'Night of the Long Proboscii' (starring Sean Muller and Sharon Stone)

My last night in Lamu was spent at the Mangrove Cinema watching an awful Asian action movie dubbed into American drawl, called ‘The Prisoner’ and starring the ever-present Jackie Chan and Chow-yun Fat. It was worth it just for the experience of being in the cinema, seeing who else was there - almost all locals, including a fully veiled young woman on her own - and how they reacted to different aspects of it.

During the day I had gone on a dhow (old-style wooden boat with cloth sail) day-trip with a few other tourists and the boat's crew to the beach on Manda Island opposite Lamu, during which we caught the fish we later had cooked for our lunch. Admittedly, the pickings were a little scarce but I was quite pleased to have caught my own lunch with nothing more than a piece of fishing wire, a nail (as the weight), a hook and some shrimp (bait). The sailing was surprisingly relaxing and after lunch and some lounging on the beach, as well as comparing notes with a German birdwatcher who has a house on Lamu, we drifted gently between the two islands for more than an hour before returning to Lamu town.

It was only as the plane took off from Manda, with the archipelago of islands revealed below us, that I realized just how little of Lamu I had actually explored; not having ventured into the interior where all the shambas – though few of the people – are. I managed to get away with 35kgs of luggage despite an official limit of 15kgs, having reached an agreement with the Air Kenya official who, conveniently, was also at the airport to see us off. Since he knew the plane would only be about a quarter full to Malindi he agreed beforehand that I wouldn’t have to pay excess baggage charges, and at the airport (a small thatched shelter next to an airstrip) he got the officials to effectively look the other way by only weighing two of my panniers and not the bike.

From Malindi airport I cycled to Watamu, where I decided to stay so as to visit the famous Gede ruins the next day. The ruins were amazing. I arrived quite early in the morning on an overcast day and was the only one in the forest for at least an hour, wandering amongst the crumbling tombs, houses, fort and palace dating back over 500 years. Surrounded by huge trees filled with chattering monkeys and giant, flapping Silvery-cheeked Hornbills, using their huge casqued beaks to feed on the wild figs, and giant black millipedes (or were they centipedes?) on the ground, it was a beautifully haunting experience.

The next day I cycled to Kilifi. Determined to stay within budget I eventually found myself at a place I had avoided for precisely that reason when I was heading-up to Lamu: the ‘celebrated Kilifi Holiday Inn’. Needless to say, at 400 KhS (Kenyan Shillings) a night it was not, as I had originally thought, a relation of the South African hotel chain.

The room did, however, have the essential prerequisites of fan and mosquito net for the double bed. After washing some clothes and going out for an early supper I returned to my room hoping to while away a couple of hours before bedtime. I soon discovered however that there were large numbers of mosquitoes in the room. After killing about ten – the options for evening entertainment are endless in this respect – I realised that they were being attracted through two airholes in the wall by the fluorescent light. People with no experience of living in a mosquito-infested area may not understand the nature of the problem: “Why”, they might ask, “don’t you just get under the net?”

Well, first of all there is only so much you can do in bed under a mosquito net. More importantly though, leaving the light on would still attract numerous mosquitoes which would then still be around when I went to bed. Why should that be a problem? Because mosquito nets ain’t all they are cracked-up to be: if any part of your body presses-up against one your blood will be sucked and the sound of dozens of large mozzies doesn’t go away because of the net; the buzz is at least as bad as the bite. It was at this point that I recalled news footage from earlier this year when Sharon Stone stood up at the World Economic Forum (WEF) to pledge a few thousand dollars to mosquito nets for some African country or other (could have been Kenya actually) and challenged the businessmen there-present to do the same. Some of the businessmen, suitably aroused (morally, of course), did indeed follow her lead. It raises the question however as to whether Ms.Stone has ever tried to sleep under a mosquito net in a room full of these bloodsuckers (the mosquitoes that is, she's clearly used to the businessmen).

What, I ask myself, would her movies be like if every sex scene had been in a room full of mosquitoes? Would the famous scene in Basic Instinct (which I have still yet to see) take on a different significance?I even thought of a title: ‘Night of the Long Proboscii’ (a proboscis is a mosquito’s biting instrument). I wonder if I could co-star…

Somehow I suspect that if she were to experience such conditions she would quickly come to the same conclusion as the rest of us: the only good mosquito is a dead mosquito! After killing a further five, and attempting to block the holes with various bits of gear, I was at the point where I would quite happily have agreed to the DDT-equivalent of a nuclear bomb being dropped on Kenya if only it would get rid of the little bastards. Needless to say, I went to bed rather early.

Today I cycled back into Mombasa, which was more painful than I expected with the road being inexplicably worse on the side coming back than it was on the side going out, and there being a lot (!) of traffic from at least 15kms outside of the city itself. I’m currently shacked-up in the ‘Glory Bed and Breakfast’ having spurned the ‘Excellent Hotel’ because it was too expensive, and I’m thinking of having supper at the ‘Splendid Restaurant’. (You may have noticed that people aren’t shy to make grand claims about their establishments – which often bear little relation to their actual quality I might add). Tomorrow i hope to get the train back to Nairobi (if the ticket office decides to open, which it didn't today) in the evening, and do some more wandering around the city during the day.

I wonder if they would show 'Night of the Long Proboscii' at the Mangrove Cinema...

Lobster in Lamu

"Lamu is, in short, unmissable". So says the author of my Bradt 'Backpackers' Guide to East and Southern Africa" after a glowing account of the Lamu Archipelago. Clearly he didn't try to get here with a bicycle because he may have concluded on the contrary that it is - to use another of his turns of phrase - "eminently missable".

Having consulted the tourist police in Malindi on the safety of the route, i had been told that it would be fine to cycle the 110km's to Garsen, the last outpost before entering the 'badlands' of the north - as one local journalist recently described them - that begin on the east side with the town of Garissa. However, cycling the next 116km's to Mokowe where boats ferry you to Lamu was out of the question because all vehicles had to carry police escorts and it was fairly obvious that i wasn't going to carry a large, gun-toting soldier in addition to all my other luggage. So i left Malindi knowing that if i was going to get to Lamu i would almost certainly have to do so using another means of transport. Nevertheless, it seemed an opportune moment to get a 100km+ ride under my belt, and so on Friday morning i set-off at 7am with all my gear, five litres of water and a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter to eat on the road if i couldn't find sufficient supplies.

The first 20km's were fairly similar to the cycling from Mombasa, with many subsistence farmers along the road, living in their small thatch-hut communities tilling their shambas (fields). Supplies were scarce at the occasional hut selling various goods and other than a few bananas and some cheap biscuits i was glad to have my peanut butter sandwiches. After 40km's the traffic thinned quite dramatically and the vast majority of the people i saw on the road were on bicycles, seemingly fetching or returning with water. The landscape also began to thin; a gradual transition from the lushness of bananas and coconut trees in dark, fairly rich soil to the drier acacia grassland with dry, sandy soil. The sun was burning down and i would have been tempted to stop for a break of some length were it not for the fact that there was not a shred of shade within easy reach of the road. So i carried on, setting myself short-term targets for distances and stopping occasionally to make and eat a couple of sandwiches. Having got used to always having a fair number of other travellers on the road, this was the loneliest (not necessarily a function of being alone i might add) i have been thus far. Once again, the road was good, i was fortunate not to get any punctures, and i managed to keep myself entertained by birdatching as i went along.

In fact, it was a very productive day in that respect; i saw at least four new species that i later identified - with the help of my insanely heavy 'Birds of Africa South of the Sahara' as being Northern Carmine Bee-eater (a beautiful, slightly delicate pink-bodied bird with a bright blue head), Eastern Chanting Goshawk, Van Der Decken's Hornbill (i actually stopped to get a better look at a flock of these with my binoculars) and Northern White-crowned Shrike. This is not the first time that my interest in birdwatching has not only helped retain my sanity but actually kept me entertained - one of the more valuable hobbies i have picked-up, thanks to family encouragement and an ostensibly rare bird (which later turned out to actually be an escapee) that once chose to visit our garden in Johannesburg.

With my odometer showing 66miles and my just having had to begin drinking the water in my 2l water bag having consumed the three litres in my bottles i came upon a small wooden guardhouse by the side of the road, a few hundred metres from what appeared to be a rather large intersection, from which - rather inconceivably - emerged four men, at least two of whom were local police. I decided to stop for a chat and try to get an idea of whether it was in fact another 10km's to Garsen. Of course we had to exchange pleasantries first, with me explaining where i was from and what i was doing and planning on doing, and them shaking their heads in disbelief. It turned out to be a wise move, as it transpired that the buses to Lamu did not leave from Garsen but all came from Mombasa or Malindi and therefore i would have to catch them at that very intersection which was with the road to Lamu. It also turned out that there was a YWCA and WorldVision at that very junction and i was told that the latter had a reasonably good guestouse. Inwardly relieved at not having to face another hour of burning heat, i passed the sign pointing back to 'Malindi, 100km' and wheeled my bike to the guesthouse where i rested, overnighted and did a little more birdwatching with what remianed of my energy. In total i had done almost exactly 100kilometres in about 6hours (arriving at 1pm) and was quite pleased with myself.

Having supper in the development centre that night with a group of local Kushitic women - immediately distinguishable by their almost burnt-looking faces and penchant for incredibly bright fabrics - provided perhaps the most inconcgruous moment of my trip so far. On the TV was a popular Tanzanian soap opera - that acting in which, incidentally, is cringe-inducingly atrocious - and one of the scenes showed the actress walking on a treadmill in a gym. God only knows what these women, who come from a society of nomadic herders who move from water source to water source, seeking grazing for their goats and covering great distances by foot merely to stay alive, thought about this but they seemed to find the whole thing very amusing.

The next morning i spent three hours by the side of the road getting rejected - because of the bike - by bus after bus before finally getting on the 'KhadiStar', the conductor of which was on good terms with a tout i had befriended. I amused myself in the meantime by watching the local Kushitic women who were making a living by selling maize, tea, sour milk-shakes and other produce to the passing bus passengers, and chatting to others waiting around the small memorial opened by President Kibaki last year to mark the opening of the road. (The road for 500metres either side of the memorial was impeccable but quickly deteriorated towards Lamu).

The road to Mokowe was not great and i feared for the health of the bike - straped as it was to the roof - but we made it through with no attacks from 'shiftas' (bandits) and other than the quality of the road i don't think it would have been a problem to cycle. The ferry was full so i ended-up taking one of the many small wodden boats ferrying goods, touts and locals to Lamu from Mokowe. Aside from the bike and I on the bow - with me, in my 'flats cap' and khaki clothes looking for all the world like a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia - there were a few goats, some chickens, various anonymous sacks and large amounts of the local, legal, intoxicating root called 'miraa' (or 'khat' elsewhere) which was being enthusiastically by the other 8-10 occupants. Puttering in to Lamu Island, waves gently lapping against the boat, the beaches of Lamu on our right, and the trees on Manda Island about a kilometre to our left was a somewhat surreal experience.

I arrived on Saturday afternoon and have since been lazing around a bit, frequenting the many juice bars and dodgy (as they all tend to be) cafes, walking around the town and meeting some other travellers, including some very friendly British girls and some - dare i say, also pleasant - US military personnel on 'civilian affairs' duty. Oh, and i went to lie on Shela Beach - about half-an-hour's walk along the coast out of town - where i over-exposed myself to the sun with the result that my body now has the complexion of a boiled lobster. (So i'm the lobster in the title. Although lobster is cheaper here than in SA, it's still out of my budget so i'm afraid i cannot comment on the local lobsters....)

Having just switched from the Sunshine Guesthouse to the Bahari i have committed myself to at least another two nights here, which is no bad thing. The town is really something else, with it's incredibly narrow alleys flanked by old 3/4-storey buildings almost too narrow to wheel my loaded bike down, no cars, few bicycles and many small donkeys it is truly another world. Realising that i had become a little tense about being targeted and outsmarted by touts i had a good laught at mysef yesterday wen i realised the irony: i'm supposed to be interested in game theory, of which bargaining is a key sub-field, and these guys are demostrating the significant gap between theory and practice.

There are a numbe of places here with internet services though few work. The exception is the post office from where i am sending this, which has good rates and very new-looking Dell computers. In a town like this, with a population of maximum 30,000 that's quite impressive i think.

As things stand i have yet to decide where to go from here and how to leave - though i am particularly reluctant to risk the bike to another thrashing. I am currently leaning towards the - surpisingly cheap - option of flying to Malindi or perhaps even Nairobi before starting south in earnest but i will have to explore whether the bike will be accepted as luggage. However, there is no hurry, (especially not here) since Lamu does have one bank (that does take traveller's cheques) so i do not run the risk of running out of money.

Next update before i leave