Out of Africa-Just in the nick of time!
Friday, January 18th, 2008
We spent Christmas with our friends Anna Martina and Frank at their beach house about 20 miles south of Mombasa, Kenya. The house was a huge cabana style house tucked into the bush with a pool and a cook that just kept bringing us more and more food. I’m not going to lie, we pretty much spent 5 days eating great food and swimming lazily around the pool with a few beers in hand. By the time we finished breakfast, the cook would ask us what we wanted for lunch, and before we new it, lunch was being served. Not a bad way to spend Christmas. It was tough being away from home, especially since it was Christys first being away from her Grandma Nunny’s house for Christmas ever. On Christmas day, Christy’s only wish was to somehow call home. We were at a house in the middle of nowhere in Africa so it was a tough task. Frank told us all to jump in the car and armed with his laptop and headset, we set off to find an internet connection. After about 30 minutes of driving around with the computer on and wi fi searching, he found a connection. We stopped the car and with the amazing technology of Skype, we called home! Here we are in the middle of nowhere and Christy can call home to America. Unfortunately, it was still 4am back in Cali so I couldn’t do the same. Anyway, it was a great holiday.
One of the great things about traveling is learning about the different cultures and Politics of a region. The day after Christmas, Christy and I were treated to one heck of a learning experience when we got into a discussion on politics in Africa. Joining our discussion was a friend of Frank and Martina’s who just happen to be a Kenyan local. She had a Danish boyfriend who lived in Mozambique working for a cellular phone company (that’s how Frank and Martina know them b/c they too are Danish). So we had white Europeans who live and work in Africa and a local Kenyan who had deep tribal roots to Kenya discussing African politics. Things got heated to say the least and Christy and I just sat there and listened to them for about 3 hours. We learned so much about the local’s viewpoints on things and how really screwed up things are in Africa. It was a conversation that I won’t ever forget. Rather then get into the lengthy discussion, just ask us about it when we get home!
We booked our flight out of Africa for December 27th, not knowing that it was election day in Kenya and not knowing that there were talks of riots. We were planning on taking an 9 hour bus from Mombasa to Nairobi but after talking with the locals, they did not think it would be safe if riots broke out. They do things different in Africa for elections, you go to the polls and vote and if the person you voted for doesn’t win, you start burning things down and causing complete mayhem. After hearing about this, we decided to fly straight to the Nairobi airport so if riots did break out, we would safely be at the airport. (See Becky, I’m always thinking about the safety of your daughter). We had no problems on our travel day and after 28 hours of traveling we were relaxing in Malaysia.
Unfortunately, things did get very ugly in Kenya almost immediately after we left. Riots broke out everywhere and many people were killed because of the “rigged” election. Even the town we were staying in prior to leaving was damaged and some building were burned. We got an email from our friends who were still there and they said if we wouldn’t have left that day, we could have been stuck in Kenya for a couple of weeks. We definitely dodged a bulled there, literally and figuratively.
Steve