Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Vacation in Watamu

Finally a long needed break from work! Last Thursday was Kenyatta Day (or Hero’s Day) so Jane, a fellow stationed in Nairobi, and I decided to go to the coastal town of Watamu for the long weekend. The house we stayed in was so beautiful and lacked any sort of privacy whatsoever. I’m pretty sure the surrounding village can tell you our weekend schedule since our house lacked curtains, in some places walls and in others ceilings; all in a very artistic way of course. Being poor volunteers we really had to budget our money, which meant we weren’t the typical Italian tourists Watamu sees, we were the never before seen muzungu breed of calculating hagglers.

Our first day’s activities involved the frustrating task of deciding our meal budget with the house cook, a tall, dark, helpful Kenyan with an ole St. Nick belly named Joseph.  Testing the waters Jane and I asked him how much money he thinks he would need to cook for us for 3 days. After a moment or so of hemming and hawing he says with conviction “About eight to ten thousand shillings” (so around 80 to 100 USD). Jane and I look at each totally confused as we try to hide our shock. This makes absolutely no sense since you can buy an extremely nice meal at a fancy restaurant for around 600 shillings. (6 USD). We decide to draw up a menu for the days so we can figure out how much money Joseph actually needs and eventually we decide that four thousand shillings is much more than enough for us and another friend who plans to arrive the next day.

“So we’re good now? We’re on the same page and agree that this is enough money?” I ask Joseph.

“Ah yes. This is good” he replies assuringly.

As we’re about to turn he quickly adds, with a glimmer in his eye, “Ah yes, we’ll see, pole pole.”

Jane and I are confused as to what else needs to be considered but after going around in circles with Joseph and always ending in “pole pole” we give up and decide that if we need to ask for receipts we’ll do that. Pondering to ourselves as to why Joseph thinks he needs so much money, we decide that he’s used to catering for wealthy Italian tourists (this argument also supports my Kenyan friend Becky’s belief that the Italian mafia vacations in Watamu).


The next day our second bout of haggling involved driving the price down to a reasonable figure for our tuk-tuk to the beach. After much disputing we finally arrived at the beautiful white sand beach in the squelching heat. We positioned our towels as far away from the beach boys as possible and soaked up the sun and sand. Having spent enough time in Kenya to have no interest in engaging in conversations with random men, the beach boys were sadly disappointed and probably a bit confused as to our blatant disregard of them. Jane was quite exceptional at this task, refusing to even acknowledge their existence even though sometimes I gave in with a short answer to a question or two.

“We must seem like some really grumpy vacationers” I said to Jane chuckling.

“Yea we are” Jane replies coolly.

Totally settling in to our new grumpy personalities we complain that there should be more clouds in the sky and the sun is much too hot (this is after torrential rains on the coast the previous week) and so we pack our things up to head back.

Our weekend involved many wonderful activities such as couch lounging, watching really bad action movies like the Expendables, and an interesting visit to Gede Ruins. But the highlight for me was Joseph’s phone call to our tuk-tuk driver to take us to dinner on our last night. Always willing to help he calls the driver and after a while begins to laugh in surprise. When he hangs up the phone we ask him to explain what happened (since the conversation was in Swahili).

“He said you don’t pay enough and he doesn’t want to pick you up.” Joseph laughs heartily.

We all crack up in amusement and astonishment.

“I told him you are our friends and he has to help you so he’s coming.” Joseph adds.

You know you haven’t been screwed over by prices when the tuk-tuk driver would rather make no money than give you a ride.
Our open air living room

Board walk to the creek which was 5 mins away from the house



Sunset at our house

"Window" in my bathroom

Open air shower

Getting ready for our bird watching expedition at Midas Creek

Pensive monkey at Gede ruins

Gede Ruins

Enormous rocket tree at Gede Ruins




2 comments: