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Wednesday 25 January 2012

Our Christmas in Kenya: A Retrospective

Well, this has clearly been a gap in the recent reporting of our lives here. The main reason being that, like we keep saying, we don’t want this blog to turn into a monstrously smug travelogue. But – I’ve decided our awesome, crazy Christmas in Kenya cannot go un-recorded. A large proportion of the awesomeness of our festivities is down to the people we spent them with, most notable being our great friend Captain Matthew Ball, slacker extraordinaire, who spent a whole two-and-a-half weeks with us in beautiful Kenya.

It should go without saying that Christmas also brought pangs of homesickness, thoughts of epic Jones family dinners, walks on cold crisp days, travelling the country in the lovely Bodhi (our car), and thoughts of much-missed friends (not helped by an uber-cute xmas card from our beautiful 9mth-old God-daughter Erin in a santa hat). But setting that to one side...

So, I don’t want to bore/depress/annoy our kind and loyal readers with an extensive essay on fun times. Instead, I’d like to briefly give you my favourite, all-time, top twelve moments of ace-ness from Christmas 2011 (I couldn’t get it down to 10). In vaguely chronological order, they go something like this…



1.  Hiking our way from our beach cottage in Vipingo along the beautiful Indian Ocean coast at low tide to the Kuruwitu community marine reserve, where we snorkelled. Seeing amazing fishies, enormous starfish, and afterwards, eating chapatti and beans. Then, it being now high tide, we waded our way back with our rucksacks on our heads and the water lapping at our chins. My favourite moment was receiving a text from our Kenyan snorkelling guide saying “Please call me if you need rescuing” – clearly he didn’t realise we have braved the black rocks and icy waters of many a cove of the British Isles! Warm bath water isn’t quite so scary. It’s the kind of adventure we only seem to have with Dr Ball.

2.  Walking on the beach on the morning of Christmas Eve – and being invited up to the cliff-top house of a Kenyan millionaire. Drinking beer at 10 in the morning on his terrace, while a pod of dolphins swam past. And hearing about how he and his wife had been to Buckingham Palace just the week before (his son-in-law was a Naval Captain and surgeon and had just been awarded a CBE – I hated him immediately).

3. “We make gymnastic with you now?, said the topless, ripped Kenyan man to Matt as we sat at the Mtwapa beach bar. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse, and so Matt was dragged into joining the impressive gymnastic display. Hilarity ensued…


4. Being woken up on Christmas Day – as the mosquito net parted to reveal…Matt Ball in full Santa suit (brought specially from the UK) and carrying a sack full of cards and presents from family and friends back home!


5. Spending Christmas Day on a dhow (traditional Swahili boat) with great people, swimming and snorkelling in deep water. And eating a delicious lunch of BBQed fish and cold beer on a remote beach. Bliss. Highly reminiscent of the Red Dwarf Theme: “I want to lie, ship-wrecked and comatose, drinking fresh, mango juice, goldfish shoals, nibbling at my toes, fun, fun, fun, in the sun, sun, sun…





6. Silly jumping in games. Yup, between several swimming pools and the big blue Indian Ocean, we succeeded in playing some serious water-bound games. I still haven’t managed to do an underwater handstand like Helen though. Or a somersault without getting water up my nose. More practice required…


7. Spoiling Matt (and ourselves) with a surprise xmas present of a posh lunch cruise around Mombasa island - complete with lobster and cold white wine. I know, it’s a nightmare being us…


8. Heading to a whole new part of East Nairobi – Komerock – for the birthday party of our lovely Swahili teacher, Lucy. Her husband Nick and their whole family made us so welcome, and we were surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of her children, grandchildren, sister’s children, children’s friends. And a whole lot of cake. And vodka. It was amazing. Asante sana Lucy na Nick!


9. More great people, this time for New Year at Camp Carnelley’s in Lake Naivasha. Thanks to all the VSOs (and their friends) for the pure comedy of the Name Game (we couldn’t resist!), and the high quality athleticism / increasingly drunken / aggressively competitive jostling of Round-The-Table Table Tennis.

10. Climbing the dramatic, volcanic Mount Longenot – the only way to spend New Year’s Eve. We’ve spent many a New Year’s Eve with Matt, hiking and climbing in the Lake District. This was something else. I’ve never seen a volcano that actually looks like a volcano, with enormous internal crater covered in rainforest, still-boiling steam vents, and pre-historic cracks, tears and rifts in the surrounding valleys where tectonic plates and lava flows have oh-so-clearly done their thang.


11. Mzungu Matatu! Throwing our volunteer credentials out the window, we decided to hire a matatu to drive us back to Nairobi from Naivasha. Normally we would have faced a pretty crazy, squashed matatu journey. But this way, we got to travel in style. Possibly the only time a matatu has been entirely filled with white people, we caused much amusement for our driver and tout, as well as pretty much every Kenyan we passed. It was well worth it to avoid the awful traffic and to stop for some great pics looking over the beautiful Rift Valley (birthplace of, y’know, homo sapiens).



12. Having more time than we’ve ever had before in the constant company of Matt Ball. He may be the ultimate sh*thead (and yes, we did play cards a lot), but he’s also a total dude. It was so good to have time for proper catch-ups and heart-to-hearts in amidst the “Vulcanology 101” explanations (complete with diagrams in the sand); the “Who can handle the ocean waves longest without drowning?” competitions; and the day of cycling amongst zebras and giraffes and managing to maintain enthusiasm despite horrendous hang-overs.



See, I totally avoided being smug about our travels or making you hate us! Oh wait…

With massive thanks to Matt, to everyone we hung out with, and to Kenya, for a truly once in a lifetime Christmas. While we missed our friends and family back in the UK loads, we couldn’t help but feel massively fortunate to have Christmas in this beautiful country. Bring on 2012! And may our lives be filled with crazy Christmases in amazing places. 


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