Saturday 12 September 2026
A pretty good few hours at the market. For once I do not get lost at all. Amd my two new ‘ couturieres come up trumps with some gorgeous inventive stuff. Get in line now.
I am sorry that this is so sparse but I am wring on Tuesday and I am very tired.
Sunday 13 September 2026
Turns out I forgot to pick up some cuddly ponchos at the market and so we have to make a detour en route to the train station. I like to get there early as the three x-ray machines plus the sniffer dog array are time consuming. And Kenyans generally are strangers to the queue as we know it. Throw enough Somalis into the mix and the miasma of flapping burqua makes things quite the panic-fest for an aging Scot with a wee wheelie.
The trains, I may have mentioned, are (probably deliberately) built by the Chinese for maximum discomfort. Rock hard and bolt upright might be an admiring observation in some circumstances, but in regard to train seats, it is not. The paucity of leg room between the facing benches means that everyone has to manspread and then intersperse their legs. Like a sweaty human zip. Nowhere to charge a phone. And a disembarking procedure involving one door for every two crammed carriages that never fails to enrage me.
I get a shuttle to Mtwapa and meet Vicky at Baraka. “You are looking plump” she observes.
Back at my room (which, I feel, is smaller than anything enjoyed by a death row prisoner) I plug in the phone and sleep.
Monday 14 September 2026
One of my fave things here is the morning pikipiki ride from room to Baraka. The ‘roads’ en route are particularly bad today. There is no tarmac here and recent rains (and in Mombasa it KNOWS how to rain) have simply turned them to mush, which then hardens again into something that looks like a plate of papparelle.
We get a matatu to town, which is great as I get a front seat, breeze and views of passing bits of Mombasa County.
From the terminus we walk down to the ferry – through tight packed vendors of everything you can imagine and some things, as genteel people, you probably cannot. Again, being in a huge crown of hundreds all pushing to get on board when the big gates open, is not my favourite thing. It is amazing that no one is killed in the stampede. On board, our ferry seeems to perform something like an eight point turn (presumable to get the trajectory right) before setting off for Likoni on the other side. Having climbed up the hill from the landing point we get a tuk tuk to our funding. Vicky has been lent a (huge, relatively) semi-built house to use as a safe house for groups on the run, but as yet, unfunded by Mama B. Also for today’s funding. We get lost about three times in the jumble of building works in various stages of complation. But this is probably a good sign, for security’s sake. The (rather impressive) house is being built for one of our makuti ladies, One of our first groups to be funded in Mombasa, and formed of slightly more mature ladies.. Makuti are like large rooftiles, but made from palm leaves. My chuff knows no bounds. As it were.
Fundings are getting more expensive, which is a worry. Especially where we have to relocate the women and their kids by some distance. So if you were wondering how to give your corporate brand some credibility in the humanity area, now would be the time.
Obviously we can just about manage to fund (as we did today) two farms, a cleaning contract, a croc selling business and a carrier bag group for (just) less than £20 per woman. Plus transport. But it is a push. The problems the women and their children are running from are the usual horrors of being poor and female on the Coast : FGM, early marriage (age 9), and inter tribal violence, in which nine year old girlks are used as financial leverage – as I have explained before, “you stop setting our villages on fire and you can do what you want with my nine year old daughter” kind of thing. So your £20 stops that. Just a thought.
In the corner of the room, two women are making liquid soap. Always a good business. This is a new group “birthed” (as Vicky puts it) by a group we started last time. And the rescues go on.
Our little tuktuk man comes back for us and even (for a little extra) takes us across on the ferry and up the hill to the matatu stage.
The thing with matatus is that they do not leave the stage until they are full. Fifteen minutes waiting and Vicky and I get out and take a tuk tuk to town where we squash ino another matatu with what turns out to be a driver with either a death wish, or who is a total psychopath. In all my years in Kenya I have never heard passengers screaming in fear and begging the driver to slow down. I am still recovering from reading about Marco Bezzechi binning it on the first lap in Misano (yes reading – I have to make do with Crash.net’s live updates while I am here, greater sacrifice hath no Moto GP fan made) and what this guy is asking of his tyres, they just might not have to give. To be honest, it is scary. But, again, to be honest. He gets us to Mtwapa in about half the time of any other matatu.
Bone soup at Baraka and plans for tomorrow. How I laugh as I write this, as I should have known better than to make plans.
Back at my cell, there is no electricity. The blackness is utterly impenetrable and I do not have enough battery in my phone to use the torch.
I play Russian Roulette with my meds, feeling a little bit Helen Keller as I sort by shape.
I hopefully plug my phone charger in … maybe the power will come back in the night.
Hhahahahahahahahahahaahaha
