My blog - December 2002
Lamu I: God Is On Our Side
December 31st 2002, 6:53am
I've just returned from a holiday on the island of Lamu, just off the coast of Kenya. I spent quite a bit of time writing and taking photos while I was there, a lot of which will appear on here soon. Here's the first instalment, most of which was written while in the plane...
I'm flying across Kenya in a Gulfstream G159; a twin propeller plane with 24 passengers. I'm near the front on the right hand side, next to the window. The plane is small enough that I'm also by the aisle. This is the smallest plane I have ever flown in.
So far the flight has been very smooth. Looking down over Kenya I can see vast expanses of red ground, yellow grass, green trees, the occasional river and lake, but very few roads. Unfortunately we can't see Mt. Kilimanjaro today because of clouds. There are a few clouds below us, but they just look like the occasional ball of cotton wool scattered on the landscape, floating above their own shadows.
The pilot tells us that the temperature in Lamu is twenty-nine degrees, but he doesn't know what the weather is - it's either sunny or cloudy. I feel us start to descend; the plane feels like it is angled forwards quite steeply. There's quite a lot of cloud in front so it'll probably start to get bumpy.
I can see the coast now. The sand is white, the sea is clear blue. I can see roads and houses now. There are lots of rivers too, splitting the land into little islands. It feels like we're hardly moving.
We're now over the sea. I can see boats with triangular sails. I see a coral reef. There are shoals of fish like big black clouds in the sea. The reefs are green, the rest of the sea is dark blue.
I see land again. Small islands in the sea, not more than a bit of sand and a few trees. I can see white lines in the coral, they look like subterranean roads. We're over the land again now, following the beach. There are quite a few dhows on the sea.
The pilot tells us that Lamu is to our left, and it's raining there. He says 'we'll do our level best to land' but if he can't see the runway we'll have to go back to Malindi and wait for the rain the stop.
There's a real desert island to the right - just about big enough the film 'Survivor' on. We're flying through the rain now. The flight is getting quite bumpy. I notice the landing gear retract. We're over a big river. Or is it water between islands? We're now at the other side of the island - or is it a different island? It's hard to tell.
We're circling. Are we trying again, or going to Malindi? The gear is out again. We are very low, and banking steeply - it feels like it's about 45 degrees. I can see our shadow on the seabed. There are lots of trees in the water.
The gear is retracted again. The nose is back up and I can feel us speeding up. The pilot tells us that we're going to Malindi. Then about ten seconds later he comes over the speakers again: 'God is on our side. The rain has cleared - we'll make a quick dash for it.' We bank round again.
We're very low - we're skimming the tops of the trees. Now a gap has appeared and we're flying just a few feet from the ground. Now I see a runway - we touch down perfectly and everyone on the plane starts clapping. We taxi along the runway, water splashing under the plane's wheels. We're here.
Outside the plane it is hot and humid, and I can't see any buildings anywhere. Then I hear someone shout 'Welcome to Lamu', and I notice a man standing by the trees a little way away. I have to wade through an inch or so of water on the sandy ground by the runway to reach him, where I discover a couple of small buildings with tin roofs, hiding behind the trees. One building claims to be the 'Manda Duty Free Shop', and they're selling bottles of water.
Under a thatched canopy there are a group of people waiting to take us to the boat to Lamu (the airport is on the adjacent Manda Island). One of them tells me he will help me find accomodation in Lamu. Someone pulls a handcart across the runway piled high with our luggage. I find my rucksack and follow a group of people along a sandy path towards the sea. We walk out along a long wooden pier and climb down into the 'taxi'.
The taxi is an very old wooden sailing boat. There are sacks of maize in it already. I throw my rucksack on top of them and clamber in. It's still raining lightly, so I move aft where there's a canvas shelter rigged up. I sit on a bench at the edge of the boat, near to the engine which is in a big makeshift wooden box in front of me. There are only a few of us in the boat and we cast off and move a little way off from the pier. For some reason, we stop and wait for another boat to fill up before returning and filling up ourselves.
Then we cast off properly and start to head across the channel towards Lamu.
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Off To Lamu
December 20th 2002, 5:44am
Tomorrow morning I fly off to Lamu for the Christmas holiday. I'll switch off the commenting system on this blog until after I get back on the 30th, so you won't be able to leave comments until then. Not that anyone ever does leave comments. (Well, rarely anyway).
Tonight I'm going to watch Two Towers, which should be good. A film all about Wembley, I think.
Have a good Christmas, wherever you are.
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What I Miss About England
December 16th 2002, 6:55am
I think people back home think my year in Kenya is just one big holiday. Although I do love living here, there are some things about England that I miss...
- Long summer evenings - Although we have lovely weather here, the sun goes down at 6.30 all year round, which doesn't seem right.
- Clean drinking water - I've got so used to refilling the water filter every evening and cleaning the mud off it each week that I've almost forgotten what it's like to take a drink straight from the tap.
- Safe roads - With potholes, few road markings and vehicles with no lights or dazzling lights, driving at night is the one thing that really scares me here.
- Safe cities - I don't go into Nairobi too often - it's too stressful. I spend all my time looking over my shoulder to see if someone's about to mug me.
- Friends - I have made quite a few friends here, but I still miss my friends from home. (Of course, when I go home next year I'll miss my friends from here!)
- Reliable electricity - The power here is supposed to be 240V like in the UK. It tends to range from 0-1000V in reality.
- My guitar - The Yamaha electric guitar I've borrowed from church is okay, but it's not a patch on my Patrick Eggle back home! The church is getting a Line6 POD soon though, so that'll nearly make up for not having my Line6 Flextone amp.
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Comment posted by James Ots at 6:55am on December 16th 2002
By the way, the list is in no particular order and isn't exhaustive.
Sometime in the future I'll add another list entitled 'Things I'm going to miss about Kenya'.
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Two Films
December 11th 2002, 8:50am
On Saturday I watched the new Bond film. Although not a great film, it is generally a good Bond film. It has everything you'd expect and then some. Sometimes it was so over the top it almost had me in stitches, though some of the inuendo belonged in Austin Powers really. The special effects in the parachute surfing scene didn't work - it looked really fake.
Yesterday I watched the latest Harry Potter film. We were going to the new cinema to book tickets for Lord Of The Rings, and since Chamber of Secrets was showing I thought I may as well watch it. I thought it was better than the Bond film in almost every way, except for the ending which was really cheesy.
I was a bit disappointed with the cinema though. Everyone has been talking about how wonderful it is and how nice the seats are, but I think I prefer the Sarit Centre. The seats were big and quite comfortable, but there was very little leg room and the head rest was too far forward which meant it was difficult to relax. On the positive side, at least the sound was good, whereas at the Sarit Centre it often drops out or changes volume at random points during the film.
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Life Goes On
December 7th 2002, 10:18am
Last night I went to the new cinema out at the village market to watch Minority Report. It's only just come out over here, even though it was the last film I saw in the UK about five months ago. (We often get films a few weeks early though). Unfortunately, all the films were sold out so we couldn't experience the 'club class' seats in any of the four screens.
We instead went to a cool bar in town called Gipsy. It reminded me of Coventry - the building was a horrible concrete thing, but the atmosphere was great. Also, the weather was cool and rainy. I had a kebab and a few rum & cokes before we moved onto Kengeles, a chain of bars across Nairobi which kind of remind me of Wetherspoons. I had a Kenyan Guinness, which tasted vaguely of Guinness, but was very bitter and had a strange sesame aftertaste.
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Naivasha II - The Return of the Youth
December 2nd 2002, 9:58am
I've just been on the church youth retreat at Naivasha. This time the youth came, so we didn't have to turn it into a leaders' retreat again.
It was a lot more tiring than last time, as I had anticipated. During the morning we had been to the Naivasha Country Club to go swimming. We had planned to go to Fish Eagle Camp, but their pool was being cleaned, so we drove to another place but the pool looked like it needed to be cleaned, so we ended up at the Country Club, which looked really posh but cost less than the other places. I spent too much time lying at the side of the pool and got very sunburnt.
On Saturday night, after the barbeque, disco and fireworks, we showed some films outdoors, using a video projector. I went to bed after the second one, but some people stayed up to watch four films in a row, including The Jungle Book!
We did fireworks slightly differently from how they would have been done in the UK. We gave everyone matches, opened an enourmous box of fireworks and let them do what they liked! The fireworks were finished pretty quickly, except for the firecrackers which people stocked up on and let off all through the films and on the way home the following day.
I was driving an open backed pickup, and most of the time people rode on the back rather than in the cab. Two of the guys rode all the way to Naivasha and back home on the back of the pickup as well. At one point Andrew (one of the other leaders) decided that lying on the roof of the pickup was the best way to travel.
On Sunday we went to the gorge. We were going to play a football type game in it, but as we walked to one end we discovered that there was a small part which was flooded. We were about to turn back when Andrew, without taking off his shoes or rolling up his trousers, waded into the water, which came three quarters of the way up his waist. He then proceeded to carry most of us across to the other side, although I took my shoes off and waded. There were several other places which were also flooded, but many of those could be passed by climing round the sides. On the way back some people managed to climb along a ledge above the flooded part and jump down the other side. It was an interesting team building exercise which was far more fun than anything we could have organised on purpose!
It's a weekend I won't forget soon, not least because it's going to be a while before my skin stops being bright red.
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Comment posted by Maret at 6:53am on December 31st 2002
What an experience!I am not the best of planetravellers so that would have terrified me.Glad you had a great time for christmas.Much warmer for you than for me.In Tallinn today -18oc.YES MINUS 18oC
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