Mombasa

Yo yo,

I now sit in Mombasa. Specifically, in the hotel in which we are staying for these three weeks. Mombasa is a coastal town - Kenya’s major port. It has a large Arab influence that is obvious in much of the architecture. Tall white buildings with arches, terraced with balconies, the building’s open areas confined by intricate and oddly beautiful black steel gratings, in a fancy-prison sort of way. The mosque’s call to prayer skims across the rooftops five times a day, adding a little flavour to the air and reminding me very much of the sounds of Zanzibar.

The hotel is really nice. We have two little apartment style room with a full kitchen for our breakfasts and lunches. One for guys, one for girls. They must be trying to make sure there is no funny business going on this trip (are we still in grade eight after all?). The girls’ apartment is across the pool. For dinners the Chinese restaurant at the hotel feeds us. Problem is they seem to want to cater towards our white skin. We have been fed fries or pasta, not much in the way of greenery, or even orangery for that matter. It would make much more sense for them to do what they do best and feed us Chinese-style. It would also be welcomed with open arms. My fried food and sugar consumption has risen a thousand fold over the course of this trip due to lack of other options. As such I have put on 25 pounds. Remember that mock beer belly/pregnant thing I can do? Yeah its for real this time. That’s a blatant lie, but at the very least my cardiovascular system has taken a hit. It feels odd not having the relaxed breathing rate that I have become accustomed to over the past years even after doing something strenuous. I feel ill-prepared if I were to have to run a marathon to save my life or bear warning of an invasion or something. It will be nice to be back in a place where I can run and exercise much more easily and routinely. Something I definitely took for granted.

We are working in a quarry for this course. However, it is not recognizable as such in many places. Huge trees and dense undergrowth in places. Lots of pine of all trees (an exotic Australian species, used because it grows very fast with low sapling mortality here). In stark comparison, we have also been to some open quarries on the property. Smashing and grinding by large metal arms and bellies, but they are set against a backdrop of new bark and green leaves. The restoration looks to have come along well. We are doing the first evaluation as to the extent of success, so what we find should be interesting. The quarry is owned by Bamburi cement, owned by Lafarge, which is the world’s leader in materials production. They produce all sorts of things, cement being one. Lying in waiting beneath the top soil around here are massive ancient coral beds. With everything dead and fossilized what is left is pretty much pure calcium carbonate (limestone, also chicken eggs), which is the basis for cement. So, this company came in and started digging down twenty or thirty metres to clear away the coral. Where they went a little too deep little ponds were formed because the water table is right there (a few of us are doing a separate study of those ponds to find why they suck so much (ie. aging way too quickly). But anyway, the point is that this company is somehow nice enough and conscientious enough to clean up what mess it made. You see, Kenya only a couple of years ago put into place legislation regarding quarrying and mining, but this company began restoring thirty years ago. They even have their own fancy little branch called Lafarge Eco Systems that is primarily to clean up and do research. It’s quite amazing really. It could be because in the developed countries legislation has been in place for some time, so Lafarge had all the mechanisms and infrastructure in place to clean up after itself anyway, so it might as well do it here, but don’t take that for gospel as it comes from the mouth of someone who doesn’t always know what’s going on entirely (me). Either way, conscientiously or required legislatively, it is cool that such a huge corporation is providing solutions to some of the problems that will have some very large implications in the not-as-distant-as-we-would-like future.

This past weekend five of us went away for a little safari action. There were meant to be six of us plus the TA (Katie), but Nick felt rather ill so he and Katie stayed. (He is feeling much better now, in case you were wondering). We drove for about an hour in a southwest direction to get there. Shimba Hills they call it. It represents some of the only remaining coastal forest that used to stretch all the way from Somalia to Mozambique. In it are many forest-dwelling savanna elephants (actually a little too many for the size of the reserve and as such have been devastating the vegetation with their fancy little trunks), and the only Sable antelope populations left in Kenya. [Sorry if many things in this e-mail sound as though I am preaching for conservation and against, in a depressive sort of way, the state of nature. I don’t mean to sound like that and it’s not intended (especially the depressive part), its just the way it is this day in age. We, as a species, have caused what is now the sixth major extinction event in history – kinda like what killed off the dinosaurs, just two legged. Tonnes of fun for us now, but I have a feeling it won’t be as fun later, especially for not-us]. Anyway, these antelope are really cool. Huge horns curving back over their heads as if the bone were reaching, stretching for contact with the shoulder blades, never to quite reach its goal (at least not in any of the ones we saw). White bellies and faces with dark stripes slashed down either side and along the top of the snout. Short manes stuck upright with lots of gel, but still able to blow in the wind like my hair never used to with all that gel in it. Watching the herd of them was quite amazing. Even if they were all lying down ruminating there would be soo much motion. It was like watching an in-flight congregation of flies meeting too close to a pane of glass (you know how crazy flies get around glass). Their ears and manes and tails constantly whipping around here and there, buzzing almost.

The lodge in which we stayed was great, fantastic even. Dubbed a tree-top lodge it is sort of one. I heard some stories about it being built around trees and had images of having to climb over a large branch running through my room to get to bed, having to earn my sleep. It was not quite. There was a branch running through the room, but unfortunately it did not impede my way in the least. Each room faced a small watering hole where animals came to drink and each had a private balcony from which to view them. My room faced the rising sun. And man, the washrooms were amazing. Shared, but still awesome. Really cool looking and spacious. Well decorated. White and brown walls, wood finishing and wall ends, but not planed wood, straight-up still-parts-of-branches-sticking-out wood. The showers had a nice orangey-brown tile an open door accessed through a head height walled “L” preceded by a lovely (but short) walk (probably not considered a walk by many) past a plant (potted) flanked by windows. The whole lodge was built and lined with wood. Off the south-eastern end a long elevated wooden bridge wound through the trees to a covered platform overlooking another small watering hole. The platform was called the jungle bar. No one was manning the bar.

And dinner. Dinner was fabulous, and included in the room price (along with breakfast which was also excellent). It was essentially a six course meal. A chilled fruit course, a soup course, a salad course, the main entrée, dessert, and coffee/tea. Quite fancy indeed. Cooked by a round and friendly man from Western Kenya with what must be rosy cheeks I am sure if such colours showed up more prominently on black skin. We even ordered a bottle of wine for the table. We felt very much like little kids pretending to be grown ups, or at least I did. All I needed was a pair of dress shoes much oversized that I could slug around in and shuffle across the bare floor, with a face trying ever-so intently to be stern and proper and taken seriously (grown-up that is) despite the ridiculousness of foot attire. It was a wonderful evening, with most of it spent at the dinner table. Earlier that day and early the next day we got the closest I have ever been to an elephant, discarding the time we were charged by that giant bull in Namibia (I still maintain it came within a metre, but of course that Volkswagen van we were driving was at least 20 metres long in my mind’s eye). Moses, our guide and resident research scientist, had a little trick where he would drive up and stop the white Mitsubishi Pajero a little ways away, then slowly creep up. When he got close and the elephants started to get antsy, he would rev the engine and shut it off. There was a long moment when the elephant stood still, obviously confused as to what was going on. Then it would just go back to eating. So we would just be sitting there not even seven metres from the thing as it plucked away at the trees and shrubs. It would walk even closer if it has such an urge. Cool, but made the heart quicken at times.

So that was a worth while weekend. And now I will be off. This course has by far the most work. We will see if it all is possible to do. I don’t think the professor realizes how little time we actually have, given we only have a few days left. She said that hopefully we will be done with everything before we leave to go back to Princeton. We better well be done before leaving if you ask me, makes no sense not to be.

Hope everything is going well is everyone’s respective corner of the world. Take care and I wish you well. Good luck with the running for those who do that sort of thing; the hammering who do that sort of thing; the painting who do that sort of thing; the computing who do that sort of thing; the studying who do that sort of thing; and all other manners of keeping oneself busy or making you happy (not that they need be mutually exclusive).

Peace,

Mark.