Friday 28.01.11
Well, life in Mombasa is pretty different. From what we can gather, when you ask for a price for a taxi or tuk tuk, they give you a pretty good deal which is nice. The local boys sell FROZEN water which is such a treat. Everywhere you go, you see gekkos and lizards running everywhere - and I mean everywhere, but more on that later.
It is so so, unbelievably hot here, especially inside without airconditioning. A lot of the businesses have aircon and most of the houses, but Tammi is going without indefinitely - to save money. Though I think she is going to have to give in sooner or later! Being inside is so hot, especially upstairs. We are constantly walking around covered in sweat, and feeling like our clothes are damp. Trying to sleep is a bit tough too!
So as promised, the fundies (laborers) arrived this morning to begin work on the house. The only problem was, they turned up at 6:30am so we had to get up to let them in to begin work - tired!!! We headed early in to town to meet with Joseph the real estate agent dealing with the lease for Tammi’s house. We met with the property management group and also the landlord briefly. The landlord is a large, old Kenyan woman. When it came time to sign the lease, she used a thumbprint instead of a signature. What an interesting way to overcome the illiteracy problem in Kenya! There were only a couple of things that needed amending on the lease and then Tammi was able to sign it off.
While we were at the office signing the lease and discussing it, it became obvious that the property manager, landlord and maybe even Joseph had no idea we were actually living at the property yet. There seems to have been a bit of a breakdown in communication, and the fundis were definitely unaware that we were coming so we are living in a house in the middle of full renovations, moving room to room as they are painted!
There is still only power to the lounge room so we cooked a tuna bake on the floor there. There is no water still so the poor toilets aren’t handling that so well - yuk! And we are still trying to sponge bath ourselves. There are ants everywhere and they crawl on the floors, walls, mosquito nets and on everything else too. At first I was squashing them all, but now I just flick them out of the way. At night, it appears that all the lizards make their way inside. They crawl across the window sills and walls so we had to move the beds to the middle of the room away from the walls.
In the afternoon we decided to go to the beach. Apparently it’s much nice to go to the resort beaches rather than the local beaches so we headed to White Sands beach resort. It is pretty easy to blend in, though luckily we were both wearing dresses as otherwise we may have been a bit conspicuous in the old, dirty shorts and t-shirts that are our usual attire. We ate lunch in the restaurant and then headed down to the beach where there are many REAL rastafarians! They all want to talk to me and love my hair and ask to touch it! We also enquired about snorkelling with the locals and also hotel staff. It’s a decent price for the 2 hour trip so we may do it on the weekend. The water was amazingly warm but very shallow so we didn’t stay in for long but it was lovely.
We then made our way back to the hotel pool which is amazing, and huge! There is a poolside bar which is a bit of a novelty too. A staff member in the pool approached me and I was beginning to get a bit worried, wondering if we had been caught out! However, he was only interested in whether or not I wanted to join in a game of water polo. There is nothing like a game of water polo to blend in with the guests so I happily joined them. I played scorer and our team even won!
It was an amazing day and I can’t wait to go back for some snorkeling, and there are some great stalls on the beach with nice bags and kikois too. Once home after an exhaustive day we made a tuna casserole bake with Melvin in the lounge room, as the kitchen still did not have power.
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