Date received: Thu Mar 29 2001, 01:24 AM PST
After two days of sailing and an overnight bus ride, I'm back in Nairobi. After having been away from communication for so long, I had been looking forward to getting my messages, but unfortunately i just found out that my roommate Karen has been in a serious car accident. Not the kind of news I was looking forward to.
The sailing trip from Lamu was fantastic. I was on a dhow, which is a traditional sailboat common to the coast of Kenya. The boat was returning from the Lamu Archipelago with a load of fish, and I joined along for the ride. Just me, six crew, a captain, and 3200 kg of fish, in an open hull boat. For food, all we had to do was dip into the catch of fish, and cook it on the open fire. At night, I slept on a reed mat and stared up at the stars. We sailed for a total of about 30 hours, stopping only for a couple of hours to wait for the tides to turn. Yesterday morning we hit a major lull in the wind, and just floated for hours. We eventually arrived in the village of Ngomeni yesterday afternoon. I then took an overnight bus to get back to Nairobi.
I plan on staying here for a least a day to catch up on computer/communication things, and then probably head to Uganda.
peter
