They Say It Takes a Village...: Watamu Indian Ocean

As I said in my last post, I have met some amazing new friends from a volunteer group called Love Africa who invited Rikki Tai and I to Watamu, a beach village on the Indian Ocean. Pictures are at the end. Here are the highlights!

1. The night we left for Watamu we ran to Nakumatt, which is a huge Walmart-like store in Nairobi, just before we left for the bus station. Rikki Tai and I ran around the store grabbing last minute stuff we needed and then I went to checkout as she ran to another store. As I started to unload everything onto the belt I became slightly light headed which I ignored at first but it became increasingly worse as the cashier scanned the items. As I pulled out my wallet to pay, I became a bit frantic as I started to see spots and knew I was all by myself with an open wallet in hand. I remember counting 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 shillings and then everything went black. All I remember after that was hearing Rikki yelling, “No, she’s my friend! She’s my friend!” A few minutes later I woke up on a bench with a cold cloth on my head. Apparently when Rikki came back into the store to look for me she saw two people holding me up by the arms and thought I was getting arrested only to run up and find me passed out in their arms. Super scary and random but I recovered rather quickly and then we headed to the bus station just in time to catch our bus. Nothing like a last minute blackout to start your vacation!

2. The bus station was probably one of the sketchiest places I have been since I arrived in Kenya. It’s in the middle of downtown Nairobi and the streets outside the station were packed with people. The second we got out of our matatu (taxi) there were people swarming us from all directions asking if they could take our bags. We took the night bus, which was an experience in itself. The bus had to have been going at least 90 mph and apparently there’s no such thing as capacity limits as there were people sleeping on the floor in the aisles right by our feet. Even though it was a 10-hour night bus ride, the driver had no problem blaring Indian music as loud as possible and using his horn that honked actual tunes of songs at least once every five minutes. 10 hours later we arrived in beautiful Watamu and began what I can honestly say, was the best vacation I have ever been on in my entire life!

3. We rented a house that was incredibly beautiful just a minute’s walk from the Indian Ocean. The beach had a few giant rock formations that made it look like something out of National Geographic. I’ve never spent so much time in the ocean in my life and for those of you who have seen me frantic in water… you know that says a lot!

4. Watamu is a beautifully diverse African beach town. While driving down the road or walking on the beach I saw people from all different tribes, religions and different parts of the world. One minute I'd be passing a maasai tribe, the next I'd pass a group of women in burkas and just behind them would be a Euro man in a speedo. Numerous nights on the beach we would see groups of 5-10 maasai tribesmen walking on the beach in their bright red tribal dress and jewelry holding spears and shields as they yelled, “Jambo!” I absolutely loved it!

5. The house was all open air with no windows, which was fantastic until I fell asleep on the sofa outside my mosquito net and woke up looking like a 5 year old with chicken pox. I counted 25 mosquito bites on one shin and then lost the will to continue counting. There was also a random 10 inch by 4 inch rectangle on my lower back that had to have had at least 30 bites. If I get malaria over this next year, mark my words it will be from this trip!

6. Another perk to an open-air house is all the wildlife that makes its way into your house. I probably saw somewhere around 30 millipedes that were at least 4 inches long in the sink, in the shower, under rugs, you name it! We also woke up to monkeys scampering across the roof every morning. But the best surprise was a stray cat that Rikki Tai and I decided to feed the first night. Bad idea. First, one of the guys woke up to it not only inside his room’s mosquito net, but also standing on one of the other guy’s backs just starring at him as he was sleeping. I won’t go into the details of how that played out but lets just say it’s a miracle the cat made it through the night. I never understood the theory that cats have nine lives until the second night when we accidentally left an entire raw chicken in the kitchen sink to thaw which the same cat helped itself to. It ate the entire thing. And just when we thought surely the cat couldn’t still be alive after eating an entire raw chicken, it broke into our kitchen a few nights later and tore open a zip lock bag of cinnamon rolls which it also devoured. Now that one made me mad!

7. We had some of the most amazing evenings on the beach. One night we played football as the sun set. The next night I taught everyone how to do a cartwheel and round-off (somehow not one of them knew how to do either). And my favorite night was the night we had a full moon and the tide retrieved about a quarter mile in just one part of the ocean. Never did I think I would move to Kenya, go on vacation to the Indian Ocean with 8 people I just met and walk a quarter mile into the ocean under a full moon in the middle of the night. I am so blessed!

8. We decided to do two excursions in Watamu and both confirmed that in Africa, the only thing consistent is… inconsistency. First we did a not-so-deep sea fishing trip which turned into a glorified boat ride into the Mida Creek in a tiny fishing boat with not even one of us so much as holding a fishing rod. Needless to say, we didn’t catch anything. A few days after that we went on a snorkeling trip. We expected a total bust excursion after the lame fishing trip but instead went to one of the best snorkeling spots any of us had ever been to. I tend to get a bit panicked in water but was actually doing really well until the very end when the boat guide threw a pound of bread into the water right next to me to attract fish. All of the sudden I had about a million zebra striped fish swarming me. I freaked out and swam to the boat as fast as I could. When I got out the guide was laughing and told me my skin was the same color as the bread. Not funny!

9. A few days before we left Watamu, one of the guys and I took a piki piki (motorcycle) taxi to the bus station to get everyone’s return bus tickets. Because Kenya is a very modest culture, I wasn’t terribly surprised when the driver told me I could't put my arms around his waist to hold on. That left my only option to put my hands on the top of his shoulders as Michael sat behind me holding onto the back rack of the piki piki as we drove 110 km per hour to the bus station… without helmets. As we drove through Malindi you would have thought we were celebrities as people cheered and yelled Wazungu (white people) at the top of their lungs. On the way back to the house the sun was setting and the sky was completely burnt orange. In that moment I just kept thinking, “I can’t believe this is my life. How did I get so lucky?”

10. After another 10-hour bus ride back to Nairobi we made it home safely but not alone. When I was unpacking one of my bags I reached in to grab what I thought was a pen only to feel it moving in my hand. I screamed and dropped it immediately and found a surprise 4-inch millipede that had made its way back to Nairobi with us. And that my friends, is a vacation!