A day in a backpackers, an afternoon on a Mombasa beach

There is no doubt that the beaches of Mombasa are gorgeous!

White white sand, crystal clear azure blue water, dancing palm trees leaning over the beach to provide welcome shade, splashes of colour from the vendors' stalls where they tempt you with sarongs and kokois and bead work and carved wood and all those trinkets and curios you really, really want to take home for everyone you know -- but you don't...

The visit to Mombasa has been a treat.

Because we have had to wait for visas -- again -- this time for our Ethiopian visas which entailed sending our passports back to the Ethiopian embassies in our respective countries, to be issued with a visa and then waiting for the passports to come back to Kenya again, our base has been and overlanders' backpackers outside Nairobi. Not a good place to be stuck. Funny how there are campsites/youth hostels/backpackers and there are campsites/youth hostels/backpackers. For someone like myself who has very very seldom slept in one of these havens for the modern-day traveller, (although, I suppose sleeping in the dormitories of pilgrims' refuges when I walked the Camino has to count for something??) I approach these with a completely open mind. More often than not I have been pleasantly surprised. Surprised, yes. That is what I said. So perhaps my mind has not been that open. Otherwise I would probably not have been surprised to find lovely trees and green lawns and reasonable washing facilities .... at least twice, now three times, in the last 8 months...

So my experience has not been too extensive. Only 8-9 months' worth of experience, to be exact -- of which the first 5-6 months were mostly bush camping anyway, so don't really count. But I can tell you there has only been three places that merited a Red Button. The first was outside Lusaka -- remember? The place with the most amazing, fabulous, brilliant, beautiful, wonderful, hot!, powerful!, showers. The second was the dairy farm where the toilets, scattered around the perimeters of the beautiful garden, looked like little hobbit dwellings and the lowing of the cows woke us early in the morning and where the farmer's wife ran the excellent 'home industry' for the women of the region -- spinning and dying and knitting the most stunning woollen products. And the third is where I find myself at the moment, in Mombasa.

BeerPong: Six glasses of beer, two ping pong balls, a long table. Get the ball inside the glass of the opposing team, and one of them has to empty the glass. Does your aim get worse as the game progresses? On the contrary! Georg and Caroline vs Anna and Scott -- tight competition. A Nail biting game (that is, if you bite your nails. Otherwise it was just a warm up for the evenings championship)

What is different about this place? What is special about it? Why is it that Emy and Orm and Ignacio and Anna Did. Not. Want. To. Go. Back. to Nairobi.? I don't really know. Perhaps it is the lovely big spacious house in which there are many rooms and dorms and sitting areas and tables and chairs where you can eat the delicious food the kitchen staff (very very slowly...) produce. Perhaps it is the proximity to the ocean -- a short walk down to the beautiful beach. Perhaps it is the swimming pool, the green lawns, the red hibiscus flowers, the friendly staff, the hot! water, the limitless and free! internet connection. Perhaps it is the good price -- one of the cheapest places we have yet stayed at. No. THE cheapest place by far!

Or, perhaps it is because here are no trucks and the people here are, one and all, just delightful. Whether there is any correlation between those two, I have no idea, and no doubt someone will shout me down. But those two suppositions seem to me to be naturally juxtaposed. All the travellers here are the same age group as the truck/trans/passengers -- between 20 and 35, roughly. Male and female in the same proportions. But all of them are travelling as individuals, for a start. On their own steam. They are here because they choose to be here, not because this is where the truck has stopped. They all have a life back in the real world -- meaning they all have a career, a course they are busy studying, a job they are going back to, a purpose in life, goals they are hoping to achieve, action plans according to which they lead their lives. There is Henry who has a short break between an old career and a new direction of study. And while he is waiting to hear at which university he has been admitted to go study medicine, he is practising his existing qualification (Masters in Social Work) doing volunteering with a street children's programme here in Kenya. There is Georg who is on a short break from northern Ethiopia where he is doing research for his Masters thesis (subject being the geographical changes in the Chilalo Mountain Range over the last 150 years.)

Georg and Henry vs Orm and Michael in the pool for a noisy game of volley ball, after a hot game of 'Let-me-show-you-what-I-can-do-with-a-foot ball!'

Then there is Michael who passes through for a few days on his break from his work in China. "Do you like china?" he is asked. He thinks for a moment. Then he replies: "I most definitely did not like it at first. But then I learned the language and now I love it." He makes it sound so effortless to learn Mandarin! Caroline is gorgeous and is resting after completing a demanding degree at Cambridge and before starting her career as food writer. (I am delighted to be able to introduce her to two brilliant food writers, Gwynne and Kimberly.) There were also the two lovely - very young French demoiselles who came to do 9 months of volunteering for one of the many organisations that take your money -- a lot of your money, and then make you do the manual labour for their own gain. They had only been here a month when they realised the company is as corrupt as the worst and that they have lost all their money and have no recourse to it, as well as having lost 'employment, accommodation and a purpose' for the next 8 months. A hard lesson... There is young Scott who is no older than some of the youngest, but already a part-owner of a successful backpackers and now starting a second one in Akkra in a couple of months' time. And so the list goes on. During the day they swim, relax in the sun, go off to town to enjoy the magic of Mombasa, go to the beach, play volley ball and foot ball (give a ball to a bunch of young men, and you see why they say boys grow old, but they never grow up), showing off their best and most intricate moves and tricks, or they play poker or Monopoly or Backgammon or chess -- the competition electric in the air, the shouts of disappointment loud and the shouts of victory even louder. All of them interesting to talk to, fun to be with, well-spoken and well-mannered. Even their drinking games are fun! The same as we have been playing for months -- but without the foul language and verbal abuse and anger and loss of control. These youngsters all drink, get drunk -- even hopelessly drunk, and continue to be full of fun and laughter and good humour. And when they have finished with their games, they all jump into a bunch of tuk-tuks and put-put-puttt off into the night to a club or a Blue Moon party or another place where there are more youngsters and more fun, until 4-5- even 7 in the morning when they come home, now really, really drink but still laughing, still full of the joys of life.
My faith is restored. Thank you!

Avery and Amy made a formidable team, and, the surprise of the evening, the team to come in last were Anna and Orm -- having to pay the forfeit of funneling a bottle of beer each.

No -- I am not sure why this place is so different, but different it is and Emy and Orm, Anna and Ignacio and I were really happy that we had come here to finish out the long wait for the passports. But now the passports are all back and we will get back on the truck and continue our journey -- and I shall look forward to telling you about the last few months as they unfurl in front of us towards the distant horizon. It should be good and exciting and interesting. I am excited. I hope you are too!