12/12

For the second day I have walked down to the dam, in the valley behind and below Anthea's. I tried to sketch it yesterday, and the place is so peaceful, and one of those where it is easy to sit and think about things. (& lose any innate ability to draw..)


I'm sitting on a concrete structure, which appears to have been built to house a sluice, or a pump inlet pipe or something, but judging by the amount of crayfish debris, and signs of other carnage on it, must be the regular haunt of the Giant Kingfisher, which is currently sitting not far off, watching (& probably cursing) me and the water for food.


The slightly scruffy, but quite pretty collie Folly, has kind of adopted me, and come down to the dam with me, is sitting not far off keeping an eye on the flying things....insects & birds.

I haven't really written much about the scenery on my travels yet, for lack of real opportunity, but am going to try now.







The drive south from Nairobi soon brings you out of the urban mess into open scrub-land, and the sites of a number of closed factories, and other miscellany. These quickly give way to vast views, mainly to the west, but the east too at times, as you travel through some attractive if savage looking hill country.

Then there is nothing of real note....(Sadly we couldn't see Kilimanjaro for cloud cover) until the hills give way to more vast, and I mean VAST views of the bush.

The road winds through some quite spectacular mountainous areas, without itself changing levels much, if at all. (Alright, so there's quite a drop in height for the first thirty or forty miles out of Nairobi) It's only when yuo've travelled through hundreds of miles of bush, when you start approaching Mombassa that coconut palms emerge to add variety, as well as the almost ubiquitous Baobub, "The Upside Down Tree", which is at it's most impressive right on the coast.

The soil almost everywhere is some shade of red, perhaps suggesting an iron rich base..? It is apparently endowed with minerals, but relatively poor in microbial life, and vegative content/humus is again lower than could be expected. (Hm, so I'm told...)

The tea growers avoid fertilisers, and even mulch, believing that the tea thrives better in the barest soil. This makes some sense if it is mineral rich, but goes against other cultivation ideas in a pretty fundamental way. However they do seem to do quite well out of it, so must have some idea...

Returning to the drive, the road frequently offers enormous views, even to a hundred miles or more, across the simply mind staggering expanses of the southern bush, only a fraction of which is actually designated as Tsavo National Game Park. I haven't got the exact dimensions, but am told it is approximately the size of Wales, which is simply incredible.

There are similarly amazing views cross to sections of the Ridt Valley further back up the road. (Anthea drove me to have a look at the "Naivashu Ridge" or something, which coincidently Neil & Tanja had also visited as part of their safari trip.) (We argued with the vedors of all the cheapest crappiest sh*t in the galaxy, and won no arguments it has to be said, but still managed to avoid buying any of the nonsense they were tryng to force on us. They's reckoned without Anthea. A kind of victory then..)

Like I said, I don't quite savvy the lingua Cymraig, nor Kiswahili, but I understand the tragedy/comedy of some of it, I think....well, a bit, maybe...

The road to the viewpoints gives nothing away either, not until, after winding through some rocky cuttings and several ramshackle villages, you come to a very large lay-by. As soon as you come to this you realise that you've arrived at the very edge of the world. There are a number of sort-of shelves in the immeasurable legth of the escarpment, but essentially you're loooking at a drop of about a mile, to a seemingly endless plain, which although it is difficult to really make out, appears to be made up of primarily scrubland, or bush, with occasional small--holdings in and amongst. Anyway, as with so many other things on this trip, I hope the photos show it better than woreds....

We didn't stay for a very long time, just long enough to have a really good look. Anthwa decided to try the next road down the escarpment, despite it having a poor reputation for hijackings. We drove down it for a while, to another viewing point, past two AK47 wielding cops, (kid you not) and stopped again, just as briefly before heading for home.

Then, about a mile or so along the road, we were flagged down by some more (big f-ing gun toting) cops. Fortunately they hadn't reckoned on Anthea's nerves of steel, and after giving her a lot of gyp over her PSV license, or something similar, she persuaded them that they were just sooo wasting their time trying to extract money from us. They gave up, and I breathed again, and so we were allowed to go...

(Road pics next, at least I think so, all I'm doing is copying my written journal...but they'd kind of fit right now...)

11/12

Fortunately, or not, it was decided that there would be too much gossip caused by my presence, among the additional "help" in particular, drafted in to assist in the massacre of the meat chickens....Not that the place isn't already awash with rumour started on my arrival...

So, instead, I have done very little. Very relaxing.

I walked down to the dam, which is only a few minutes from the house, and tried to sketch the scene. All I can say is that I'm glad I took the camera, as you can tell, I'm not a natural artist.



Still it was nonetheless a peaceful and calming way to kill an hour or so.

In the afternoon we walked among the tea, as we have everyday while I've been here, with the full complement of dogs, excluding the police dog, and kept an eye open for Duika (Pronounce diker) which are small deer, and Jackal, which I have yet to see.






I have slept a lot here, and feel as weak as I don't know what, I suspect it's still the altitude.

Chicken dinner (!) then flicked through the papers and slept again.....

10/12 continued

(I know, I just didn't see the next page when I wrote the last one!)

"Tea Walk" & "Tea Walk w~ Moon-Flowers"

& "Shopping"....

This, as I can now testify, is the season of the "short rains".

Kenya is now struggling witha fairly lengthy & very destructive drought, but, as the heavens have just opened here at Limuru/Tigoni for the first time proper in ages, I think that they're really trying to catch up a bit.

Boy oh boy, that's rain.

I won't try to explain the cycles of weather that travel up and down Africa over the period of each year, with the tilt of the earth, the proximity of the equator, the clash of the southern hemisphere's weather systems with those of the north, and so on, but think I ought to read up on it a bit more.

Anyway, it's absolutely hammering it down. On the tin roof. Hmmpfh.....

I had a lot more to write, but am so utterly very desperately tired, very hungry (no food today to speak of, Anthea doesn't eat very much at all...) and could be suffering from dehydration, and once again I've been hit by the change of altitude back up to Tigoni, from sea-level....(Oxygen, I so miss you, I bought you flowers and everything....)

Here's another list of stuff that I should write about, but am propping my eye-lids up to get down on paper...be grateful....

Taxi trip into Mombassa.

The 100% commission put on the "bus fare" by the "beach boys" (just don't ask...)

the bus trip (7 hours with no air-con) the near-death experience of ploughing through a set of road-works & demolishing a concrete post or two...Inspecting the damage at the truck-stop. Ouch, just how are we all still alive??

The incredibly poor condition of a once proud city. The filfth & squalor & I do mean that most sincerely,

The hour wait, or more that Anthea had to endure, due to the bus not dropping us off where we were told, and an hour or more later than we'd been told.....

The utterly incredible views over southern Kenya, the mountains, the coconut forests, the bush, and the proximity of the narrow guage railway for the majority of the journey.


Anyway, we have a quiet day planned for tomorrow, slaughtering chickens apparently.

I kid you not.....

10/12

I know I've missed out on a few days, but there wasn't a lot to write, so...by way of some kind of summary:

As planned, David dropped me off at the RRB&S Club, which kind of explains the gap.

A totally self contained development of varying sized appartments, two pools, two bars, security guards, restaurant, etc, with a little touristy shop, and another basic general store. All at tourist prices, which meant that the beer was 90/= instead of 50/=, and so on.....But still quite a pleasant way of spending some chill-out days, the exact details of which aren't so important, but involved striking up a friendship with some of the staff, in particular Eddy "Safari" (I mean, come on, as if....) one of the barmen, and some of the guards, which in turn lead to some interesting comparisons being made with home. I will say no more.

I do have to say though that while the resort complex is very pleasant, it is nevertheless pretty much the last kind of place that I would personally have picked to spend a whole holiday in. But am still very glad to have had the chance to come to find out for myself. The weather was absolutely fabulous, and many happy hours were spent in the pool(s), and occasionally the sea/ocean. (I couldn't believe how hot the sea was, especially as you first get into it...like a very hot bath, but salty...It got more bearable as you swam out, but boy, hot.....) oh...and bars....(Natch)

The view across the complex....Hmm, could be anywhere....

Neil, Tanja & some muppet or other....

Me, Eddy & Neil...

However I am struggling to compute how, in five days, I seem to have managed to spend approximately $100 + 5000/=, ie roughly £110 or more. It's not feasible that this has been done totallu legitimately. I know I'm on holiday, but I still thought I was keeping the beer to an acceptable level(!) (Mostly) and didn't go mad on the gastronomic front either. Some cunning jiggery-pokery perhaps may have gone on....and that i will probably never get to the bottom of....But, hey, it was fun wasn't it??

(Much later note, this seems like peanuts in comparison, but when cigs are 20 or 30p a pack, and beers 30 or 40p a bottle, that takes a lot of spending, believe me...)

Except the bit where Neil & I went off with Claudia (The bizarre girl with the pet monkey) To Mtwapa, and I had a meal instead of waiting to revisit the resort menu.....(Limited to put it bluntly)....which upset Neil who wanted us to eat with Linda & Doug, from Canada, who's last night it was...(I mean come on, it's not like we were related or anything....) It was hardly as if there were even particularly close friends or anything either....This resulted in Neil throwing a major paddy in the taxi back, and acting a bit like a spoiled kid... admitting later that it was mostly down to his jealously of my being friendly with Tanja. Not that anything could possibly have become of it, I was only being a happy-person-on-holiday, not anything more. This was fortunately the only minor cloud of my stay with them, and had been pretty much forgotten by the time we got the bus back from Mombassa....

As I write this I am actually back at Anthea's, and this is all just a fading memory already.......

For the record though, Tanja could just swim like a fish though........Or mermaid, or something else equally as elegant.....Hope she's out there somewhere having a top life.

5/12 Part 2

Today was pleasant, if not quite as revolutionary, or even revelatory, as some of the previous days. I swam in the sea at Kilifi, (Sorry, Ocean) albeit relatively briefly, and endlessly in David's pool. Lovely. Had a quick trip into Kilifi itself to a supermarket, and to a hardware store before going for a sandwich at the Kilifi Beach Club, which I have to say was rather disappointing, even if the place looked like it had really been something at one time. (Still, I could have been in Ken Lilley's garden back home....it is Tuesday after all...)

Believe it or not I still haven't found any postcards yet, but there's a fair bit of time left yet, so I'm not panicking....

We packed up and left Kilifi in the early afternoon, to go to try to find the RoyalReserve Beach & Safari Club, at a place called Kikambala, to try to make tomorrow a bit easier for David, when he drops me off. While we were fairly nearby, wehad a quick nosey at the beach. The tide was out, and the combination of seaweed and sludge below the tidal line was not especially appealing I have to say. The beach at Kilifi has now spoiled me for any other that might be less than perfect.....!

Although there was nothing of note about the rest of the evening, we visited David's sister and husband, Sheila & Derek. Jehovah's Witnesses, but I avoided controversy, in much the same way that the pleasingly steady flow of White Cap & Tuskers that has accompanied this trip so far, was neatly avoided in return....Being interrputed by an ice-cold Coke, which was extremely welcome.

Next we moved on to Nyali, on the outskirts of Mombasa, to stay with Aubrey & Howard, friends of David & Jane's, who also have an absolutely fabulous house & pool. We all went out to a curry house for a fairly pleasant meal, even if it could have been hotter, and I don't mean spicier either. Then back for another beer, then to bed with the mozzie net....

It's funny how the temperature seems to drop as the sun goes down, then slowly but surely creeps back up to hot again. Odd, but I'm told it's the way that the air comes off the land as the evening sea cools, and vice versa in the morning. Still, it's hot, damn hot.

5/12

After a mad, mad drive, of over six hours, on the famous (infamous I wonder...?) Nairobi to Mombasa highway (A109) including two attempts to drive through the Tsavo Park, which apparently you can sometimes get away with....especially if you're a reservist Police Officer.., and a "short-cut" along a very rough & rural back-road, at speeds which one might associate with a normal road, almost, we have now arrived at the house in Kilifi. I am so very glad that I have my camera with me, as my initial reaction is that I am so waaay out of my depth again. Thhis place is absolutely bl**dy brilliant, and like something out of one of the American soaps, good grief I feel more than a little parochial, as well I might....

However it is 23.15 and still over 30°!! Far too hot for Yorkshire based types who have, until this trip, been used to wearing umpteen layers, against the UK weather, I promise you. But the ceiling fan is helping somewhat.

I have so much to write, but haven't got my head around much of it yet, so here's a list of clues:

Crayfish, dam, Crested Cranes, Giant Kingfisher.

Old England, the generation & ideas gap.

The anti-mosquito sprays removing the printed labels from various items, including biros.

Tsavo Game Park: Access denied, at gun-point.

The reservist Police. AKA "Romeos". David is an Inspector apparently...

Guns, and their wearers....

Whites & their staff, a far too huge a topic to even attempt here.

Ringing home, and the problems & enormous cost of doing so....the utterly unhelpful operators....

The f**ing stunning country between Limuru/Tigoni & Nairobi, and ditto, moreso, between Nairobi & Mombasa/Kilifi.

The sh*t that is the overall impression of Nairobi. (And latterly also Mombasa) but also the quite reasonable contemporary buildings....

The history of the (Narrow guage) railway, especially with regard to some of the absolutely bizarre and beautiful (if isolated) mosques built alongside it, by & for the predominantly Indian workers who actually built it.

The apalling state of the nation's "premier" highway, & it's funding by other African governments, seeing as it is the main route into the heartlands...

The not-so coincidentqal geographical spread of AIDS along the settlements that attend the highway, and others....You'll have to work that one out for yourselves though.

The poor.

Charcoal, & life at the very edge.

Weight limits and p*ss-poor civil engineering. Huge ruts in the North-bound carriageway caused by same.

The beauty of Air-con.

The mental breakdown I had last night while reflecting on my life, with beers, tears & Anthea.

My own hang-ups & madness & how to deal with them.

My "home" relationship, Xmas, home, dogs, hunting, life, age, missed opportunities, and so on, and so on.

I know I haven't even started on the house yet, but I will quickly mention the fabulous pool, which needless to say I have already had a proper splash about in. Simply wonderful.






I must also add that, up to present I haven't really been in a Malaria area yet, and so this has been my first time under a Mozzie" net, which is a little funny, but extremely sensible naturally.

Neither have I mentioned the abandonment of the Lariam, and my sunbsequent changeover to Paludrine, which doesn't seem to have any dire side-effects, so far..touch wood.

Beach near Kilifi....the water was like getting into a hot bath at home...unreal....

4th December

Not everyday does my world treat me like this it has to be said.

After arriving on Thursday evening at around 0130 (local, ie 2230 UK) and spending the night with Neil & Tanja, at a mentally grotty, but passable hotel in Nairobi, and a mad morning with the Savuka Safari people (Mercy & ?) trying to find her, I've spent from then til now with "A".

We've walked and talked endlessly. Although I was pretty spaced out unfortunately by the altitude (7500 ft or so) and more so the Lariam, at least at the start, which most certainly did not help. (For a fuller explanation of the nightmare that is Lariam read this.)

The effects began to wear off on Saturday, which meant that by the time we'd met her sister "J" and husband "D" last night, I was more or less "straight". They live fairly near, about 2 miles or so, on a tea & flower farm, though I think they may do some veg & maybe even have a bit of stock too, though couldn't swear to it.

A few bottles of "White Cap" (or "White Chap" as it's more affectionately known...) helped the rehabilitation process...

I'm racing ahead a bit here, but there's so much to try to take in all at once,



"A"'s place:

Staff

Kilonzo: Cows
George: Outside/chickens/rabbits (dog food, very sensible!) assistant in surgery etc
Michael: Inside & a bit of overlap with Michael.

Dogs

Fly: German Shepherd who really doesn't accept my being here much, if at all.
Bear: Ditto who is much more tolerant of me.
T'Other: Ditto (Bitch) who quite likes me.
Spook: Belgian Shepherd, a bit of a scaredy-cat. but gorgeous!
Fuffy: A bitch hound (!) of some description, I'd say foxhound (ish), sort of accepts.
Sabu: Border Collie (dog) who's okay with me but who really hates monkeys!
Folly: Ditto (Bitch) who adores me, no really, instant bonding.

In addition to which there are two "visitors" that A looks after on behalf of some people from the American Baptist Mission (Retreat more like):

Coco: a X breed Ridgeback and;
Lady: a proper smart Rottie.

And an unknown Police dog, who's essentially a German Shepherd, but may have a touch of something else in him, it's a long story...

Other animals:

One-Eye: a simply huge tabby Tom cat
Acorn: a smaller tabby Queen
"Unknown": a ginger & white Queen that does nothing all day, everyday, except lie in
the sun & eat, not moving more than a few feet, and that only occasionally...

6 Jersey cows
The aforementioned dog-food rabbits
Countless chickens, meat & layers
At least 5 or 6 Guinea Fowl.
At least 2 ducks
Several bee hives....


Plus several visiting Sykes' monkeys, who basically come to steal the honey, fruit & veg, and absolutely delight in taking the mickey out of the dogs!


I was so going to try and write more than I have so far, but have pretty well lacked the time, and/or the opportunity. I will try to flesh out the above bones when I get a proper chance & assimilated it all a bit more.

Anyway, J the sister is married to D, there son is R, apparently a well known rally driver, who's a couple of years younger than me. Besides a fabulous house, straight off a colonial film-set, but which wouldn't look out of place if it was lifted from the middle of all the tea etc and dropped into a London suburb, no really, it's a bit surreal...They've assorted dogs, Dachsunds & Dobermans mainly, near Tigoni. In adition to this they also have another house near Mombassa, at a place called Kilifi. Together with various friends, they are to spend Christmas down there. As part of the arrangements for that involve D driving down, with a car-load of provisions and so on, somehow I find myself invited to accompany him. This will allow me to hopefully hook up with Neil & Tanja again, who by now will have go through their safari, and arrived at their timeshare...As well as having a few days as D'd guest.

I so love it when a plan comes together!