In which I FINALLY see Heidi, and taste a plethora of new foods in Mombasa

MOMBASA IS HOT!

Even in Sombo, it was really cool until around 10am when the sun appeared. But here, it’s hot already at like 8:20, because the sun doesn’t have anything to hide behind until then, since it’s rising over the Indian Ocean. But it’s gorgeous and we are having a fantastic time. I missed my Heidi!

Wednesday morning Heidi, Dr. Val, and Jennifer arrived on a bus from Uganda and came to the Bass’ house. I was in the shower when I heard the car pull up and I looked out the window to see the van, so I cut the shower short and did the fastest drying-off-and-getting-dressed I’ve ever done so I could run outside and give her a BIG FAT hug. We are veeeeeeeery excited to be in Africa and most excitingly in the same spot in Africa at the same time!!

Let me introduce some people to you: You know Heidi. :-P Dr. Val is a vet that has been a missionary to Uganda for 19 years now, and Heidi has been staying with her for the past 7 months doing vet mission-y things. Jennifer is a missionary nurse to Uganda that Heidi and Val have worked with when in Soroti.
So we killed some time in the morning (they arrived around 6am) watching TV slash sleeping slash talking on the couches, then Chrissy dropped us off at this country club that had hiking trails and a pool and places to eat. So we spent the afternoon there relaxing and walking along the trails and catching up. We went to a shopping center for lunch and so Dr. Val could meet with a Kenyan pastor she works with sometimes to do camel training/revolving loans (you give someone a camel, they give you back the firstborn and keep the camel, so they get a camel and keep the stock alive) then we bought some fruit and juice for the train ride because all us recently-been-in-the-desert people really like juice. :-P

Soooo we got on the train and had an uneventful ride, we had dinner on the train while being serenaded by a guy with a guitar playing an interesting combination of songs, from “In the Jungle” to “Stand by me” to “Killing me Softly” and the Swahili songs “Malaika” and “Jambo Bwana”. Then we headed back for some dark chocolate and sleepy-time….but not before we made the straps designed to keep us inside the top bunks into a spider web in the middle of the room so Heidi and I could enjoy being in a hammock. :-P When we woke up, we were pretty close, we had breakfast and hung out in our cabin for a while and waved to the many little kids who ran over to the track to wave to us, as they heard the train coming.
We arrived on Mombasa and took a taxi to our hostel…it’s like a resort, made for Christian conferences, but they have some rooms that are dorm-style that are much cheaper, so we’re staying there. It was interesting trying to pay…since we had miscommunicated the price, and three of the 4 of us spend most of the time in Uganda, so we had an interesting time coming up with enough money in the correct currency to pay for the rooms, since they wanted payment for all 3 nights up front. But eventually we figured it out, and headed for the showers, which felt REALLY nice after being on the hot train all night. Then we went to the ocean, where the tide was out and it was flat for quite a distance. We walked out for a while and saw sea cucumbers, urchins, lots of crabs, coral, and starfish. When the tide started to come in we went back and jumped in the pool. The ocean water (being really shallow) was hotter than most of the bathing I’ve done in Kenya, so the pool, which was probably about 87 degrees, felt nice, but was also really warm. So we hung out there for a while then came back to our room to eat the second half of our dinner that we’d brought with us…the first half being some hibiscus flowers and the leaves of a tree Val said were edible. :-D We brushed our teeth just for fun with the small branches of the Neem tree, you peel back the bark, chew the end of the stick into a brush, and brush away. It felt surprisingly clean and even lasted longer than normal teeth brushing, I think. After dinner we had tea but no cups, so we used our juice boxes from earlier in the day to drink the tea. They’ve been wanting to try acupuncture on the numb spot on Heidi’s back, but haven’t had the needles…Val just got the needles from the states so we practiced on each other a little with her guidance, just for fun, and then headed to bed!

Thursday morning we went to the ocean again, but walked along the shore instead of out, and mostly just stepped in the muddy sand. Some locals climbed a coconut tree for us and cut open a few coconuts so we could drink the water. They were too young to have the expected meat yet but it was cool to drink directly from a fresh-picked coconut!
After we wandered a while, we were starting to burn so we spread the sulfur-y concrete mix-y mud that we were walking in on our backs and shoulders as sunscreen, and wandered around the beach…there may have been a short mud-flinging fight in the middle of there, started by Heidi and Val of COURSE. :-P After a nice long shower we hopped in the pool again for a while, then went into town..called…Mtwapa, or something like that, to go to the bank and get some groceries. We had chapati for lunch at a little “hotel”(what you call a restaurant) and then got some fruit juice from a fruit stand, then took a ride on some bodabodas back to the hostel. I thought “my mother would kill me if she knew I was doing this” but it IS the cheapest way to travel around here, and fun, and an interesting experience, so we did it anyways. :P (don’t worry mommy, I didn’t wear a helmet either. :-P but the fastest we went was like 25mph…so it wasn’t thaaaat bad) During the ride I told Heidi the story of the man my parents rescued from a motorcycle accident where he ripped his chest open on a guard rail. :-D

So theeen we went back and relaxed some, and then we met up with the fishermen we’d met on the beach the day before, with whom Val had arranged to bring us some fish, a chicken, and some octopus. They said they would roast it for us on the beach. So we watched them as they made a fire of coconut husks, tenderized the octopus by smashing it repeatedly against the concrete, and then wrapped it around a stick for roasting. The fish got a stick through their mouths to hold them flat, then a small branch was split down the middle. The fish were wedged in the split then tied in. They slaughtered the chicken on the beach, then they plucked it and gutted it and put it on a stick. The intestines got their own roasting stick…the feet and the head were wedged in a stick like the fish, and the liver got speared. All the sticks got jabbed into the sand, angled over the fire, for roasting. We also brought some onions, peppers, zucchini, and eggplant and made kebabs. THEN they took a coconut tree branch and wove a mat to use as a tabletop for us, it was awesome.
Soooo after a while of cooking the food was all ready and we ate! I started with the chicken intestines, since everyone else at the table had already eaten intestine…it wasn’t too bad, but this was a tiny chicken, not like the large chunks of cow intestine Heidi’s had to eat (haha). Then we ate some fish (meh), some octopus tentacle (not as nasty as I was expecting…the fire roasted the suction cups so it wasn’t gross like my brain made it seem like it would be) I ate some fish testicle, chicken heart, spleen, and liver, and also the comb and a couple bites of connective tissue (well it certainly wasn’t meat) off the feet…none particularly good, but interesting experiences. Then we ate actual chicken breast meat and it was quite good.
The grand finale of our beach feast was roasting marshmallows and making smores over the coconut husk fire. Good stuff! The best part? This WHOLE thing only cost $10. For all 4 of us, combined. $10. How’s THAT for a good deal!?

This evening we’re planning on taking a boat out to the reef and snorkeling! I am QUITE excited for that!

I think it’s about time for lunch, so off I go! Don’t be too jealous, all you New Yorkers, that A. I’m with Heidi and your’e not, and B. I’m in a warm ocean with a warm breeze getting hot and sunburned and you’re braving another snowstorm, okay? Ok, good.