Asante

Mombasa Day 2!
Woke up to the call of prayer at 5am again. Its very pretty and not really a bad way to wake up! After the prayer everybody is up again, children, roosters, matatus...
The water and power were on so I made some coffee and sat on the balcony watching the city wake up around me. Jen lives in a neighborhood just north of Mombasa island. It's considered upscale, but, that's relative. Her building is 6 stories and has only 9 units, so it's tall but not big. Jen lives in the penthouse, the rest of the residents are Hindi. The building is vegetarian only and Erdu is everyones primary language. Everyone has been very friendly and waves as you pass.
The primary language spoken in Mombasa is Swahili. Although English is Kenya's national language, most everyone converses in Swahili and understands English. Mombasa has a population of about 1 million people. It consists of Mombasa island surrounded by a half moon shape of land, the north end being Jens neighborhood, Nyali, the south being accessible by ferry called Kihone. Of the million people in Mombasa about 5,000 are white. Some are like Jen and there for work, some came there for peace corps and stayed, some came for adventure and others are native Kenyans that have generations of family that go back to British rule. With .5% of the population being white, we stand out a bit. The common name for white people in Swahili is Mzungu. Everywhere we go we are addressed by Mzungu. There is a profound economic difference in Mombasa between the black population and the Mzungus. Whites are perceived to have money, and lots of it. The tourists, who are white spend it left and right and the general population is making a wage we could never fathom. It makes for an interesting dynamic. We often pay a little more and get noticed a lot more but not in a way that you feel unsafe, just in a way that everyone is stareing at you ALL THE TIME. Most people are very nice, curious and let you go about your business.
The fruit here is awesome! We had mangos and bananas for breakfast. I took my malaria pill with food in hopes of not puking my guts out in another strange location.
We decided to head to one of the big hotels on the beach for the day. You can pay a bit and use their pool and grounds for the day. We went to get our suits on and Tommy forgot his(WTF?) so we had to pick one up. We hopped a matatu(I say this very casually but it is quite an event, standing by the roadside, shoving in between 12 people with babies on their laps, squeezing in next to a burlap sack full of bananas held by someone you are now touching, as everyone stares at you and you injure your leg on the way in) to the new huge fancy mall in Nyali. This is the mall I mentioned in an earlier post about security. It has a large supermarket on par with Walmart so we searched through the hot pants and found him a decent floral number. We grabbed another matatu(sustaining only a bruise to the hip in the shuffle and then deafening reggae) to White Sands Resort Nyali(fancy pants).
We paid 1000ksh(about$8) and had a freshly cut young coconut, ate Italian(there are a ton of italians here, at some point the Italian government decided to provide brick ovens to all Italian restaurants in Mombasa, so needless to say the pizza is amazing!) on the beach and played in one of the several pools. We enjoyed the waterslide and then the bar...ahhhh, perfect way to ease into vacation! They have a special Mombasan drink at every restaurant here called a Dawa. It is vodka, lime, honey and unrefined sugar, they put the honey on the end of a small bamboo stick in your drink and you can stir it all together. We will be making these at our house a lot so please invite yourselves!
We took a tuktuk home instead of a matatu ths time. A tuktuk is a motorized rickshaw. It has 3 wheels, a 2 stroke(sometimes 4) motor and seats three behind the driver. They are cute and make a sputtering noise as you speed down the street like the Jetsons. They cost a little more then a matatu but less then a taxi. As far as traffic is concerned they fit below a car and matatu but can pass motorcycles, and, due to their size can wiggle through traffic if there is a jam. It has a little cover but is mostly open air feeling. I found tuktuks the most exhilarating. Like a motorcycle but not, flying through in the smokey hot air!
Since it was Saturday night we had plans. We were going to dinner at Jens coworkers home. His wife taught us how to make a Kenyan food called chapatis, which are similar to the Indian paratha. I can't wait to make them when I get home! She also made a huge feast of indian favorites, it was great! I think the jetlag was starting t hit and we were falling asleep, so we got a ride home and fell asleep fast.
I hope I'm not boring you guys! Sorry about the mixed up pictures!