Malindi + Mombasa

The view from my tent

What a nice change of pace it has been to get to the coast. At Mpala I was beginning to feel as though we were seeing the same, beautiful nonetheless, but largely the same, scenes over and over: scorched earth with pale green thorny vegetation and intense, dry heat. As soon as we neared the coast the vegetation switched to palm trees lazily swaying in the wind, growing out of the sand-covered ground. The palm trees all have pseudo-ladders hacked into them so that palm wine tappers can climb up and tap their wine. In Malindi we camped on a private beach and would fall asleep listening to the waves of the Indian Ocean crashing into the beach. It was absolutely surreal. The beach was owned by a German man and his family. His home was there and he had a restaurant and bar on the premises too. The beach is perfect white coral sand and the ocean water is the temperature of bath water and the colour of perfect turquoise. The variation between high tide and low tide is quite dramatic as well with low tide retreating far out into sea and high tide threatening to drench our tents and producing amazing waves that we’d spend our afternoons body surfing on. Besides playing in the water, during our time at Malindi we did assignments, had lectures by the beach, and visited locals farms and had lectures by the farmers. My favourite part of this class is that my prof always buys samples of traditional African fruits and vegetables for us to sample. The best one we’ve tried is baobab fruit from the baobab tree also known as Rafiki’s house.

Map of the sacred forest in relation to Mombasa

After four days in Malindi we drove to Mombasa. On the drive there my class stopped in Kaya Rabai forest. This is one of a collection of forests that are considered sacred to the Mijikenda people who live on the coast of Kenya. The dress for a male Mijikenda is limited to a blueish-green sarong tied around his waist. We were greeted by an elder Mijikenda who escorted us through the forest. Rules of the forest: no shoes or socks (to ensure proper contact with the sandy forest floor which has healing and cleansing properties) and no running (so as not to disturb the ancestors and so as to prolong your foot’s contact with the healing, cleansing sand). Keep in mind that our visit took place at 1:30 in the afternoon under the hot midday sun. I don’t think we’ve ever experienced so much pain. Our feet were numb for hours after. It was absolutely scorching. The elder was so sweet and said we did a great job and thanked us for not complaining at all. He said that it’s OK to leap around a little bit. I would argue that “a little bit” is a gross understatement- we were jumping around in between patches of shade and speed walking through the tour. In all though, the forest was beautiful and I appreciate that we were allowed to visit given that only recently people other than the Mijikenda have been allowed to enter the forests. It was fascinating to hear about their beliefs and traditions. The Mijikenda are also very special because they’ve been especially successful at maintaining their traditional lifestyle and practices, no doubt in some part due to the fact that they and their forests are protected under UNESCO World Heritage Site designation.

We arrived at our Presbyterian (a.k.a. dry) hotel in Mombasa in the afternoon and spent the night working on projects and essays. The next morning we said goodbye to our beloved Bunduz staff and trucks at the Mombasa airport and boarded our flight to Zanzibar.