"I have before seen other countries, in the same
manner,
give themselves to you when you are about to leave them…"
Isak Dinesen
Out
of Africa
It was good to get out of the city and into the country again. This time, Melawend and I were riding along the dry
plains that stretch from the Ngong Hills through to Mount Kilimanjaro to the southeast. Part of my hurry in finding a passage to India was
the coming of the rainy season – this was April 3 and the rains that would turn this
brown bristly land green were to have started at the end of March.
From time to time, we were riding near the railway that linked
Nairobi and points east with Mombasa on the coast. It
was built to serve foreign interests. The
export traders on the coast prospered on goods they gleaned from the hinterland including
rhino horn and gum Arabic. In the 19th
century, the West lust for ivory went orgasmic.
Europe set its sights on Africa.
In the 1880s, they divided it into European "spheres of interest",
with Kenya going to Britain. The British
government initially gave authority and right of exploitation to a private company, the
Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA). By
1887, the company men began moving inland along the coastal caravan routes. The interior was warring, tribal territories,
dominated by the wide-ranging armies of the Masai. As mentioned, on the slopes of the Aberdares,
were the Kikuyu, an agricultural people who impressed the whites with their
industriousness.
But the IBEA did not find enough resources to rule and develop
the country so, in 1895, the British Government took over responsibilities for the
territories that were to become Kenya and Uganda. They
decided to build the railway that Melawend and I were now dogging to the coast. Started in 1896 and finished in 1901, it ran from
Mombassa to Lake Victoria. It was built by
32,000 coolie laborers from Gujarat
and the Punjab in India. It was called the "Lunatic Line" and cost
more than 5 million pounds to build, an enormous sum in those days. So there was also enormous pressure to make the
line pay for itself – to carry freight. The
inland tribes of Kenya were not involved in cash economies or crops so it was decided to
bring in white settlers with promises of cheap land to farm or ranch along the line and
feed the line.
A steady influx of Europeans, mostly British, built up a modern
agricultural economy (as Kenya had few resources). But
the expropriation of mainly Kikuyu land led to alienation and bitter feelings between
whites and Africans, which erupted in the Mau Mau rebellion.
That culminated in independence in 1963.
The white community could say that it did lead Kenya to a more
diverse and competitive economy than in most other African countries under colonial rule. Growth was also attributable, in part, to a large
community of traders, artisans and professional people from what are now India and
Pakistan, who still contributed to Kenya's prosperity.
So far so good: no animals had charged out of the plain to make a
meal of me. But I was hungry. About 50 miles out of Nairobi, I wheeled Melawend
into the parking lot of a café and went inside. Simple
wooden chairs and tables stood between dirty white-painted walls. The only light came in from small windows, making
the place dim but restful. It seemed a popular
place for young locals. They hardly took
notice of me, though I was the only mzungu here. I ordered a bowl of rice and two mendazies (fried
Indian bread) from a young waiter who wore a striped T-shirt and blue shorts. In a corner was a jukebox. As I went to put in some coins, a guy in his late
teens came over to me.
"J-O is good," he said.
Since I had no idea what any of the selections sounded like, I
pushed the button for J-O (but I forgot to make
note of the title). The disc went down and
the room began to vibrate with fantastic African music that featured a lot of shouting,
talking and singing to a rhythmic beat that almost compelled you to move your body. I noticed that some customers and the other waiters
moved about with more spring in their step and some wagged their heads to the beat. Some knew the lyrics and sang along. I thanked my music advisor and sat down. He stayed by the machine because every once and a
while, the needle struck in a flaw in the record. He
would give the jukebox a backhanded bop to which even "the Fonz" might have
given double thumbs up and said, "Heeeey!"
(For those of you who don't
know, and those of us old enough to remember, this was the ultra-cool, leather-jacketed
Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli – played by Henry Winkler – in the 1974 to
1980 American TV series, Happy Days. Check it out. Haeeeey!)
About 10
miles further on, I stopped to take in the beauty of the other overflowing breast of
Mother Africa – Mount Kilimanjaro. You
were pulled here almost as much by the name as by its renowned majesty. At 19,344 feet (5,895 meters), you could go no
higher in Africa and still have your feet on the ground.
The broad flat snow-capped summit was actually the peaks of three volcanoes,
which were just three degrees south of the Equator.
It was perhaps 50 miles away from me, across a field of what looked
like coffee plants, across brown grasslands and the forest beyond, across the border in
Tanzania. I parked Melawend by the side of the road and stood on her seat to get the best
possible view over the foreground.
I ached to be
there. Rob had climbed it. (There were
several routes including the popular Marangu Route that almost any reasonably healthy and
fit person could climb, even without climbing experience – a person like me.) But even from this road, it was humbling to behold. Today, before the beginning of the rainy season, I
was blessed to see the broad flat summit, thrusting up higher than the surrounding clouds.
When I had
thought of Africa, I heard African drums (from old Hollywood movies), I envisioned awesome
wildlife, and I remembered, almost echoing, the exotic name of "Kilimanjaro." The local Chagga people called it Kilema Kyaro – "that which cannot be
conquered" or "that which makes a journey impossible". Now after actually seeing it, I thought, If I climb only one more mountain in my life, let it be
Kilimanjaro.
Photos - Melawend on the road entering Mombasa. Mount Kilimanjaro - taken
by standing on Melawend's seat - you see the flat snowy top of Kilimanjaro beyond the
savanah, towering amid the clouds just to the right of center above the distant hill.
Like the
permanence with which you carve your name into a rock, so had Hemingway left his indelible
mark on Kilimanjaro.
"..as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably
white in the sun, was the square top of Mount Kilimanjaro," wrote Hemingway in
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro".
During his first safari on the Serengeti Plain, Hemingway had
come down with a bad case of amoebic dysentery and had to be flown to Nairobi. He went via Arusha, which was just west of
Kilimanjaro. This gave him a fantastic view of
its squarish snow-capped peak, which was "unbelievably white in the afternoon."
In "A.D. in Africa: A Tanganyika Letter" he said that
he "became convinced that though an unbeliever I had been chosen as the one to bear
our Lord Buddha when he should be born again on earth."
(I thought
Hem's account of this experience was funny. As
I stood there on Melawend, gazing at white majesty of Kilimanjaro, I had no way of knowing
that in another land of magnificent mountains, I would also do battle with dysentery and
believe that I too had been so chosen...)
Hemingway was 34 years old when he was here on his first safari
– so was I. Though Hem had poor eyesight
and had to wear glasses while shooting, no one disputed his bravery in a hunt. Shortly after he returned home from the safari, he
wrote this dialogue:
"Why
are you always so pleased when you’re brave?" said Pauline, his second wife, who
was with him at the time.
"I don't know," Ernest said. "I'm just always pleased."
"It's cute," said Pauline. "But it's sort of silly."
"Look," said Ernest said, "The things that please
me are very simple things. Most of them have
to do with natural reflexes and co-ordination... Now shooting and all the things that are
made up of so many things to do and think at once all surrounding one central necessity
please me."
(Photo: Hemingway with kudu and oryx trophies, Kujungu Camp, Tanganyika, Feb.
1934. THIS PHOTO MAY NOT BE DOWNLOADED. It is used here with
the permission of the Department
of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library - Ernest Hemingway.)
Hemingway's stories often dealt with the complexities of
relationships between men and women and how men sometimes perceived that their women were
also their destroyers. In "Snows of Kilimanjaro",
Harry, who is dying of gangrene, initially blames his wealthy wife Helen for his decline
as a writer, then blames her wealth.
"…this good rich bitch, this kindly caretaker and
destroyer of his talent," says Harry.
In the next breath, however, Harry admits he destroyed his own
talent for not using it. He had been made too
comfortable and lethargic by her wealth, he thought.
But perhaps to underscore a lack of communication on the part of
Helen (though more likely on Harry's part as well) these were the last words between them:
"You know the only thing I've never lost is curiosity,"
he said to her.
"You've never lost anything.
You're the most complete man I've ever known."
"Christ," he said.
"How little a woman knows. What
is that? Your intuition?"
In "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (another
story set within an African hunting safari; a story that Hemingway considered one of his
best), Francis, a wealthy American, panics when a lion he has wounded charges and the
white hunter has to kill it. Francis' wife
sees this cowardice. It happens twice. He looses the respect of both the hunter and his
wife. Francis holds on to the confidence that
his wife won't leave him because of his wealth and her fading beauty, but, unrepentant,
his wife sleeps with the hunter. Francis
finally overcomes his fear by facing and shooting down a raging, wounded buffalo. This
gives Francis courage and the happiest moment of his life.
The hunter sees this change in Francis.
"Beggar had probably been afraid all his life." (The
hunter is thinking to himself.) …
"But over now. … Main thing a man had. Made
him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear."
But the buffalo is not dead.
It charges. Francis faces it and
fires fearlessly, but it still comes. It is
almost upon him as he prepares to fire once more. His
wife also shoots, but she hits Francis in the head. Accident
or not, Francis is destroyed by his woman.
But it was also true that Hemingway himself expected his woman to
"tag along and like it."
As I understood him, Hemingway was considered
"a man's man". I sense that there is
a slight suggestion in that expression of a man being a respected, independent man, a single man – a man that can stand on his own
without a woman. That was probably true of
Hemingway, yet the man was virtually never without a woman throughout his adult life. From the age of 22, until he killed himself at 62,
Hemingway had been married – four times.
Here is a breakdown:
1921 He
married Hadley Richardson.
1927 He
divorced Hadley Richardson and married Pauline Pfeiffer, a writer for Vogue.
1940 He
divorced Pauline Pfeiffer and married Martha Gelhorn, a writer.
1944 He
divorced Martha Gelhorn and married Mary Welsh, a correspondent for Time magazine.
1961 He blew
his own head off by tripping both triggers of a double-barrel shotgun, while still married
to Mary.
It seemed that Hemingway at least wanted, if not also needed, a
woman in his life. I thought that what quite
often helped to make a man a man was a woman. I
felt that the love of a woman helped to balance a man out.
And vice versa. If he was
"all-man", the right woman could bring out his gentler side; if he was a bit
weak, she could liberate his courage and manliness. Either
way, her love would help to strengthen his resolve in most any situation. And vice versa.
But was I also putting too many expectations on Her, and not
enough on myself? My reasoning said no because
I believed that love and marriage, particularly in this age, was like a gable roof –
where one side leaned equally on the other. It
was a complimentary balance of weakness and strengths, a mutual giving and taking. I wanted and needed Her, but I wanted to be leaned
on too.
(NOTE: In 1953, Hemingway came to still-colonial Nairobi
on the second of his two African safaris. In
1999, Scribner's published a Hemingway novel based on this
safari. The book, titled True at First Light, was released to coincide with Hemingway's 100th
birthday in July of 1999. Edited down by
half by his son Patrick, who was also on that safari for a time, it is drawn from the
850-page manuscript that Hemingway started shortly after he returned to his home in Cuba. In 1963, Mary Hemingway, Hem's fourth and last
wife, placed the bulk of Hemingway's papers, including this manuscript, with the Kennedy
Library.)
As I lost myself in staring at Kilimanjaro, I almost fell off
Melawend. It was time to move on.
The miles had been slipping by and I had not seen any wild animals.
(But this was also true of many wilder
areas of North America – and then you would see a large animal such as a deer or bear
cross the road, sometimes resulting in devasting accidents, so often fatal for the animal.) Then, about 70 miles before Voi, I spotted a small
troop of yellow baboons that was sitting in the sun-baked grass and thorn trees by the
other side of the road. I stopped to
photograph them. As my camera clicked, they
glared at me with their black faces. I knew
that they were strong and aggressive animals.
"…the baboons are destructive beasts and the Natives
detest them." Isak Dinesen had written
this in Out of Africa.
One of the big males glared at me and started to come my way. A big truck came along between us and gave me the
cover I needed to get on Melawend and get the hell out of there.
It had turned out to be a perfect day to travel: about 80
pleasant degrees, little wind and almost no traffic. I
stopped again just long enough to get out the tape recorder.
I did not want to stop and write down my observations every time I saw
something, nor leave them to memory. I could
ride with one hand and hold my cassette recorder with the other to keeps some notes along
the way. (I do not recommend doing this.) As I rode, I talked about Hemingway and Kilimanjaro
and about the time at the café with the African Fonzie. To my left, I noted that I had been traveling
parallel to a long escarpment, the face of the Yatta Plateau, several miles to the north. It ran roughly parallel to the road as far east as
I could see. I said aloud to the microphone:
"The terrain has been mostly scrub since Makindu."
I did risk one more stop because I beheld a hideous sight. It was fat and stuck up out of the ground about 30
feet high, and looked like an erect penis that had hideous roots jutting out of it,
especially from the head. This was a baobab
tree. It was bare of leaves and its
citron-like fruit, called monkey bread, which was supposed to be good for cool drinks. To about 10 feet up from the ground, the bark had
been stripped away, likely by elephants. This
gave me reason to believe I might not be alone for long here in this hilly area near Voi.
As Melawend and I continued on, I noted that the soil was a
bright rust color. The pavement was of a
secondary grade and it seemed to vibrate when a car passed.
I saw the gate for Tsavo National Park, where Mary the elephant
was now living. I thought, what the hell, I
might as well try to go in.
"You cannot bring dis scootah into the park," said the
gatekeeper, a rounded African with a graying moustache and an official brown cap. "It is not allowed. The animals, they may chase you and kill you."
I did not argue.
Finally, I saw a sign as Melawend and I rode up a gentle grade of
grassy hills toward a ridge with a few tall palms sweeping the sky. Beneath a Coat of Arms, it read: "Welcome to
Mombasa." Stores, houses and more palm
trees appeared.
I was glad that I had a copy of the International Youth Hostel
Handbook. It told me of the Kanamai Holiday
and Youth Centre on the coast at Kikambala, about 15 miles (25 km) north of Mombasa. As we rolled through outskirts of Mombassa I
found a sign for Kanamai Camping. The sun was
already getting low when Melawend and I rolled through the mainland part of the city and
over the Makupa Causeway, onto the five-square-mile coral island that bore the town of Old
Mombasa. There was no time to go exploring. We clipped through the northwest corner of the
city, got off the island via the New Nyali Bridge and headed north along the coast.
On the way, Melawend and I passed powdery buildings of the
Bamburi cement factory – the largest of its kind in Africa. The main material used was coral limestone, which
was under much of Kenya's coastal plain, up to four miles inland. Huge amounts had been quarried over the past 30
years and left an extensive depression. The
unsightly scar was considered by experts as too saline to rehabilitate. That is, until Swiss agronomist Rene Haller managed
to plant trees here. Within 20 years, there
was a timber-producing forest. There were also
meadows and a wildlife park. In the quarry
area, there were fish, a crocodile farm and an experimental banana plantation.
Just beyond Majengo Village, I saw a simple sign for Kanamai with
an arrow that pointed down a sandy road. About
two miles in, we came upon thatch-roofed buildings in a forest of palm trees that extended
right to a white sand beach. As Melawend and I
pulled up to the reception office a girl was coming out.
Her name was Linda and she was from Ottawa.
She had been in Lamu for four weeks, learning Swahili. She loved meeting Kenyans. She was off to the home of a local family to have
dinner with them.
I asked the girl at the desk if I could set up my
tent on the beach.
"No problem," she said.
It was full night when I began setting up the
Eureka! "Wind River" tent for the first time.
Fortunately, there was light from a meeting house nearby. There was another tent, which also looked new,
already set up on the beach so I put the Wind River about thirty feet away. The air was balmy, there was a gentle breeze off
the Indian Ocean and you could hear waves lap gently at the shore. In the light, you could just see the white edges of
the waves as they swept up over the sand.
The owner of the tent showed up around 10 p.m. I was sitting outside my tent and I said
"Hi," and introduced myself. Her name was Lisa and she was a junior accountant
from California. From the meeting house light,
I could see that she wore jeans and a loose short-sleeved top. She had long thick light-colored hair that waved
gently in the breeze. Her face was
fine-featured and she had full lips that formed a warm smile. She liked to study different cultures and wild
animals and for some time had a great interest in Kenya.
She also liked to take photographs.
We sat by a log up from the edge of the beach. She listened with rapt attention to tales of my
photo safaris around North America and about this journey.
Then she poured out her desires to see the world and try new things.
Conversation was easy and I did not want it to end. We talked until midnight. Sometimes we would shine my flashlight on Fiddler
crabs that were walking sideways along the beach. It
was such a mild evening that we got up and walked slowly along the beach, being careful
not to step on the crabs.
Lisa was single but she was trying to get over her fiancé
because he had cheated on her. They had
problems. She wanted children; he didn't. He liked his football and baseball games; she had
suppressed her desire to travel. He would
often be drunk and abusive. He had been a
fairly heavy drinker before they met. But when
he was sober, she said, he could always make her laugh.
She liked to read but seldom got the time.
Because she agreed that they could get season baseball tickets, he had
agreed to come to Kenya with her and another couple. But
then he confessed his infidelity. This was
last winter.
"I should have seen the writing on the wall," she said.
It was the old story. The
woman falls in love with the man because she thinks she can change him for the better. He gets what he wants out of her and hopes she will
never change.
She was wounded but she was also a survivor. And because the other couple was more her friends
than his, she had decided to come to Kenya with them anyway.
But just a week before they left, she had met a very nice guy who seemed to
enjoy exactly the same things that she had kept to herself for long time. Yet he had also seemed a bit domineering, she said. She didn't know what to do about him. And now she had wanted to get off by herself for a
while.
We got back to talking about cultures, wildlife, photography,
conservation and travel, and she brightened up. It
was wonderful to see her release her enthusiasms and desires. It did me good too.
The breeze was a bit stronger now.
Every once in a while we would hear the rustling thwack as a dead palm branch would fall and hit the
ground or a dull thud as a coconut fell to the sand.
I walked her back to her tent and said good night.
"Thanks Tom," she said. "This has been the most peaceful evening I've
had in a long time."
"I feel the same," I said.
When I awoke the next morning, Lisa was already up
and was sitting outside her tent.
"Good morning, Tom," she said. "Would you like some cereal?"
It was a beautiful sunny day and I could see how
pretty this place was. The grounds were of the
same white sand as the beach except that most of the brown dried-up droppings from the
palm trees had been cleaned away. It gave the
feeling that this forest was carpeted in white velvet.
The meeting house was all floor-to-roof round-top windows with white-painted
supports between them. The roof was thatch. There
was a long low cafeteria and dining hall nearby that had a concrete patio and faced the
beach. The wide beach, the ocean so gentle
today under a glorious bright sky... I thought, I
could live here!
And I could also see how pretty Lisa was. I imagined that dressed and made up for the office,
she turned a lot of heads. But here, roughing
it in Kenya, I saw a natural and unpretentious beauty about her. After we finished our cereal, Lisa and I looked at
each other's photos. She carried about 20
five-by-sevens in a small album. I had one
similar plus several eight-by-twelve's that were mounted to mat board. While my fortes were scenics, travel and mood
shots, hers were people and animals (close-ups that were taken mostly at zoos). Several of her photos were of older relatives. She had a fine way of capturing light so that it
brought out the detail time-etched details in elderly skin.
"You really have a talent, Lisa," I said.
"Oh, thanks," she said. "You know, I love accounting," she said. "I love it when I can take a difficult account
and get things to balance out. It really makes
my day. But I sometimes wonder if I've chosen
the right career."
We talked until about 9:00 a.m., when a different
girl came out from the reception office.
"You can't camp here," she said. "It is not allowed." She did not wait for a response but returned to the
office.
We began to pack up.
I got my tent down first. Lisa
left hers and came over.
"I've got to leave around 10:00," she
said. "It's already arranged for me to go
on day trip with my friends and some people we met in Nairobi who have rented a jeep. I'd ask you to come but there's barely going to be
room for me."
"I was planning to stay here and do some
writing," I said. "Thanks
anyway."
"So you will be here tonight?" she said.
"Yeah, I think I'll take one of the dorm
rooms," I said.
The place was almost deserted.
"Hold on a minute, Tom, I'll be right
back."
Lisa walked to the reception office and came back a
few minutes later.
"It's okay to camp on the beach," she
said. "Since you've already got your tent
down, why don't we share mine tonight? It
will save packing up two tents tomorrow."
About this time, teachers began to arrive at the
meeting house for a convention. With them was
Linda, the girl from Ottawa who had come out of the reception office when I first arrived. She sat nearby on the beach with some of the
teachers. She had a guitar and she floated on the breeze some beautiful ballads and a few
sweet Swahili songs. She had the gentle,
soothing voice of a folk singer. Sometimes the
teachers would join in, but mostly she sang alone to an appreciative audience. Soon, she went off with a small group of the
teachers.
Lisa's friends showed up shortly after that and she
was gone. Though my head was filling up with
possibilities with Lisa, I tried to keep a clear perspective.
She's on the
rebound and is already attracted to someone else. You're
on the rebound – don't get involved.
About a mile out from shore, you saw heavier seas
breaking gently over a reef. With the palm
trees and the white sands, you might have thought you were on an island in the South
Pacific. I put on my sneakers and wandered out
into the shallow water and soon I was walking on coral.
In amongst the coral, there were many black urchins and delicate green
plants anchored in the sand between the corals so that you had to be careful where you
stepped. I stumbled a few times trying to
avoid hurting anything down there, not always successfully.
It was such an exquisite and fragile world over which I was clumsily
trespassing.
Further out, dark-skinned men were standing on the
seaward edge of the reef, fishing.
The water was so warm and the weather so perfect
that I lost track of time as I wandered out to the high part of the reef and around again
through the shallows. It was breezy and the
sun shone down. By mid-afternoon, my skin
began to ache with sunburn. I went back to
shore and did my writing in the shade of the palm trees.
Lisa returned around 10:30 p.m. I had retired early to listen to the inspirational
music I had recorded back in Ridgeway. I awoke
as she came in and sat down quietly beside me. I
remained still and silent. The outdoor light
of the meeting house shone through the translucent walls of the tent, bathing Lisa in a
yellow glow. With her back to me, she quickly
slipped off her jeans, her top and her bra. She
slipped into a baggy T-shirt, lifted the cover and lay down on her side with her back to
me.
"Hi," I said. "Did you have a good time?"
"Sorry to wake you, Tom," she said.
"Yeah, it was fun."
I hesitated, not knowing what to do or what I was
truly feeling. But I slid in next to her and
spooned her body with mine. To my pleasant
surprise, she wriggled in closer to me, took my arm in her hand and wrapped it over the
top of her arms across her breasts. I gently
stoked the back of her hand and then her face for several minutes and she drew her back
tightly against my chest. This felt wonderful! So spiritually relaxing! So different than it had been with Audrey. I did not want to miss any of it by falling back to
sleep.
But it also bothered me. I tried to comprehend if the joy I felt in our
closeness came from Lisa or in larger measure from the pain of more than a year's
loneliness. Was I just feeling sorry for
myself? Had this closeness opened the
wound of an honest sorrow in me that had a depth I had not realized? So in getting this joy, was I "using"
Lisa?
"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,
the more joy you can contain." This was Kahlil Gibran in his book, The Prophet.
"You 're lonely, aren't you Tom," she
said.
How did she know?
I didn't know what I had done so wrong in my life, or to whom, that I should
have been lonely for so long. There had been
few gaps in my life where there had been no touching, no intimacy. One of those gaps had lasted for more than two
years. I was really getting tired of being
alone so much.
I did not say anything. I kept stroking her hand.
By the way she responded, I sensed that she had been
lonely too. Did she need and want me as much
as I did her? Gradually I drew my hand down,
then under her top.
"Not here, Tom.
I'm afraid someone might see us."
I eased my hand out and hugged her.
"Will you be staying in Mombasa long?" she
said.
"Probably a couple days," I said. I've got to try to talk with a ship's
captain."
"Maybe we could share a room in town tomorrow
night," she said.
The next morning after another breakfast by the
ocean, Lisa's friends showed up and took her away on another day trip. We had agreed to meet in a cheap hotel I had read
about in Lonely Planet's Africa on a Shoestring
– the Cosy Guest House.
Mombasa
was a name I associated with exotic places. It
had to go way back to old movies about Africa when characters said they were going to meet
in Mombasa. And it was true. The city and the whole coral coast of Kenya had had
a pretty exotic history.
Arab
traders founded Mombasa in the 8th century. It
was visited in the 1330s by Ibn Batuta (an Arab who was one of the world's all-time
greatest travelers). In 1498, the Portuguese
explorer Vasco da Gamma came here. The Portuguese took over in 1528. The Turks drove them out 50 years later but the
Portuguese retook it and built Fort Jesus. It
stayed Portuguese for a century before colonists were starved out by a siege force of
Omani Arabs. For next three generations, it
was occupied as an outpost of Islam, and eventually came under the sultans of Oman and
Zanzibar. Christianity was reintroduced in
1845 by two Protestant priests from Germany. At
same time, there was a one-man, preemptive British presence in Captain Owen. He was ordered off after a few months but the
British were back in force in 1873 under Sir Bartle Frere and put down the slave trade
through a treaty with Zanzibar. Freretown, a
settlement for freed slaves, was set up across from the old harbor in Mombassa.
The
British used gun-boat diplomacy. They wheeled
and dealed with the Zanzibar Sultan who was persuaded, in 1888, to cede the Kenya Coast to
the Protectorate of Her Britannic Majesty. For a time, Mombasa was the capital of the British
East Africa Protectorate. The British
stayed on, turned it into a resort, and built the railway that would change the course of
Kenyan history. They also deepened the harbour
of Kilindini. It became part of the newly
independent Kenya in 1963. Now Mombasa had a
population of nearly half a million, while it hosted about a quarter of a million tourists
a year.
Two
creeks, Tudor and Kilindini ("deep water") flanked the island, which provided
its natural harbors. Kilindini, on the
southwest side of the island, was now a modern deepwater harbor (the largest in East
Africa) and had docks, shipyards, and sugar and petroleum
refineries. Mombasa was the largest port on the northeast coast of Africa. Out of this port, they shipped tea, coffee,
pyrethrum, potash and concrete. And it was via
this port that I hoped to go out of Africa.
With
the uninhibited atmosphere of its strip clubs and sailors' bars, and casino, Mombasa was a
favorite port of call. I thought, Surely I will find my ship here.
As Melawend
and I motored through the city and onto the dual carriageway that was Moi Avenue, I saw
what was the traveler's cliché for Mombasa – two pairs of huge metal tusks. They were made of white-painted sections of steel
that formed crossed arches over the two double-lanes of the street. They had been built to commemorate Queen
Elizabeth's first visit in 1952 (It was a bit ironic that she became Queen of England
earlier that year when her father died while she was visiting Kenya. Nine years later, Britain would surrender its
colonial grip on the country.) I played the
tourist by taking a photo of Melawend parked at the base of the tusks in the cultivated
median, across from the office of Air France and a Wimpy (fast food) outlet.
Photo - for size reference, you can
just see the orange-covered load on Melawend as she is parked by the center median of the
road.
I found Cosy Guest House on Haile Selassie Avenue, a
busy main thoroughfare of painted, weathered hotels, shops and office buildings. Cosy Guest House occupied most of a five-story
concrete building that had been painted cream and white with rusty red solid-sided
balconies. Signs with the hotel name were
displayed haphazardly on a couple balconies, over the entrance and the entrance archway
itself, which was flanked by Coca Cola logos. A
few of the balconies were blackened, as if by fire. At
the dark simple registration desk near the entry, I hesitantly signed in for two guests
and was given room 9. I was allowed to park
Melawend inside a storage area near the reception desk.
Now that I was settled, I wondered: Will Lisa really show up?
The room had plain painted walls, a mirror and table, a ceiling
fan and two single beds. I went out and stood
on the balcony as the sun sank toward the skyline. I
looked up and down the wide street. At the end
of the street, to the northwest, I saw the railway station that marked the eastern
terminus of the railway that had opened up East Africa.
Across the street, young Kenyan men hung out in doorways.
Late in the afternoon, I looked directly below me and was
surprised to see a lovely-looking dark-skinned lady smiling up at me. Her lips were full and glistening red. She wore her long black hair up and I could see the
glint of long gold earrings. She wore a
crimson satiny dress that had a low neckline. From
my vantage point, I could not help but notice that she had large breasts and that she was
fingering her neckline to reveal even more of them. She
had high cheekbones and seductive eyes. Her
look was unmistakable, but as if to drive the point home to a naïve foreigner like me,
she motioned with a finger for me to come down. When
I did not respond, she used her finger and her eyes to ask if I wanted her to come up.
Men were still hanging out across the street. They were looking at me too and I could see by the
white of their teeth that they were smiling at what was going on. I looked at the girl and shook my head. She shrugged and walked away.
There had been a few moments in my life when loneliness had such
a grip on me that I considered using the services of a prostitute. After all, you paid to have your hair cut in order
that you would feel better about how you looked. So,
if you were at the sharpest edge of loneliness, and there was no one else around who
wanted to make love with you freely, why not pay a girl, a professional, to sooth your
aching spirit and give you undemanding physical pleasure?
It was an illusion that you paid for, but I thought it might serve as a
brace to help get me through the lowest of times. I
thought that this was one of the main reasons that prostitution was the world's oldest
profession. But my moral upbringing would
always shake me out of it and say, Wait for love.
Still, I had nothing against prostitutes. In some ways they actually seemed to provide a
vital service. I wondered how many suicides,
murders and rapes had been avoided because a skilled prostitute had eased an enraged or
troubled soul. (Of course, in so doing, they
also set themselves up as potential targets for violence.)
Perhaps, in their way, they had even saved or revived some marriages. So, in the long run, I thought society might
actually be better off for having them around. And
if that was the case, why not legitimize them, educate them, help keep them healthy, get
them off the streets and into respectable, albeit discreet, establishments.
But what did I really know about prostitution?
I knew that it was a fact of life here in Mombasa and that to
some extent, it was monitored. The girls were
given regular blood tests and had health cards they had to get stamped. Still, I learned later, that many of them had
tested positive for AIDS. And I had heard that
Mombasa was a favourite port of call for US Navy vessels.
AIDS was on the rise Africa.
But it seemed much of Africa was in denial. Only about 5,000 cases had been reported to the
World Health Organization (WHO) by 11 African governments, but some experts would estimate
that over 50,000 Africans had already died due to AIDS.
In Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire, the first known sample of AIDS-infected
blood was taken in 1959. It was estimated (in
1987) that 7% of the city's three million people were carrying the AIDS virus. The World
Health Organization (WHO) had recently predicted that AIDS in Africa will have claimed 5
million lives by the year 2,000.
(At this
writing in October 1998, that estimate has already been exceeded. An estimate by UNAIDS and WHO for the end of 1997
said that 20.8 million adults and children in the Sub-Saharan Africa were living with the
HIV/AIDS virus, and that the disease had created 7.8 million orphans. Globally, there were 30.6 million adults and
children living with the HIV/AIDS virus – including 5.8 million new infections in
1997 alone – while the total deaths from HIV/AIDS had reached 11.7 million. A July 1998 report said that 83 percent deaths from
HIV/AIDS world-wide came from Sub-Saharan Africa. )
Virtually anywhere I had been in Kenya, there were posters
advocating safe sex, including the safest sex – no sex.
Lisa showed up about a half an hour later. She had been hiking with her friends. We sat on the balcony. We talked more of our travels as we munched on
cookies and drank bottled water. We talked
with the ease of people who have known each other well for a long time. She looked at me softly and then she got up.
"I need to take a shower," she said.
She left to use the common bathroom and returned about fifteen
minutes later. Her hair was damp and tousled. I excused myself to also take a shower. When I returned, I saw that she had pushed the
single beds together. And she was lying under
a sheet she had spread across them.
"I'm tired," she said.
"Do you want to come to bed?"
I nodded. I stripped
down to my briefs and slid in next to her. We
lay on our sides facing each other, not saying anything.
We just looked into each other's eyes. Her
lips parted and her eyes seemed to be searching mine for some mutuality of need and desire
and trust.
"Tom, I know that I haven't been with anyone who had
AIDS," she said.
It was a statement that was also a question. It might have been careless, but somehow I felt
certain this was true about Lisa.
(At this
point, in 1987, AIDS was still considered to be a disease that was confined mostly to
homosexuals and drug addicts.)
"I know that I'm okay too," I said.
We relaxed and her look softened once more. At the same moment, we moved toward each other and
kissed softly. We put our arms around each
other and drew our bodies together. We kissed
and as we did, we ran our hands gently over each other.
We did this for some time. She
murmured how happy she was that I was so gentle with her.
We started slowly to slip off each other's remaining clothes. Then she startled me.
"To heck with it, I'm going to enjoy this!" she said.
She suddenly stood upright on her knees, whipped off her T-shirt
and went at me with a passion I had seldom known, limbs and hands and mouth moving every
which way. I joined in and let go of any
inhibitions. With sighs, laughter and happy
tears, we carried each other through a night that seemed to cleanse away each other's
unspoken pain.
In the morning, I awoke feeling relaxed. Lisa lay asleep in my arms for a time and then her
eyelids started to open. She gave me a lovely
sleepy smile. She aroused me and drew me in
once more. Then we cuddled. I wanted to stay like this through the day and into
the night. It felt so good, so right to wake
with such feelings.
"I really want to be married again," I said. It just came out like that. And I hugged her.
"Have you got anyone in mind?" she said.
"No, not yet." I
said, just as spontaneously. "What about
you?"
"I'm not sure what I want," she said. "I feel like I've been running away from my
life. But I feel better now about going home
to sort things out there. I know I can do
it."
I knew this would be our only time together. The moralist in me felt guilty for having made love
with someone with whom I was not in love. I
thought, How am I going to explain this to my
future wife? For now, I felt at peace with
myself. Lisa seemed to feel the same way. I sensed that there had been a great deal of mutual
compassion in our passion. We were stronger in
the places where things in our lives had wounded us. We
were two lonely, sensitive people who had taken a chance and braced each other. But that was it.
"Maybe we'll see each other again in California," she
said.
But she said it in that light non-committal way, like a
euphemistic goodbye. We just lay together
until it was time for her to go. Her friends
would be coming by to take her back to Nairobi. We
dressed and began to pack up, not saying much to each other.
It was awkward having shared not only intimacy and passion with someone, but
also an act of kindness of the most personal kind. It
was hard to let go of that despite knowing you had to.
We heard a honking from the street.
There was a rush to finish up, a quick hug and a kiss goodbye. There brief moment of intense eye contact, then she
left. I looked from and balcony as she got in
the Jeep. As they drove off, she looked back
and waved. And she was gone.
I thought, I'll never see
her again.
It was time to press on. I
went to the yacht club as Mike had suggested. I
went up to the bar where three men were drinking. One
had misty blue eyes and short graying hair and in his spotless attire, looked like the
owner of a yacht. The one in the middle
looked, in profile, like Hemingway in his late fifties with a white beard and unkempt hair
brushed forward.
The third man was British. He
had blue eyes, steaks of gray in his combed-back hair and he wore the dark pants, white
shirt and cap of an officer-seaman. He smiled
when I came in and nodded in greeting. I
introduced myself and he told me he was the captain of a ship that ran Europe to Singapore
and the Far East. I asked him if he knew if
there was a potential ship in port and if it might be possible to get a passage as a
workway.
"As a matter of fact, a ship out of Bombay has just come
in," he said. If it had been an old one,
there might have been a chance for a passenger cabin.
New ones don't have them. Maybe
if you had seaman's papers, but I think you're out of luck.
There are no workway passages anymore."
He cocked his head sideways. "Josh
here was the harbourmaster in Dar Es Salam. He'd
tell you the same thing."
Josh just shook his head, no, and continued to nurse his beer.
The man who looked like the owner of a yacht was not encouraging
either.
"Son, I have a Master's ticket and I would still have to get
the permission of the ship's owners."
A lean young man sitting alone at a table spoke out.
"There's no way," was all he said.
I went over The Missions to Seaman on Mogadishu Road. There was no one at the chaplain's office so I left
copies of articles about my journey and a note mentioning the need for onward passage and
that I would be back.
Already I felt this was going to be a repeat of Halifax. Discouraged, I retreated to Kanamai. On the way back, the visor on my helmet broke off. Back at the center, I had to take a dorm
room, M8, because the warden was here and he said that camping was not allowed on the
beach. I went out to the beach and sat by the
log where Lisa and I had talked. I felt
utterly alone. I caught up with my journals
and retired to my bed. But it was stifling in
the room that night.
I wandered over to the beach and went over to the long cafeteria
/ dining hall. In front of it was a raised
concrete patio that ran the length of the hall and faced the sea. On it there were only some long brown palm
branches. It was mild out but the breeze would
rise and fall, giving you a chill. I lay down
on the patio up against the wall below the first row if windows and placed a palm branch
over me to cut the breeze.
Ah, that's better.
There was an outdoor light that was on and my bed was hard but
the air and the atmosphere was much more pleasing than the sticky heat of the dorm. I slept restlessly.
Around 2:30 a.m. a night watchman came onto the patio. He was in his early twenties, I imagined. He looked around carefully and stood for a few
moments about fifteen feet from me. I kept
still. He looked right at me, or rather at the
palm branch. He left and I relaxed.
I awoke to raindrops falling on my face. The night sky was filled with ominous clouds. There was a strong cool wind. I threw back the branch and ran for the dorm,
reaching my door as the clouds burst. It
rained hard for an hour. The road would surely
be washed out, I thought. So I stayed for the
day and wrote in my journal, read from By-Line:
Ernest Hemingway, and thought for a long time about the road ahead.
(Winds
determine the seasons here. The northeasterly
kaskazi blows from October to March. This is
the warmer of the two monsoon seasons. The
hottest time is January and February. I was
here in early April, when the southeasterly kusi blows with a rainfall peak in May until
July. It is the stronger of the two winds, the
colder and the less comfortable - but like the climate, it stays mostly benign.)
The next day was overcast but I rode Melawend to Mombasa and went
back to The Missions to Seamen. This was an
Anglican organization that looked after the spiritual, moral and physical welfare of
seafarers of all races and beliefs. The
chaplains worked full time, visiting ships and making themselves available to discuss a
seafarer's problems. At the Missions to
Seaman's Club, seafarers could call home, get a meal, worship, talk with a chaplain, watch
TV, play pool, and so on. It was a charitable
organization that helped to support itself through accommodation and shop charges. Its symbol was a flying angel. And its theme was taken from the Book of
Revelations:
"Then I saw an angel flying in mid-heaven with an eternal
Gospel to proclaim to those on earth, to ever nation and tribe, language and
people…".
I met the chaplain, Reverend Colin Noyce, a kind and quiet-spoken
man who told me about The Mission. As for as
any help with onward passage, he said that they use to be able to cable ships in order to
help seamen hitch a ride, but no more. One of
his assistants did get a ride on a ship to Spain "not too long ago", but that
had been a special favour. He said I should
talk with a Mr. Andrick of Dodwell Shipping next door.
I met Mr. Andrick in his large tropical-style office. He was friendly and said that the agency that would
be handling the ship from Bombay would be The Shipping Corporation of India, and he gave
me the address. I went over the corporation's
offices and met the General Manager, a slight-built Indian about forty years old. He always smiled as he spoke.
"It is quite impossible," he said. "You see, there are not any extra cabins on
the ships and they do not take passengers."
I asked if I could have a pass to go and see the captain.
"No," he said, smiling.
I went back to The Missions to Seamen and had French fries and a
Coke in the club. There were three
rough-looking seamen having beers at a table and they spoke in German. I stuck a note for Reverend Noyce on his door
before I returned to Kanamai.
Kanamai became a haven for me, a place to remind me that when in
my life I had been refused, here I had been regained.
I wangled permission to set up my tent on the beach and spent the evening
admiring the ocean and the shore and the gently darkening sky. I missed Lisa's touch, but I felt peace of spirit. I did not even think of what lay ahead tomorrow
– my last shot at a passage to India by ship.
After a beautiful sunrise at Kanamai, I bid it adieu and made for
the gate at the Port of Mombassa, "the most modern port in Africa". I showed my portfolio to a policeman and a Customs
official and they were sufficiently impressed to let me in.
"You will have to leave your scootah by the gate here,"
the Customs man said.
I walked beside several ships at berth and beside huge cranes
that were on wheels which ran along tracks. The
ships were being loaded with lumber and bags of cement.
Between the cranes and the long steel-clad warehouse were huge stacks of
burlap bags that were piled against the buildings. There
were dirty skids, men driving trucks, and bare-backed men in shorts hoisting heavy white
bags into railway cars.
The image of these men with their glistening skin and bent backs
made me feel this could have been the scene out of colonial Africa – or America
– the daily work routine of slaves. And
it seemed to illustrate a White attitude toward Blacks: of keeping them uneducated,
powerless and without land; to give them strong backs and keep their minds weak.
Behind their backs: "What they don't know won't hurt
us."
At the far end of the harbour, I found the freighter, Imyish Mandin, out of Bombay. Steps rose from the pavement to the deck of the
ship – I just walked up like I worked on it.
"What do you want?" a guard said at the top of the
stairs.
"The captain," I said.
"He left for town five minutes ago," he said.
The Second Mate came by.
"I'd like to see the Chief Officer," I said.
(What did I
know about rank?)
I was shown to his office. He
seemed young, about thirty-five. He was
chubby, had green-gray eyes and he was friendly. Right
away, he offered me a seat and a drink of orange pop.
He was quite interested in my odyssey. Others
came in and I became the center of rapt attention. I thought, Hey, this looks hopeful!
"We hope you can come with us," said the Second Mate. "But first we must go and see the captain and
send a telex to the head office in Bombay."
"Where is the captain," I said.
"He is at the shipping office in town. We will take you there," he said.
We were driving back to the gate where I got on Melawend and they
caught a bus. I followed. Sure enough, there was Smiley, the General
Manager."
"As I told him earlier…" he said to my supportive
comrades.
"What about sending a telex," I said.
"Yes, let us send a telex," said one of the guys from
the ship.
"No," he said. He
was no longer smiling. "It will be a
waste of time. They will not allow it."
And that was the end of it, almost.
The captain was not there but my supporters described him for me. They wished me well and left. I sat in a large waiting room and the captain
showed up about fifteen minutes later. He was
50ish, round, with gray hair and a grandfatherly face.
He listened patiently.
"I am afraid they don't allow passengers," he said
simply.
I thanked him and left. But
I was stubborn and this let me be mad.
Damn it! If only he would have let me send a telex, let me
talk with them at headquarters…
I had tunnel vision. I
saw it only the way I wanted to see it, not from their position.
For the third time since I first came to Mombasa, I retreated to
the Pan Coffee House just to the left at the end of Haile Sellasie Avenue and had French
fries and a Coke. It put me in mind of good
old Maximes of Aswan. This time I felt
defeated. But with that came a sense of relief
– I would not have to plead with anyone here any more.
I got gas for Melawend and at around 11:00 a.m., we high-tailed it back to
Nairobi.
With a newfound ease of familiarity, the long run back up across
the plains to Nairobi was a pleasant journey. I
stopped long enough to photograph a herd of cows that were being led two small native boys
who were wearing shorts and T-shirts. As I
passed through villages, there were lots of waves and shouts of "Jambo!" from
men, women and children. I wish I had the time to stay and meet you, I
thought. There were no wild animals this time,
only the gentle sun on the low green-spotted hills, coming down as the afternoon wore on. I had no fear of riding out here.
I spoke to Melawend in my best Billy Crystal imitation.
"My dear, the way you're running is mah-vellous, simply mah-vellous."
The miles passed quickly. Though
I dreaded what people back at the Nairobi Youth Hostel might say when they saw me yet
again, I thought I might even see Lisa there. But
I had one major worry.
How in hell
am I going to get out of Africa?
It was bound to happen somewhere.
About five miles out of Nairobi, Melawend ran out of gas. I walked her about a mile to a gas station and made
it to the hostel by nightfall. I was welcomed
back almost like a celebrity by Festus Kathuo, a warden, and by David Mwaniky the senior
warden. The hostel was crowded but I settled
in quickly. With bread and butter, I ate the
can of corned beef that I had bought with Audrey in St. Catherine at Mount Sinai.
Lisa was not here.
I wrestled with possibilities and got busy. I went back to the High Commission and posted a
note advertising that I was looking for work. Cycle
Importers on Monrovia Street donated a new visor for a signed article and a handshake, but
they had no ideas where I might get a paying job. I
asked around for work.
At this time, an American girl named Julie came to the hostel. She had a dusty just-out-of-the-bush look with her
dirty blond hair and no make-up. But she had
bright eyes and fine features, and a nice figure. You
could see a pretty girl under a tom-boy appearance – vaguely like Princess Diana
might have looked after a rugged time in Africa. Julie
had just finished a long stint with the Peace Corps in Zaire where she worked with people
in villages on irrigation and fish-stocking work.
We spoke for hours. It
had been a long time since she spoken at length with anyone in English. (As Zaire use
to be a colony of Belgium – the Belgian Congo – the official language was still
French). Her eyes flared a little when she
spoke. She almost burst with conversation.
She joined me for a peanut butter sandwich in the Common Room. She spoke of her 125cc trail bike. She told me of having had a radio but lousy
reception; of getting books from Kinsasha, the capital, 100 miles away and reading by
kerosene lamp. She had worked in two villages
whose population totaled about 4,000 people. She
said she was treated royally, "like a Pope" as she represented the modern
outside world. They loved to talk with her and
that is how she spent most of her spare time because there was no TV. But visiting their kin in the city was a world
apart. There was little talk because a TV
would be on for four hours straight.
She would encourage her people to challenge her instructions and
ideas – to use their own creativity. But
she also sensed their reservation, having suffered long ago under Belgian domination, when
most of the fruits of their labors were taken away, when hands were cut off for not
meeting cotton quotas. She worked with them in
making fish ponds and irrigation projects, using crude home-made implements. Ponds were dug by hoe. Bamboo and exhaust pipes were used for irrigation
pipes. The people were always willing to work
long, hard hours, even men in their sixties.
I was becoming fond of Julie.
She was an unpretentious girl. She
had grit and spirit. She was a giving person,
an undemanding person. Her voice seemed a bit
hoarse, which may have come from so much talk here and there. But there was a soft genuine femininity under her
roughened exterior.
There was also an undercurrent in Julie. She was a hard worker with a strong will, but I
could tell she was hurting inside. This was
when she told me about a relationship she had had with a Zairian man, a "good
friend". She talked about the attitudes
of African men toward women. Men had carte
blanche to fool around, she said, and their women had to put up with it. Men treated women as their "possession". There would be no romance and little affection. Any shown was mainly for the "conquest". Once they had the girl, they took her for granted. Julie said all this with hurt and loneliness in her
eyes, her face and in her protective body language.
"You feel alone, like that," she said. "You need
a closeness."
We would talk often. She
treated me to a Tusker beer at the Fairview Hotel and we once shared breakfast at the
Thorn Tree café. And she loved the late
afternoon ride on Melawend around the outskirts of the city, and heading back into the
city under a beautiful sunset sky.
One day, her friend from Zaire had come to town and she went off
to meet him. From then on she seemed distant
and depressed and seemed to avoid any more outings with me (not unkindly). When the day came that she went to Lamu, shortly
before I was to leave Africa, we were standing in front of the hostel together as she was
headed for the bus stop. I reached out to take
her hand but we fell into a hug. She held so
tightly that it seemed more like a plea for help. And
then she kissed me.
"Are you going to be alr
