Twende!

Things I am thankful for: malaria medicine.

(The first month of my trip we have experienced a couple run ins with mosquitos but nothing compares to the Mumbasa coastline.)

We have nestled into a little beach cottage community just outside of Mumbasa, Sand Island. The quaint cottage is a nice change from the Banda for two reasons: 1) electricity and 2) running water. We had arrived so late the night before that I did not have time to explore our new home. I awoke to an early morning wake up call from cackling chickens, as I slipped outside of my mosquito net made my way to the back door. Before I open the door the sound of the waves and the smell of fresh ocean air pull me outside. I have finally made it back to the beach. As I walk out towards the water something catches my eye on the patio in the little foot bath. A baby sea turtle scuttles around trying to find a way to escape. The turtle is about the size of my palm, and looks like a small McDonald's toy. It had gotten lost the night before in its attempt to make it to the ocean. We scooped him up and released him in the ocean. Perk of living on the beach.

Another perk, having fresh produce brought to your doorstep. Living here is like having your own personal farmer's market. We have our pick of fresh fish and prawns, then we move on to the fresh fruit, then baked goods. Around noon our chef, Ali, arrives to prepare us dinner. I spend the day tanning on the beach and sneaking into the kitchen to watch Ali prepare dinner. He is shy and my presence confuses him so my attempts to learn African cooking quickly cease. I retreat to the beach for a swim. JJ and I swim over the reef to a small sand island and lay out for awhile. Eat, tan, nap, swim. The rest of the day continues in this pattern. And we drift to sleep listening to the ocean waves.

The next day I wake up to new mosquito bites, how could this be? I slept in a mosquito net, with bug spray and a bug repellent bracelet (so thankful for my Asian genes...). I run to my bag for the Benadryl, some delightful pest bit my eyelid and now the left side of my face is swollen, thank goodness no one else is awake to see this. Everyone slowly makes there way to the kitchen and we all surprisingly were attacked last night. High quality mosquito nets...oh well.

After breakfast a woman comes to give the girls a henna tattoo. After receiving the tattoo we all admire our new body art, then realize that 1) we can't go swimming for a couple of hours and 2) she used hair dye to paint us...details to come on how that works out. The paint dries we head to the beach to tan. After a couple of hours JJ wakes me up, we are going on a Star Fish excursion. I run to the cottage and grab my camera and we head to the canoe, all eight of us. As each person gets in the canoe gets lower and lower, the driver laughs and tells us the boat typically holds five but its ok? This is very reassuring.

After a rocky ride we arrive at a little sand dune in the middle of the ocean. We make our way out to the middle of the dune, as we get closer I begin to see colorful stars sprinkled across the sand. First Asian instinct, pull the camera out. We play on star fish island for about an hour, making mermaid tops, stacking them, covering ourselves with them, basically using them as living legos. As the sun goes down our stomaches begin tot rumble. Instantly we think of the fresh fish waiting for us at home. We pile into the boat and make our way back to the cottage, we are greeted by Ali, bon appetite.