It was the full moon tonight, though very different from a month ago on Zanzibar. Here the moon rose when it was still light, but still over the water, and going through ghostly pale pinks and blues until it became clear and white. There were some clouds, but the light shone on the water. It […]
Disappearing island
Yesterday, at lunch, we’d talked to a boatman and then this morning we went to meet him to take us out to a little sandbank, close enough to the beach that we could probably have swum there, for a spot of snorkelling. The boat was a small single-sailed outrigger boat of the type used on […]
The other Kongo river
We went this early evening to the end of the line, to where the Kongo river meets the sea. It is, of course, the other Kongo river, a rivulet by comparison, but also very historical, as at its mouth is the Kongo Masjid, the first in East Africa. The estuary was a very appealing spot. […]
End to work
Today was my last day of committing to full-time work for one of my clients, which means that from actual 1.5 or 2x work I can go down to roughly full time when all my clients are accounted for. So, looking forward to that, though the large payments were nice. I tried the local interpretation […]
Dinner tonight
We looked up and there was a baboon sitting quietly on our kitchen counter. It left, taking with it one of the three tomatoes meant for dinner. It also ate a passion fruit.
Beach encounters
We went for our evening walk along the beach and, on the way, got accosted rather unpleasantly by a man selling bracelets. He was quite aggressive and walked along, rather too close, as we were about to go down a narrow and hidden path, lined with tall fences and bush, so I turned on my […]
Evening stroll
The highlights of the day were: tamarind juice in the afternoon an evening stroll on the beach a tiramisu brought home to have with an episode of Succession The not-highlights were: a working day which caused some annoyance as senior management destroyed much of what I had worked on on the very day of the […]
Truly dire
An astonishingly poor meal today from a very expensive restaurant. One of the only times (perhaps the only time ever?) I sent a dish back. This was at one of the expensive beach resorts so I didn’t have very high expectations of the food, but I was surprised when my fish tacos turned out to […]
Hunt for a beach
After a bit of work, we took a rickshaw south to a fishing collective we’d been recommended, there to have lunch. I do like this way of travelling around: just amble out and in less than a minute a rickshaw will arrive and take you off. We undoubtedly get overcharged, but it’s worth it for […]
Joining the 21st century
The GF and I decided to join the 21st century today by opening an MPesa account. We also got our mobile phone SIMs, of course. But the MPesa is what is exciting. We went to a mobile phone shop where I remarked to the GF what a pleasure it is sometimes to see a really […]