Kenya a second home to Swiss couple

By Philip Mwakio

For over 40 years, the couple has visited the Kenyan Coast every year for up to six months each time and have come to call the country their second home.

The first three months would see them jet in around January for a holiday that lasts until April. Come August, the couple packs up their travel bags and boards a flight to what has become known as their second home — the Kenyan Coast.

They started their first trip in 1964 with a stay at the then Two Fishes Hotel in the South Coast before moving over to the Whitesands Beach Hotel.

Meet Hans Meier (83) and his wife Alice (84) from Zurich, Switzerland have been married for 62 years. This shows that not all marriages in the West are short lived.

The beautiful sandy beaches, with ocean waves against the shores struck a chord in their hearts and every year for the last 45 years, Hans Meier and his wife Alice, have visited the Kenyan Coast spending up to six months during each visit.

"We had gone out shopping one day when we bumped into a larger-than-life poster depicting holidays in Kenya,’’ Alice said.

The beautiful sandy beaches, with ocean waves against the shores struck a chord in their hearts.

They immediately made reservations and booked their holiday to Kenya. It was a decision that marked the beginning of a love affair with a foreign land.

"We have never regretted our first encounter here and have deeply fallen in love with this beautiful country, which is like a second home to us,’’ she explains. Sunday Magazine caught up with the couple as they sun-bathed along the lawns of Plaza Beach Hotel along the Bamburi beach, north of Mombasa. According to the hotel’s Benson Kilonzo, the couple first came to the hotel in 2002 and have remained one of their most consistent clients ever since.

Social couple

"We have made it a tradition since then to assign deluxe room 215 to the Meiers whenever we have confirmation of their coming. It is their favourite room and we ensure we don’t disappoint them," he says.

The hotel’s reservations manager Chris Charo who speaks fluent German serves as an interpreter. He says the Meiers are down to earth and very social.

"They never complain openly even when they are wronged and have come to be part of the Plaza family." Yet their first contact with Africa was not Kenya but the idyllic Indian Ocean Island of Seychelles.

"We stayed in our hotel room and ventured out to walk along the beach and would hop into a boat to cruise to the other islands in Seychelles," he recalls.

Hans and Alice Meier enjoy the beauty of the Kenyan Coast at lawns of Plaza Beach Hotel. Photo: Maarufu Mohammed/Standard

However, when the opportunity to sample Kenya presented itself, Hans, who worked with the Post Office and his wife who was a secretary at an information bureau back in Switzerland, grabbed it and have never let go.

They say Kenya has so much to offer apart from the beaches.

"We have traversed the country side and seeing the wildlife roam in their natural habitat in one of the world’s largest conservation areas —the Tsavo — is one of the most beautiful things on earth.

It’s a little bit of a return to the Biblical Garden of Eden where everything was good and peaceful," Hans says.

"We have seen Kenya grow from its early independence days to the present. There was very little to write home about those days. The country has undergone a full metamorphosis as a nation," Hans attests.

It is pleasant to see Hans and Alice rise up early everyday and engage in exercises to keep fit. Yet many people their age require someone to assist them walk or use a walking stick.

By 6am they will be at the hotel’s beach for an hour’s swimming session.

After that, they will take a walk along the pristine white sandy beach before retreating to their hotel room to freshen up and get ready for breakfast.

Disregarded travel ban

"We love your seafood, chicken with fresh vegetable accompaniments . . . everything you serve here. Meal times are the best ever for us," Alice says.

Their love for Kenya was evident when they chose to visit early last year despite the post election violence rocking the country then and against caution by many Western nations against travelling to Kenya.

"We were not scared even though our own government and relatives persuaded us not to set foot here as they claimed the country was burning," Alice recalls.

Though no single tourist was the target of the violence that erupted after the disputed Presidential elections, overseas tour operations cancelled their travel contracts leading to massive decline of tourists visiting Kenya.

They laugh when they recall how travelling was in the past and how things have changed. Then, it would take up to 14 hours to fly from Europe to Mombasa.

"In one such journey, the pilot made us feel like we were never going to reach our destination after he took a longer route to reach Mombasa," Hans says in reference to an incident where the plane took off and flew to another destination within Europe before flying to Africa.

Top among the things that have left an impact on them in Kenya is the hospitality of the locals even in the face of hunger and abject poverty.

"To the locals, hospitality has nothing to do with what one has, it’s just something that easily flows," they say.

"These are very unique gifts that you people have and is not found in many other places. Please, never let go of this," he pleads.