Mombasa!

In other news, I'm still in Mombasa now.  Our homestays in Riruta ended last Thursday and we took a night train for Nairobi to the coast on Friday night (departing at 7 pm and arriving around 11 am).  That was awesome.  Never before have I been on top of a moving train in the middle of the night watching the African savannah pass by under the moon light. SO COOL.  We're staying in a portion of the town that is heavily influenced by and contains a large population of Muslims.  We're staying here to study the traditional Islamic Swahili culture, and because of the strict Muslim culture, all of us five guys and our male trip leader are not staying in homestays with families like the girls are, but instead are staying in the house of the only person who would let us stay, Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany who happens to be the most famous Swahili poet of all time.  Pretty cool as well.  But aside from that, we're actually getting much less of a “cultural experience” than the girls are getting, which is fairly lame.  On the other hand, while not getting the strict Islamic culture shock that we're supposed to be learning about here, we got a pretty good culture shock of our own on Saturday night...

I'll preface this section with the note that we are embracing having nothing to do but bro out all the time and be as bro-ish as possible while still being able to wear skirts commando around the house 24/7.  Anyway, seeing that us boys really have nothing to do (the owner of the house doesn't actually sleep here), we decided to go out on the town in Mombasa on a Saturday night.  We were told by our friends back in Nairobi that Mombasa was “the Vagas of Kenya” and they weren't kidding... After finding our way to the recommended club “Casa Blanca” we were soon surrounded in a sea of hookers.  By far the most ridiculous night of absurd shenanigans to get these women off of us.  But, at least now I can say I've bought a drink for and been somewhat molested by a prostitute.  Cool... I guess.

On a side note, us guys all bought traditional Islamic “kikoi”, which can basically be described as skirts for men.  They're awesome.  Since us five have a lot of free time in Mombasa, we've spent a majority of our days lounging around commando in our skirts.  Bro time all day every day in the Nuybrani.  As a short (bro) Swahili lesson: Nuybani=House.  Nuybrani=House full of bros.  Hujambo=Traditional greeting.  Hujambro=Traditional greeting for bros.

Ahmed, being a widower and living alone, doesn't ever cook for himself.  So after THE most filling lunch of all time yesterday, a delicious authentic Swahili dinner, breakfast delivered to our house, and another amazing Swahili lunch we really haven't done anything with Ahmed let alone experienced Islamic culture aside from the food and hearing the call to prayer 5 times a day.  But aside from that, Sunday has turned out to be yet another broday as assumed.  We started out getting ourselves lost while walking around Mombasa in our kikois.  “Shirts off skirts on” as we've been saying... Anyway, after being heckled a fair amount, finding our way back home, and filling up on a Swahili lunch, we decided to head out to the beach.  Similar to the matatu's of Nairobi, Mombasa is home to three-wheeled (roughly) three-passenger taxi's, called tuktuks, that can get you anywhere you need in the city for sh100 ($1).  After fitting 5 of us into a tuktuk we arrived at the most beautiful beach I've ever seen.  Even filled with locals, the beach extended far enough so there was tons of space and even areas where we wouldn't get harassed by vendors or people wanting us to ride their camel.  Appropriately, we all have matching orange “Laserbeamz” plastic wayfarer sunglasses and had a wonderful time walking half a km out into the ocean and still being up only to our waist in 85 degree water.  SO chill.

Monday turned out to be another fun day itself.  After learning traditional Swahili wood carving for the first part of the day, we had our first experience seeing the inside of a Islamic mosque and the practices associated with it.  That evening, seeing that we're not in a homestay, we were invited by our professor, David Spruling, to the “Mombasa Gentleman's Club” for dinner that evening.  We began by enjoying a fine glass of Hennesey cognac on a balcony facing the Indian Ocean and ordering the most expensive item on the menu (prawns for the equivalent of $13).  Then, aside from the pretentiousness of the situation and location, we began to talk to David about why, unlike all the girls, we haven't had any real Islamic cultural experiences.  Apparently the men our ages these days in Mombasa are at a weird intersection of modern society and traditional Islamic customs.  They're place as young men have usually been either in school or in work, but work these days have been tough to find for men and has thus turned a large percent of the male youth in the city to turn towards drugs, gangs, and even being recruited for al-Shebab in the worst sense.  Therefore, even if a family decided to take us into the homes, we would be discouraged, as men, to be in the home during the day and would usually end up probably doing even less than we already to together or easily get into situations that the college would rather us not get into.  Therefore, instead of living with a family and experiencing the Islamic cultural experience, our experience (and the paper we soon have to write) deals mainly with how and why we weren't included in the society.  Which, in the long run isn't all that bad seeing that we pretty much just went on an awesome vacation that ended in us spending an evening in the swankiest men's club in Mombasa.

On a final note, this blog post is the first time I've had internet for god knows how long.  So sorry for the sudden rampage of posts.  Today's our last full day in Mombasa and nothing all too exciting happened.  Tomorrow morning we'll be boarding and plane and flying to the island of Pembe, where we'll actually be included into a Swahili Islamic home!  Yay!