Playing with Starfish

I went to Tiwi Beach, a South Coast tourist hot-spot, for the weekend. The whole idea of taking weekend vacations here blows my mind—even on work days I go swimming in the Indian Ocean every day, so it’s not exactly a hard earned break ;) I love that I get to explore places along the Kenyan coast and become more familiar with the country that has been my home this semester. It would be sweet if East Africa had airlines like Ryan Air in Europe where you could travel between countries easily, but I can’t say I can complain about the locations I can reach by matatu in an hour.

I met up with a friend who’s living on the North Coast and we lounged in our cottage on the oceanfront Friday evening and Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon I hopped back to Msambweni so I wouldn’t miss a celebration of the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday with my family. I wasn’t there for the actual ceremony, but the preparations beforehand were lots of fun; they reminded me of getting ready for the wedding. Everyone was in a good mood, in a Christmas sort of way. My 10 year old cousin Faiz even made a comment that “We have no Santa, this is our celebration of everybody’s birthday!”. I was mad impressed he even knew about Santa, seeing as I had no clue the Prophet’s birthday was a big deal for coastal Muslims. It was a really fun experience to have with my family.

After the celebration I headed back to Tiwi to have a few more adventures. We hung out on the beach Sunday morning and were the only ones there—it felt like I had my own private paradise. Then we went snorkeling out past the reef. The water was pretty rough and I didn’t want a repeat of my Jamaican scuba diving incident (yeah, I got motion sickness and puked underwater. So not something I want to repeat.) so I didn’t spend too long out in the water. We took a hollowed out tree canoe to a sandbar known for all of the starfish that live there and I got to add another animal to the list of African creatures I’ve frolicked with! We got to play with the starfish for an hour or so and had a blast. Then it was time to return to Msambweni, where I came home to find my cousins had picked flowers for me and put them in my room and my mama (aka my angel) had hand-washed my laundry for me (my least favorite rural chore, I’m just NOT good at it!). Such a fabulous welcome home to end a fabulous weekend.

The view from our cottage

Frolicking with the starfishies

Private beach!

Canoe ride to the reef