I had been hearing good stories from other travelers about the tropical coast of Kenya. It proved easy to hitchhike from Nairobi down to the coast at Mombasa, along a modern, well-maintained highway.

Mombasa is much older than Nairobi, and more interesting. One tourist attraction was Fort Jesus, a lumpy, unprepossessing three-hundred-year-old waterfront fortification made of coral blocks. It was originally built by Portuguese traders in the years before the Sultan of Zanzibar kicked the Portuguese out of East Africa. The business community was an interesting blend of East Indian and Arab stock. Being a port town, sailors of every imaginable description abounded. Ladies of the evening in Mombasa proved to be very aggressive and persistent, unwilling to accept my "No thanks" response to their overtures. One flashing eyed young woman snatched away the sweater I was carrying, and retreated, teasing and beckoning, into a nearby doorway. It was a chore to retrieve my garment while maintaining my dignity. And this was at 9 o’clock in the morning !

Walking around central Mombasa I spied familiar faces. Three of the Ohio State ladies strolled out of the post office. I wasn’t too surprised to see them, since I had memorized the schedule of their bus tour, so my presence in Mombasa on that particular day was a bit less than coincidental. The gals seemed happy to find me, and led me a few blocks to where their bus was parked. They hid me in the rear of the bus until Jennifer boarded. She was shocked but seemed pleased to have me reappear, delivering a big unexpected hug right there between the seats in front of God and everybody!

When Jennifer asked me which way I was headed, I said that I had heard about a particularly nice beach south of Mombasa called Twiga. Another amazing coincidence! That was exactly where the Ohio State folks were headed that afternoon, planning to camp for the next four days! So by popular acclaim, the professor in charge made exceptions to quite a few tour rules, and I got a free ride to Twiga (means "giraffe" in Swahili, I’m told) on the East Africa Zoological Study bus.

Twiga was really a lovely place, quite near the equator. A simple, laid-back low lodge was surrounded by lots of big trees, a dozen nice bungalows and a campground. Since June was off season, it was almost deserted. I rented a two bedroom bungalow for $3 total per night, and two of the students immediately moved into the second room, tired of living in the tents. The bungalow was large and airy, the main external walls being made out of a checkerboard pattern of coral blocks and air. While this construction style did manage to deny access to uninvited humans, it provided hot and cold running monkeys for free ! Quite a troop of those little critters lived in the trees at Twiga, and they entered and exited at will. A big lockable zinc-lined box was provided in the kitchen to keep the food secure from monkey raiders.

Time spent at Twiga was idyllic. In the mornings, a procession of beautiful Kenyan girls visited each bungalow with baskets on their heads selling ripe mangos, or fresh pastries, or coconuts, or chocolate bars, or pineapples, or other tropical fruit. A low reef 150 yards offshore enclosed a small lagoon in which it was pleasant to wade and collect shells. The days were beautiful, with a nice breeze always coming either on or offshore. Every afternoon about 3:00, like clockwork, a good big thunderstorm came in off the Indian Ocean and it rained like crazy for an hour, and then reliably stopped. During the storms, everyone sat in the big thatched patio of Twiga Lodge, reading and talking. Many hours after dark were pleasantly spent sitting talking on the beach. It was nice, comfortable social scene. Twiga was the first place on my travels where I felt as if I were on holiday.

One afternoon I returned to our bungalow to find at least 30 monkeys sitting on the thatched roof. Bad sign. I came closer to see that the alpha male monkey had stolen a half loaf of bread, complete with its waxed paper wrapper, from our kitchen, and was sitting on the ridge pole eating it. The other monkeys were clustered around in hopes that he would drop some, or would get full before the bread ran out.

Realizing my assigned role in this scene, I shook my fist at the thief, calling out in jest "You scruffy monkey, give us back our bread!" The regal old gray male then displayed his sense of humor by finishing the last of the bread, crumpling up the wrapper into a ball, and disdainfully throwing it down directly at my feet.

While wading at Twiga the next morning, I spotted a colony of the famous local sea snakes just inside the reef. Sea snakes, according to reliable reports, are SO poisonous that anyone bitten dies within three steps! And there they were, in the calm waist-deep water, four or five pairs of bright black eyes on long, slender bodies sticking up out of holes in the bottom, swaying to and fro as the water moved about them. They didn’t appear too aggressive, and I made a mental note of the colony location for future reference.

"Arachnid Andy" was the name secretly assigned to one of the socially introverted Ohio State guys by his fellows. Andy was a guy who would get really excited and happy whenever I told him about an interesting snake or spider I had seen somewhere in the past. He would whip out his notebook, furiously take notes on the sighting, and demand more and more details. He did know a tremendous amount about snakes and spiders, and was the acknowleged local expert. I detected an opportunity to improve my masculine image with the bevy of Ohio State females by capturing one of the deadly sea snakes as a present for Arachnid Andy.

I walked a short distance inland and found a nice hard stick, about 18" long and a quarter inch in diameter. I whittled a shallow groove around one end, tied a piece of my monofilament line into the groove, and fed the loose end back under the band, making an effective little noose which would tighten when I pulled on the loose end of the monofilament. With my jury-rigged catching stick and a mason jar, I waded carefully out to the sea snake colony.

The snakes all pulled themselves back into their burrows when they sensed my approach. I squatted down nearby, with my chin in the water, and positioned my little noose over the entrance to one burrow. Before long a smooth head peeked out cautiously. I jerked the line and caught him right behind the head. He wrapped his body around the catching stick as I pulled him out of the burrow. With the poisonous end of the stick in the jar full of sea water, I loosened the line, and my captive freed himself and swam rapidly around. I removed the stick and secured the screw lid on the jar. IT WORKED! Just like the plan! AMAZING!

Shortly I was the center of a knot of cooing young women, listening to my manly story, and admiring the dangerous-looking sea snake as we waited for Andy to return. Ah, good, there he came, striding gawkily along, headed past us towards his tent.

"Andy, I’ve caught a sea snake for you!"

Arachnid Andy’s head snapped around to view my proffered jar. Never even slowing down, he marched quickly past.

"Thass a EEL" he said dismissively.

No question that he was right. My newly-earned "brave hunter" status deflated. I released my inoffensive little eel near his home shortly thereafter.

After finally waving good-bye to my friends from Ohio as they headed back to Nairobi and then home, I bought a bus ticket up the long, muddy coastal road towards Lamu, a tiny island off Kenya’s northern coast. Everyone on the bus seemed to be either selling or chewing "speed weed", the bitter leaves also called "qat", or "kyat" by some. I chewed quite a bit of it myself, as it was interesting and inexpensive. The effect was a slight, disconnected feeling of euphoria after considerable intake of speed weed. I can understand why the Somalis tend to fire all of their weapons into the air every afternoon.

The old bus, even with its huge double rear wheels, got stuck in the mud several times. All the male passengers, it seemed, were expected to assist in pushing it out, and I helped along with the rest. Due to my inexperience in these matters, I first chose a pushing position just behind the wheels, resulting in much hilarity from my companions when I found myself covered up to the waist with brown sticky mud ejected by the spinning tires. Eventually we reached a nasty, smelly little pier on the mainland shore, and rode an overloaded, decrepit sailboat to the island, easily visible a few kilometers offshore.

Lamu town was very picturesque and interesting. Plenty of buildings dated from the period 100 to 300 years ago, when Lamu was a major slaving port, providing human property to the Middle East. The architecture is not exactly Arabian, and not exactly anything else, but a fascinating blend of local traditions and original design. Intricately carved wooden doors and door-frames were to be seen on every street. A Zanzibari fortress occupied the center of town, and old muzzle-loading cannons were scattered everywhere around the town. Food was excellent and very cheap. Fresh lobster tails could be purchased for 60 cents per pound, and cooked up at any of the local cafes for only a few cents per meal. Amu Lodging, facing the waterfront close to the center of town, was a bargain at 61 cents for my own room, with a big 4-poster bed with FULL MOSQUITO NETTING! I immediately fell in love with mosquito nets which wrap protectively around a bed, because they obviate the need to fumigate oneself all night with the toxic fumes from burning mosquito coils. Yes, on the magical isle of Lamu, one could live luxuriously for $2 per day.

Lamu got electricity from a big generator which could be heard all over the town. In theory it operated from dusk to midnight every night, but in practice blackouts were common. One evening I was sitting on one of two big swings on the Amu's second-story porch overlooking the harbor. An hour earlier I had met an Australian woman named Elwyn, who was chatting sitting next to me. There were a few Kenyans on the porch, and three people on the second swing just across from ours, and the night was pleasant. Suddenly the generator stopped, throwing the town into inky black silence. Quite unexpectedly, Elwyn quickly slipped her slender body under my right arm, planted herself in my lap and gave me a big, wet, penetrating kiss! It was a pleasant complete surprise, and the most direct come-on I've ever personally witnessed.

The following morning I was somewhat nonplused to discover that Elwyn had a boyfriend who was also living at the Amu. He had gone somewhere for three days, and my new friend had taken good advantage of his absence. That situation seemed a shame, because I had rapidly gotten rather fond of the woman, and now, to keep my life simple, it was obvious that I should disappear from Lamu before the return of the cuckolded boyfriend. But at least I enjoyed another 48 hours in that paradise, bodysurfing on the far side of the island with Elwyn in the daytime and hiding from the mosquitoes at night. Funny, but I felt a bit dishonorable for not breaking things off immediately.

As I was preparing to leave Lamu island I began to feel lousy. I was getting headaches, my joints also ached, and bright sunlight became progressively less bearable. I bussed back to Mombasa and after a night there, hitch-hiked up into the cooler high savanna, checking once more into the Iqbal hotel in Nairobi. By that time it was obvious that I was pretty sick, as I was sweating copiously, and unable to keep much in my stomach other than water. I dragged myself out to a local doctor. Sure enough, I was down with Malaria. I guess the mosquito nets didn’t do a good enough job.

It seemed that everything that could go wrong WENT! Every joint ached, my old joint surgeries fell apart, my neck was too stiff to move, I was nauseous, dizzy, farty, burpy, diahrrea-y, very very feverish, with cold shivering chills ! But none of that was the worst. I have a very high pain threshold, and was taking two kinds of potent pain-killing medications, but the headaches which lived IN my eyes, were very nearly unbearable. It felt as if my eyeballs would be the size of tennis balls if they weren't constrained by my skull.

The inexpensive Kenyan doctor prescribed quinine and rest. I moved into a more expensive room at the Iqbal which had only two beds in it and settled down to ride out the disease. The killer headaches and hallucinations which I suffered for the next few days are still the most powerful and most amazing I have ever experienced. I lay in the cheap bed, teeth occasionally clacking, shaking and sweating with fever, afraid to close my eyes because of the terrifying disjointed full-action-color visions which always took over. With most hallucinations I have found that I could sit back and watch, aware that they were unreal, and that they would pass. For some reason I couldn't achieve any "distance" from these, they were too immediate and always "real" and threatening. With a half hour of mental preparation, I could just barely get myself up a few times a day to drink water and to use the toilet.

But fortunately, after three hellish days the fever broke, and after four I could stagger out to buy crackers and ginger ale. Malaria is no fun, I can assure you, but neither is it the end of a vagabond’s world.

Four easy ways to find oneself killed in mysterious Ethiopia