Vagabond

by Mogoatlhe, Lerato

  Ready to check in at last, I walk past the bar and some chalets to the office, where the manager, Uncle Thomas, has only one rule for guests: ‘Have fun and feel free to ask for whatever you need.’ I’m at the Loft. It’s a six-bed dormitory with bamboo walls that come up to the waist. The beds are sleeping sponges in boxes that have been sectioned-out with planks. Mine is the third from the space that constitutes our invisible door. The rest of the décor consists of mosquito nets, and six wooden boxes we lock our stuff in. I can’t sleep – nothing new there – but for once it’s because the open wall helps the breeze carry the sound of the waves to me. I’m from Mabopane in the north of Tshwane. Back home, every effect of apartheid’s housing policies is still intact, especially the lack of scenery. I feel like a tropical queen, and I’m paying less than R100 for the pleasure.

  Monday: The fishermen are the first to start the day, just before dawn, when they hum and chant slowly as they push their boats out to sea. It sounds like spiritual music. The beach falls silent again until before sunrise. The area in front of Patrick and Paul’s gallery has been swept, and their shop is ready for business. ‘Daybreak Africa,’ Patrick says when the sun finally peeks out through the clouds. I go back to my bed and sleep until mid-morning, when I take my shower. The one I use stands alone, behind some rooms. It’s open-air, with high bamboo walls and a bamboo door and requires drawing water from a well. I wind down the lever so the bucket can get to the bottom and pull it back up and I feel like I’m walking on air: I love turning previously new or weird experiences into comfort zones.

  By mid-morning all shops on the beach are open. The stalls at Big Milly’s have been laid out with beads, hats and crafts. Week days have a slow pace. People who aren’t at school are at work, or hustling for work. Every third guy I meet seems to be Kofi or Kwame. ‘What’s up with that?’ I ask Kwame number five. The Akan people name their children after the day on which they are born. Monday’s sons are Kodjo, and daughters Adowa. Tuesday has Kwabena and Abena. Those born on Wednesday are Kwaku and Aku. Nana-Yao and Nan-Yaa are born on Thursday. Friday’s children are Kofi and Efua, and the weekenders are Kwame and Ama on Saturday, Kwasi and Akosua on Sunday.

  I’m Efua the beach bum in the morning, hanging out at Father Ben’s bar. He sells packets of gin and sodas from a small shack that can’t take in more than two people at a time. Drinks are served on a counter that has two stools. The drinks are cheap, the company of guys who have shops here great and the view of the sea fantastic. All the men here have dreadlocks. Most importantly, the men’s dark bodies ripple with muscles that have been honed by a lifetime of pushing boats and pulling nets swollen with fish, arms chiselled by carving wood and playing djembes, legs made sinuous by soccer. These sculpted bodies also come from pumping iron and doing push-ups against one of the logs on the beach. They give Kokrobite an oversexed vibe that makes holiday flings part of the experience.

  I order a black coffee with two sugars and take this moment in. A woman walks across the beach carrying a tray of fish on her head by balancing it on a cloth that’s been twisted into a flat bun. A girl comes over to sell sugar cane and boiled groundnut. Life is sweet and the living easy. We call it ‘irie’ on this side of the beach. There’s always a fat joint going around and hiplife playing on someone’s cellphone.

  Tuesday: Hell has broken loose. Calamity of Nollywood proportions has befallen me – there’s a python on the loose. I live in a glorified bamboo hut. Who the hell loses a freaking python? Francis just looks at me and smiles. ‘Don’t worry. It probably went home.’ Yeah-bloody-right.

  Rewind to a few hours ago, in the mid-afternoon, when Francis is napping on the hammock with his pet baby python, Princess, coiled around his leg, he says. Next thing he knows, he wakes up in the early evening to realise that his python is missing.

  ‘No need to worry,’ Uncle Thomas says when I ask him to move me to a chalet until Princess is found. ‘We know her, and she has never harmed anyone.’

  Wednesday: Francis wants me to come over to his place for lunch to see how friendly his favourite pet is. Not even in his wildest dreams am I hanging out at a house that has a python. I repeat my daily routine of hanging out at the beach with my crew of boys named after days of the week, listening to Blakk Rasta’s ode to Barack Obama’s impending election as America’s first black president, and Bob Marley. When I get bored of the beach I move to the bar. A boy I’ve never seen is at the top of the coconut tree, throwing some to his friend on the ground. As usual, Trinity, the bubbly three-year-old whose mom sells cloth and beads at Big Milly’s, is giggling and running around the bar. She calls me ‘Sister Lee’.

  Thursday: She jumps out of the cab as soon as it stops next to the overland truck, running to the bar with outstretched arms. ‘Hakuna matata,’ she shrieks. Noah plays the song; Helen throws her hands in the air, her feet rising and falling, like Ladysmith Black Mambazo without the rhythm. It’s a good thing I can stop myself from laughing out loud. Noah repeats ‘Hakuna Matata’ until Helen pushes her hands upwards, occasionally wiping the sweat off her face with the back of her hand. ‘It’s good to be back,’ she tells me before I ask. She’s a Brit who lives and works in Nigeria. She used to live in Accra, where she found her much younger husband. They come to Kokrobite for a holiday every year. Helen always announces her arrival by dancing to ‘Hakuna Matata’ from The Lion King.

  Big Milly’s bar is definitely the place to be from 4pm on Fridays, when the curio tables are laid out around the entrance and around the bar. The stage, beneath the Loft, has speakers in every corner. The weekenders arrive in cars and cabs and only check into their rooms after a few drinks. Weekends are a full house at the Loft. The beach turns into a market that also sells bikinis and Bob Marley sarongs, along with drums and paintings of sunsets and coconut trees. When night falls, everyone goes to Big Milly’s bar for live entertainment. Francis jumps around the yard leading a troupe of dancers and flame throwers. Their act is followed by live drummers.

  The bar is full, like it will be on Saturday night for the weekly reggae night, when the stage is decorated with neon lights, and a band performs reggae hits that always include Bob Marley and Lucky Dube’s music. There’s a white poster at one of the beach shops that says ‘Rastafari keep fit Sundays’. The theme plays out in a game of beach soccer with the weekenders. The teams are mixed, but the boys are all different shapes and sizes of the hottest bodies I’ve ever laid my eyes on. They strip into swimming trunks for a cooling dip in the sea after the game.

  I’m on my way to take a shower when MD, at his usual Sunday afternoon position at the bar, which keeps his all-seeing eyes on everyone’s movements, calls me over. ‘Lee, I want you to meet my friend.’ His friend, Shola, is in navy-blue dad jeans and a white high-collar shirt. His skin is dark and beautiful. He’s forty-seven, Nigerian and flirtatious.

  ‘MD tells me that you are travelling around Africa?’ he says.

  ‘Hardly, Ghana is number four.’

  MD takes over the introductions. He’s been to twenty countries in Africa. He has lived my dream.

  ‘Can I offer you a drink?’ Shola quips.

  ‘I drink Star, but you’re buying, so South African wine please.’ The wine menu has a choice between two South Africans wines, both bottled for Tall Horse.

  We move our flirting session to Accra, where he takes me to dinner in Osu. I don’t have cute clothes and I’ve been out of my red lip gloss for a month; I can only hope my cleavage will distract Olushola from looking above my chest. We get a cab to Osu with MD, who is still committed to his role as a wingman. I have been missing Joburg and my fabulous, sponsored lifestyle as an entertainment journalist. I want sushi, I want champagne and cocktails, and for Shola to pay for it all.

  Monsoon is a Japanese restaurant that overlooks Oxford Street in Osu. Unfortunately, it doesn’t open on Sundays, so we go up the road to Frankie’s. It’s a burger and chips joint on the ground floor, with a more formal set-up on the first floor. I order
prawns and salad and a Long Island iced tea. MD leaves after one drink.

  Shola brings out his West African male charm; removing the shells from the prawns before putting them in my mouth. I’m not completely shocked when I feel a moistness between my thighs. I am, however, floored to discover the drops of blood when I wipe up after peeing. My period is going to be here any minute now. Meanwhile, I need to get laid; now that I think about it, my body needs it. I have to go back to Kokrobite, to get my boxes of Lil-Lets tampons. ‘I’m sure we can find them at any pharmacy,’ Shola says, setting us off on a joyride around Osu and Cantonments, where we stop at every pharmacy that’s still open. He insists on leaving me in the car, from where I watch him forming circles with his thumb and index finger, putting his free index finger in the hole, pulling it out, pushing it in, and so on. We finally find a box of Tampax, and head over to his hotel; he wants to shower before our first night out together.

  We go to a club that only opens on Sunday nights, arriving just after 11pm. Other than the shining black tiles, dim blue lights and massive couches in the VIP area, another thing I notice is how empty it is. 11pm is too early to be here.

  I lead us to a corner couch, he orders champagne, we quaff and talk until the night starts, and getting to the loo means squeezing myself between people. I have not partied in West Africa since my first time in Accra in 2006. Back then, I was too stuck to the stripper’s pole to notice that people don’t buy alcohol in single units of shots. If you’re drinking a Smirnoff Storm you buy a six pack, if you want a double shot of something you buy the whole bottle. This I discover when the waiter brings another bottle of champagne with a bottle of Belvedere vodka, to make something Shola calls a Sex Bomb.

  ‘Just as well, seeing as there can’t be sex tonight,’ I coo.

  The last time I had vodka I woke up with my dreadlocks on my bed stand. The Belvedere is passed to the group of girls next to us. Well after midnight, the club is on fire; the crowd buzzing on bottles of Moët and Hennessy dashed with Red Bull. Girl squads are decked in minis that fit like a second skin, their high-heeled legs commanding attention. I feel plain in my old green dress and yellow pumps that are starting to fall apart from trodding Kokrobite’s stony paths.

  I sit in the corner boring the hell out of my date, whose groin is currently rubbing up on the girl shaking her bum against him. P-Square’s ‘Do Me’ has turned the club into something like a sex party.

  I make a note to buy new shoes, seeing as Shola and I are definitely becoming an item. I love flings that move fast: We’re on holiday, we’re horny and into each other – of course we are going to end up in bed. We spend the night at his hotel in Cantonments.

  The first thing Noah says when I arrive back at Big Milly’s is that Shola has already called three times. I don’t have a phone. I make calls on Friday afternoons when I go to the internet café to check emails. I decide to make him wait until then. Not Olushola. He’s back that very night with my best friends Moët & Chandon.

  I join many tourists around West Africa’s coast whose tropical life is fuelled by lots of sex. There are couples in real relationships, but in Kokrobite sex is a sport. Over time, I become the team captain, and go on a sex spree that leaves several people angry at me for playing them. But first, Shola. I enjoy his mind and listening to his wild stories about life in Lagos and California. And while I love the champagne lifestyle that comes with dating him, I don’t like that he wants to upgrade me from the Loft to a private chalet or how irritable he gets when my buddies hug me. We’re on the deck at Monsoon with MD and Malcolm one afternoon when Shola sends Malcolm to the coffee shop below, where there’s a stall with cell phones. He has had enough of only reaching me via the phone at Big Milly’s.

  I like Shola for fun and for practical reasons like getting me a phone – now I will be able to talk to my next fling, Eliasu, whenever I want to. I met him back in my YWCA days but my fever cancelled our date. Seeing him in Kokrobite a few weeks later puts him back on my radar. I keep Shola for our champagne lifestyle, and play with Eliasu for his woolly locks, taut ass and great sex.

  Things get weird between Shola and me when he goes to Dakar and Abidjan for business. He wants me to move into his hotel while he’s gone, so his usual cab driver can take me to the places we always go. My list of travel rules has three items: Arrive with no expectations, leave with nothing that doesn’t fit into a bag, and always use a condom.

  Shola’s business trip is my moment to pay some attention to Eliasu, more so as I will be moving to Cape Coast, his home town, when I leave Kokrobite. I don’t want my other lover’s driver’s eyes on me, so I decline Shola’s offer and remain in the village where I pass time with my occasional shag, Kodjo. Life in Kokrobite doesn’t change. The waves are still my night song. Fishermen wake me up before dawn with their chants. I hang out at the beach, read, nap, eat, visit Kodjo and his friends most week nights, and have vodka-soaked parties on Fridays and Saturdays. One Sunday, two guys I’ve seen around ask me to join them for a joint on one of the verandas at Big Milly. The one closest to the entrance shifts to make space for me on the cushion. He moves something that looks like a round snakeskin bag.

  ‘What’s that?’ I’m still at the entrance.

  ‘Just my snake,’ he says.

  ‘What the fuck, man? What is it with you guys and the damn pythons? Call me when you’re aren’t playing with snakes.’ I’m scared of snakes and the only reason I put Princess around my neck at the Reggae party and asked people if they liked my scarf is because vodka makes me do crazy things.

  October 2008

  I’m on the balcony at the internet café to send work emails when my mom calls. My body starts feeling weird and her words are suddenly annoying. ‘Mom, please stop talking.’ I hang up before she can respond and lean against the wall. A sharp, stabbing headache flashes across my head. My ears are hot, but my arms are covered in goose bumps. My knees burn with pain, like something is hacking my bones.

  I’m with Kwame, the sixteen-year-old boy who has been following me around from when we met on my first day at Big Milly’s. He’s a sweet kid who likes Blakk Rasta and soccer, and I’ve got used to him being my shadow. He carries my laptop and walks ahead of me. The plastic bag I’m carrying has my lunch – a rice and bean dish called waakye, egusi and fried fish. Walking to and from the internet café, between the palm trees, usually puts me in a sentimental mood, when I talk to myself silently about how good it feels to be here – in Kokrobite, in Ghana; West Africa. Not this afternoon.

  At Big Milly’s, the bar staff are setting the scene for the Friday-night party. Speakers have made it from storage to stage, waiting for sunset, and people hang around at the bar. I unlock the wooden box with my things to take out my medical bag and the malaria test kit in it.

  The bag is still on top of the box, with the plastic bag containing my food, when I wake up on the Saturday morning. I don’t wait for the two stripes to appear on my test kit before taking out a box of my malaria treatment. I knew it was malaria from the moment it hit me, during the phone call with my mom. It’s the kind of pain and sensation that I’ve never had before: Weak, dizzy, disoriented and more painful than period pains. Kwame is at the bar waiting for me to wake up. When I tell him what I have, he tells me to drink lots of water. ‘You’re going to vomit a lot.’ I spend most of Saturday with my head hanging outside the Loft, spewing thick yellow goo.

  My head feels hot, my body swings between being so heavy I can’t even move my lips, and so light it feels like I’m floating. While everyone is jamming to reggae, I dream about shadows trying to pull me from the bed, and technicolour spider webs. I have short spells of hot flushes punctuated with cold shivers that run up and down my back. My bedsheets are drenched in sweat. And so goes my first experience of malaria. It makes Shola even more convinced that we need to shack-up at his hotel. He’s hardly in Accra for more than a few days at a time, so I put my cards on the table: This is just a shag. I’m not in West Africa looking fo
r a true romance story.

  When I’m back to normal after four days in bed, I get a minibus to Elmina and Cape Coast, where I visit the former slave castles – trips that fail to make me sad or put me in a reflective mood about history. If anything, I get annoyed whenever a guide takes us to the Door of No Return, saying how blessed we are because, unlike our ancestors, we can make our way back through the door. The biggest sham I know is saying never again, and crying over slavery when millions of Africans live in abject poverty. I go on these visits because I feel compelled to, not because I want to.

  So, it’s with great pleasure that I pack my bags for Takoradi to look for transport to Ivory Coast. I arrive just before sunset, opting to rather look for the first taxi out of town than wait another day for a bus. The taxi I get claims to be leaving ‘any moment now’. As if.

  I’m too cheap to get a hotel room I’ll only use for a few hours. Besides, this is Ghana. There’s always music blaring hiplife from dusk until dawn. I leave my bags inside the taxi and follow a guitar riff to a chop bar across the road from the taxi rank. There are several other chop bars next to where I’m sitting. Patrons sit on plastic chairs and down bottles of Star beer. As always, Lucky Dube plays from one of them. It’s my cue to dance my heart out and catch someone’s, anyone’s, attention. Giving people something they can talk to me about is one of the tricks I use to make friends.

  A group of four male friends invite me to their table and, later, to one guy’s house.

  I start feeling uncomfortable when we leave the main road and go into a dark alley. I don’t mind strangers, but I must always be in a position to walk back to wherever I need to go.

  ‘I have to turn back,’ I say.

  ‘Are you feeling uncomfortable?’ one of them asks. He doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘I understand, but let me tell you something, my sister. You need to relax a bit. This is not South Africa. We are not going to rape you.’