Bamburi is situated very nicely; I had chosen the north beach because there is more action there, more bars and more whores. Bamburi also lies slap bang in the middle of everything; it’s easy to get everywhere.

Anyhow, in one way I had expected the holiday to be a little different: Sun and sea: I am not what one would call a sun-bather, but I am a water-rat, which doesn’t mean this is confined to sex in the bath, I love to go for a swim in the sea.

Everything was a bit different in Mombasa, I had my NBC equipment for snorkelling with me, but I didn’t even use it, in fact I was only in the water once in 6 weeks. The reason for this being the character of the coast. The carpets of seaweed didn’t bother me that much, but the circumstances that one had to walk such a long way for a swim, especially when the tide was out kept me from going for a dip. The water right up to the 1000 metre away reef was more suited for a walk than a swim, even when the tide was in, it was just too shallow. When the tide went out, there were suddenly large areas just lying idle, Seaweed etc formed a dark sub-surface which meant that the extremely hot sun heated everything up to a great extent. When the tide comes back in, it is then as warm as bathwater which is nice and pleasant.

Talking about the sun: Extremely hot. It’s not so much the environmental temperature, I’m used to around 30 – 33 degrees centigrade from Asia, and it’s humid at the turn of the year, but that’s not it either. It still seemed to me as if the sun was pulling the fur off – simply brutal. Maybe it has something to do with the equator, or it really is just how I seem to feel it.

Anyway, I decided to concentrate my activities to the dry and shady part of the beach, and to reduce my sporting activities to hunting for hens.

It started off quite well. On the first day I had something to eat in the hotels beach restaurant and let myself be chatted up by the next best hen that came along. Of course I was ignorant to everything and asked her stacks of questions, anything I could think of. She showed me, for example, another nice beach restaurant which I most surely would not have found on my own, it was a long way off, 50 metres. We had a drink, and then I decided on an excursion to a gigantic supermarket called NAKUMATT which was supposed to sell shoes. Even in my size (46) was not supposed to be much of a problem; well that’s what my new girlfriend told me anyway. I had made the mistake of not bringing any open shoes (sandals) along with me, because I had planned on buying a pair on location. Wrong! Size 44 was the largest I could find so what now? Walk around bare footed in the hotel and down the beach? One thing was certain; it was much too hot for normal shoes.

I noticed the shoes that many Massai men (and all of those who wanted to be) wore – self-made sandals cut out of old car tyres. I spoke to one in front of our hotel on the beach, and asked him if he was able to arrange a pair in my size. What a stupid question, there is nothing that one cannot arrange! I haggled the price from 950 KSH (ha ha, new shoes only cost 900 at BATA) down to 500 because I couldn’t really be bothered to haggle and had hot feet, paid 50 in advance, and the next day I had my new shoes.

After all, the tread was the same on both sides and not quite bare, so I still had good aquaplaning qualities. They were a bit concave, but we shouldn’t forget that car tyres are round. They weren’t that comfortable but better than nothing at all. Apart from that I was now the only Muzungu on the whole beach who had a pair of Massai shoes. The others on the beach had a good look, and of course a go od laugh.

I got rid of my first acquaintanceship after we had carried our bags of beer, water and shower gel into the hotel: She was much too HC and the Dollar signs lit up in her eyes, apart from that she was touchy… Can do without things like that.

Apart from that, what happened on the beaches was that what normally happens on such beaches… The usual beach peddlers set up their stalls at their usual places and try to sell the usual rubbish that they usually sell, of course if possible to the white people, and the whiter the better using the same old talk to get people to buy. The fruit sellers with their meagre supply, trying to get rid of it to anyone who passes by; pensioners in pastel coloured suits dragging carrier-bags full of grub towards the next possible seating place, of course with their coloured girlfriends tagging along behind them. A camel is waiting patiently, but mainly futilely, for a few idiots who want to take a ride up and down the beach. Female sex tourists with their worn out rasta-boyfriends rush shamefaced towards the hotel entrance. “Dr. Important” with gold rimmed glasses, non-lit pipe in the corner of his mouth and an army rucksack over his shoulder talks to the believably interested Massai junk peddler about the weather back home, only so that at home he can with pride talk about his “close contacts” to the natives of the country, but not without showing his third class wooden elephants that he had, after a hard bout of haggling, only just managed to knock the price down from 5000 to 4500.

Divers stroll in full panoply packed with their bottles towards their boats; a few freelancers laugh, because of the civil police presence more or less shamefully at the Muzungus; a group of snow white tourists who have probably finished their safari and are now having a weeks holiday on the beach, let themselves – well protected – be shown the dangerous beach by their guide for a fee of 200 KSH, for this pleasure they naturally had to leave the safety of the “all inclusive bunker” of the African safari club. A paraglider is hanging onto his chute like a wet sack and hoping for a soft landing. A fisherman is repairing his boat and hardening it in the fire, and a bit of a pissed up old bloke snapping left right and centre, runs jokingly with his fresh conquest towards the hotel to give her a good working over.