Our journey to Kenya! Part two

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Our trip to Mombasa...
I only wrote about Nairobi. Now I've got the time to tell you about the hot and multicultural city Mombasa. 15th of april in the afternoon when we arrived in a small town nearby Mombasa called Mariakani we had to get out of the bus and waited there for the sister of Grace to pick us up. Grace sister, called Joyce, and her brotherin law, Pius, took us to a small village (Kalalani) where the Kamba-tribe lives. (Joyce husband is a Kamba). The family (inclueding more than 20 children and adults) is living together on a farm with animals in a native livestyle. When Joeri and I arrived we had much to do with showing ourselves to the children and introduceing ourselves. They welcomed us very happily and soon we were like members of the family. The livestyle there was very interesting. Useing the "toilette", having a shower,... all things were very exciting. The food in Kenya is much more better than in Uganda. The use a lot of herbes and spicies and coconut. There are so many coconuttrees! On the first day Pius and Joyce showed us the town Mariakani with their shops and two dancingclubs,.... Nearly every day we went to the twon to go to a shop from Pius sister Penina, to buy some things visiting "friends" and I let myself pained with henna (very nice tatoos!).
->Oh and I think I forgot to tell you that I let my hair plait a month ago.
The next day Joeri and I really wanted to go to the beach to swim in the indian ocean. So we did. Pius allways joined us and showed us special sights in and arround Mombasa (Fort Jesus, Pembe ya ndovu (the horns made out of steel) and we enjoyed swiming in the warm and dangerouse ocean (Joeri were so afraid about the sharks and all the horrible monsters in the sea;-))
On friday there was a buried from a uncle of Joyce and Grace and they invided us to join them. Grace and Joyce are from the "Gjonie-tribe". This tribe is living in the real bush of the coast region in a very old and traditional village. Also the buried was very traditional, wow, I've never seen something like that not even in the television.
On thursday evening we arrived Gjonie with a special taxi. The buried has already been started in the afternoon this day, so we decided to go to the place after eating coconutsoap, meat and posho.
Already in front of our house we could hear the music and when we arrived at the place where the dead body was lying the music made it difficult to understand another. Meters away from the "party" I could lightly smell the stench of the dead which accompanied us the following days...
The first we saw were the groups of young or old people who were sitting on the ground playing cards and drinking palmwine (very good wine made out of coconut!).
Then we saw a lot of children a hugh crowd of them, playing, runing around,...
The music became louder when we came to the place where the coffin with the dead person in it was standing. And there all the women where standing or dancing around the coffin, singing and crying (the men aren't allowed to cry, they only drunk A LOT OF palmwine. We didn't want to go to the coffin but the others took us very close to the coffin so that we could see the nearly 2 weeks old dead body of uncle whatever. (it was so hot because of the many bodies around us, the small of sweat and dead..., crying, singing and dancing women and women who breastfeeded their babies next to the coffin) Cultures can be so different....
After a while we left the group of women and sat down somewhere together with a few of the over 30 cousins of Joyce and Grace to enjoy the palmwine and try to forget the last few minutes nearby the coffin. The got to know so many people inclueding two cousins who talked to us in french and german, wow. In the middle of the night we went back to our house to rest a little bit.
The real buried was on the next day in the afternoon. Joeri and I met one of the cousins to go for a walk. He showed us the palmforrest, very nice and holy stones, his fields and his home with his wife. We also have seen men climbing the coconuttree without any rope, fascinating!
At around 4 o'clock they took the coffin and all together were going to the grave. The problem there: the grave was too short. So they had to enlarge the grave.
Finally the coffin was under the earth and the real party started. The people danced and the drunk men entertained the hole crowd. In the evening we left the "party" after taking some bottles of palmwine and visited the grandmother of Grace and Joyce. (Of course Joeri and I attracted a lot of attentions allthough me myself was dressed in the traditional clothes "kanga".)
On sunday we went back to Mariakani and in the evening after saying goodbye to everybody Grace, Ruth (a cousin), Joeri and me took the bus to Nairobi.
Wow what for an adventure!

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