Hot, sticky and oh so sweet

Mombasa is an amazing place to be, full of different types of people everywhere you look.  Old Mombasa Town in particular is incredible, as well as playing host to thousands of tourists the back streets are filled with locals each with an interesting story of their own.  Somalian boys on street corners trying to get you to exchange money with them, men with bottled water whose eyes light up when they see a white person (it’s hot right and white people love water, we’re like camels).  Then there’s covered Muslim women heading to the local Mosque.  Street beggars hanging on to the glimmer of hope as a shiny 5 shilling coin falls into their outstretched palms and by contrast rich Kenyan business men sipping on latte’s at the fancy cafes.  Oh and let’s not forget the tourist groups walking around with their guides with the scared deer-in-headlights-look.  I’ve never understood the group travel thing, I much prefer the less safe option of just wandering around aimlessly waiting for something exciting to come my way.

Today was one of my more interesting encounters, in a rustic old colonial-style apartment I met an Indian-by-heritage, second generation Kenyan man named...let’s see we’ll call him Raj.  Raj is a weed dealer.  He spends most of the day sitting in his hot and sticky apartment rolling joints to sell.  It’s an interesting profession, one that means he can sit at home and smoke weed most of the day while meeting people.  It’s like working in a Darwin video store only you get to be your own boss and probably earn more.  He buys 400KShs worth of locally grown ganja, picks the seeds and the stems out then expertly rolls joints which he on-sells at 10KShs per stick.  Most days he sells around 80 sticks per day so every day is a profit of around 400KShs.  It doesn’t seem like a lot but in a country where employment is difficult to come by, even if you have multiple degrees and years of experience it becomes a lot, well enough to get by on anyway.  I asked how many each person buys and it’s always about 1 or 2 sticks each so that means between 40-80 people come and see him every day.   

Like a plastic surgeon Raj’s slender fingers continue to deftly and elegantly roll perfect joints, one after the other.  Like a faithful partner there is always someone eager to visit him to get their fix.