A Few Weeks Worth of Plays, Stays, and Perfect Waves,

19/7 Bamburi Beach, Mombasa

The switch has been made from village volunteer to pan-E. African tourist. A week long process of re-vegetation in personal activity level, and a de-vegetation in diet, unfolded to reflect vocational transition. Kampala sewed up delightful music, food, and dessert. A dance-dominated play in the National Theatre showed off unrivaled brilliance through its choreography and sheer physical supremacy attained by its cast. I used to think nobody could dance pop music like Michael Jackson did in the mid-80s when he mastered Thriller, moonwalking to Billie Jean for the fist time. The "Heart of Desire" crew effortlessly duplicated any and all of Jacko's gyrations while moving elegantly onto hotter moves. From classical ballroom numbers to Latino steps to sweaty, primal tribe trances, the Kampalans conquered. After the show, they astoundingly performed spontaneous individual feats, each breaking it down solo at center stage one-after-the-other.
Stomach content with Indian, Chinese, and various African feasts bitten and chewed from Kampala's cosmopolitan eating establishments, I took my Ma down to the neighboring international bus terminal for a hitch across the Kenyan border to the Luo stronghold of Kisumu. Soon to be renamed Wesupportobama, Kisumu is Kenya's 3rd largest city and rests beside Lake Victoria. The settlement behaves like a town, however, suffering from mid-week doldrums. It merely acted as a populated layover en route to Nairobi and Coast. Apparently, the minister of finance, a relative of PM Raila Odinga, was robbed in central Kisumu, where we stayed, during the short duration of our visit. Next day, we reached Nairobi, saw a movie (the stupidly riveting popcorns ((Kenyans call more than one kernel of popcorn 'popcorns' just as multiple mathematic calculations are known as 'maths')) gobbler 'Incredible Hulk'), then took the night bus a few hours later to Mombasa. Fittingly, the police chose to stop every vehicle on the highway, line all passengers up on the roadside, search their bags, and kill them. A few of us miraculously escaped and hid in maize fields, using the Southern Cross constellation as our navigator. Surviving off of surprisingly tasty glow-in-the-dark earthworms and drinking our own pee, we met a band of winged acrobats riding camels with palm-tree branch wings. Together, we flew over the Tsavo man-eaters, the Turkana, and reached Somaliland. As mere warlords in the heart of Mogadishu, life is a workaday hustle. Or at least one would think it as such as silly thoughts flood the brain during an outrageously prolonged and uninteresting roadblock from the indisputably corrupt Kenya polisi. What they were searching for, nobody knew. When several people were shot and killed on the highway a few days after the inconsequential searches, nobody was surprised.
The sunrise after the police party we reached Mombasa, spent a night in a dumbly recommended hotel that would not pass muster from even the most seedy budget dwellers, before riding the coastal matatu circuit out to Bamburi beach northbound. First day, I buddied up with a few of the more articulate, less abrasive local beach bums who plan no-budget sea safaris held together by floss fishing line and sympathetically wayward tourists. Dreads make easy friends. Come eve, the Swahili, the Friday, and I toured the boys' shanty. A big bed, and a small oil candle, and little else houses the three lads. They pay 1500KSH a month, less than Mommy and I pay for one night in the luxuriously empty Fontana. After a half night of intimate discotheque in Mtwapa town, just a small ration of sleep was needed before the following day gave way to waking hours. Coast living is low and easy. Particularly if one's in a place abundant in foreign amenities. Pool, tusker keg, electricity, portions of TV with slim commercials. Besides the mindless banter with the local tourist hassler workforce, the way of life has turned distinctly private. Visits to internet cafes are on the wane, ocean romping and sea gazing on the wax.
The last instance in which I spent considerable time with my mother passed more than a year ago when we drove down to the Alvord Desert in sparse, vast SE Oregon. Once secluded, the vacationing maintained a satisfying regimen of round-the-ignored-clock reading, running, eating, and sleeping. On the Swahili coast, pesky interruptions lying in the way of transcendental Alvordian swaths of time are growing fewer but still ongoing. Orders for food must be annunciated. The room cleaner has to be told to wait when the room occupant wishes to sleep into the afternoon. This coerces the occupant into an additional morning task in accompanying the already annoying ritual of elephantine pissing that prior drinking of tropical juices and their various concoctions unabsorbed by a body awash in humidity demand. Some institutions request shirts to be worn. The wearing of pants persists, and not out of preference. Why can't we go without trousers if the climate permits? No cogent reply to this query exists outside the archaic realms of fundamentalist religious justification, I say.