Vipingo

We arrived into the Mombasa airport and into a different world. After about 30 minutes our host, Lois showed up. It took another 30 minutes to finally get our rental car, a beat up Toyota with over 100,000km. I would call it Pepe but it seems to have lost all it’s pep. As we followed Lois to he grocery store and our home for the next week, the poverty along the streets just slapped you in the face. Makeshift squatters booths make from wood, tin, sticks, selling anything you can imagine, food, clothing, junk. Since there are no social services like garbage pick up, telephone service, etc., garbage was strewn all along the streets with people everywhere. Kids, old people, goats, cows, bikes, driving and dodging obstacles everywhere. Oh and we are driving on the other side of the road. This is a challenge! Nobody follows standard traffic rules.

The grocery store was surprisingly normal. Lou and I stocked up on produce, meat, cheese, paper products, etc. Lois then lead the way to our now home, down a long dirt road almost an hour out of Mombasa. The cottage is really cool, right on the beach, very private, about a mile of white beautiful sand beach 20 yards from our door.

Our own private lounging bed, beside the beach that hangs freely from four poles, our own private swimming pool, a beautiful garden surrounds our cottage, a beautiful veranda overlooking the incredible Indian Ocean.

Cooking our first dinner was a challenge, a strange kitchen, strange ingredients, a strange land. I cooked spaghetti, imagine that? Lois came over to have us come over to their house for a drink, the main house is right next door. We accepted and invited them back over for an Italian dinner.

This morning Lou and I headed out on our own after a walk on the beach, our destination Kalifi, a small town up the coast. Again we were overwhelmed by the number of small makeshift kiosks along the streets, people everywhere, it’s like trying to make some organization out of a bee hive. Crazy.

We finally settled beside a pool at a little resort to have a couple of Tuskers and some lunch. This must be a French resort, a older woman around the pool without a top, she really should be wearing one, most of the guys in wini bikinis. It reminds me of a joke I heard once, “How are women like furniture?” When they get older their chest’s fall into their drawers…this was a piece of antique furniture.

No day is the same in Africa.nice evening, Ernie and Lois retired to their little estate about 10 years ago, a very solitary but peaceful and beautifully simple existence. They are a wonderful couple, Ernie retired from the insurance business in Nairobi and found his utopia. They have a staff of six people, two housekeepers, two landscapers, and two security guards. So we have someone doing our laundry and housecleaning for 500 KSH per day. That works out to about $6. I wonder how many Sedgefield women would give up housecleaning,