Adventures on the Swahili Coast.

Western Uganda is truly beautiful and I love living and working here, but for this ex-sailor it’s much too far from the sea, and for our two boys, who share their grandfather’s obsession with trains, then the absence of trains is also an issue.  We were all very excited therefore when we embarked on our once-in-a-lifetime family holiday.

It started as most of our trips do, with the now routine 6 hour drive to Kampala, followed by a chance for the boys to let off steam at the “softplay” at the shiny new acacia shopping mall.  As it was our holiday we also treated ourselves to our first ever family cinema outing – to see “Planes 2: Fire & Rescue”, in 3D.  Jonah helpfully slept through most of it, leaving the rest of us in peace to enjoy the film through 3D glasses (a new experience for us technologically backward rural dwellers!)  Then a morning taxi trip to Entebbe airport to fly to Nairobi, the capital of our larger eastern neighbour, Kenya.  The flight was delayed by several hours.  The notice screen kept cheekily reporting “On Time” next to the ever changing departure time!  By the time we arrived in Nairobi we were under pressure to reach the train station in time for the next stage of our journey, which made the taxi through the crazy Nairobi traffic jams more stressful.  We needn’t have worried.  Our 7pm train to the Kenyan port town of Mombassa was running late.  The train was there and we could see all the carriages, but there was no engine to pull it.  The first few hours were fine.  We got some food and the boys were so excited about being on a train station and hearing the horns of, or seeing other trains coming through the station.  There was no information, however, and when people tried to enquire the station master was found hiding locked inside his office!  We were pretty fed up by the time the train finally departed at 12.15am, but we put the boys to bed in our sleeper compartment and then alternated eating a late supper in the dining car at about 1.30am before turning in ourselves.  We got up to the dawn at around 7am and discovered we still hadn’t come very far.  The timetable has the train passing through the massive Tsavo National Park in the early morning light, potentially glimpsing the notorious Man-eating lions of Tsavo, who acquired a taste for the British and Indian workers who laid the railway tracks at the turn of the last century.  However, we didn’t reach Tsavo until gone midday when the searing afternoon heat drives all the animals under cover.  We saw a straggle of elephants and tow zebra from a distance.  An 18 hour train journey with numerous random stops amidst straggly bush is a bit of an ordeal for a young family, but the boys coped very well with their seemingly endless fascination for staring out of the open windows and screams of delight whenever we passed another train or vehicles at a level crossing.  Although again, there was no information from any of the train staff about our delays or arrival, they were very helpful at providing a free lunch as well as the allocated supper and breakfast.  On disembarking the train at 6.15 pm as the sun was setting, there was further excitement for the boys as our taxi embarked onto the Likoni ferry to cross the busy deepwater Mombassa harbour (into which most of Uganda’s imported goods arrive) and pick up the coast road that heads south towards Tanzania.  We arrived at Stilts backpackers, Diani beach and ate and went straight to bed, tired after our 35 hour journey from Kampala. 

It was all well worth it.  I’ve swam in the Indian Ocean before, but Diani beach has to be the best beach I’ve ever been to:  Perfect white sand lined by coconut palms on one side and a clear blue-green ocean on the other.  It was bright and sunny but not too hot with, a refreshing breeze but not so strong as to blast your skin with sand.  Stilts backpackers was a relaxed and friendly place with good food and friendly service and we soon befriended a German couple who were expecting their first child and seemed keen to spend time with our two boys and to seek protection from the persistent beach-hawkers through our ability to politely decline their wares in Swahili.  I’ve been fascinated by boats and the sea since I was about Sam’s age, so our five days on Kenya’s beautiful south coast were one of the best holidays I’ve ever had.  We took a (motor)Dhow trip from Shimoni to Wasini island and saw dolphins on the way there, snorkelled off the island and then visited the bizarre coral gardens and feasted on delicious fresh fish cooked in Swahili spices and coconut milk.  We also took a trip on a glass-bottomed boat passing over star-fish, sea urchins, moray-eels, sea-spiders and many types of colourful fish.  Whilst snorkelling over the same spot I also spotted a white and brown sea-snake, which thankfully wasn’t disturbed by my presence!  Bethan doesn’t share my enthusiasm for swimming in the Ocean, but she and Sam enjoyed a camel-ride along the beach, padding along in silence and admiring the scenery from a greater height.  Diani beach also offers kite-surfing and sky-diving, so we enjoyed watching other people float out of the sky onto the beach or rip through the waves behind a billowing kite.  Sand-castling was more suited to our age-range and budget however, so we kept busy digging big holes, making sand walls and collecting pretty shells, while others leapt from planes!

Notwithstanding these modern attractions, this coastline is in many ways unchanged from its long history.  Beautiful lateen-rigged sailing dhows still grace the coastline catching delicious fish in much the same way as they have for centuries, using the same boats and methods as Peter, James and John would have done on Lake Galilee.  The Swahili coast has its own strong cultural identity too, infused with the influence of Islam, and the complex legacies of the Arabs’ East-African slave trade (which although less talked about, preceded and exceeded the Europeans’ Atlantic slave trade).  It was a real pleasure for us to be able to talk to locals in their own language.  Our three years of studying Swahili in western Uganda has been frustrated by the fact that although many Ugandans use Swahili, they don’t much like it and rarely speak it properly, (the Congolese version prevalent around Kasese is notoriously poor).  In contrast, on the south Kenyan coast, we found that the “Swahili sanifu” (clean Swahili), we’ve been taught is what everyone speaks, and they love it when others speak it too.  Encounters with beach-hawkers, drivers etc, which could otherwise have been an ordeal or a haggling marathon became simple, friendly and even enjoyable when conducted in Swahili.  Whereas French people will often scoff at a Brit’s attempt to speak inaccurate French, no-one expects Brits to be fluent in Swahili, and so our efforts were encouraged and rewarded. 

We were relaxed, rested, well-fed and happy therefore when the 7pm train back from Mombassa to Nairobi departed bang on time.  Alas, it was too good to be true.  After half an hour we stopped and waited two hours for another engine to pick us up.  This second engine duly broke down at 7.30am in the middle of a sparse clump of scrub-bushes in the middle of Tasvo national park – not an ideal place to be stranded.  At 11am a third engine finally arrived to continue pulling us towards Nairobi.  At this point we were becoming concerned about catching our flight to Entebbe, as the apparently ample 12 hour gap between train and plane was rapidly being whittled down while we continued to stare at the same bushes.  No-one was telling us anything but we managed to find the train manager and he advised us to get off the train one stop before Nairobi, at Athi river, as the airport is on the South-East side of the city.  This saved us another hour and a half on the train, plus the time it would have taken to drive through Nairobi traffic back to the airport.  He also helpfully booked us a taxi to collect us from Athi river.  Nonetheless it was gone 8pm when we got off the train at Athi river, 25 hours after leaving Mombassa and with only 2.5 hours until our flight to Entebbe.  Another stressful taxi rush to an airport was then followed by another delayed flight leading to our eventual return to Kampala at gone 2am –  again 35 hours after leaving Diani beach.

 

So, would we recommend the Kenyan coast for a holiday? 

Definitely.  It’s beautiful, exciting, much more affordable than other tropical beach holidays, and more culturally interesting.  However, there is considerable political instability and some violence North of Mombassa as you head towards Somalia, so pick your location carefully and check the FCO website for current advice.    

Would we recommend taking the historic “Lunatic line” between Nairobi and Mombassa? 

Sam and Jonah would say yes, Bethan would say no, and I guess I would say maybe, but only if you’re in no hurry.  It’s certainly a memorable adventure, and you get to see a lot of Kenya in more comfort and safety than from the buses which hurtle at breakneck speeds.  The Chinese are currently constructing a new 1.5m gauge railway which will connect Mombassa to Nairobi and eventually Kampala, Juba (South Sudan) and Kigali (Rwanda), so maybe that will offer an improved service one day soon?