Lazy Days

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Eric, Elaine, Helmut & Sue at Ocean Sports

Early morning on our last day in Watamu, drinking ‘morning tea’ on the veranda of our room.  Eric and Elaine agreed not to go to bed right after supper as is their habit, but come eat with us at the hotel.  It was sad to say goodbye to them at the end of a congenial evening.  I  hope it won’t be another quarter century before we meet again – but that would probably need to be in the hereafter!  As Elaine has a sister in Toronto, it’s not impossible that they might visit us one day.

It was another lazy day yesterday, like the one before.  It would be oh, so easy to fall into the snail pace of life here!  It’s so hot that one task or event per day seems almost too much.  Elaine finds it impossible to work up the energy to do anything much, living here at the coast.  I would too, I’m sure. 

This morning, once again, Eric very kindly picked us up in the morning after breakfast and took us to the local dukas as we had a couple of errands to do which at home would have taken an hour at most.  It took all morning, with our friends driving from grocery store, to pharmacy, to bank machine, to the tailor who makes shirts from the cloth you choose in half a day.  That was quite enough activity for one day! 

Flame Tree with 'monkey smackers'

Peter, do you remember the ‘monkey smackers’ when we used to go to the Arkle House on Tiwi Beach when you were small?  They were two foot long, flat, blackish-brown, dried pods like giant mange tout pea pods, the fruits of the flamboyant trees.  We used to give them to you to keep the vervet monkeys away when you were eating bananas for a snack or they’d snatch them out of your hands.  Last evening while I was showering, there was a troup of those monkeys gallivanting around on our roof and Dad went out to chase them off.  It reminded me of you and the monkey smackers.

As soon as we arrived in Nairobi I discovered to my surprise that my Swahili emerged from the back of my brain without even having to think about it.  Every day more vocabulary returns.  This will be more useful in Tanzania than here in Kenya, where English is still favoured as the lingua franca over the official Swahili.