STRABANE GRAMMAR SCHOOL WORLD CHALLENGE KENYA EXPEDITION FOURTH WEEK Tuesday 14th August 2007 By Stephen Birkett The first three weeks have been hard work but the fourth week is rest and relaxation. The group got down off Mount Kenya a day sooner than planned and were impatient to get down to the coast. The train only goes three times a week; Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, so they hoped to get the Monday train instead of the booked Wednesday one. Tom, who has been providing our transport, told us it was all booked up. We stayed in a cheap hotel in Nairobi on Monday night; basic but clean and secure and booked in there for our last night, next Monday. At 6-30 on Tuesday morning we set off. It was dreadful getting out of the traffic jams and pollution of Nairobi but once away from the conurbation the road was clear and as we descended to the coast it got noticeably warmer. We got to Mombassa after a ten hour journey on one of Tom's buses. It wasn't as bad as I had feared, although there was a bit of drama when we were sent on a diversion around roadworks and vehicles ahead of us had become stuck in ruts and holes in the dirt road. Our bus had to reverse on little more than a rutted verge before striking out over a field and some construction work to reach the repaired section of the main road. Other vehicles floundered on the way across this obstacle course but our bus made it. We arrived in Mombassa at about 4-30 p.m. and booked our train back for Sunday. It took ages to get food at the huge Nakumat supermarket so it was after seven before we got away. We had to take the bus on the Likoni ferry across the harbour but just as all the vehicles were loaded all the foot passengers piled off the boat and got on to the one that had just come in! Much to our chagrin it then left before us. Our ferry finally set off and deposited us on the far shore a few minutes later. The drive south through the slums of Likoni was fascinating as we watched life going on from our seats. We got to Diani Beach Cottages at about 8-30 p.m. Tom has done us a real good turn here. The team was adamant that they didn't want to camp this week but they are about £150 over budget already. However they have a contingency fund to help with R&R so they decided to go with the cottages. Tom contacted Richard, who owns 'Diani Beach Cottages', which normally go for about 2000/= per night, according to the guide book. We have them for 1000/= (£7-50) per person per night. They are perfect; comfortable, clean beds, verandas, dodgy showers, good toilets and kitchens with cookers and fridges. They are right on the beach and there is a bar and a basic but good restaurant attached. Better still it is close to Shimba Hills National Park. I have always wanted to visit this place but I have always ended up the wrong side of Mombassa. I am going to splash out on an organised day trip there and leave the team with Charlie and Fay for a day. At six-thirty on Wednesday morning I was awoken by a cacophony of bangs and crashes. At first I thought the dustbins were being emptied but then I heard the chattering of animals. I went outside to discover that the site had been invaded by a troupe of Sykes monkeys and they were quartering the area for any edibles. In their search they were leaping from corrugated iron roof to corrugated iron roof; thus the racket! Later I discovered that they were consummate thieves, taking anything left around that might conceivable contain food. The youngsters had a lazy day on Wednesday. Those who got up before midday either wandered down to the beach or dandered into town to look at the tourist shops and use the cybercafé. The beach at Diani is almost a cliché; clean, white coral sand, turquoise sea and palm trees fringing the beach as far as the eye could see in either direction. Those who went to the beach were besieged by touts, hawkers, women and beach boys selling everything from boat trips to curios and drugs to sex. One of the boys expressed his astonishment at the prostitutes. He was abashed about how up-front they were and what he couldn't get over was how they were all pleasant, pretty, young girls. It brought home to them how harsh life here is and how if you have an asset, you use it to make money to survive. On Thursday morning I awoke to the sound of monkeys and rain. I found a couple of them searching the rubbish pile for edibles and watched them. Their little hands searched out morsels of food and delicately picked of the dirt before savouring their find. As they ate they constantly looked up; tiny black eyes alert to any potential danger. Close up their fur was exquisite; a brindled grey-green. The hair around their face stood up to form a kind of ruff which framed their face, giving them a clownish aspect. The morning was spent on routine tasks like washing, changing money and sunbathing. In the afternoon ten of us went snorkelling from a glass-bottomed boat. It wasn't a promising start, the sea was rough, clouds had obscured the sun and as the boat chugged along the coast, heavy squalls drenched those not under cover. However by the time we approached the coral reef that protects the coast from the biggest waves, the sun came out and the sea was calmer. As the boat crossed the reefs we began to see interesting life on the seabed; sea urchins, fish and a variety of corals. One sad thing was the amount of broken coral on the sandy floor; evidence of the damage done by trawling and anchors. When we got to the diving point one of the crew jumped in with a lump of bread and swam under the glass bottom so we all could watch as the fish swarmed around him to get the bread. We were then given goggles, snorkels and bread and in we went. It was amazing to have all the brightly coloured fish nudging your fingers in their rush to get the food. Once the feeding frenzy was over I had time to lazily swim over the reef to look at the variety of fish, corals and Echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins and sea cucumbers) below. Philip whizzed up to me and made me come to the surface. They had found a Lionfish; one of the most poisonous fishes around. This bizarre animal, about nine inches long has fins developed into long spines with flag-like streamers that put you in mind of those South American Carnival costumes. Its red, black and white stripes warn potential predators that those spines are tipped with a deadly poison. All too soon I was being called back to the boat as it was time to go but that was £3.75 very well spent!   Shimba Hills National Nature reserve is about 25k from Diani. The low hills catch rain from the sea so there are areas of tropical rainforest and patches of grass in the drier areas. It is one of the richest areas in Kenya for biodiversity and it hold a population of the rare Shimba Sable Antelopes. Sable Antelopes are relatively common in South Africa but the two subspecies in East Africa are seriously endangered. The Angolan population was thought to be extinct until a tiny relict population was discovered. The Kenyan subspecies is restricted to the Shimba Hills and conservation is gradually raising the population from the 120 that it had dropped to. I was determined to go but Michael and Paul decided to come too. We were picked up at 6-45 and, after a few annoying but typical Kenyan delays, we were off. The scenery was lovely; rolling hills, some covered with tropical rainforest, others in shrubby grassland. There were even pine forests although the pines were unlike any that grow at home. We saw very few animals though; a troupe of baboons, some buffalo in the distance and a pair of giraffes which didn’t belong there at all but which had been confiscated from a tourist who was trying to get them out of the country! Everywhere we went the road was littered with elephant dung, some, as Paul so elegantly put it, still with a glaze on it! There were great elephant footprints on the road, places where elephants had dug fresh holes in the road and trees recently ripped down by elephants but we never saw an elephant al day! We did, however see two herds of Sables. The females are fairly unremarkable antelopes, a dun colour with curved scimitar horns. The males, on the other hand, are truly magnificent beasts with their black coats and their white markings, making them look arrogant, and a huge pair of horns on their noble heads. At eleven we had a guided walk to some waterfalls led by a handsome female park warden hefting a huge rifle. It was nice to walk through the forest with the expectation, albeit unrealised, of coming across a wild animal. In the event we saw nothing bigger than a frog and a tiny baby python! The waterfall was quite beautiful though. A sheet of water cascaded thirty feet over a cliff. Its veil of water was split half-way and it plunged into a sandy pool fringed with flowers. After the waterfall walk we headed to Shimba Lodge for lunch. This is a bizarre, all timber construction on stilts by a water hole. The lowest level is the restaurant and above are rooms, each with a balcony overlooking the water hole. At night all manner of animal will come down to drink but all we saw were two huge monitor lizards the size of dogs. The lunch was fabulous; a buffet of all manner of fascinating Kenyan dishes as well as some European food. Paul and Michael pied their plates high with grub whereas the three Germans we were sharing the van with took only soup and fruit. The boys had soon polished off their plates and went back for equally huge second helpings. The look of pure ecstasy at this abundance of delicious food after weeks of camp cooking was sight to behold. They still managed to squeeze in a generous portion of a rich chocolate pudding to finish off. They declared that the £45 they had paid for the trip was worth it for the food alone! That evening the whole group went to an Indian restaurant in Diani, which was excellent too. I could hardly finish my meal after the huge lunch but somehow the two boys managed to scoff a whole meal. On Saturday the youngsters had hoped to go body boarding but they couldn’t find anywhere that did it so they made do with lying on the beach in the scorching sun and swimming in the crystal-blue sea. Money was running pretty low by then anyway. I couldn’t lie on a beach so I walked south for about 5k to a place called the ‘Colobus Trust’. This organisation was set up to help conserve Diani’s monkeys. Four species occur here, three common and one rare. The common species are the Sykes’ monkeys already mentioned, Vervets (the ones which raided our tents) and baboons. The rare monkeys are the Angolan Colobus. These monkeys are similar to the Colobus we saw on Mount Kenya but they are a different sub-species, having much lighter frames and not as much hair. Their numbers have declined alarmingly. They used to occur all along the coast and right into the Tsavo National Park but now they are limited to about 200 in the short strip of coastal woodland south of Mombassa and there are an unknown number in northern Tanzania. They live in what is called ‘Coral Rag Forest’; a forest of trees growing on the thin soils that overlie the rugged coral rock of the coastal strip. Unlike the other three species they cannot use human food so they can’t survive by scavenging on our waste. They rely on leaves and fruit from Coral Rag Forest trees which are rapidly being cut down for timber and development. The other monkeys have become ‘Primate Pests’ because they have learned to expect food from humans and they can become aggressive if they are denied it. Another problem for the Colobus is that they are almost entirely arboreal. Evolution has deprived them of thumbs and big toes and their hands are more or less curved hooks for clinging to trees. The other monkeys are at home in trees and on the ground and they can dash across roads but the Colobus are clumsy and slow on the ground and more and more are killed trying to cross Diani’s roads. The Colobus trust has a four pronged approach. They reclaim pet monkeys and treat injured monkeys and return them to the wild; they put rope ladders across the roads for the Colobus to cross; they plant trees that Colobus like to use and they educate children to conserve and protect wildlife in general and monkeys in particular. On my way home that day I was pick pocketed. Someone managed to unzip the side pocket on my back pack and I lost my mobile phone and the small hand-held computer on which I have been writing these reports. Ironic really that I should be the only one to get robbed after me banging on so much to the youngsters about security! That night Paul and I ate lobster in the local café whereas the rest all went into town for a Chinese. We had ordered a bus for the next morning but it, in typical Kenyan mode, arrived an hour and a half late. The team wanted to go go-cart racing but I needed to report the theft so I went to Mombassa Police Station and they went off to have fun. Mombassa is a lot more laid back town than its inland counterparts. It is also largely Muslim so you see Swahili women swathed in black with only their eyes peeping out from under a veil. However the African spirit is still here so you see far more women covered head to toe in the brightly coloured kangas. The police station was a ramshackle affair and I was directed upstairs to the office of the Tourist Police. A policeman in a bright yellow football top told me that the tourist police didn’t work on Sundays but that he would see to it. He took me into an office where two boys were playing computer games on a PC and he sent that running. He patiently typed out the report for me, printed it in triplicate and stamped each copy before handing me one. I asked how much and he said that the Tourist Police would charge me but as they weren’t there I didn’t have to pay. He then took me into town to where I could buy a new mobile and bargained with the salesman until he got a replacement for me at a good price! I asked him to join me for lunch but he said he had to get back to work. I had lunch at ‘The Fontinella’, a lovely, shady courtyard restaurant off the busy Moi Avenue. After lunch I strolled down to the old colonial quarter of the city with its sleepy colonial style buildings dominated by the great sixteenth century, Portuguese, Fort Jesus. I wandered down the side streets into the ancient Swahili quarter with its ornately carved wooden doors and the spidery wooden balconies which looked about ready to collapse into the street. I met the group back at the station. They were buzzing with the excitement of the racing. The train didn’t leave until seven so they hit an Italian ice-cream parlour and gorged themselves on exotically favoured ices. The train hadn’t left by 7-15 when a steward came along the corridor with the dinner gong; actually a worn out metal xylophone. We were served a delicious three course meal in the restaurant car but we were still sitting in the station when we returned to our sleeping berths to turn in. The train was stiflingly hot and without a locomotive there was no light or ventilation. We finally got a loco at about 9 and crawled out of the station. We were soon all asleep to the rocking, or rather jolting, motion of the train. Breakfast was at 7am; juice, toast, coffee and a fry up. The train was supposed to get in at 11 but I was rather shocked to discover that it wasn’t expected to arrive until 3! By the time we got t the hotel it was too late to do anything that day as we were going to a posh restaurant that evening. However I didn’t have a clean stitch to my name so I got a taxi into Nairobi and bought pants, socks and a shirt for about £35. The taxi took 15 minutes to get into town but three quarters of an hour to get back due to the traffic jams. The restaurant was called ‘The Carnivore’ and it is reputed to be one of the top 50 places to eat in the world. Just in at the entrance is a huge fire surrounded by a low wall on which are racks of spits. Every conceivable meat is on those spits, gently roasting away. We were shown to our table and offered the Carnivore cocktail, the Dawa, which is Kiswahili for medicine. It was vodka and lime juice with honey stirred into it. Several tried it and pronounced it good. The waiters asked if any of us were vegetarians and seemed very relieved that none of us were. The meal was amazing. After delicious soup we were given a plate with a couple of spuds on it and a Lazy Susan with sauces, relishes and salads was placed on the table. There was a little flag on it and we were told to take it down when we’d had enough meat. Thereafter they kept coming with skewers of meat and we ate until we could eat no more. Most meats were conventional such as lamb, pork, beef, turkey, chicken and sausages but there were also chicken gizzards, ox kidneys, ostrich meat balls and crocodile steaks. The crocodile was rather like salty, fishy chicken. Eventually even Michael and Paul were full so the flag went down and we were served sweets and coffee. The team had budgeted about £25 each for this final blow-out and were very surprised when the food bill was less than £15 each! Victoria had missed all the animals we saw the first week so I was determined that she wasn’t going to miss out. I hired a vehicle for the morning to go to the Nairobi National Park. Michael and Charlie came too. We had a lovely game drive with good views of all the major animals except elephants, hippos and lions. We had brilliant sightings of a silver-backed jackal and we even saw a black rhino form a distance. The rest of the team had had the day shopping for souvenirs. They were really getting into the bargaining and some were travelling home with rucksacks bulging with African Crafts. We had a quick fifteen minute shop before eating and departing for the airport.   What has the four weeks in Kenya achieved for the young people on the expedition? The team has worked together for four weeks with good humour and minimal complaints. I have seen an increased self-confidence and self-reliance in all the challengers. Some of them have gained enormously and the trip has fostered real leadership skills in some of the participants. All of them, but the boys in particular, worked very hard on the building project and had a real sense of achievement in seeing it completed. The Mount Kenya Trek was arduous and it’s completion in record time has put many of them well on their way to their Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. They saw genuine poverty and it s my sincere hope that they will realise that no matter how bad life at home seems, their lives can never be as impoverished as those of some of the people they have come across here. All in all, then, it was a most worthwhile experience. I have to say that my admiration for every member of the team has grown over the expedition and any employer or university seeing this on their C.V. will know that they are getting someone very special.