Island Life

After about 16 hours in two different busses and a boat ride, we made it to Lamu! I'll get to the island in a bit, but I want to give a play by play account of our last few days.

We loaded onto a bus Nairobi at 10 pm on Thursday night. This 10 pm bus left at 11. After driving for about 5 minutes we were stopped by Kenyan Police and told to evacuate the bus with all of our belongs, put into lines and scanned with hand held metal detectors. What a way to start an evening! The bus ride lasted through the evening with one bathroom stop (which I don't want to think about) and dropped us off in Mombasa at 6:30 am. We were picked up by William, a Tuk Tuk driver (which is a interesting open air taxi) and taken to buy bus tickets. Once we had our 8 am departure time, we were joined by the rest of our travelers. Austin and Sarah! and their Peace Corps friends, Bryan and Kirk...all serving the PC in Malawi.

After about 20 minutes of arguing with bus officials about being able to sit together, we left Mombasa. The 6 hour bus ride lasted 8 and was packed. Standing room only. It was hot and a few of us have burns on our arms from sitting in the window seats. The bus stopped every few hour to pick more people up. When the bus would make stops, villagers would come up to the windows and sell water and different foods. I passed on the homemade Samosas but did enjoy being called "Madame."

The first 4 hours of the ride were on a semi-paved road, the last 3 were on a road that was not paved at all. Imagine riding a school bus on the bumpiest road you've ever been on...now imagine riding that HOT bus for 3 hours. Needless to say, it was a long, sweaty day.

The landscape on the ride was incredible. So lush and green. Many, many hut villages were passed the way. Even when it was hot and we were tired, I smiled and thought, "I'm in Africa." The smile dissapeared when we drove past refugee camps. These people were displaced during the Kenyan election of 2007.

We got off the bus and hopped on the island shuttle and after 30 minutes, arrived at our final destination. This is Jill's 5th time on the island and let me tell you....she's kind of a big deal, people know her. She sent a text to a friend and there were 3 people awaiting our arrival. They took our bags and led us to this amazing house. After a quick tour, we decided that we had to stay there. It's kind of like a really funky tree house. There is sleeping room for 8, a kitchen, dining room, two showers, and an amazing view of the ocean...all for less than $10 a day. It's incredible. We gave our host some money and went to the market to buy us beer and water...because, really, when you're on an island, do you need anything else?

After showering and feeling like "a million Kenyan Shillings" we went to Jill's favorite restuarant called Hapa Hapa. In Swahili this means, Here! Here! We had a great dinner. With all the traveling, the girls from NE had only had 1 meal and our 2nd meal was much overdue.

We spent our night watching the moon come up over the water (we're right on the equator and even though we get 12 hours of sunlight, the sun sets around 6 pm), and enjoying some breeze in our home's Penthouse. Not really a penthouse, but it's an openair bedroom with a nice breeze and ocean view. Actually our entire place is open air. It's safe, amazing, comfortable and I can't believe we can stay somewhere for so cheap.

We haven't seen much of Lamu yet. A few things about Lamu: There are no cars, donkeys do all the hauling/transporting and we will defintely ride one at some point. Most of the people here are Muslim and we have already experienced waking up before 5 am to hear their prayer. People are very nice and kind here and it's really relaxed. They call it "African Time" because there really isn't a schedule.

It's so great to see Austin and Sarah....or as the people in their Malawi village call them, Austella! Their PC friends are also a lot of fun and this made the bus ride a little more bearable. Our plans are pretty loose right now. We have an idea of what we want to do, but after all that traveling, all we want to do is relax in our house.

The weather here is really hot and humid. It's hard to adjust coming from an Omaha winter. We are getting used to being shiny and and sticky. I'll take this any day over snow. 

I think I'm going to join the team back at the house. They are a few Tusker's ahead of me (that's Kenya's brew) and I better catch up.