Rugby Trip To Mauritius

A week back after half term and then I was off on a rugby tour to Mauritius the Tanzanian team. I know how absurd does it sound. So on the Saturday we set off from Arusha to catch a plane from Nairobi to Mauritius. The first couple of days were spent training as we had not trained together. The team was made up of guys from Dar, Arusha and Moshi. Some of the boys had come back to Tz for Uni holidays and quite a few had just stepped out of the bush. We stayed at a hotel with three other visiting teams in a town in the west midlands of the small Island. The competition was the Confederation of Africa Rugby Junior tournament and we were competing in the Eastern pool.
Our first game was against Reunion which we narrowly lost 25 – 19. They played like I guess the French are famous for, with arms and boots flailing at the breakdown and willing to throw it around blindly out wide. The second game was against Mayotte which was little more successful as we end up winning 35 – 10. The winner of our final game against Mauritius would have taken second place. Unfortunately we were lacking troops by the last game with quite a few injuries. I played every minute at fly half for all three games but had to train as jumper in the lineout previous to the Mauritius game. One more injury and I would have had to ruin my good looks and put my head in a scrum. We were presented to the President of Mauritius before the game but unfortunately could not step up to plate and lost 23 -18, was really tight in the final stages though. The standard of rugby was pretty good but after three games in five days our bodies were well and truly battered.

On the off days we sampled numerous beaches around the Island and generally just did it tough. The hotel was quite a bit of fun with Reunion and Mayotte staying there also. The Mayotte boys in particular had a good party with us after we played. Mauritius itself was very surprising to me. It was very developed with amazing infrastructure, developed beach fronts and every plot of land that does not have a building has sugar cane. The population is mainly of Indian and Sri Lankan decent. I guess they speak Creole French mainly, despite English being a national language it is not widely spoken. A young Irish guy on the tour who grew up in Tz, was the only one in the team who could speak French so he was the designated translator for the week. Jake White was at the drinks after the last game and actually came and talked to the Tanzanian team before our last game as one of the boys had a connection with him and he happened to in Mauritius at the same time.

For the final two days before we flew out we moved down to the South East Coast, not far from the airport and did some snorkeling, ate seafood and sampled the local beer and ‘Green Island Rum’. It was an awesome ten days, quite a ridicules opportunity when I think about it really.
The one down side about going was that I missed out on the opening of the new campus at Usa River. By all reports it was a great success. I did not miss out on it all though managing to go straight from my returning bus to the restaurant where the Australian High Commissioner from Nairobi was hosting a function after the opening. With her she brought quite a bit of Australian wine which we did our best to drink.

Unfortuaately upon return I was told of Darren Stratti’s death. I knew of but had not met Darren but some vollies’ at St Judes had quite a close relationship with him and other people from the Food Water Shelter project. There are an Australian couple staying at the school currently who were in the Air on the way over to work for FWS when it all happened and are now some what in limbo as the project as not been halted but the volunteers and management have all gone home.

I hope all is well at home with everybody at home, I hope to speak to you all soon.

Pangani to Malindi

Ali and I took advantage of the mid term holidays
and set off to the coast of Tanzania and Kenya for the week. We caught an early bus to Pangani, a very quiet costal town north of Dar es Salam. It ended up being a bus, Dulla Dulla and a taxi but we got there in time to wander around the little town and have a beer on the beach. Very quiet but was certainly far more pleasant than close by Tanga. The next day we caught a bus from Tanga to Mombasa. After being left behind and having to run the bus down twice on the trip, 2km before the boarder the road collapsed and there was a queue waiting for a front end loader to repair the road. He had some serious pressure too as the 500 people waiting were in typically African style crowded around inspecting the progress. Ali and I decided to hedge our bets and walked to the boarder with our bags prepared to catch a bus on the other side. We met back up with our bus in the end but instead of getting to Mombasa at 5pm it was more like 10pm.

I enjoyed Mombasa allot. Fort Jesus was interesting and the old town is like a derelict Stown Town. Was interesting to see some of the buildings which date back to the Portuguese in the 1500’s, you often forget that these parts of Africa were well traveled before the British and Germans decided to poke around. Mombassa harbor is also surprisingly picturesque. Thanks to a gift from Ali’s Grandfather we lashed out and had an awesome meal at a restaurant looking back across the harbor to the old town. Thanks Mr and Mrs McKinnon, I think Ali has sent you photos. Two nights in Mombassa then traveled up to Kilifi 50km North. Ali’s cousin lives in Kilifi but unfortunately was not there while we were there. She was kind enough however, to let us use her house while we were there. The trees must have grown quite a bit since Ali was last there as we took a few wrong turns before finally finding the secluded house just off the ‘Kilifi Creek’ which is far bigger than it sounds. Morning, the gardener, despite not knowing we were coming remembered Ali so gave us the keys and we had our base for the rest of the week.

We decided that bikes would be good to get around for the week. We went into the first hotel on the way into town and hired two bikes, one off the cook and another off his friend. We quickly found out they were terrible and we ended up doing quite a bit of walking with our bikes anyway and found a more reliable source next. Kilifi is a quiet little town with a few resorts around looking out onto the beach and picturesque creek which has numerous sizable boats moored there.

The next day we went for a further ride around and then went to visit Upendo Orphanage. Ali’s cousin Margret, has been very involved in developing the Orphanage. It looks after 35 Orphans who eat three meals at the Orphanage, come there to play there, are provided with financial support and attend school at near by local schools. They however sleep at Guardians houses, which is debatably a better option than them being institutionalised into a regular orphanage. Ali sponsors a child there as do her parents. We had lunch with them, toured the complex and talked about their plans for the future. It was all initiated by local women and the head lady Grace was very impressive and realistic about the future and present.

We went up the coast to Malindi for one night. Was an ok coastal town that had good sea food, a massive Italian influence and good coffee. For some reason Malindi is a Mecca for Italians and Germans, although I could not exactly work out why. It was however relatively deserted as it was out of season which was quite nice really and Watamu just down the coast was much the same. Visited he Gedie ruins on our way back down to Kilifi. Gede was a Swahili town that was destroyed due to their good hospitality shown to the Portuguese and was walked away from in the 16th century. Is like East Africa’s answer to Pompeii. Is in the middle of a forest with a lot of the town still standing. We were the only ones there to wander around the vast town with our guide.

Back to Kilifi and Dow trip up Kilifi Creek on the Friday. We had our hearts set on sailing up the coast to Malindi and came quite close to booking until we spoke to some people in the know who told us that the seas were too dangerous to go out the heads at that time. The local dow operators conveniently forgot to tell us that. So we decided to just do one up the creek instead. Captain John and three helpers cooked us a three course meal while sailing around Kilifi Creek it was a great day. Before heading to Mombassa the next day we dropped into Upendo Orphanage once more armed with six Banana cakes we baked the night before and had lunch with the kids. Then it was one night in Mombassa and back to Arusha on Sunday and back into work Monday.