Party in Mombasa

I finally made it to Mombasa with a big group of Peace Corps volunteers. I met a few volunteers who I still hadn't met (good thing, since some of them are going home soon).

The morning started off fun. I just missed the other volunteers in Voi, so I wound up traveling alone. I got to Mombasa in the morning and went to Paul's (one of the deaf education volunteers) school. A few other volunteers were there and we did some computer stuff and swapped stories for a while. Then we grabbed some Chinese food for lunch (delicious!) and then hit the beach.

This was my first time at the Indian Ocean. We got there in the afternoon and it was low tide. Very, very low tide. The water was beautiful and warm and transparent. Probably one of the most gorgeous scenes I've ever seen. We wanted to go out so that the water would come up past our knees. We were pretty far out, and the water felt like it was getting shallower. I noticed that I had cut my hands on a few things at the bottom (it was pretty hard to swim without scraping the bottom). They were pretty irritating, what with all of the salt water. Then, a few small cuts were the least of my issues.

I took a step and my right toe really started hurting. I was trying to figure out what happened, and then I felt a lot of thorns in my right leg. After yelling quite a long stream of profanity, some of my friends helped me get back to safety (I've been very restrained with my language around Kenyans, but there were none near us in the water, so it was quite impressive). We looked at my leg and realized that I had stumbled into a nest of sea urchins. Ow. Two friends helped tow me to the shore. I was in complete agony (I think 10 thorns in my toe and 30 in my shin). We miraculously had tweezers and a sharp knife (these things get in there really deep and leave nice purple welts). However, I thought it would be better to call Peace Corps medical and they said that the best thing to do is to rub papaya on the sites because there are enzymes that will dissolve the spines. I was very grateful to not have people digging around my lower appendages and extremities with a knife.

While someone went for papaya my friend Jackie and I (she only had one urchin) sat on the beach and talked. She's been working in Nairobi for almost two months now, and is about to finish up her work in Kenya. We discussed networking things that we need to do for one another and follow-up work that I can do from this end. Not nearly enough time for everything we had to say and I was trying not to think about all the purple spots on my leg. After thirty minutes of searching, we were told that there are no papayas on the beach this late in the afternoon. At that point, we all decided to pack up and go to the supermarket (more like mega-market) and get some papaya and other supplies. We applied the papaya, and it was glorious. Still a bit painful, but much, much better.

After that, we had a delicious dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant (shawarma=delicious) and then met up with a lot of volunteers at a club called Il Covo. We had a lot of fun drinking and dancing the night away. My foot sent me painful reminders over the course of the night and it didn't help that several people stepped on it on the dance floor. Still, I really enjoyed all the people there and met some really interesting ones, the lights were nice at the club, although the music could have been a bit better. Once it was sufficiently late, we headed to another volunteer's house and crashed. I think we all slept really well.

Most importantly, always keep papaya on hand for those sea urchin encounters. :)