Diani

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Next morning we had brekky then packed and checked out. We got a tuk tuk to the highway and waited about 5 mins for a big bus to turn up. We didn’t want to take a matatu, more risky than a big bus in an accident. And went to Mombasa. It took about 3 hours since we stopped a lot to drop off and let on passengers. Our bag was shoved up front next to the driver, it was so full its funny!
We got off in Mombasa, and the bus guy took us to the Modern Coast Express office so we could buy tickets for the 26th. We did that then got a taxi to take us to Diani Beach, via an atm. This means crossing the Likoni Ferry, we were in line for an hour and a half to board the ferry and eventually made it to Diani by 3.30pm. We checked into Stilts, texted Sule and met up with him at Forty Thieves bar across the road. It was so good to see him!! I had been near Diani beach in a village called Makongeni for 3 months in 2006 on my gap year after high school and made friends with Sule. Right now he´s in his last year of high school which I have been paying for since 2008 (Kenya is a bit screwed up educationally) and living in Diani in a shared house. We had some drinks at Forty Thieves, then walked to a local restaurant for dinner together, checked out a local club called Shakatak that I used to go to then headed back to stilts together. We had an early night and arranged to meet up the next day.
We got up and had brekky in the bar area, then after a while decided to head to forty thieves again, this time with swimmers and go for a swim. There weren’t many people there so we got a booth and watched some football on the tv with a cold drink before going swimming one at a time (need to keep an eye on belongings here). Forty Thieves is actually on the beach, and the floor on the lower level is just sand. Outside the bar there are tables as well and then further down the beach and on either side of the bar on the beach are beach boys, not allowed in to hawk their goods but you step over an invisible line and they can talk to you as much as you can handle about good prices etc. So each time we went swimming, on the way back to the bar we would nicely say no thankyou I cannot shop now, I´m wet and have no money on me.
Sule texted us that we would meet up at 2 and he would call us. So we had a little bite to eat at forty´s (its expensive there) and dumped the towels at the hotel before taking a matatu to Ukunda junction. A town about 2.5km away from the beach on the main road to Mombasa, it’s a local town, definitely not a tourist town. We met up, demanded our change from the money man on the matatu who tried to charge us mzungu price and met Sule who took us to a local football final match about 10 mins walk from the main road. Everyone was playing in football boots except one guy who had no shoes on at all. The ball was not a very good one, but they did ok with it. The ground was very very bumpy so it made it hard to control the very bouncy ball. Eventually the better team scored, the other team thought they were offside so no one tried to intercept, but no whistle went and the guy was in fact way ON side. After the game we took a short cut back to the main Diani road, walking literally next to the runway at the small Diani airport which was in use most of the day, so we saw planes take off and land. We got to the road and walked back to forty thieves and had a cold drink. Then walked up the beach to Kim4Love and watched some amazingly strong men (3) do a performance with a band singing on a stage overlooking the beach. The men would do things like standing on each others shoulders 3 high, backflips, one man holding the 2 out either side etc. Then closer to us but in the other direction was a boxing ring where guys were doing a boxing display, both groups came and asked for tips later.
At sunset we left and went back to Stilts, we didn’t have enough cash to go get dinner. We sat in the bar for an hour and chatted to Sule about his plans for getting a job. Then went to the same place for dinner. We had a drink back at Stilts bar while Dario gave Sule a lesson in Excel then he went home and we had another beer and said ‘happy anniversary’ seeing it was our 3rd.
Next morning we were up and had brekky then had to pack up our room as we hadn’t been able to book the next night in a stilt house. We had to camp in our tent for the night then move back into a house the next night. So we got shown where to set up the tent and we got given a mattress that was too big for our tiny tent, but we made it fit. Then we organized a taxi to take us to Kinondo sacred forest south of Diani. We had an hour long tour in the forest with our guide, her name was Binki. We were shown all the types of medicinal plants and the big trees. Before you are allowed to enter you must take off any headwear, in Binki´s case she is muslim and had to take off her hijab when we entered. So we left our hats in the taxi. We also had to put on black sarongs. Its all a case of respect for the ancestors that used to live in the sacred forest. We hugged some big trees, the locals believe you get power from them. The other rules included never hugging or kissing someone else in the forest, you cannot go to the toilet in the forest and you cannot take anything, even a fallen leaf from the forest. It is one of the last closed canopy forests in Kenya, and was beautiful. We saw colobus monkeys too. Halfway through the tour we bumped into 2 other girls on a tour with a friend of mine called Salim, he lives in Makongeni and started working there in December. He is a friend of Sule´s.
After the tour we paid the entrance fees of 500Ksh per person, and tipped the guide then got back in the taxi and went back to the hotel. We had lunch then Sule came over with his laptop and Dario gave him more lessons in Excel, and in basic mathematics, his maths is so bad! Then the boys went to play football with Sule´s team, I had an icky tummy so didn’t go. I made friends with Max and Abby an American couple who have spent heaps of time in East Africa, and just finished Uni. We played rummy, waiting for Dario to return and the BBQ to start for dinner. Dario returned later on, but said there was no training since the team had played a final the day before they were having a rest, so there were just a few guys kicking a ball around. He had a shower, then the bbq started and we all migrated from the bar to the bbq area to eat dinner, yummy tomato soup, salads, veggies, rice, chicken and beef. We went back to the bar after dinner and played more cards before going to bed in our tent later on. We didn’t sleep very well since the camping area is closer to the road than the rest of the property so you can hear the traffic, the nightclubs and the animals. Early in the morning the Sykes monkeys were up, and we had moved the fly off in the night as it was way too hot, so we could see them through the mesh playing in the trees. There was a another tent a little way off that was without a fly too but someone had rigged a giant tarpaulin over the top of it with ropes from the trees and all the younger monkeys were using it like a trampoline! So funny! They would climb up the trees and jump into the middle of it one at a time!
After we were woken up, we went and hung out in the bar until breakfast was served at 8am. We had pancakes and fruit and yogurt. We had planned on checking into our room at 11, the normal check in time and then going to Makongeni village. Unfortunately the people (Italians…) who were in the hut we were supposed to be in went to the beach without checking out and didn’t come back until almost 1!!! We were annoyed, but eventually we got into our hut at 2 and called Sule to come and meet us at the hotel instead so we didn’t go to Makongeni. Instead we did more maths work with him and then the boys went to play football. I stayed in the bar and hung out with everyone there, including a staffy who turned up with a couple of divers who work in a nearby resort. Unfortunately 2 british girls had been robbed that afternoon so the police were taking their statement. It was literally 5 minutes away on the main road walking back from the supermarket, a buy ran across the road, slashed the handle on one of their bags that was over the shoulder and ran into the bushes with it. She lost camera, phone, ipod and cash which sucks  they had some tuskers and we all chatted about other things instead. I met Gavin who is volunteering at the hotel for free food and board and he just got back from the Congo and said it was amazing! I don’t know if I would go yet, but he said its really safe in certain areas at the moment.
Dario came back and had a shower and we had dinner with everyone, Max, Abby, Gavin, Emma and Oefie. With lots of drinks (except us, only a beer each plus zappa) including a shot of zappa that the brits bought everyone, basically its sambucca but cheaper and bright blue! It was gross, but everyone did it. We eventually hit the sac at 11ish.
Next morning monkeys woke us up again, but not at the crack of dawn luckily. We woke up when they jumped onto the balcony of our little stilt hut and from chair to chair, very funny since they started looking in at us through the mesh (there are no windows, just wire mesh or woven leave mesh type thing (we sleep under mosquito nets though). We got up, had brekky (pancakes, but this time we had bought nutella… so good!) then had showers and headed to Ukunda on a matatu to meet Sule and go to Makongeni. We got the matatu easily and got off at makongeni, it looks the same! Its amazing, nothing reallyhas changed in the structure of the village, main road and the market area are all the same. We then went to visit Sule´s family, we met his grandfather, mother, older sister (with 4 month old nephew), younger brother Samen who is 18, and then 2 of his younger sisters. They were very nice, but only samen really spoke English well. We got a tour of the 4 bedroom house and the kitchen, 4 girls sleep in the one bedroom, grandfather has one room, mother has one room,then out the back is the 4th bedroom where sule used to sleep, now it is just samen. It is a mudbrick house with a thatched roof. He showed us the mangroves where there is a womens group that runs a fishpond program, and then we went to look at the school (I helped finish built the library and some housing for teachers, but it´s now just storage). It was almost the same as before, but there was a fence around it. We walked on to Camp Kenya, where I had lived for 3 months in 2006 and met the manager Duncan who was great, took us on a tour. It has changed a lot, there are now standing buildings for the dorms instead of tents, there is electricity so there are fridges and lights, the kitchen is the same too, but the old place we used to eat in is now just storage, they all eat in another area. It was nice to see the place again.
We walked then to the new health clinic in the village built by Rafiki Kenia, an NGO from Holland apparently, they do maternal care, labs, kids, almost anything I guess, its small but its good to have active healthcare in the community. Then we went to see the cyber café that has opened up, the same building contains a tailoring college. The internet was surprisingly fast, and it was full when we entered, Salim was there too so we had a chat. We checked our emails when a few of the camp Kenyan mzungus had left and had a drink. We had also taken a family photo with Sule and his family, so we left it there to be printed for them as they had run out of colour ink. We paid the money and they said they would take it to the family when they had the ink. After the cyber we left the village and took a matatu back to Ukunda. All the kids yelled jambo and waved as we left, a couple coming to hold our hands for a little while which was cute. The matatu on the way back was much more crammed, but we survived and got off at the junction, then walked the 25 mins or so to Sule´s house (he rent s a room in a large house). We got there and saw the place, then grabbed his football gear and headed back to the other main road, the one to Diani and took a matatu back to stilts. We got some money then headed up the road to our favourite chicken tikka restaurant for a belated lunch (it was now after 3pm). They welcomed us back, gave us free passion juice after our first glass and got the chicken cooking before we even ordered. They were great! Then it started raining and we had to wait a little while before we could walk back to stilts. Then Dario checked Sule´s homework then he showed him how he puts his contacts in his eyes (he got grossed out) before they headed off for football and I hung out at the bar again.
That night after Dario was back, we went with 4 others, Max, Abby, Aiofa (pronounced Eefa, Irish name) and her Emily to Annielo´s Italian restaurant near the Ukunda junction, it’s the same place that we went to heaps last time I was in Diani. We took one taxi with all 6 of us inside and got a table at the restaurant. As per 5 yrs ago, the food was AMAZING!! I had carbonara and Dario had a pizza, everyone loved the food. We got free crisp bread with balsamic in the middle of the table and the wine was really cheap, but really good!! We were stuffed by the end, but as usual Dario wanted ice cream and we got some, chocolate was amazing and the vanilla was good too. Then we took the taxi back to the hotel, had a few drinks, then headed over to Forty Thieves with 2 Canadians and Gav, a british volunteer who was volunteering at the hotel for free food and board. Half of us were tired and left after half an hour and the rest stayed until the wee hours of the morning apparently.
Next morning was our last day in Diani. We hung out at the beach all morning until just after lunch time. Then we met Sule at the hotel at 2ish, Dario went over his homework and they did a bit more maths and excel training on his laptop. Then they went to football. I hung out at the hotel as usual with the others who had come back from the beach. The boys returned just after 7, and we copied some videos and movies from each others computers, then we walked him to the road to catch a matatu back to Ukunda, but the tourist police stopped and called him over. They threatened to take him away and to court the next day. I got really angry. It was the same guy who had basically been rude and interrogated Aiofa 2 days before when she got robbed. He was so rude to us, and when we explained we were saying a farewell to our friend he got angry and told us we were basically stupid. We had nothing on us to rob and we were directly in front of the hotel!! He was going to take sule away and we said no, and he came back to the hotel with us. We were so angry!!!! Corruption is everywhere! He was basically being threatening to try and get a bribe. We walked away.
We got ready to go out since we had planned on going out to the Italian place for dinner again. We ordered 2 cabs since we were taking Gav and Sule with us. We didn’t want sule to go out on the road again by himself incase the police came back. We dropped him at the junction and said our goodbyes. We had another great meal at the Italian place, this time with Gav too. For dessert, the others had organized a surprise bowl of icecream with candles and sung happy birthday, so nice!! Then took the taxis back to the hotel and played some drinking games and they gave me a card and a jar of nutella as a gift!! Then we went to forty thieves to dance! It was really fun!! But we had to leave the next morning at 7am so we were the first to head to bed at about 3am. WE said goodbye to everyone.

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