Travel and Personal

The White Sands of Malindi

By Dweep Chanana ⋅ December 16, 2005 ⋅  Email this post ⋅ Post a comment

This weekend I am in Malindi, a beach town 1-hour north of Mombasa, for a 2-day work trip to facilitate a project of the Growing Sustainable Business initiative. During the trip I will meet mango farmers, private service extension providers (PESPs), and transporters, to resolve some outstanding issues of quality control and logistics in order to source mangoes from this area.

This is a sleepy little town. Time moves at its own pace here, and nothing happens fast. It must be the humidity, that makes movement uncomfortable. During the day the town bears a deserted look. Even the waves recede, leaving large swathes of sand to be reclaimed in the evening by advancing tides.

There are plenty of saving graces, though. Heading out to a mango farm, tarmac road lasts only for 5 minutes, and we have a flat tire soon after. But the first car driving by stops, and exchanges our flat tire for a healthy spare. Few words are said. The next two cars going into town do the same, stopping politely to offer help.

Then there is the food. The Old Man and the Sea, Le Bistro, La Malindina. Upmarket restaurants with lip-smacking food that left me going back for more.

Finally, there are the beaches. The water on the town beach is red, because of the annual runoff of silt from the Sabaki river. But further south, the water is a clear blue-green and the beaches white. In the evening, as the sun sets behind us, the town congregates on the pier and the beach, playing sports, jumping into the water, and just having a good time. With the sun going down, and the heat subsiding, the town is waking up.