Mnazi in Gazi

The first stop on our trip: the village of Gazi on the south coast of Kenya. Tove’s old master thesis supervisor Farid was staying there to do more field work in the mangroves and to visit his Kenyan wife Fatima’s relatives. Luckily they were in Mombasa the night we arrived and could pick us up at the train station. They took us to their guest house, which felt like a five star hotel after 25 h on the train and we had a looong nice sleep until the mosque woke us up at 5 o’clock. As most settlements along the coast Gazi is mainly Muslim and there are little mosques everywhere, often just regular houses really.

Luckily we could go back to sleep for another couple of hours, until the real important deadline made us rise and shine – the spring tide was coming out and it was time to go to the mangrove forest. First we took a canoe into one of the little creaks as far as we could get, then we continued by foot. We saw loads of crabs and mud skippers, but not so many birds since it was already approaching mid-day – and there are no crocodiles here, or so we are told. At first we walked along the river bed and it was all nice and easy, but more like a tourist tour than a real adventure. But the stakes got higher pretty quickly, since the monsoon rain started pouring down and we were forced to take shortcuts through the muddy forest to come back to the right place. But in the end we arrived back at the village all muddy and soaked, but with big smiles on our faces.

Rule nr 1: Muslim people don’t drink. Rule nr 2: If they do, it is far from the mosque. So the bar all the way up by the main road was full of people who had had one too many, mnazi mainly – fermented palm wine that you have to drink with a straw because it is so full of particles and stuff. When we came back the second night, the bar people proudly presented us with beer they had gotten hold of – possibly the warmest we ever had and not easy to swallow. “You look exactly like a Brazilian football player – Maradona”, they said to Mattias, and then argued for a long time how the rabbit and the squirrel are the same animal, except for the tail. When we had understood that fully, we went home…

Change of plans. Instead of going with 40 of Farid’s nearest family on the back of a lorry to relatives just off the coast, a dear and close relative died and the nearest 14 had to go to Dar es Salaam immediately. So we went just four wazungus (white people; us, a Belgian and an Italian student) to the island Wasini. Snorkeling in the marine park, dolphin watch and seafood… Well, not really… it turned out to be the local community’s little park with less marine life than just of Gazi’s coast, absolutely no dolphins and quite plain fish for lunch. But we had a good time anyway, and tomorrow we are off for Tanzania. Kwa heri Kenya!