Building a Bucket List

In the untameable mirror that is the sea, I find myself confronted with all my forgotten dreams and resolutions. At the start of every beach holiday, I converse with the water, making excuses for the adventures I didn’t go on, as well as promises of change. Only after this, which I now recognise to be… Read more »

One of These Trees is not like the Others

Something that helped my understanding of Diani evolve was looking at the trees. Perhaps that sounds odd. But what better way to start reading a place than to look for its “original” self, as it were. And sometimes this self is found in the landscape. Look around the edges of a place and you will… Read more »

People you’ll talk to on the Beach

During off season times, every tourist that walks onto the beach gives the vendors a very visible jolt of hope. I stepped out there earlier today, and was welcomed enthusiastically by people selling jewellery, fabric, and trinkets. I realised there were three kinds of vendor that approach me every time. 1. Lady selling kitenge, kikoy,… Read more »

Three Years & I’m Back

It’s been exactly 3 years since I last wrote here. Now I find myself back on this blog and back in Diani. This coastal town seems to bring out the observer in me. Or it could be the fact that when settling into a new life, you notice more. Differences you sense make you more… Read more »

Three Diani Months Later

“All I wanted to do now was get back to Africa. We had not left it, yet, but when I would wake in the night I would lie, listening, homesick for it already.” – Ernest Hemingway There’s something about Kenya that makes me feel grateful to be alive. The day my family moved here, when… Read more »

West Coast to South Coast

“…and in the heat of the day, now, I lay in the shade with a breeze in the trees and read with no obligation and no compulsion to write… I would not even write a letter. The only person I really cared about… was with me, and I had no wish to share this life… Read more »

Vancouver in 600 (ish) Words

Waterfront station is where the SeaBus, and trains from different directions come home. Commuters disembark, zig-zag  through the station, and spill out onto West Cordova Street. From here, you can choose the type of Downtown Vancouver experience you want: the buzzing stores, pubs and clubs on Granville; the spread-out restaurant patios at Coal Harbour; the relaxed weekend… Read more »

♫Holding On To Driftwood♫

Bayview-Hunters Point Home, San Francisco

The odd thing about the Gold Dust Lounge was the absence of food. No matter how you sell it, I will not get excited about Chex Mix, let alone consider it a meal replacement. So, 1am found me dining al fresco by a train station, attacking a paper bag containing an In-N-Out (el-o-el) burger and… Read more »

Street Art and The Gold Dust Lounge, Fisherman’s Wharf

After a windy ferry ride from Sausalito to Fisherman’s Wharf, I was covered in mayonnaise. The eat-all-things approach I adopt when visiting a place (and on most Mondays) got in the way of my finishing my salad, so the remainder of the seafood mix hitched a ride back to San Francisco with us. It was… Read more »