A week in Paradise: Coral Reefs, Coastal Forests, and Worship under the Cashew Trees

Papa Dave, Rebecca, Oren and David at the Nairobi airport waiting for our flight to the coast for our last week of vacation.




If you are following this blog regularly, you know that Rebecca and I are currently on vacation with Rebecca’s parents, Dave and Jean, and we have just left three days of safari in Northern Kenya to spend a week along the coast north of Mombasa near a town called Malindi. (The Indian Ocean borders the whole east coast of Kenya for those who are geographically challenged.)

The place we are staying is called Turtle Bay Beach Club, and it is far and away one of the nicest places I have ever stayed (as far as vacation accommodations) in my life. The place came highly recommended to us as very beautiful AND family-friendly with lots of activities for the kids. We have not been disappointed!

I am putting a picture in here, but to capture the beauty of this place would take a photo album. There are so many amazing features, but much of the daily activity is focused around an enormous swimming pool (one of three) which sits about 100 yards off the beach. By day, there is opportunity to swim, eat sumptuous food, play darts, table tennis or water polo, or simply join the other sun worshippers reading books and dozing around the pool. Or, one could walk behind the wall onto the powder white sand beach and enjoy sitting under or climbing the expansive mangrove trees, wind surfing, sailing, canoeing, exploring ponds filled with eels, watching sea turtles, going deep sea fishing, or snorkeling through one of the most fish-filled coral reefs in the world.

Rebecca and I opted for snorkeling on Thursday and took an excursion (for birding) into the Arabuko-Sokoke forest on Saturday. I will give a brief account of each of these excursions, although I do not have pictures because I do not have a camera that goes underwater or a telephoto lens powerful enough to shoot wildlife unless it is very large or very nearby (or both).

I should begin by mentioning one trip earlier in the week that we were able to take as a whole group (grandparents and kids included). We visited the Gede ruins, an old Swahili trading town from the 15th Century that was apparently abandoned at some point in the 17th century due to a lack of water and political competition. The ruins are interesting and Oren enjoyed running around the broken and partial walls of the remaining structures. Much to our chagrin, he quickly made his favorite activity peering into the ancient wells that are quite dry and about one hundred feet deep. He made a thorough search of all the grounds to be able to look into as many wells as possible. This required us to hold him thrashing by the hand for much of the excursion.

Next door was a much less threatening nature center which housed 100s of species of indigenous butterflies in a giant aviary. Butterflies from Kenya are exported all over the world to collectors and zoos (while they are cocoons). I had no idea there was so much opportunity for income generation through the butterfly trade, but many local community members benefit as they are involved in capturing them in the forest and raising larvae in their homesteads. We found that this area has numerous projects aimed at finding ways for the community to generate income sustainably so that they can value and protect the neighboring forests and marine park. In the midst of poverty, with such pressure for fuel and food, it’s refreshing to see people working hard to save the natural habitats for the long-term (utterly impossible to imagine in Burundi so far).

On the way home from this trip we visited a fair-trade wood carving facility and bought some really beautifully carved animals. Oren enjoyed watching the carvers make and paint the animals. He is quite a shopper and was asking everyone he met how much their wares cost and was prepared to strike a bargain for most everything. (This delighted the merchants but was a bit of a challenge for the parents who had to diplomatically say ‘No’. Over and over and over.)

Wednesday was spent enjoying the pool and working vigorously on teaching Oren how to hold his breath under water. This has been a point of concern for us because he has no instinct for this, and in fact usually inhales suddenly when his face hits the water. He has been somewhat stubborn about learning to hold his breath, but the good news is that we finally made a breakthrough this week and he can put his head underwater without drowning. The next step is swimming although that will have to wait until we are back in Burundi.

On Thursday the Grandparents agreed to watch the kids so Rebecca and I could go snorkeling. There is a weekly expedition from the hotel guided by a zoologist who is quite good. We learned a lot about the reef before we even left the hotel. The reef is like the barrier reef in Australia in that one has to take a boat quite far out off the coast (in low tide) to get to it. Once there you can go in the water and snorkel along quite long walls of coral, filled with tropical fish that are able to grow unusually large because of the peculiar conditions of temperature and current here. (The groupers can get up to 12 feet long.)

We saw many beautiful angel fish, butterfly fish, surgeon fish, parrot fish and a moray eel. This was Rebecca’s first snorkeling experience and she found it magical to just float above such an incredible array of sizes and shapes and colors. It was much like bird watching – except easier! We also learned that white sand beaches are all created by parrotfish, which chew up and digest coral. They apparently expel about a kilogram a day each. Since there are approximately 50,000 around the reef near us, they produce about 50 tons of sand per day. Consequently they have added many miles of land to the coast over the past several thousand years. Our guide also pointed out, indelicately, that everything we were sitting or walking on from the coast to several miles inland, had passed through the intestines of a parrotfish.

On Friday, Rebecca and her Mom took a bird walking trip around the neighboring village down to the mangrove swamps. Their guide recommended we do a trip into the one-of-a-kind Arabuko-Sokoke forest. This place is unique in that it is one of the few remaining protected dry coastal forests in the world. It is home to many unique indigenous species of flora and fauna, particularly birds and butterflies (over 250 species of each!). The forest is also home to about 80 elephants and their diminutive cousins, the secretive elephant shrews.

Rebecca and I once again took up the grandparents’ generous offer to baby-sit the kids so we could go on a 4 hour guided trek into the forest. The trip started out extremely well as we immediately caught sight of an extremely rare spotted ground thrush right when we got out of the car. This was followed shortly by our happening upon a small group of elephant shrews who scurried around on the path in front of us for about 15 minutes. FYI, the elephant shrew has a long snout, black body, yellowish-brown backside, and looks to be the size of a small dachshund.

We also saw several other species of birds including a Narina trogon and several varieties of hornbills. The forest itself is unusual, filled with beautiful indigenous trees with fancifully twisting limbs reaching out into a broad, light canopy. It was a really great outing and we had the sense that we had been blessed by this rare opportunity to see such a rare natural wonder of the world. Sadly we were told that efforts to protect this forest are ongoing as there are many who would like to convert it into farmland and other profitable real-estate.

On Sunday we decided to visit a local church that Rebecca and Jean had seen in a nearby village (outside the resort) on their bird walk. The sign they had read said the English service began at 9:15 and ended at 10:15. Despite our best efforts, we were not able to get out of the hotel until about 9:15 and started the twenty minute walk to the church. About half an hour in, we guessed we had taken a wrong turn and got directions back to the path we were supposed to be on. It was close to 10 when we arrived, but, thanks to African sense of time, instead of being 45 minutes late, we were 5 minutes early! The congregation actually met outdoors underneath 2 cashew trees. The singing, all a cappella, was beautiful (all in Swahili). There was an opening sermon followed by more singing and then an extended period of prayer.

I am used to hearing this kind of group prayer where everyone says their own prayers out loud, but I have not often seen it build to a place where much of the congregation (30 people) were weeping openly. I pictured this scene multiplied all over Africa and much of the rest of the world. People crying out to God, praising, worshipping, and calling out to Him, and I believe it gives Him pleasure to hear this praise and adoration.

I did think about the fact that I have rarely prayed myself to the point of weeping, but then, I thought about the fact that my life has been so privileged, and mercifully free of tragedy and hardship, that I have not ever come before him on my knees and surrendered in quite such an abandoned way. I do feel like something is missing for me because of that, although, having seen the appalling hardship and tragedy that so many in this part of the world endure, I don’t know if I would be able to pay the price for that kind of expression. I did feel blessed by being able to share in worship with this community, and they were delighted to welcome us. (We did duck out before the beginning of the second sermon as the kids were getting quite antsy and it looked to be going on for several more hours.)

We spent the rest of Sunday relaxing on the beach and swimming in the pool. Rebecca and I have also been enjoying daily early morning swims. I really feel like I have recovered a lot of my health and physical, as well as spiritual, well-being from this trip.

Monday we head back to Nairobi where Dave and Jean will depart for the US. We will spend several more days visiting doctors, dentists and possibly other MCCers, then head back to Bujumbura on Friday.

Here is a photo of some Masaai performing at the hotel. They can jump really high repeatedly, like kangaroos! Very impressive!