Common Sense and Whiskey

Vignette: Encounter in Kenya

I once met a young man named Joseph Oyule on a trip to Mombasa, Kenya. We exchanged addresses and kept in touch for a while. Now, five years later, as I lay on the bed in a villa at the Kingfisher resort in Malindi, 75 miles (120 kilometers) up the coast from Mombasa, Mirja runs in and exclaims: "Guess who's here! Joseph Oyule!" 

He just shows up. Takes a two hour bus from Mombasa and a taxi, and here he sits. He’s young, smaller than I remembered, almost timid in his yellow polyester shirt with a too big collar, slacks and big battered wing tips. Joseph, Mirja and I sit and make halting small talk, alone in the still heat at the Kingfisher bar.

Two European female acquaintances are due for lunch, and I can see this particular fivesome isn't made in heaven, so I decide to take Joseph to a beach hangout called the Driftwood, for lunch. We hop a taxi.

Better Ending to Deadly Kidnapping

Good news for Judith Tebbutt this morning. As the BBC reports,

"Mrs Tebbutt was seized on 11 September last year from Kiwayu Safari Village, a luxury resort on a deserted stretch of Kenyan coastline, comprised of thatched cottages on the beach.

The couple had arrived only the previous day and were the only guests."

Her husband was killed in the kidnapping and she was taken by speedboat and held hostage in Somalia. She has been released on payment of ransom, and flown to Nairobi.

The Kiwayu Safari Village web site says only this:

"Sorry the website is unavailable due to the tragic events. Our thoughts and prayers are with the affected family."

The resort is described here as

"a barefoot luxury retreat on a deserted stretch of white beach facing out over the Indian Ocean," with prices from $400. 

Back last October we had a story about a deadly kidnapping from the small island of Manda in Kenya, about 75 miles south of the Somali border. The resort in that kidnapping, Manda Bay, closed and put up a statement that read in part

"Manda Bay will remain closed until we are totally confident that sufficient security has been provided for the whole area."

They hired a "fast response boat" and reopened December 1st.

Lesson: Take your East African beach holiday beyond Somali speedboat range, down to Mozambique or out to Seychelles.

 

 

Kidnapping Deadly for Victim, Resort

There is news this morning that Marie Dedieu, a 66 year old Frenchwoman kidnapped from Kenya by suspected Somali militants earlier this month has died in captivity. The BBC reports that the Somali kidnappers did not take her wheelchair or medication with them.

Ms. Dedieu was kidnapped from the small island of Manda, part of the Lamu archipelago which, as you can see in this Google map, is about 75 miles south of the Somali border.

There is a resort on Manda called Manda Bay. Perhaps it's more accurate to say there WAS a resort there. The proprietors point out that Ms. Didieu was "believed to be a home owner on the Lamu side of Manda Island," and not resident at their resort. Nevertheless, a kidnapping from your little resort island can't be good for business.

So they've relocated their guests elsewhere and "Manda Bay will remain closed until we are totally confident that sufficient security has been provided for the whole area. "

I'm going to bet that'll be approximately never.

Read the Manda Bay statement.

Vignettes from Africa I - Driving to Nairobi

Here's a short series to be posted over several days, random short experiences in Africa. Not necessarily in any order, just observations collected over time.

Two hours 25 minutes beyond the lip of the Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, we found a tarmac road. Open-backed, full-polluting Tatas tore across the flats outside town.

The run-up to Arusha was shady, tree lined, graceful. Then after the coffee plantations, ramshackle stalls like "Lucky Feed M ill." "Lucky Family General Store." "Moona Pharmacy." ("Moona is an obscenity in Finnish) "Beuty Saloon."

We got a driver in Arusha named Moses, and he said we'd make Nairobi by 4:00. Arusha called itself the halfway point between Cairo and the Cape. Maybe so, but I wondered, so what?

A few years ago a United Nations conference was postponed here because a snake fried the wiring of the Arusha International Conference Center. Made it too hot to use.

Over at the Mount Meru Hotel they’d be happy to arrange tickets for you on Air Burundi or Sudan Airways - whichever you’d like.

Moses stopped in at a little bar he knew for us to change the rest of our Tanzanian shillings into four Tusker premiums, and we sure did roll into Nairobi right at 4:00.

•••••

The most delicious thing in Nairobi was a three-day-old newspaper. It was nine days since we'd seen one. Walking back from the newsstand, a fight broke out right in the middle of Kenyatta Avenue. We stepped around the pile of people and settled into the ex-pat bar at the New Stanley Hotel, called the Thorn Tree.

Several cold Premium beers later, Maurice, a man from United Touring Company, came stridin’ in like the guy in those Keep On Truckin’ cartoons to settle a debt, clutching a one hundred dollar bill and a five.

Caught up, Premium braced and a hundred bucks richer, we felt like stepping out. They tell you not to brave the Nairobi streets at night. But the cabs wanted five bucks for two blocks’ walk, so we said screw 'em, and we walked to a place called Trattoria for Italian dinner, and then walked back. Most of the people on the streets were security men with clubs.

Next: Flying to Zimbabwe

Adding Insult to Injury (from Crocodiles)

This photo, from the Rwandan border town of Gisenyi, is as close as we got to the UN/NGO-dominated town of Goma, Dem. Rep. Congo. U.N. charters flew in almost constantly. Click the photo for a larger version you can actually see.

 

To and from Gisenyi, long haul trucks from the Indian Ocean ports of Mombasa and Dar es-Salaam brought goods to supply eastern Congo. Congo itself, mind you, fronts the Atlantic Ocean. But the state of its infrastructure is so dismal as to require the eastern half of the country to be supplied from the other side of the continent.

So it's no real surprise to see this article from the AP: Wildebeest roadblock? Highway planned in Serengeti. Along with the crocodiles in the Mara River, it's one more obstacle the wildebeests really don't need.

*****

Right now the annual wildebeest migration across the Masai Mara is in full swing. Here are a couple of sites tracking wildebeest movement:

Annual Wildebeest Migration
The Great Migration

Wildebeest Migration Maps

Looking for the best way to track the annual Masaai Mara wildebeest migration in real time? Sure you were.

Try this site. Maps, charts, nice graphics. We'll put it in the "Travel Tools" sidebar.

Photo from EarthPhotos.com.

Perils of the Kenyan Drought

Enjoy this nicely done story on Kenya from the Australian blog Inside Story.

Photo of Mt. Kilimanjaro from EarthPhotos.com.