Saturdays at the Beach

It didn’t take us long to find the beach and make it part of our routine. While the actual city of Mombasa is an island, it doesn’t have any beaches. However, where we live in Nyali, just to the north, the beaches are beautiful soft white sand including a large reef and the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.

We learned the hard way that staying on hotel property is the best way to enjoy the beach. They are very welcoming and accommodating especially if you spend some money there. We love to do laundry in the morning and then reward ourselves with lunch at the hotel, poolside, overlooking the blue water. Our first week at the beach we were so excited to feel the sand in our toes we headed straight there and little did we know that as soon as we hit the sand we were the prime target for the beach boys. Unfortunately these beach boys won’t sing us a good song, just the “welcome my friends, come see what I can sell you” song that we’ve heard so many times. We walked about 20 yards and were not left alone and could see several more headed our way so, disappointed, we headed back to the hotel. We have since learned to enjoy the beach from our favorite hotel, Mombasa Beach Hotel. We have made some friends with the staff and learned that if we leave our things at the hotel and look like we have nothing with us we are mostly left alone as we enjoy our long walks on the beach. It is so nice to be able to relax and finally have a good reason to feel hot and sticky!

I'm SO excited to be at the beach!

One of our first weeks, still a little pale!

Last week we gave into the tourists in us and rode a camel! We have seen them every week and it was something I couldn’t go home without experiencing. I thought it might be romantic, like riding horses along the beach, but it was way cooler than that! They are such huge animals! Our camel’s name was Bob Marley and he likes mangos and bananas. He got down on his knees so we could climb on and then when he got up with his back legs I was looking at the ground. Then he got up with his front legs and it felt like we were 10 feet in the air. It was a very cool experience.

We have only suffered the occasional minor sunburn and have thankfully not noticed any side effects from our anti-malaria medicine that can cause sensitivity to the sun! The beautiful Kenyan coast is something we have enjoyed getting used to and will miss a lot.

Nakumatt

A place where we feel a little more at home is the Nyali Nakumatt. This is where we do our grocery shopping and it is very much like a small version of Wal-Mart. (Even grocery stores in Kenya are amazing places, Dad!)

They have everything from bread to entertainment systems, hardware to yoghurt. We can find things like Kellogg’s cereals (which we don’t buy because they are about $15 a box), whole milk in a bag, Heinz ketchup (again super expensive), maize flour, Twix (that melts as soon as you step outside), laundry soap, insect killer, packaged meat (not the animal still to be cleaned), pasta and Prego, etc, etc. When we first arrived it was suggested that we shop at the Nakumatt because the markets were not safe. While we still stay out of the markets, we’ve found several fruit and vegetable stands on our way home where we like to by those things fresh. We’ve learned that Nakumatt usually gets their produce from the markets. That little tip has saved us from stock-piling too many fruits and veggies that go bad WAY faster in this hot and humid climate than at home. Unfortunately we still tend to get the mzungu price so it doesn’t really save us money! We usually shop about once a week and round trip takes us about 3 hours. I will not miss that when I can load my groceries into the trunk and be done for 2 weeks in about 30 minutes!

Loaded with groceries on our way back home we take boda bodas (bikes with seats on the back) to the matatu stage (bus stop) where we got on a matatu that takes us home.

The Amazing Matatu

This majestic creature can be found in all parts of Kenya, both rural and urban areas. It can move at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour and follows no laws of man. Its roar can be heard from miles away and although they are many they travel alone wherever they go. It is commonly used for human transport and can carry up to 22 passengers – at least that’s as many as Emily and I have witnessed. Legally they are only allowed to carry 14.

The routes are supposed to be painted on the side (you can kind of see it says "Docks" behind the door), but it is always good to double check with the conductor when you get on.

Matatus are the main form of public transportation. They are similar in shape and size to a Volkswagen van but they appear to be made by Nissan. They have five compact rows with three small seats in each row. Each matatu has a driver (who doesn’t count as a passenger) and a conductor (who does). The conductor takes your money and alerts the driver when passengers want to exit, or alight, as they say here. You can let the conductor know you want to get off by tapping on the metal sides of the van.

It takes skills to get in and out!

The matatus have a wide variety of horns and sounds which they use to get your attention so you will board their bus. The conductors will often try to talk you into going wherever their route will take you to get you in the van. If there are several matatus going to the same place the conductors will try to convince you that their van is better than the others and herd you in that direction, although the price is never dropped.

Matatus don’t seem to follow any rules of driving. They are constantly cutting others off, stopping at any time to pick up a passenger and speeding as much as they can. Time is money after all. Although it is illegal they try to pack as many passengers into the van as possible if they think there are no cops ahead. As I mentioned the most Emily and I have been on with is 22 passengers.

The total today was 22, our high score! This was taken from the back row which contained 4 people.

This was a kid from church - don't worry I hardly ever do this to strangers.

We take matatus wherever we go each day. We know the prices for most of the routes we use by now but the conductors often try to over charge us. Our co-workers tell us that it’s because of the color of our skin and everyone assumes that white people, or colored people, as they say, have lots of money. This has been true with pretty much everything we have tried to buy for the first time. For example, the first time we took a bicycle ride (another form of public transport for short distances called a boda boda) the riders tried to charge us 200 Ksh each. I think we ended up paying 40 Ksh each and we later found out that the going rate is 20 Ksh. We have come to love price tags and despise bartering since we don’t know what a fair price is for most things.

Well we got a little off subject with this one but we feel that the tangent was apt.

What time is it? It’s laundry day!

So we have a very nice stackable Kenmore washer and dryer unit. Both of them have glass doors so you can see the clothes spinning and the neighbor kids like to watch it for hours on end.

I may have embellished a little bit. We actually haul our laundry up to the roof of our building where we have a large sink all of our own. We wash and rinse our clothes by hand and then we hang them on the line to dry. Neither of us is very experienced at doing laundry by hand, in fact we had never done it before coming to Kenya. We have, however, developed a pretty good system and it goes pretty fast. (About an hour to wash and hang one load. Then we wait several hours for the clothes to dry before we can put them away.) We always worry that we’re not getting them quite clean enough or that we’re not getting all of the soap out but we’re sure we use WAY more water for our laundry than our neighbors.

We always have to wash the sink before we can wash our clothes.

The dry cycle takes 3 hours for button-up shirts, 5 hours for t-shirts, 8 hours for pants!

After washing our clothes by hand for five weeks we have determined this. Now we have actually DONE laundry. All you washing machine people have never actually DONE laundry. You have loaded a machine that does it for you, but this is the real deal. (Any readers who have done laundry by hand may now pat themselves on the back) Don’t misunderstand; we don’t have anything against washing machines. In fact, we’re very much looking forward to enjoying that luxury upon our return home. We just think it’s a funny phrase we use when we don’t, in a way, actually DO the laundry.

Our laundry room... dirty clothes on the sheet in the bed frame, clean clothes in the suitcases and not-quite-dry clothes hanging on the line.

Mmm…mmm…good!

We have eaten many new things in Kenya. They have a staple of rice and beans. The rice is soft and sticky and the beans are pinto beans that are stewed with tomatoes to give the juices and the beans a good flavor.

Their other staple that every Kenyan woman must know how to make is ugali. If a woman gets married and cannot make ugali she is sent back to her family until she learns how. Ugali is simply maize (corn) flour added to boiling water and stirred to make a kind of dough (think grainy playdough). You eat ugali with your hands and it goes with a variety of different things including kachumbari (sliced tomatoes, onions and peppers drowned in the juice of a lime), skuma (boiled and seasoned kale – like spinach), cabbage, and some kind of meat – we’ve had fish.

I had to prove my worthiness as a wife! My attempt at ugali.

The best meal according to a Kenyan is nyama choma – translated literally it’s grilled animal, but it just means any kind of meat. They are not picky about their meat and it often includes or mostly consists of bone and fat.

Another great Kenyan dish is pilau. It is rice with certain spices that give it an orange color and nyama choma. We’ve been told that it is common to slice a banana in with it and when we tried it we were very surprised that it was very good.

They eat everything with chapati. Chapati is like a thick tortilla, but more flavorful. They like to tear it into bite-size pieces and cover it with beans – either pinto beans or a kind of bean soup that tastes like lentils. The chapati soaks up the juices and it’s really good.

They love to drink hot things (tea, coffee, cocoa). There is a saying in Swahili, “When it’s hot, take it hot. When it’s cold, take it cold.” Well, it’s never cold, so we’ve been hard pressed to find anything cold! We haven’t tried anything we really didn’t like which has been a pleasant surprise! The abundant and very sweet bananas and other fruits have been a highlight, and good for us too.

A passion fruit! We had only had the juice until we got here.

Flat Sweet Flat

We live in an area called Nyali. We are told that Nyali is the rich part of Mombassa. We do live in a gated community but it’s not what you imagine. Our neighborhood is near the Nyali movie theatre and that is where we get off the matatu (Public transportation). From there we walk along a dirt path through a field which seems to serve as a community dump and where we often find goats grazing. We walk past the family who lives under the big tree and a small Muslim church with corrugated steel for a roof. Then we cross a small paved road and arrive at our community’s outer gate. From there it is just a short walk along the dirt road to our building’s gate.

The road home... Our building taken from the trash pile. We are the top, right balcony.

We have a security guard that always greets us as we enter and leave our building. Just outside the gate is where our trash it burned three times a week. We just leave it on the pile and the care taker burns it. This is one of the many smells that floats through our apartment during the day. Our building has a cement parking area on the ground floor where the children in the building play. We often watch them from our balcony and enjoy to see them having fun in the cool evenings.

Our apartment is extremely nice by Kenyan standards. We have two bathrooms, three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a sitting room. We have running water but not heated water and a sink and line up on the roof for laundry. We have two gas burners which use a propane tank. We can’t drink the water from the tap but we buy big containers of water and we have a dispenser in the kitchen. You will know how nice our apartment is comparatively by remembering or re-reading the post from the 17th of March where we talked about visiting our friends at their home in Likoni. The overwhelming majority of Kenyans live like our friends in Likoni and very many live much worse.

The sitting room/dining room.

The kitchen and the bathroom.

The neighbors that we have met have been very nice. One neighbor, Sofi, even brought us some nyama choma (grilled animal – precise animal unknown).

Things we don’t have that we are all used to: a garbage disposal, laundry machines, air conditioning, an oven (not that we could use it in the heat) a normal sized refrigerator, hot water, TV, internet, and carpet.

Things that we do have that we’re not used to: a sink for laundry, mosquito nets to sleep in, four fans (two blowing directly on each of us) to keep us cool enough to sleep at night, common power failure, lots of bugs eating our food, and the occasional lizard.

Despite these differences we are getting along just fine and we’re gaining a greater appreciation for all that we have.

Meet the Staff

We would like to introduce to you the staff of the Accounting Department at Yehu Microfinance. These are the wonderful people we work with everyday. They make Yehu run smoothly and the work they do allows over 12,000 people to work towards self-reliance. They have made us feel very welcome in Kenya and have taken good care of us.

Bernice Githinji is the first person we met when we arrived in Mombasa. She gave up a Saturday to pick us up from the airport and take us to the store for food. She has a good sense of humor and is strong in her opinions. She often speaks to us in Swahili because she thinks we should know the language already. She is the Assistant to the CEO and we’re not sure what she does everyday! :)

Kombe David Mathoh is the Accountant for Yehu. He is the fearless leader of the department. He is very kind and quiet and probably the busiest person here. Once when we needed to meet with him on a Tuesday to go over a report he said, “Okay, just a minute, I have to finish something, just a minute.” When we stayed until 6pm on Friday waiting for him to have time for us and he tried to tell us, “We’ll do it on Monday” we knew we had to be a little more insistent!

Phoebe Mwanjala has a great laugh. She is always welcoming and willing to help us learn whatever she is working on. (Note: We have found when a word ends in an “I” or “Y” the sound will often be left off. Example: One of the branches of the bank is in Mwambalazi, but people usually say Mwambalaz) One of our favorite things about Phoebe is that she says almost every day that she “is feeling dizz” when she gets tired or hungry. It makes us smile! Phoebe has a husband and a little boy that she misses at home.

Gerald Makonde Mshanga is “cool.” He loves to use that word and thinks things from the States are cool! He likes to try to speak with an American accent rather than the more common British accent but things usually come out half and half. He is a hard worker. Gerald loves ugali (a Kenyan staple we will show you later) and says it makes you strong and gives you lots of energy, so Justin should eat it everyday.

Maina is an intern like us. He is a local student in his second of six years of accounting school. He is always very polite and very quiet.

Adet Kache is Yehu’s CEO. He is very kind and always willing to help us at any hour of the day or night. He is completely devoted to the success of the bank. He is extremely motivated and hard-working. Adet arrives early and leaves late each day and we rarely see him at the office without and appointment because he is so busy and hard at work (hence, no picture yet).