Mombasa sparkles, smells with festive season’s rituals

The coastal city of Mombasa is sparkling with merriment as festive decorations go up and jingles and carols fill the air with joy and anticipation.

Wherever you go in the port county, nights flicker and dazzle with an array of decoration – mini string lights, wide-angle LED mini lights, large-bulb lights, animated, and colour-changing lights adorn the streets and key buildings, including favoured shopping malls.

Night aerial views of beach hotels overlooking the ocean are simply stunning, with lively Christmas trees flickering their neon lights irresistibly for visitors.

We are inching closer to the peak of December’s festive journey, which started about a fortnight ago with a series of age-old cake mixing traditions. The cake-mixing tradition, dating back to the 17th century and symbolising unity and hard work, involves soaking the mixture in alcoholic blends for days. The final mixture is then divided to make Christmas fruit Cakes.

Tantalising wonders
Once an intimate family affair, hotels now organise community cake-mixing ceremonies, open to all.

On beaches, elated visitors, families, and friends are coming in droves to immerse themselves in the therapeutic and tantalising wonders of the roaring ocean as they escape the baking hot day temperatures that characterise the city in December.

At the weekend, an electrifying beach football tournament organised by Coast-based journalists under the banner of Coast Media Football Club formed the icing on the cake for holidaymakers at the Nyali public beach.

Christened the “Shoreline Showdown”, the tournament was intended to sensitise the public to keep the environment clean and safe for sea life.

The Saturday event kicked off with a beach cleanup drive, led by Kenya Wildlife Service officers in the morning that saw more than 1.5 tonnes of waste collected. This was before members of the fourth estate and teams from various other organisations battled it out in sweat-draining football encounters next to the sprawling turquoise ocean as its waves break on the white sand beach.

Marine life
Coast Media FC chairman Francis Mtalaki noted that the sensitisation campaign against sea pollution was informed by the growing concern about plastic waste finding its way into the ocean and affecting marine life.

With visitors touring the Coast in large numbers for Christmas and New Year, the chair said: “As the media fraternity, we are happy to end our year here at the beach with this sensitisation campaign. We understand that visitors are coming.

“They are welcome but we are saying we must stop polluting the environment. In one way or the other we are all affected by pollution.

“So we must prevent plastic and harmful chemicals from entering the ocean and damaging marine habitats and wildlife… Marine ecosystems are being impacted by both the plastic and climate change crises.

“Contaminants are making wildlife much less resilient to the impacts of climate change, which in turn is making wildlife more vulnerable to the effects of contaminants.”

Similar sentiments were echoed by Musa Mbira, director of Kadmus Freight logistics, one of the sponsors of the event, who said: “We are urging residents and visitors, please let us stop polluting the beaches because this is what we need for our livelihoods here.”

Regarding security in Mombasa during the festive season, County Police Commander Peter Kimani assured visitors that ample measures have been put in place.
He said at the Jomo Kenyatta Public Beach – popularly known as Pirates Beach, where a huge crowd of visitors is expected – there will be a help desk to handle the concerns visitors might raise.

“Visitors have nothing to fear, because we have put all the necessary measures in place to strengthen security. Today, all the gender desk officers stationed within the beach stations are having an orientation,” he said.

“In the last festive season, we heard cases where children were separated from their guardians after a beach visit. This time round I want to urge parents to take care of their children, but we will have a help desk where they will be able to report.”

Kimani warned those planning anything sinister that undercover officers had been dispatched to monitor activities on beaches throughout the festive season.

The the shoreline, he said, will be under 24-surveillance by officers on patrol boats from the Kenya Coast Guards and KWS.

“You will find someone looking and acting like a beach operator but he might be an undercover officer. So don’t make a mistake of violating the laws of the land. You will be in hot soup,” he warned.