Mä ensin näin vain meren sinisen
ja koralliin löi aallot jylisten
…
Kuumankostean
minä tunsin Mombasan
ja meren, taivaan Afrikan.

Our trip to Mombasa ended yesterday with an uneventful two-leg return flight via Nairobi. The flights in the other direction on Friday (and Saturday, as it turned out) did not go quite as smoothly because of technical problems. We left Entebbe more than an hour late and had no chance of catching the intended flight to Mombasa in Nairobi. So Kenya Airways put us up in Hotel Intercontinental, where we had time for a few hours of sleep before rushing back to the airport at six in the morning.

As reputed, the air in Mombasa is very hot and humid. Regardless of what you do or don’t wear, it always feels like you’re wearing way too much. Exit the hotel room, and there’s a giant, invisible cow breathing straight at your face. Every time. Or maybe a camel, like the ones walking back and forth along the beach, only bigger. On the white beach itself, there’s a slight hot breeze, but for most of the day that’s no place to go unless one enjoys being harassed by a herd of guys who wish to sell anything at all and won’t take no for an answer. The only time I stepped on the beach after the initial test was while walking to and from the boat during our snorkelling expedition on Sunday. The Whitesands Hotel is a real luxury affair with four or five restaurants, bars, and swimming pools. ”Half board” has a specific meaning there: it seems to refer to the routine of spending only half of each day eating. We escaped Monday’s dinner buffet by choosing a cruise on an old fashioned dhow – a dinner cruise that is, which means we stuffed ourselves anyhow.

Compared to Uganda, Kenya feels like a big country. It has a much larger educated urban population and a much bigger tourist industry and general infrastructure. The traffic culture is less primitive, people have slightly bigger egos and fewer restraints, and the western influence is more easily visible in small things. The accents are often easier for an ear unaccustomed to Bantu phonetics. Still, it felt good to be back home (for that’s what it is starting to feel like despite my journey back to Finland in May) in Uganda, away from the swarms of mzungu tourists and big-bellied, newly-rich locals. There’s a certain charm in using wrinkled notes instead of credit cards, in travelling on a boda boda instead of an air-conditioned minibus, and in sipping Amarula on the rocks in domestic candlelight instead of downing fancy cocktails at the poolside bar.

09:07