Beach Bumming It

This last week in Mombasa was my first experience with the Indian Ocean and also my first experience with a shore that is protected by a coral reef. (the picture is of a piece of live coral that had washed up on the beach one morning)


It was stinking gorgeous. The tide would go out in the morning and leave all of these island things in the water that you could walk on to get out to the reef, so we would go out there and play with creatures in the tide pools -- there was little tiny, bright blue jellyfish one morning, a bunch of sea cucumbers another, and a billion little hairy star fish another. (There were also urchins and anemones -- don't touch those. They sting!)

We would go swimming in the afternoons, when the tide came in, and the water was SUPER salty -- like, sinus irrigation water kind of salty. There was tons of sea weed that would get worse and worse as it got later, and sometimes stinging things hid in it, which tended to cut things rather short. :P

The Cross and a Sword

So, when we weren't beach bumming it this past week or being uber tourists and taking pictures of everything -- or nothing; it's hard to tell in this pic

we really did do some class like things.

In one day we visited the oldest standing church in East and Central Africa, as well as the second oldest church in East and Central Africa that is still in use, both established by the same German missionary who had a rather unfortunate last name. Seriously. If your last name is Krapf, (just say that out loud once or twice without coming up with anything unfortunate) you should seriously look into getting a legal name change.

If nothing else, he left a serious legacy with the Anglican (Church of England) congregations around Mombasa in that he's their claim to fame in East and Central Africa. He showed up on the continent in 1844, a couple of centuries after both the Portuguese and the Moors (Arab speaking, Muslim people group) had conquered the area "in the name of God," so he had his work cut out for him.

Unfortunately, the Rabai people that he first settled with held on firmly to their traditional ways, and the mission pulled him out after fourteen years of work resulted in only a handful of converts -- and a fairly significantly sized missions base that is still standing. Cool to visit, but not much real use in reaching people for Christ. Out of all of the "reached" coastal peoples, the Rabai still hold the most tightly to their traditions and the rituals that take place in the Kaya, or sacred forest groves.

We also visited Fort Jesus, a Portuguese fort that later got taken over by the Moors and then the British. The British actually used it as a prison all the way up to 1958, when they decided to turn it into a national historical site, and, after they gained independence, the Kenyan government decided to keep it that way.

It's really cool looking, but the name is rather unfortunate. Even if you are under the impression that you are going to a Christian people, (the first Portuguese explorers to land in India actually thought that the Hindu temple they visited was preforming some sort of a Catholic mass, because they assumed that the entire Eastern world had been evangelized by St Thomas!) there is really no way to enter a land with the goals of conquest and missions. You see, that sharp pointy thing in one hand is called a sword, and the thing that looks like a book in the other hand, that's a Bible, and, no matter how hard you try, it's impossible to use one for the job of the other. They just don't work like that.

Regardless, the built the fort in the vague shape of a human; head, torso, two arms, two legs, and then decided that it looked like Jesus. Ya know...maybe...kind of. I'm fairly positive he had all of those body parts...but then, so have a good number of other people.

<><

From Sand to Sand

We went to Mombasa (a city on the coast) for a week, with the supposed goal of learning about the places where European Christianity was first introduced into East and Central Africa (the Ethiopian Orthodox church was already around and had a strong following completely separate from any Western influence). We met our goal...but there was a lot of beach bumming involved too...of course.

It is crazy the number of very distinct cultures that can exist in this one, not so big, country. In theory, G-town and Mombasa are both predominantly Muslim cities, one containing a majority of Somali peoples and the other containing a majority of Swahili peoples, but the differences between the two are enormous.

In the one, camels roam through desert sand -- and the town -- with their long, gliding gait, herded by men and boys in kikoys, and the spinnerets of Mosques poke white and green heads up over the low, dry bush of the countryside. In the other, tourists and school children wander across the white sand of coral beaches, and the oldest church buildings in East and Central Africa still stand within ear shot of the Muslim call to prayer.

In one, Western females trying to respect the culture wear long skirts and t-shirts, and everyone -- including us -- is a little shocked to see a woman in jeans. In the other, the tourist culture (both foreigners and Kenyans from other parts of the country) is so ingrained that we wore shorts and ribbed tank tops -- or rolled up sleeves :D -- on the beach and found that we were still far more covered than many women in town.

In one, everyone knows who we are and tries to make us practice our Swahili. In the other, people are surprised when you try to steer the conversation away from English, and there are moments when it is hard to pick the team out of a crowd because there are so many wazungu faces floating around. (There was a family at Nakumatt with six SUPER blonde kids, and Becca and I both did a double take when the first one ran past us, because he was just so shockingly blonde. Lol.)

Short Term

Well...Jessica's lesson of the day: life is different when you're only here on a short term trip.

Our area coordinators...I think that's the right term...came down from Nairobi to visit us with their kids and a friend who was extending her stay after coming for a two week missions trip. Comparing the number of things that she saw and did in her two weeks here with the number of things that we saw and did over our first two weeks here was rather remarkable. (Not that we mentioned so to her. :P)

She was very excited to tell us how, just this morning, Warren had taken them, "to see all of those little shops, like you see in the movies." After living here for over two weeks, this was her first time to set foot in a market or buy fruit from a market stall. On the other hand, we flew in on a Sunday, and by Tuesday we were flying all over town on the matatu system as part of our amazing race, including the market that we returned to the next day to shop for Garissa appropriate clothing.

She bought her first pop from a duka early this afternoon when Becca took them to visit the mama who owns the duka beside our house, another thing that we did many times within fourty-eight hours of getting off of the bus here. And, this evening, I believe that we may be exposing her to her first meal of camel meat. So many things that seem so inherantly tied in with understanding life in Kenya that she did come anywhere near in her origional two weeks here.

It makes me wonder, looking back on all of the short term trips that I have been on, just how much of the culture and lifestyle of those places I missed while I thought I was seeing the reality of people's lives. The experiences themselves aren't that important. I mean, I'm sure her family at home will love to hear about all of the adventures that she had, but there's more to it than just seeing things.

The market is part of the heartbeat of this town. It's where people get most of their food and clothing, most of their household supplies. It's where down-countries and up-countries have stalls in the same row and begin to learn each other's language and culture. It's where the world of freshly picked produce collides with the world where aid food is resold at a profit. Christian or Muslim; Somali, Pokomo, or Luo; everyone collides at the market. (sometimes literally! lol.)

You can't really understand the way that most Kenyan's live unless you've seen how they get their food. It would be like going to America for the first time, never setting foot inside a grocery store or a WalMart and never eating fast food, and then saying that you had really seen the way that Americans live.

There are huge benefits to spending a week or two involved in missions, but this was a good reminder of how very short short term trips really are.

<><

I swear, that black shirt really is clean. It's just slowly fading out to...less black, and my camera picked that up as brown for some reason? Idk.

So, for some reason that makes no sense to my brain, approximately every other time that I put clothes out on the line to dry, it starts to rain. This is a semi desert. It doesn't rain that often. Apparently, though, Sunday afternoons are a great time for a five to thirty minute shower that is just long enough to re-rinse all of my trying to get dry clothing. :P

I've been known to just do my laundry in the rain in order to forgo the extra rinsing. (Doing laundry in a hot, dark, muggy back room on days with no power is far less pleasant than doing it outside in the bright -- hot -- sunlight. Plus, it's easier to see the stains that way...not that some of them ever come completely out anyways. Deodorant stains are amazingly persistent. Yuck! Lol.)

Yep. Can you see my poor clothing behind me as we enjoy the rain? At least rain water smells better than the stuff that comes out of our taps.

<><

Public Transportation

This is a matatu

They generally look something like this on the inside (or more crowded. Lol).

And, for about 25 cents, they will be more than happy to carry you and your stuff anywhere along their route.

They tend to be rather pimped out and play very loud rap music (often old school American stuff).

The newest in Matatu fashion...anything having to do with Obama. They love that his father was Kenyan.

*Note: All of these matatu pics come from the Nairobi area, so none of the backgrounds you see in them look anything like where I'm living, but the public transport is the same here as there.

Glimpses of Life

So, the solution to the problem of not being able to take pictures in town / most places we go....

...steal other people's pics off of the internet. :D

This is a fairly typical village in the bush. When I talk about the village, this what most of the houses look like. The other traditional housing style here is a round mud hut with a grass roof, similar in size to these ones. Houses like the one we live in are referred to as "modern houses" In our case, that means concrete walls as and floors and a corrugated metal roof, fairly standard for a house in town. (Although some of the NGOs and the upper class have medditeranean style houses that are beautiful.)

Camels are used for meat and milk (and are the main source of food and livelyhood for the Somali peoples in the area), but they also double as pack animals. Those are pieces of house on its back, as most of the tribes in this area are traditionally semi nomadic, and a good number of people still tavel with their flocks or herds.

Herds of goats and sheep (shoats?) wander through town constantly, sometimes accompanied by a shepherd, sometimes just left to their own devices. Many shepherds are school aged boys who forego school in order follow the pastoral traditions of their tribe.

Somali elders often dye their beards (and sometimes eyebrows and hair) with hena. Originally, the orange color was a sign that they had been on hajj (pilgramige to Mecca), but, in Northeastern Province, it is generally just a sign of status with in the community.

The little girl is wearing a dira -- a traditional up-country dress.
The "skirt" that the boy on the left is wearing is a kikoi -- traditional garb among the up country males. Rebecca had an epifany shortly after getting here regarding the phrase in the Bible, "and he girded up his loins." Up-country guys do it all the time when they need to move more than a skirt would allow them. You reach for the back hem of the kikoi and pull it up between your legs so that it's up by your waist. *warning* If pulled too high, this can give short shorts / speedo effect. Not okay.

Depending on the family, girls from Islamic tribes start covering their heads somewhere between toddlerhood and early adolecence, normally with some sort of a loose scarf.

Once you are out in the villages (or around people who live in the village), it is rare to find women wearing a veil. Tradition only dictates that they cover with some sort of shawl. Some wear another, tighter, head covering underneath in order to prevent the hair from showing, but ninjas or solid colored samurais are generally only found in town.

This is the outer edge of the market where we buy most of our food, clothing, dishes, etc. At least once a week, a group comes here to buy team food for the week as well as any food that we will need at "the girls' house" for dinner. This portion of the market is quite open as far as head space goes, but part of the vegetable section is so low that we dubbed it "munchkin land" fairly quickly.

Punda cart delivering goods to be sold. These are everywhere and they can carry just about anything too big to take on the back of a bike. Honestly, I'm not sure how they got pictures of the market EMPTY, but I'm sure you can mentally paste a few dozen people into each photo...