Mombassa, Kenya

My first time was in a rented zebra-striped bus back in 1969 when Semester at Sea docked there for a week - we took off blindly for the adventure of a lifetime - six of us - the stories are simply unbelievable.

One which I will relate here - skip down to the paragraph above the next picture to rejoin this current travelogue if you're not interested. Back on my first Semester at Sea in Mombasa, after having packed our "supplies" atop the bus (food stolen for days previous from the ship's dining room by all of us). These supplies were, of course, raided by monkeys and millions of bees our first night in the parking lot of a lodge where organized tours from our ship were staying. The groundskeepers bailed us out of that mess. So we drove off and found a herd of giraffe. We went off-road in the grasslands following these rather suspicious giraffe (they knew zebras don't have wheels). Well, after a while, tiring of the giraffe, we decided to push on, and, it was then that we realized, that having meandered through a sea of tall grass, we no longer had any idea where the road was!!! Nor could we identify it in the distance because there was only one or two cars an hour that would possibly pass by. But what's this??? On the horizon!!! A lone figure - dressed in a red robe!!! So we drive over to this guy, with the hopes that when we presented ourselves to him, and he, seeing six white teenagers where white teenagers are never seen, in a car (albeit looking like a zebra with wheels, but a car, nonetheless) where a car is never seen, that he might get the idea we were lost and that we might might be looking for a road. Well, it turns out, when we got to him, that he was the son of a Massai Chieftain, had been schooled in London, and spoke the Queens English better than ANY of us. He had returned to his village to assist in integrating his people with the previous British East African Government (before Kenya achieved independence in 1963) and remained there to this day. He was equally as excited as were we to meet him, and for the next two days we lived with him in his communal family hut in the village (most of us slept in the bus), eating his bread and milk and cows blood (yes, cows blood), and all those good things that go with being a Massai. He showed us how they lived, took us at night out to an elephant watering hole, and showed us all sorts of neat stuff. He was called "Sir Bobby", and when we left to push on to the Ngorongoro Crater, the Great Rift, Nairobi, and Tsavo, we drove him - well, he took us - to a tourist lodge where he said he could receive mail. But despite our efforts to retain contact with him, that was the last we ever heard. But what an experience.

The first day I did the obligatory "city tour" to see what, if anything, I would like to go back to, and poke around, later. Mombasa's signature is (are?) the aluminum tusks arching out over Moi Avenue, the main East/West commercial street of the town.

They were constructed to commemorate Queen Elizabeth's visit in 1952 and are made of aluminum (and are sorely in need of a paint job). Interestingly enough, with the two sets of tusks, accommodating the two-lane "carriageway" (I love that word), the tusks form an "M" for Mombasa as well.