Enjoying a Swahili breakfast at the Sarova Stanley Hotel

Columnist

‘I hope you’re not going to have your usual bacon and eggs,’ Lut said with a laugh.

‘No, I’m here for the Swahili breakfast, and I’m looking forward to it!’

My first visit there was in the autumn of 1967, to have a coffee in the Thorn Tree Café. If it could speak, the Thorn Tree could tell some good stories. In my first years in Kenya, the actual thorn tree growing in its centre was a kind of post-office, or you could say it was acting as Facebook or WhatsApp do today. People, mainly young European tourists, would pin their messages on the tree. ‘Fred, I will be back right here on Monday, and I hope to see you for a sundowner at 6 o’clock.’ ‘Muriel, it was so good to meet you. I will write when I am back in New York.’ That sort of thing. There’s no tree there now; Isaac, the restaurant manager, told me that the last replacement refused to grow. A message board is still there, but the many notices pinned on it are now rather like the entries you get in a hotel’s guestbook.

Enjoying a Swahili breakfast at the Sarova Stanley Hotel

In the headlines

Dutchman, Kenyan woman clash over Sh2.2m ‘love’ gift ends in court

Court saves taxpayers Sh120bn in Moi-era supplier claim

Why tap water is turning green in homes around Lake Victoria

PREMIUM I enjoyed Vietnamese street food in Nairobi

PREMIUM Visiting the most visited museum in the world

PREMIUM Dutchman, Kenyan woman clash over Sh2.2m ‘love’ gift ends in court

PREMIUM Court saves taxpayers Sh120bn in Moi-era supplier claim

PREMIUM Why tap water is turning green in homes around Lake Victoria

I enjoyed Vietnamese street food in Nairobi

Visiting the most visited museum in the world

Dutchman, Kenyan woman clash over Sh2.2m ‘love’ gift ends in court

Court saves taxpayers Sh120bn in Moi-era supplier claim

Why tap water is turning green in homes around Lake Victoria