Breakdown, Madman, Overcrowded Ferry - This Is Africa..

15th February - 16th February 2010 – Days 139-140 – Mombasa, Kenya

After four disastrous nights in Lamu (one interrupted by me kicking the mosquito net out of place, leading to us getting completely eaten alive and followed by over an hour of mosquito hunting; one shortened by me getting accidentally locked out of the hotel and M locked into the hotel until 5am, leading to very little sleep; and one delayed by 2 cats fighting extremely loudly in the courtyard) the bus ride back to Mombasa was largely spent snoozing in the hot Kenyan sun, aside from one incident which happened about an hour after leaving.

African roads are generally pretty rough and distances are long, and with the truck traffic that rumbles along these roads it's a pretty common sight to see lengths of tyre on and next to the road. Until this morning, anything leading to such a length of tyre being left on the road had never happened to me. About an hour after leaving Mokowe (the port village opposite Lamu), though, I was gently snoozing away when I was awoken by a loud bang, a weird repetitive clicking noise and the gradual slowing of the bus. By the time I came to my senses, we had stopped. “That sounded like a tyre bursting” I said. “I'd say so too” said M. The bus emptied, and a classically African session of headscratching, discussion, observation and occasional argument ensued. For a while, it seemed that nothing much was happening. Men stood around debating various important topics, women sat in the grass by the road debating equally important topics, and the two wazungu on the bus stood around, half asleep, wondering why no-one was replacing the tyre. Eventually another bus came along, it stopped, more headscratching, discussion, observation and occasional argument took place and eventually a spare tyre was produced from the entrails of this other bus. From then on the driver and his assistant got busy with the business of removing the two tyres (for the burst one was the inside tyre at the back) replacing the burst one, and putting everything back in. It seemed that the surviving tyre of the original pair was on the point of bursting too and M predicted that we wouldn't get to Malindi (about an hour down the road) without a similar stop. I was tempted to agree with her although in Africa, not only the people but also the inanimate objects seem to show an amazing resilience. Besides, I was too sleepy to take a stand on the position. The men stopped debating, the women got up, everyone piled onto the bus, and we were off again. By the time I woke up 5 hours later, we were in the suburbs of Mombasa.

How to fix a broken tyre: Stand around looking at it

With our deadline to meet Freda in Dar Es Salaam next Sunday morning, we didn't have days to explore Mombasa, as nice as it was. Like Nairobi though, the centre was easy enough to wander around and see very well in a day. A fort, built by the Portuguese is by the coast; the old town, close to it, is a typically Arab-style old town and was nice to walk around. It was also home to a guy who seemed both happy to attach himself to us and also very irate, screaming something about the Mau Mau, the Somali war, Ethiopians, his leg (which seemed perfectly intact to us), how we should learn karate, and (repeatedly) about how we “defeated him money motherfucker” along with a generous amount of ranting in Kiswahili to passers-by. Some people laughed at his obvious insanity, others apologised to us for the inconvenience. The old town was also home to a man who added himself to the long list of people who have fixed my stuff – on this occasion it was one of the sandals that I'd picked up in Hargeisa and decided not to separate myself from until the end the trip. It had been falling apart for about a week and I decided to do something about it – within about 20 minutes (during which time the guy had not only fixed my sandal but also made friendly conversation with us and also commandeered a bench for us to sit on) it was as good as new.

T gets his stuff fixed once again

We wandered back out of the old town, towards the once again delightfully named “New Peoples' Hotel” to get our bags, and hop onto a matatu towards the Likoni ferry in the south of the city. Here, chaos reigned as we were herded into a huge holding pen inhabited by lots of people and another crazy man preaching some kind of philosophy in Kiswahili to an amused crowd of onlookers, before the gates were opened and a mad dash was made for the ferry. Despite our attempts, we couldn't find a ticket office or anywhere to pay (nor any mention of safety quotas – long live Africa!) and so there was probably no idea how many people were on the boat anyway. We got over the other side too, so who cares?

The bustle of Old Mombasa

Mombasa had a nice feeling to it – the type you get when you combine an old city with a lack of upkeep and the result is a faded, paint-stripping-from-the-walls kind of charm. Surprisingly Mombasa was also home to a much larger amount of beggars than anywhere else in Kenya and these beggars were using the ingenious line of “don't give me money!” - they would instead claim that they wanted to take us to a supermarket where we could buy them food. Probably still smarting from Ethiopia, we didn't follow any of these guys, nor did we give any time to the gang of kids who, Ethiopian-style, ordered us to “GIVE ME FIVE SHILLINGS!” and cursed us when we didn't. We've also developed a lump each on our arms which have been growing since Lamu. They are red, growing, and constantly painful, and we have no idea what they are. They didn't help us with our patience levels.

Once arrived to the other side of the Likoni ferry, we hopped onto a matatu towards Ukunda and continued our trek ever further south.