A Day at the Beach

Although it may not look it, this is a picture of a very happy small boy. I know, because it's me, aged perhaps six, and I'm holding my precious inflated inner tube in which I love to sit and paddle myself around just off the beach. In my left hand there's a ball, the idea being that I throw the ball and then paddle like mad to collect it.

I'm at the Swimming Club, which is on the north side of Mombasa's Old Port, the historic harbour into which the great dhows from the Persian Gulf arrive in November and depart in April. There are no dhows so, the picture was taken in the months in between.

The Club looks across the harbour to Mombasa's Old Town, its buildings crowded along the waterfront. To the left is Fort Jesus, the great castle which dominates the harbour. Built by the Portuguese, it changed hands several times in wars with the local Arabs, conflicts which gave Mombasa the name Mvita, the island of war.

I loved the Swimming Club. It had a sandy beach on which to build castles and dams, interesting things. were washed up along the tideline, and there was enough in the water just off the beach to make snorkelling fun. Even getting to the Swimming Club was an adventure, because we were rowed across the harbour from the Old Town in a water taxi, having ridden down to the jetty with Mum on our bikes. That was one of the best things about our Mum - she loved packing a picnic and taking us to the beach. Mum did have her down-sides as well: being a Scot, she was very careful with her money, so, for example, our swimming costumes weren't the most fashionable.

I look at this picture and remember those early years in Mombasa as very happy ones; and then look at the small boy and grieve for the tsunami which will engulf him in a couple of years' time, when he'll be packed off to boarding school in England.