Our first stint in Kenya was meant to be for three months. It stretched to nine, a long time to be away from home when none of it had been planned. On our return to the UK in September ‘92 we weren’t sure what would happen next. But come November we were flying off to Lusaka, Zambia, on another short-term contract.
This time Graham was seconded to the EU Delegation to take charge of the Commission’s food aid distribution. Zambia had been suffering a prolonged drought, but as it happened, and fortunately too, our arrival coincided with a return of good planting rains; food aid was only needed to bridge the gap until harvest time. And so once again, like strange migrating birds, we left Africa in September. And once again, two months later, we were heading back again, to Kenya on yet another short-term contract, this time to close down the Larger Grain Borer project based at the Kiboko research station. This was the project Graham had been attached to as a consultant in 1992. (See previous post).
A year later, we were still in Kenya, one contract having evolved into another. In December ‘94 Graham, as head of the UK crop protection project, had to chair a three-day agriculture conference in Mombasa. I went too and, as I had the use of a rather good camera, I spent my days sitting under a palm tree in the hotel garden, looking out on a slice of Indian Ocean, sometimes taking photos of the passing beach traffic.
Hotel beachfronts around the world are places where business is done. Mombasa beach is no different and young Kenyan traders are smart, quick to cater to all tourist wants. The Akamba wood carvings and makeshift stalls of kanga wraps are among the more innocent lines of merchandise, although often the means of making contact and enabling further transactions.
Needless to say the deemed exoticism of Maasai morani (young men of the warrior age set) can hold a particular appeal to visiting women of a certain age. So much so, enterprising lads of other upcountry communities might don the gear and pass themselves off as Maasai, or so a Kenyan friend told me.
That said, I’d bet that the young man in the header is Maasai, that lilting stride and spare frame. He could be a member of one of the traditional dance troupes employed by the big hotels. These next guys, though, look more like beach-wise traders with their made-for-tourists weaponry. Very cool sunspecs and matching kanga wrap though:
