Watamu Marine Park

It's not scuba diving, but I did get a chance to go snorkeling today, at Watamu Marine Park (like Malindi Marine Park, it's a national park run by the Kenya Wildlife Service). The situation was pretty much the same as Malindi Marine Park, only this time, I knew we were going snorkeling and I was prepared with my swim suit :)

It was me, Jeremy, his two sons, and two of the clinical officer interns from the hospital who went. Jeremy's sons (who are, I think, five and seven) stayed in the boat, Jeremy and I went snorkeling, and each of the interns went for a few minutes. Learning how to swim isn't a big priority in Kenya, even for those who grew up along the coast. Kids are told not to go to the beach, because bad things happen at the beach (which was pretty much the same story I got during my security briefs before coming to Kenya) and that the water is vicious or evil or some such thing. So Jeremy didn't learn how to swim until he was in college (and this was only his second time snorkeling, the first being with one of my tropical medicine classmates when she was here in May), and neither of the interns was that confident in the water, either.

I had a great time, though, and was probably in the water for an hour and a half :) We bought loaves of bread to feed to the fish, so they were all around us. I decided to try to pet one, then decided to try to catch one (they're fast little things, those fish). I did succeed in catching one, but I think I was more surprised by that than it was, and I immediately let it go. The boat captain was laughing at me and said I could keep one if I caught it, but then I couldn't manage to get another.

After snorkeling was a (very) late lunch, still down in Watamu, then we hung out at the beach for a bit before heading back. Since then, I've been living my very difficult life: I hung out on my balcony and read a book on my iPad :) Tomorrow, though, I will have to go to work, to begin my last two weeks in Kenya. Those last two weeks will be with the public health office, though, so it should go better than the wards.