This post celebrating Kilifi was shockingly forgotten in my drafts after atrip there a couple of years back.
The beauty of the pictures (taken with an Infinix phone) and the awesome memories evoked is a timely reminder of the beauty of travel and of being random.
Enjoy!
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From Mombasa to Kilifi the scenery is gorgeous.
Once you are past Mtwapa town and into Mtwapa rural then sisal is all you will see.
With majestic Baobab trees dotting the landscape.
This was a view from a public barazani just metres away from the entry into Kilifi town.
I stumbled on it and it took my breathe away.
Sat here for a couple of hours. Gazed into the Indian ocean. Felt so peaceful.
According to the locals who I sat next to, the house peeking out at the corner of the picture is owned by a Kenyatta-era big-shot civil servant. It was used as an example of locals feeling a sense of injustice.
Chapati and coconut beans. Ordered for two chapatis. Added a third. Most tasty meal I ate in 2016. So yummy!
So affordable. If you are ever in Kilifi then you know where to eat.
There was little magical about the 2021 Magical Kenya Open European Tour event that was held at the par-71 Karen Country Club last weekend.
South African Justin Harding may have smiled as he banked 20 million Kenyan shillings for his win as he improved from joint-second in 2019 but for Kenyan golfers, the Kenya Open Golf Limited (KOGL) who are the organizers of the event and for the Kenyan government which is the title sponsor, there was little to smile about.
South African, Justin Harding, is presented with the Kenya Open Golf Championship trophy by President Uhuru Kenyatta at the Karen Country Club. (Photo: Caleb Oketch/IMG Kenya)
The Kenya Open which is Kenya’s premier golf event joined the prestigious European Tour in 2019 as the Kenyan government sought to use golf to boost tourism in the country.
The Coronavirus pandemic saw the 2020 edition cancelled with the 2021 edition looking to build on the 2019 gains. In keeping with Ministry of Health guidelines the 2021 Open was played without fans in attendance and with golfers and caddies in a bio-secure bubble.
This meant the visiting golfers would not be able to adequately sample Kenya’s tourism offering lying to waste the government’s ambition of using golf to boost tourism numbers.
When announcing the Kenya Tourism Board title sponsorship in 2019 of the Kenya Open, Tourism Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala had celebrated the fact that the event would be beamed into homes globally. A television reach estimated at a possible 600 million viewers was set to offer a great marketing opportunity for Kenya as a tourism destination.
However, due to what the European Tour Productions termed as “logistical difficulties” the live world feed coverage that was to be used by Sky Sports and global broadcast partners was unavailable for three of the four days of the Magical Kenya Open. No TV coverage basically meant that if there was any magic on the greens it was being seen by no-one thereby hammering a further nail into the sports tourism coffin.
Courtesy – Google
For the main story out of Karen country club on international media for three days of the Kenya Open to have been the lack of TV coverage was a huge blow to Kenya’s ambition to be a sports tourism hub through the hosting of high profile international sports events.
In June, the iconic Safari Rally is poised to rev off as a World Rally Championship leg. Kenya’s ability to pull off a flawless Safari amidst Covid-19 will lie in its ability to have world class organization and attention to detail. The world will be watching if the WRC Safari Rally organizers will have learnt from the mistakes of the 2021 Magical Kenya Open.
Onto the golfing action and from a Kenyan perspective there was very little to cheer. Only one Kenyan professional golfer, Samuel Njoroge of Railway Club made the cut in 2021 down from the two – Simon Ngige of Thika Golf Club and Justus Madoya of Great Rift Valley Lodge Golf Resort – who made the cut in 2019.
25-year old Njoroge, carded at par overall after rounds of 72, 68, 74, 70 to finish at position 77. For his efforts he banked 2, 257 euros which is Ksh. 293,000 from the event’s purse. He also took home the Ksh. 100,000 award from KBL for every Kenyan golfer to make the cut.
Railways professional golfer Samuel Njoroge in action during the 2021 Magical Kenya Open. (Photo: Caleb Oketch/IMG Kenya)
This poor performance was despite the best efforts of KOGL through the Safari Golf Tour, which was launched in 2018 as a preparation pad for local and regional professional players heading into the Kenya Open.
No Kenyan professional golfer has ever won the Kenya Open with Jacob Okello’s second place finish in 1998 the closest a Kenyan has gotten to success. It speaks volumes that Okello is still representing Kenya 23 years later.
(Left to Right) Pro-Golfers Dismas indiza, Zimbabwe’s Robson Chinhoi, Samuel Njoroge, Rizwan Charania, Jacob Okello, Greg Snow and Mathew Omondi. (Photo: Caleb Oketch/IMG Kenya)
From a layman’s perspective there are various reasons as to the continued poor performance of Kenyan golfers at the Kenya Open. First, golf still retains an elitist tag and is not seen as an actual sport by the general public. Second, the median age that Kenyan professional golfers pick up the sport is quite high compared to top golfers globally. Third, sponsorship of actual golfers to horn their skills at high level golf events outside the country is negligible. Fourth, the public golf facility at Lenana School that has been promised for years by the government is yet to be actualized.
A public golf facility would take the sport to the masses in ways the members-only golf clubs cannot while the facility been in a school would serve as a way to attract regular Kenyan kids to the sport thus removing the elitist tag while also reducing the age of Kenyan pro-golfers. Public tennis spaces in the under-privileged areas of California in America gave the world the phenomenal Williams sisters.
The one Magical thing about the Kenya Open is its ability to attract sponsorship. While other sports federations are barely surviving with the effects of the pandemic hitting Kenyan sportspeople hard, Kenya Open Golf Limited is swimming in money. Kenya Tourism Board, Vision 2030 Delivery secretariat, Absa Kenya, Kenya Breweries Limited all swung in with millions of shillings to boost the 2021 Magical Kenya Open.
Courtesy – Google
How to turn the cash liquidity to Kenyan success on the greens is the million dollar question.
*A version of this article first appeared on Business Daily.
For several years I have been making resolutions to travel around Kenya and East Africa but true to form, the resolutions have remained just that, resolutions.
The tide finally abruptly turned when I decided on a whim to travel to Mombasa for a weekend. When it came to it the process was pretty snappy. I decided to travel at 2pm on a Thursday afternoon, was packed by 3pm and had gotten a ticket for the 10.30pm bus by 5pm.
I took Mash Bus since it was the bus that a friend who travels regularly to Mombasa had used recently. A ticket for the regular bus goes for Ksh 1300 while a ticket for the AirCon which is the last bus that leaves Nairobi for Mombasa at 10.45pm goes for Ksh 1500 for normal seat and Ksh 1700 for VIP.
We boarded at 10.20pm and we left the station at 10.30pm. By 1.50am we were in Mtito Andei and at 5.30am we had arrived in Mombasa. Mash Bus gives water and nothing else. At their ticket price one would expect at least a snack.
The Mtito Andei phenomena is intriguing. There are restaurants galore and the bus stops for twenty minutes for folk to stretch and grab a snack or a meal. I wonder whether the eating and shopping was essential or whether it is a case of instilled tradition.
The bus had plasma screens which remained off all through the journey and this was a point of discussion for the guys who were seated behind me. Why have plasma screens and not use them was the question.
The guys also had pretty interesting conversations about football, of course international but to their defense at least it was La Liga and not the usual English premier league fanaticism. There was also a man who is clearly a frequent traveler and he regaled his audience with tales of which buses speed and those that are driven at snail pace on the Nairobi-Mombasa route.
It would have made for fun conversation but for the little fact that at that particular moment we were in a fast moving bus whose driver was simulating a Grand Prix car and zigzag-ing on the road as he tried to evade the many trucks on the one-carriage way. Mash Bus is certainly not for the faint hearted. Suffice to say that sleep for me was a luxury and I kept communicating with God all through the commute.
It is all well and good to have an eight lane Thika super highway but I reckon that making Nairobi-Mombasa highway at least a dual carriageway should be a priority for the government.
The bus finally got to the Mash offices in Mombasa but folk were not in a hurry to alight. There was a discussion about Mombasa Republican Council and it repercussions. Folk joked that this may be the last few months before one was required to get a visa to enter the Coast Province if the “Pwani si Kenya” threat came to pass. The overall sentiment however was that the government is not to be joked with and that when push comes to shove the army would be deployed, a curfew would be enforced and MRC would be crushed.
Finally I alighted. It had been over a dozen years since I had last been in Mombasa and my first impression was that there were too many tuk-tuks and Nissans. There was also to my pleasant surprise none of the oppressive humidity that is synonymous with Mombasa.
Remember I had traveled on a whim and I had no idea where I was to go or where I was to sleep or what I was to do. I was a backpacker ready for anything. Also remember that it had been over a dozen years since I was last in Mombasa. To get back my bearings and at least figure out what was where I took a walk around the town.
My walk took me from Mwembe Tayari all the way up to Bondeni where I had kahawa tungu na mahamri with the old Kanzu-clad men on the streets, I then walked on Digo road, Moi Avenue, Nkurumah Road, went to Ganjoni and also to Uhuru Gradens. By the time I had gotten to the Post Office and Salambo Night Club I had recollected my bearings.
Isn’t the mind a wonderful thing?
After two hours of walking about I stumbled on a room bang in the middle of Town which was affordable, clean, had matching slippers and even DSTV. Upon checking in the receptionist gave me condoms. This she informed me was the hotel’s policy. Quite caring of them I thought.
After my sleepless travel through the night and my walkabout on the streets on Mombasa, I needed to sleep and sleep I did.
Moderate Kenyan 