Kenya Dig It? ~ The Adventures of Hundred And Five

[bloodyrosemccoy]

September 19, 2007

 

“So, Amelia, what did you do on your 22^nd birthday?”

Well, I went on a hike through the Indian Ocean.

 

There were a couple of times, when we got to new places, that our Academic Directors sent us out in pairs on scavenger hunts, only we were looking for places, and when we got to Malindi, we did one on my birthday. My friend Thano and I were assigned to go find a small, tourist-oriented town called Watamu and check it out. I was a little apprehensive about my special birthday skirt, but how bad could it be in Watamu?

 

Thano is the kind of guy who can establish instant rapport with pretty much everyone, even when he’s inexplicably fasting for Ramadhan (he’s not Muslim, but he is crazy) and is a little crabby. And we had the added benefit that together, we were the two people whose nicknames are numbers in Swahili: mia means ‘hundred,’ and tano is ‘five,’ so people introducing themselves as Mia and Thano* were pretty funny. We got directions easily, and when we were there we managed to haggle one of the beach boys who appoint themselves your “tour guide” to actually guide us for a fair price.

 

And what we found in Watamu was this:

 

 

God damn. I don’t know if I’ve said this before, but the Indian Ocean is a mindblowing color. It’s teal—a bright, almost fiery clear blue-green that just resonates in my head on some perfect frequency. It’s incredible. And here we were on a postcard beach, the kind you never expect to really exist: blindingly white, no clouds but a few cumulus on the horizon, verdant islands, and that jewel-like color of the water.

 

We had to just stare for a minute.

 

Then we were rudely awakened by a troop of tourists. Malindi and Watamu are overrun with Italians, worse even than cats. And most of them are ugly tourists, in the Ugly American sense. They yell, wear inappropriate clothes, treate the natives like servants, and generally act like boors.** You have to swat them aside like gnats to get anywhere. And they refuse to learn another language.

 

These tourists barged by in their g-strings and Speedos, and broke the spell of the beach a bit. We looked around, wondering what we should do now we were here, and vaguely remembering something we’d heard about a “snake farm.”

 

“Oh, yeah,” said our guide. “It’s that way.” He pointed at a beach, across a small lagoon that had cliffs along its shore.

 

Then he stepped into the lagoon—tide was out, so it was about knee-high in the deep spots. Apparently he decided to go with the shortcut, which happened to be through the ocean.

 

Then he stopped. “Oh, your skirt!”

 

And I, with great aplomb, lifted it up to reveal the shorts I was wearing underneath.

 

So Thano, JJ the beach boy, and I set out across a small area of the Indian Ocean to get to another beach. It was awesome. My Tevas got a bit chewed up, but dammit, my skirt didn’t even get wet, and the water was nice.

 

Less nice was after we got on the beach and the fine white sand began to clump to my feet and shoes. I cannot stand things on my skin. I kept rinsing in the ocean, but when we left the beach and began walking past the walled rich people houses, it really started to drive me nuts.

 

Presently, on a little lane between garden walls, I called for a halt. I was pulling out my water bottle to rinse my feet when the door in the wall behind us flew open and a man was staring out.

 

“Oh!” I said, jumping back.  “Sorry!  I was just … my shoes … uh, viatu—”

 

JJ stepped forward and spoke for a few minutes in Swahili to the guy, holding up my sandals. The man took them, and to my surprise, vanished into the wall again.

 

I blinked at Thano. “My shoes are gone.”

 

Moments later the man returned, with a little basin and pitcher to wash my shoes and my feet both. “Whoa,” I said. “Thanks!”  And since the path was no longer sandy, this time they stayed clean.

 

The snake farm was too expensive for us, so we took a picture of the tiny crocodiles out front and left.  By this time Thano was regretting fasting, but he still did while I remorselessly ate a mysterious chicken part at a nice little restaurant.  “You are going to die,” I told him.

 

He shrugged. “I just need to nap until sunset.”

 

Which, when we got back, he did—nap, that is, not die. The ADs got me a cake with “HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMILIA” on it, and the others, in a wonderful misguided attempt to make me happy, took me clubbing. But definitely one of my more memorable birthdays, and the ocean hike was wonderful.

 

Especially I did manage to pause halfway along, lift a fist, and shout “ARR!” and Thano responded.  Because birthdays should be celebrated with style.

 

 

*Nobody can pronounce Amelia for some reason. And don’t even ask about somebody whose full name is Athanasios.

 

**And they never, ever look happy. I never did find a tourist who didn’t look like they really needed to have a good bowel movement. Why the hell are you going to come halfway around the world to be a grumpy jerk? Are you that determined?

Comments

[chibicharibdys.livejournal.com]

Awesome!

>> I don’t know if I’ve said this before, but the Indian Ocean is a mindblowing color.

The Pacific Ocean around these islands is as well. Sometimes I just want to go out to the ocean and stare at it for a long time.

Merry Christmas!