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Adventures with Kingsley Holgate - Afrika Outside Edge 14
Adventures with Kingsley Holgate - Afrika Outside Edge 14
Date: 2017-07-21
The Land Rover supported Outside Edge Expedition is still in Kenya, country number 31 of 33 that forms part of the outline of Mama Afrika - we've already been travelling clockwise following the coastline of the continent for one year. We splash through the mud holes - the river is running red brown, it's Kenya's largest. Tall Borasses palms line the banks. "There are hippos and crocs - lots of nyama," says our informant. "We've been hunting in the forest - with all the post election trouble in the slums the attention of the military and police has turned to the cities and it's been a poacher's dream," he tells us.
Fishing dhows wait for the high tide, a man looks up from gutting a white snapper, a moped with driver and passenger has a giant barracuda tied to the carrier. The humidity is as thick as Sunday roast gravy. At the village of Witu a man points out a mosquito net still hanging over a Swahili bed. "You gave it to me three years ago. Since then none of my babies have had malaria." The net is old and dirty, small holes tied closed with fishing gut.
We replace it with a brand new large long lasting rectangular insecticide treated net, big enough to keep a mum and two or three infants safe from the bloodsucking bite of the Anopheles mosquito. Crazy when you think of all the children that die, lives that could be saved by a single mosquito net. At the end of the day, however exhausted we are, it always feels good to have saved and improved lives as part of this geographic challenge to track Africa's outside edge, it's what we've come to do.
It's a short but beautiful coastline. Lamu, Kipini, Witu, Ras Ngomeni and then Malindi where Vasco da Gama had landed in 1498. We stop at the ancient Swahili ruins of Gedi, and then it's on to Kilifi Creek, Fort Jesus in Mombassa and over the Likoni ferry to Tiwi Beach and on to Watamu. Conducting One Net One Life malaria prevention work as we travel, our journey down the Kenyan coast is wonderful, the people as always warm and hospitable with a delightful use of English. Tanzania here we come.