural values was not very open on that point. Both on the way back and there a guy hopped on teh bus for about 15 mins and preached at us with passion and volume! Many of my fellow volunteers were not chuffed. To be honest I would have preferred it if he wasn’t there, but it seems to be all part of the service with the bus company we went with, one of the girls spotted a picture of Jesus paibnted on the back of the bus, smoking a spliff!

Mombassa is beautiful! We checked into our tree house type accomodation, called the ‘Stilts’. It is basically wooden rooms elevated amongst trees (and therefore LOTS of monkeys), but we really did feel we were in the wild, because we’re pretty feeble and get scared easily and becasue there were no windows but criss crossed wooden bits (not well explained – apologies). We headed to ‘forty thieves’, which turned uot to be a very chilled restaurant that looks out on to the beautiful beach and sea, white sand people, WHITE SAND! We spent the rest of the weekend there pretty much, on the beach and eating food. It was very chilled, although quite windy and Friday was sporadically stormy. The water was gorgeous and actually warm, and by that I don’t mean not cold, I mean warm! We all had a great time, did an alll nighter at 40 thieves on Sat night, just chilling out on the beach and dancing to ten year old songs so I actually knew some of them! (Blue-dabadeedaba..) I’ve felt so lucky with the other GVN volunteers, because we all seem to get on really well and have a good laugh, it’s great.

Oh, I also rode a camel along the beach! They’re so high up- I never realised! It was quite funny going up and then down, when they’re sat to when they’re stood, you get tilted quite a bit!

Just before leaving Mom some of us went to grab something to eat and drink in a cafe. It was an experience in itself. They took so long to serve each one of us and my take away tea came in a used plastic bottle, and my food in small bin bags(fortunately not used, or at least I hope not). I felt it was an example of being in a developing country, just because there is no efficiency anywhere. The people running this cafe didn’t really know how to run it – they couldn’t see it would be easier if they had a place to serve customers and a place for waiters to place the dirty plates and stuff. The man on the till didn’t know how to add up and there were other things like that, includign just basic hygene stuff. It might sound like I’m being really petty and picky but I think if you’d been there you’d have understood. It did not surprise me that ‘The Stilts’ - a well run and nice place to stay was run by an English guy.

Anyway, I gotta go. Been back to school today which was great. Dana and I are starting a project, trying to get every child to make a book about themselves, including a photo of themselves. WE thought it’s be nice if they had something to keep for themselves. Hopefully it’ll work. I tried teaching them pairs with some Thomas the Tank Engine cards today, but they just cheat! But I did manage to teach some of the guys a ball game which was good.

Lots of love to all xx