My Mombasa Vaction

Here are some pictures from our trip to Mombasa. It was nice, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. We were very separated from the people and the only Africans we saw were waiting on us. I wasn't really accustomed to this after living with the people and working to help them in Uganda. It seemed like during our vacation we were reinforcing the situation of the white people having the money and the power and the Africans serving them. It was strange. There were two Kenyans in the group, Peter and Niko, who were training to be priests. I ended up spending more time with them because they spoke English and Swahili (everyone else was speaking Spanish the whole time) and it made me feel less distanced from Kenya.

I will apologize in advance for some issues I had with the picture order. The blogger program won't let you switch the order of the pictures after they have been uploaded.


I didn't really want this to be the first picture, but this is a restaurant in Mombasa called Casablanca. I found this picture interesting because the women sitting to the right of the picture are sex workers. I took this picture at 1:30pm in the afternoon. Apparently, the sex workers are not hired by the restaurant, but they are encouraged because they get men to drink more and to buy them drinks while they are negotiating their transaction. One of the priests told me that men can't come alone to that restuarant because the sex workers won't leave them alone until they leave.

The main tourist attraction in Mombasa is Fort Jesus. It was build by the an army from Portugal in year 15 something something. Then it was captured by the Arabs in year 16 something something. (Can you tell that I was really paying attention during the tour). Then it was recaptured by Portugal then it was recaptured by the Arabs then it was captured by the British then it was claimed by Kenyans when they won Independence. The fort was build by carving coral. It was pretty interesting to see. Here I am standing at the entrance with, Niko, one of the priests in training.

Here is one of the canons of the Fort looking over the Indian Ocean.

Here is one of the walls of Fort Jesus.

Here is a picture of our resort. It was pretty nice except for monkeys (and these weird crab things) would come into our cottages and eat our food and leave a huge mess. I think that monkeys must be the raccoons of Africa.

Here is another picture of our resort place. The Indian Ocean is in the distance. The ocean was nice, except there were sea urchin and if you stepped on them, their spines would break off inside your foot. It also rained a lot while we were there, although it was a lot warmer than Nairobi.

Here I am on the Ferry. (You have to cross a ferry to get to the other side of Mombasa). Mombasa was a fairly clean place and you can see that they actually had a trash bin (a very rare sight in Africa) on the ferry.

Sorry again about the picture order. This is another picture of Fort Jesus. This is my favorite picture of it because you can see how big it is. It is named Fort Jesus because the layout of the fort is like a person laying on the ground (it has a head, two arms and two legs).