Mombasa: Day 2

Sleeping in Mombasa is tough business. It's hot. The windows don't close (you wouldn't want them to anyway) and the street noise (trucks banging, drunkards yelling, music blaring) doesn't stop. The ceiling fan is almost completely ineffective, and it's breeze fails to penetrate the thin veil of the mosquito net around each bed.

Waking up, on the other hand, is very easy. The sun comes in fast and dangerous over the low-rise buildings off to the East. The pre-dawn prayer calls are more than qualified to serve as alarm clocks. The matatus and tuk-tuks (the tricycle of public transportation - three wheels, two passengers, one horn) manage to make the sounds of the night sound seem somehow serene.

Anyway, by 6:30 we were up and out. Breakfast is hard to find at that hour, but a little searching with the help of a friendly askari (security guard) found us a decent spot for chai, chapati, and eggs. Afterwards we walked around the city a good bit more, stopping at another Hindu Temple. Although it was not our intent, we happened to align this visit perfectly with the Hindu new year, and the Temple was open and the center of a bustling Indian community moving all about. Hindus are roughly 10% of the population in Mombasa, with Christians representing 20% and Muslims roughly 70%. We were offered a brief tour and were once again impressed with the architecture, atmosphere, and level of devotion. There were numerous depictions of the religion's central dieties and tales on every wall, and the entire building had a very clean, safe, and education-oriented feel. It was nice. I learned a few interesting tidbits about this particular Hindu community's practices, including the separation of male and female worship spaces, and the refusal of any food produced by non-Hindus. These things were a little less in step with my western biases, but interesting nonetheless.

The rest of they day consisted of reading in the shade, wandering around the city, and visiting the harborside (the old harborside, that is - the new one is much like any modern port, with towering cranes, colorful shipping containers, and heaps of industrial pollution). I can't really complain about anything, except for the heat.

It is so hot.

Anyway, I'm off to buy a bottle of water and read again for a while. I plan to set out for dinner in the early evening when things are just starting to cool off, and before that I might sneak in another cold shower. (That'd be three on the day. I never thought I'd be complaining that the water in my hotel room isn't cold enough.)

I'll get back to you tomorrow, and Monday we take a bus south to the middle-of-nowhere town of Langa in Tanzania, where we'll spend one night before hitting Dar Es Salaam for a day and Zanzibar Island for three or four. We've cut the Arusha/Serengetti part of the trip in favor of more days on the island. It will cost us a little more money to fly from Zanzibar or Dar directly back to Nairobi than it would to take busses, but we save a lot by cutting out a safari. I think it makes more sense. Of course, I'm not thinking all that clearly with all this heat. We'll see how it pans out.

Yours,
Chris