So I arrived in Mombasa yesterday after a long, budget flight from Bangkok to Nairobi and a much shorter and much more luxurious business class flight from Nairobi to Mombasa thanks to my lovely mother who didn't want me to have to wait an extra few hours in the Nairobi airport for the next flight with available economy seats.

In Mombasa we got adopted by a tour guide who decided we needed a tour so just came up and began walking beside us, directing us to some Hindu temple and then the old town; despite the fact we were headed in that direction anyway, and told him we didn't need a guide, he persisted to walk along side us and occasionally commentate. The old area of town is home to Fort Jesus, an old portugese fort, and also home to many Arabs and Kenyans, Muslims, Christians and Hindus.

The market was shut our "helpful" guide informed us, but one of the streets we visited seemed more like a marketplace than a road anyway, with mamas in colourful kangas or kitengas or kikuyus selling fruit. These women look just like something off TV, some with babies wrapped in cloth and attached to their backs. The kids are absolutely gorgeous here, and have incredibly neat and funky hairstyles: often tiny little corn rows ending in pigtails, or braids.

After eventually ridding ourselves of our persitent guide and catching a matutu in the wrong direction, we caught one in the right direction to Kilifi where the boat's at anchor. The hour long drive was an adventure in itself over pothole after pothole after pothole. Occasionally you'll see workers mixiing mud to fill them; they're techincally unemployed but hope a grateful matutu driver will stop and pay them for their work.

This morning I woke up early. I'd slept on a couple of squabs out on deck under a mozzie net, and it was hot. In typical Banfield-Christmas-Day style mum and I rowed ashore for a cold shower in the boatyard bathroom and to wash our dirty laundry in plastic buckets with detergent because we'd lost our laundry powder.

Getting to church was a mish, and very much another Banfield-style adventure. Fenton rowed us to one side of the large "creek" where we walked along the beach to the ferry ramp where we'd arranged to meet the tuk-tuk driver, only to notice he was across the other side, at another ferry ramp. An enterprising local, however, offered us a ride in his canoe at an astronomical price, so, after a little bargaining, we jumped in and he rowed us across the strong current with his paddle made from a piece of plastic jammed in a stick.

And, of course, by the time we arrived on the other side the tuk-tuk driver was gone.

So we then spent a long time walking in search of a Methodist church, already a good twenty minutes or so late. Well, we never found that church but, just as I was suggesting we turn back and go search elsewhere for a service, I heard singing and we came across an AOG. Though the building was a little different - walls halfway up to the roof, and holes in the wall in place of windows and a door - it was much like church back home in its liveliness, with lots of clapping and joyful worship. Two shy little girls, Martha and Jen, eventually came and sat next to me, and I was sad to leave early to come to the club for lunch.

That's where I am now, and I feel it's the other end of the scale - one of those rich people's resorts, somehow apart from the outside world.

Got to go as net time's limited.