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Kenyan Safari Part Five

(Pictures will be available once scanned)

Willy is not responsible for any misspelled or wrong names and claims the right to use poetic license.  If anyone who was there feels offended or can remember the correct facts, feel free to email Willy and he'll decide whether or not to change it based on it's entertainment value.

From the desk of Willy B:

Mombassa:  What a day.   We boarded the plane to Mombassa and after travelling in club class, on British Airways, coach on Kenya Airlines was hot and sweaty.  The airline magazine was nice and I learned some more about elephants and the Miss Africa contest.  When we got into Mombassa Airport (Moa International Airport), we were launched into bedlam.  There was a SNAFU with the Hotel and we didn't get the complimentary bus, so we had to get twelve people and all their gear into one of the decrepit, rubber band-held-together pieces of junk cabs.   Since a few of them wouldn't start, our choices were narrowed down to about fifteen cabs.  The drivers were knocking each other over and pushing us toward their cabs.   The situation seemed a little tense to me and I started to get a little worried, it felt as though these cabbies were going to peel off with all of our stuff.  I needn't have worried though, cause these vehicles weren't going anywhere.  We switched vehicles several more times before we eventually found two that could both hold us and start their engines.  We headed off to our hotel, or so I thought.  We drove through one of the worst looking cities I have ever been in.  I've been in some rough places in my life and some strange situations, but this one took the cake.  Bob, George and I were in this broken down Malibu or something.  it might have been a Pinto wagon or maybe a Gremlin or something.  We were following this big blue van that had all of our stuff and everyone else in it.  Suddenly, as we were going into this market area, the van took a quick left and parked along the curb.  Our car followed it and parked just behind it.  The people started to get out of the van, I was thinking, "What the hell are they doing!!"  We were sitting there and I was asking the driver, "what's going on?" as I gripped my wooden cane until my knuckles turned white.
    "I think they are shopping sir," he said.
    "What !!?!!  SHOPPING?!?  What the hell for?"
    "There is good shopping here, sir" he said.
    "WHAT!!??"  I loked back at Bob for some sort of reassurance that this was NOT what was happenning.  He was unable to give it to me.   "What about the cab and all of our shit?" I was getting a little upset as I saw them starting to walk away.   I couldn't believe my eyes.  The whole trip, I was fairly composed, even with that snake and the lions.  This was getting tough for me to take.
    "I don't understand the question, sir."
    "What are we going to do with our stuff, carry it?" I asked Bob.
    "I will wait here until you are done shopping, sir.  It is OK we will not go anywhere."
    I looked at Bob again, "You've got to be F*&$#@& kidding me."
    I got out of car with my stick and asked the other people if they really wanted to get out at this particular spot, leave all of our gear with these cab drivers, who we didn't know and had no phone numbers for, no company information, no accountability for, and walk around downtown Mombassa looking for trinkets we could get just about anywhere in the country.  Everyone was out of their minds at that point and they said, "yes."

    I volunteered to stay with the cabs.  They said it wasn't necessary but since I had already determined the level of their insanity at that certain point I stayed anyway.  About sixty seconds later I was questioning my own sanity.   I was harangued by merchants, bothered by passers-by, asked for cigarettes, asked for lights, asked where I got my Enwoodie, asked if I would buy this soapstone chess set for my sneakers, and on and on.  After the first sixty seconds, they left me alone.   It may have been the hardened look in my eye as I stood with my stick held commandingly in my hands.  It may also have been my quickly darting eyes, my shaking hands and knees, my pale white face and the cold sweat running down my forehead.  I think the cabbies were laughing at me.  I spent a full twenty minutes in hyper mode that seemed like six or seven years, I smoked five cigarettes, switched hands on my stick several hundred times, shifted from foot to foot several thousand times and almost dropped my stick once.  I was a wreck.  Finally they came back and I was ready to go.  I was really pissed at them.  I slept good that night.  Even with my jacked-uptooth singing the high notes to the backs of my eyeballs.

We finally got to the hotel and it was absolutely gorgeous.   They had two pools there that were the coolest looking pools I have ever seen.  They were huge and shaped sort of like paisleys with extra nodes and they had bars on islands in the middle of them with bridges and scuba lessons and water polo, you name it.   One was chlorine and one was salt.  It was awesome.  We washed up, tried to find some clean clothes and came out for our feeding.  After dinner there was a band playing and I was talking to them and they invited me to play with them.  I got up and played harmonica and we had a  great time, they even asked me to sing "My Way" which was strangely cool in a calypso kind of way.  I found another bar with Four Roses and I went to town.  Bourbon helped me to ignore the dull ache that came and went in my mouth.  We had a great time and the next morning we wasted the day at the beach while some of the party went out to town to try and coerce the local ATM out of some shillingi.  I think Terry and Marla headed downtown to scope out some Tanzanite, a gem that isn't mined any more but is beautiful pale blue (I think).   They ended up getting some later and came back so late one night that we were sure they had been taken in by the local Mombassa Mob.  The remaining nights we danced and sang with the local groups that came to the hotel and we went to a dance club and we bartered our shorts off to the guys on the beach, literally.  Beth and two of the other girls rode camels, Terry and I traded clothes, watches, socks, shoes, hats, shirts, batteries, flashlights, and other stuff for the strange African artifacts found in the huts on the beach.  One night we ate dinner outside in this strange domed thing.  I can't exactly explain it but it was big, sort of like adobe material and a dome on high arches and yet it was still like being outside.   The acoustics in it were amazing.  You could hear people's conversation from across the room as if they were inside your head.  We were 180 degrees from where they were serving the meats and we had a lot of fun projecting our voices at key moments while people were getting their food.  We were typical "Loud Americans" but soon everyone got into the act and it might have been funnier if I spoke German or Swahili, but I laughed anyway.  They were foreigners too.

Anyway, after three days in Mombassa it was time to go home and we did.  We boarded the Kenya Airlines plane back to Nairobi, Jumped on a British Airways plane and flew back to London.  Some of us did a little four hours of sight seeing in London and then it was back to San Diego.

Well folks, it has taken me about three months to write this and I guess that's why I'm not a writer, but, it was a great trip and I wanted you to be able to experience it with me.  Have a good one.   If Beth is still working for BA in March of 2000, we're going back to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro.

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