The King and Queen said goodbye to Kenya in local style – posing in a tuk-tuk used by commuters on the streets of Mombasa.
Charles and Camilla ended their first tour of a Commonwealth country since the King’s accession with a flurry of royal engagements in torrential rain, and outside the Kenyan city’s historic Fort Jesus they sat in the three-wheel vehicle.
In keeping with Charles’s belief in sustainability, the tuk-tuk was electric, and with the ministerial jet a few miles away the King quipped to the press flying on his plane: “Maybe we can use this to get to the airport.”
As the King and Queen posed in the tuk-tuk, Camilla was told the three-wheeler had a top speed of 60kph and she smiled.
And when the driver Eunice Karanja accidentally started the vehicle Charles threw up his hands and grinned.
Tuk-tuks, a reference to the sound of its petrol engine, are used widely across Kenya with trips usually costing less than a pound.
Charles and Camilla’s vehicle was immaculate and had been covered with a traditional Kenyan print design and “Great” branding, an international campaign to highlight the best of Britain
The royal couple were hampered by heavy downpours that turned streets into rivers and saw the King’s schedule rearranged, with a visit to a mosque brought forward before Friday prayers.
Earlier, the King told religious leaders working to promote peace on the Kenyan coastline how everyone is trying to find a path to the “divine”.
Charles sat down with the Coast Interfaith Council of Clerics (CICC) meeting at Mombasa Memorial Cathedral to hear how they have joined forces to tackle a range of issues in their communities in the Mombasa area.
For more than two decades, the CICC, whose members represent Christianity, Hindu, Muslim and African traditional faiths, has been working in the areas of peace-building, child protection, preventing and countering violent extremism, and public participation and governance.
After a female evangelical minister described how clerics from other faiths attended her ordination and blessed her, the King said: “We’re all trying to find the same path to the divine – sometimes by different routes.”
