South From Mombasa
A series of photos from my time in East Africa when Al Shaabab was reeking havoc on the tourism industry in Kenya. Local people were struggling to survive.
This series was taken in 2014, shortly after Al Shabaab terrorists out of Somalia attacked the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi. For a country with a heavy dependence on tourism, it was devastating. The Kenyan coast was deserted as tourists canceled any plans they had and made for safer destinations. Malindi and Diani on the coast were ghost towns and the local people, dependent on tourist dollars, began to suffer.
It was 2014 and I was fleeing more sadness. I seem to have a gift for showing up just before or just after some major calamity. It makes me feel like a harbinger of bad times to come. Fear me, all ye plebeian folk, for my approach presages plague, famine, earthquakes, belching volcanoes, swarms of locusts and eternal darkness.
It’s happened in numerous places around the world. I’d arrived in Kenya just days after a terrorist attack in Nairobi by Al Shabaab and the place was still shaken by it. My friends here were grimly aware of the possibility of a repeat. I’m thinking now, of my train ride from Nairobi to Mombasa, how a scattered few foreign travelers had arrived, as instructed, at the central station at 5:30p on the dot. We spotted one another easily enough, the only westerners on the platform, so we slowly gravitated toward one another as the anointed hour passed, without announcement...and then another... and another. Eventually someone from KNR came over to the huddle and gave us the bad news. The train wasn’t running...yet, but come back at 12:30am and there would be one available, they thought.
We duly departed, had supper, relaxed, got cabs back to the station and reconvened in the same spot as before. As one o’clock came and went there was an aire of anticipation mingled with a rising dread.
Another hour passed.
Wait, there’s a train emerging from the darkness.
A train had indeed arrived, moving tantalizingly slowly, crawling actually, only to sail right through the station without stopping. It was just a tease. The engineer might just have well rolled by, window open and his middle finger raised in our direction. We’d eagerly moved to the edge of the platform but could only look on, crestfallen as the locomotive dragged our desiccated souls behind it, like tin cans behind a phantasmal hearse, out into the gloom on the other side.
Then I really took notice of the rolling stock for the first time. These tracks and locomotives probably hadn’t been refurbished since the Brits left back in the 1950’s. Graffiti is etched there from decades long passed. I see ‘Simo’ staring at me from the side of the engine amongst countless other names etched there. It’s what my Kenyan friends call me.
Me, in a previous life?
Everything has a mild whiff of decay, the engines livery peeling and faded by decades in the baking sun. Ancient technology immersed in aspic. The carriages might have rolled out of a massive rift in the time continuum. I’d ridden in cars just like this when I was a kid and they felt old then.
We’d been traversing one of the hopelessly quaint little village railways. I forget where we were going or why. A fragment of a memory, a family outing. Back then, you could get almost to anywhere, from anywhere, by train. All torn out in the Sixties, in a spasm of modernization.
Here, there was a scent I couldn’t place until I remembered there were no smoking laws back then; stale nicotine. Almost impossible to get rid of.
Right at this second, I suspected KNR was busy cannibalizing one train somewhere out of sight in order to get ours going.
Of course, a train did arrive, without announcement or fanfare at about 2:30am. Is this it? Do we get on? No-one knew. There was no-one on the platform to tell us. It could be going anywhere. We were all struggling to stay awake and in any way civil.
Yes, this was the train, we were assured eventually. But there seemed plenty of room for doubt, nonetheless.
We eventually set off in the wee small hours and are shown our cabins. I’d elected to pay less for a non-private bunk space in the hopes of meeting someone new. As it turned out, I was on my own anyway. Nairobi is at almost 6000’ so it can be quite cool, certainly after sundown. And so it was this night. We needed warmth. But then, as night turned to day and we descended toward the coast, the temperature rose steeply presaging swarms of mosquitoes.
We stopped often, in small backwaters. We stopped to take on more food. We stopped to change engines. We stopped to allow goat herds to cross the tracks. We stopped to drop off packages for the locals. We stopped in the middle of nowhere for reasons no-one could fathom. At more than one point, I could swear we were going backwards.
What was billed as a ten hour overnight affair blossomed into a 23 hour odyssey.
And I wouldn’t have missed a solitary minute of it for the world.
I befriend Edward, an older man with a beautiful shock of white hair. We both laughed at the addictive unpredictability of our trip. He’s British but born in Zanzibar in the 1940's. His father had been the High Commissioner to the Crown there. We found we had a common love of bare-bones travel. He knew Mombasa well and steered me to a good hotel and coffee bar in the Arab Quarter. We met for breakfast and then ventured down to the docks. Mombasa is the largest port on the East African coast, and has untold centuries of trade with far-flung places behind it. It’s thought that the Chinese have been trading here since the early 7th century. Hundreds of years later, some sailors shipwrecked along this coast and settled, eventually converting to Islam. Some Kenyans have Chinese DNA.
Edward’s immediate plan was to find one of the small coastal trading vessels and to hitch a ride down to Zanzibar, about 150 miles to the south. We ambled along the waterfront and almost immediately found what looked for all the world like an ancient junk reimagined by Jules Verne. Seaworthy wasn’t the first or, for that matter, the fifth or sixth word that came to mind. My immediate thought was that it must have been broadsided by an oil tanker.
Sketchy? Yeah, definitely sketchy.
But Edward had only stars in his eyes. It was crewed by a handful of barefoot Indians. They smiled at us, bemused, as we tried to impart Mark’s plan.
“You want to do what?!”
They needed some persuading that, yes, we did indeed realize this wasn’t exactly a passenger vessel but it would just be fun to do anyway. The quizzical looks that passed among them spoke volumes.
“Fun? What is this fun you talk of? We eat, sleep and work like dogs. There is no fun.”
Feel free to insert your best Noel Coward right here.
Edward told them he was perfectly prepared to pay his way, perfectly content to share their food and sleep on the open deck, which was just as well since I don’t think he actually had any choice. We were painfully aware that we were aboard their home.
I’ve found, in the global south, there’s usually little separation between the work space and the living space; they’re frequently one and the same. That tuk-tuk driver may well be riding around in the only home he knows. If he needs to shower well, he only has to wait for the next downpour. Your world shrinks to the few square feet you’re standing in.
The ship’s captain shook his head and laughed, directing us to look in the hold. Peering in, we could see that this boat wasn’t going anywhere; the hold was half full of water. They’d sprung a serious leak and were awaiting repairs. Yeah, definitely an oil tanker.
Edward and I reluctantly parted ways as he found another way to Zanzibar and I made my way south along the coast to Diani. Again, I was the only one around, everyone else seeking refuge from terrorism, anywhere but Kenya.