I'm down by the coast now, how can people live in this heat: sweating just because of the effort of being?
And why are the fans in this internet cafe not on and moving at full speed?!!
Malindi has some left of the typical swahili structures, swahili is the coastal culture - much influenced by the long precense of Arab commerce through the centuries. Wherever I am in town, I can always hear the muslim prayer call from one of the mosques at the appropriate times, five times a day. And many of the local restaurants don't cater during Ramadan (the muslim month of fast). This year it finished in the beginning of November, so there's no worries.
But the Swahili culture is not only Arab, like the language, it's a mixture of Arab, English, German and the different tribal influences. And last but not least, the town of Malindi has suffered an enormous italian invasion in the last decades... So instead of the usual
jambo greeting, I'm now being welcomed with
ciao and
benvenuto instead of
karibu.
My plans changed, I decided not to spend three days in Masai Mara National Park, and rather do a diving course here in Malindi, starting today.
I'd already been to Lake Nakuru National Park (the one with the flamingoes) and Hell's Gate NP (the one I'm goind to tell you about), and if I want more, I'm rather going to do a half day trip to Shimba Hills or even just Nairobi NP.
The referendum went pretty peacefully, no violence. The orange camp defeated the banana camp, - which means that the new constitution was rejected. I think that's good, then they'll go back to the drawing board and try and reach a conclusion on the 20% that the different sides didn't agree on.
I saw a picture of the voting sheet on TV, it actually had pictures of bananas and oranges next to the yes and no. That seemed to confirm Katrin's theory that the fruit allusions were actually for the illiterates, and probably also a common ground for all the minority tribal languages, - but strange, nevertheless.
And the breaking news this morning is that all the cabinet is resigning, if I understood correctly, I haven't seen the paper yet, but I'll tell you all about it.
Hell's Gate was fantastic, if you ever get the chance, go there!
It's one of rare National Parks where you can bike or walk through. It's just so much different not to be locked up in a car. You feel so much closer to the animals, - still, despite what we were told, that the cheetahs and the leopards were not dangerous to humans, because they have plenty of prey, I wouldn't have liked to see those up close and personal. I'm glad they kept their distance. And in the middle of it all, we were told by a ranger that, there were actually lions there also. So when cycling back, I didn't like to drag behind to take photos too much, as they like to attack the weak and slow ones.
We had a walk down in the gorge, and were joined by a local Masai. I can't remember his name, he reminded me too much of the monkey Rafiki in Lion King, so that name stuck to him more than his real one... He then took us to his village, which has been a very respectable name for touristic shows: The Ol Karia Masai Cultural Centre. When we arrived, Rafiki told us to wait outside the village gates, where we could still see the central square. Then he shouted something inside and everybody ran inside their houses, only to come back dressed in the traditional Masai attire, the red shawls and everything. We could still see the normal clothes, t-shirts and trousers, underneath. But I liked that, it's good to be able to distinguish between the real life and the show. Then we were greeted by the lecturer James, who had studied ethnobotany at Narok, and he told us everything we wanted to know about this most famous of Kenya's tribes.
Well, I'm off, going to meet Mr Angelo, my
italian diving instructor.