Wake Up and Smell the Shit

by Kirsten Koza

  Was it the humidity of the July heat, the aroma of the town, or the scent of the tropics that made Lamu unique? Was it the brilliance of the midday sky crying out for a nap, or the glare of the whitewashed stone houses, the strong winds blowing off the ocean rustling the makuti roofs that looked so enchanting? Or maybe it was the Portugese cannons perfectly aligned on the waterfront, the absence of automobiles, or the narrowness of the streets, the romantic architecture of galleries and harem rooms of the Patrician Stone Houses that all came together in splendiferous precision. I thought to myself, “John Logic, you are going to get sooo lucky when I get home.”

  One of the men began to sing aloud, his chaste voice wrestling against the wind but thankfully winning out for my private concert.

  “What is that?” I asked. My God, the haunting tune brought tears to my eyes.

  “It’s a love song from Zanzibar,” he said.

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to remember the melody and certainly none of the Swahili lyrics, but at that moment it became the song of my life, the song I’d traveled so far to hear. Its significance moved me. Jeez, no wonder hippies flocked here in droves.

  Suddenly, my body lurched forward and ricocheted against the bottom with a thud. My satchel and precious khanga also went flying off the seat, as the captain, clinging to the mast pole, turned and laughingly stated, “Please, do not worry. All will be well.”

  The boat had stopped moving, which seemed altogether surreal. I looked back and saw yards of rippling foam had left white skid marks behind us.

  For the crew, this was business as usual, but for me, a freak sandbar incident was not funny or in any way part of the package. My plane was set to leave in less than an hour, and the windless launch had already postponed the timeframe allotted for my cruise. We were far from shore, and the only other dhows we’d passed were long out of sight.

  While watching the guys, for what seemed like days, try to free the boat, I remembered this little game in elementary school I loved to play, where I’d spin the globe on my teacher’s desk and stop the turning sphere abruptly with my index finger and declare, “THIS is where I am going to end up someday.” Of course nine out of ten times I’d land smack in the middle of the “blue part” and demand a do-over in hopes of landing on a cool “green part.” This was kind of like that, only there wasn’t a plastic orb handy for one more whirl. No, it was just me and a couple of African dudes in loincloths stranded somewhere south of the equator—shipwrecked—alone on the Indian Ocean.

  I reckoned this was some kind of payback for my bratty behavior. If only I’d told Hans where I was going, then maybe I wouldn’t be in a situation where I was about to be “knocked upside the head” which is yet another one of my mother’s charming sayings.

  The men jumped over the side and swam toward the islet. With all their might, they grabbed onto the outer hull whilst fighting the surf, and kicked their feet. Still, the craft would not budge.

  “Can you help us?” the commander pleaded.

  Just as I stood up, ready to jump ship and plunge fully clothed into the depths of the ocean deep, the dhow released itself and began to drift backwards. Both men heaved their lean bodies up and over the side of the boat like trained seals.

  By the time we reached Lamu, I spied poor Mohammed sitting by the docks awaiting my return. He’d arranged for me to take a different flight, but mentioned I’d arrive later than expected. What a relief, I thought, as the tour was leaving for Samburu the next morning, and if I missed that, then I’d really be in trouble.

  Now back on Manda, I signed the guestbook near the runway, a registry of thoughts from people who’d visited Lamu Island over the years. I scribbled “I hope to come back again someday with someone I love.” I kind of felt guilty for not sharing the day and found myself kind of missing Lori and her worrisome ways, the chatter of the ladies at dinner time, and even their lively discussions about teacher strikes, who did or didn’t get tenure, or really important issues like how rough the toilet paper had been on safari.

  Once inside the larger airplane, I spotted Mmmonika in the back left seat reading quietly, looking rather angelic. I settled in across from her, the only other seat onboard. This plane seemed wider, better. Maybe it was for the best I’d been delayed. No copiloting duties for me this return.

  A man hopped in and prepared the engines for takeoff. I was half hoping to turn around and see those French boys sitting cross-legged behind me, nuts and all, but it was just us three.

  I regaled Monika with my tale aboard the stubborn dhow that wouldn’t move, and then, after we’d reached cruising altitude, that hideous, undeniable symptom usually associated with acute drunks or amoebic dysentery hit. The unmistakable “clear the decks, I’m going to puke-my-sandals-up-through-my-intestines” urge that rammed me faster than that dhow had come to a halt. Oh, the salivating sensation behind the molars that invades your mouth, like tarantulas on your tongue. My forehead suddenly felt hosed down with perspiration. I’m guessing my skin was as white as my dress because I was losing consciousness fast.

  My stomach twerked back and forth like it was trying to churn butter or something. Oh man, I’ll bet it was the BUTTER! That slick, yellow, mother effing bowl of butter I’d been served at lunch and used to sop up what seemed like a seven-pound crustacean as though it was my last meal—ever.

  Then, for some reason, I pictured that infamous scene in the movie Stand By Me when Gordy tells his buddies a campfire story he’d written about a kid named Davey Hogan, who drinks a bottle of castor oil before a pie-eating contest (a retribution plot for all the evil jerks who’d called him Lard-Ass for being overweight), and after gorging himself on blueberry pies during the festivities, a thunderous noise like a runaway log truck alerts the audience that some major shit is about to go down. Once he blows chunks, the smell overtakes the crowd, and every single participant and spectator barfs, too, and soon all are covered in slimy, purple spewage for the ultimate revenge, or as Gordy puts it, “a complete and total Barf-O-Rama.”

  What if after losing my lunch in here the pilot passes out from the stench? Who’ll fly the plane? I may kill us all! I was skating on thin tailspin territory here.

  I turned toward Monika and with one lethal glance she could tell what was about to happen. She quickly rummaged through her sack then whipped out a clear plastic baggie and gave it to me. It was a miracle only a wise woman of the cloth could perform so selflessly. But have you ever had to carry a see-through bag of your own vomit for several minutes whilst airborne inside a turbulent plane? It ain’t easy.

  Monika stared out the window in silence, hopefully praying for my absolution. I sort of lay there melded into the seat, dazed, still weak from the release, in emptied, gutted shock.

  The pilot must have heard the guttural upchuck and turned back in time to catch me holding the bag like I’d won the prize goldfish at a school fair, with bits of turgid flesh morbidly visible, still warm to the touch.

  After what seemed like ten years had passed, we finally arrived at the Mombasa airstrip upon blessed, flat land. I was just thankful a SWAT team with guns wasn’t there to arrest me (though I probably deserved to be shot).

  Monika left the plane first. I couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind. How did she know to pack an airsick bag? What a frickin’ saint!

  As I stepped out onto the folding ladder, embarrassed, yet oddly elegant in my Karen Blixen get-up, the pilot kindly took hold of my carry-on “saggage,” walked about 50 yards in front of the plane’s propeller, and tossed my leisurely lunch onto the tarmac.

  I prepared myself for whatever penance Hans had in store for me. After that sickening flight, “the trampoline” would be a piece of cake. And, no sooner than I could adjust my hat to its rightful position, a flock of seagulls swooped down and began feasting on my “just desserts” as if they’d been expecting it.

  Jill Paris is the author of Life is Like a Walking Safari. Her essays have been publi
shed in the Travelers’ Tales anthologies The Best Travel Writing 2009, Leave the Lipstick, Take the Iguana and The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 9. Other essays have also been featured in The Saturday Evening Post, Travel Africa, Gadling, Thought Catalog, and more. She travels for the inexplicable human connection.

  ANDREW SCHWARTZ

  Postcard from Kenya

  “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”

  —Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

  THERE COMES A MOMENT IN EVERY MAN’S LIFE WHEN HE FINDS HIMSELF on his knees, shoveling up his own shit with his ever-blackening bare hands, while an angry family of strangers screams invectives at him in a language he does not understand. The hope in such moments is to escape with dignity. I was on the road from Laisamis when such tribulations befell me.

  Laisamis is in the Kenyan north, a region to which the Western world, in its inexorable onward march, has still only sent advance sentries. The Kenyan police get progressively more unpleasant as you move farther north (ostensibly, this is because shit’s realer up there) and today they are in standard form, berating a Pakistani man in a tight-fitting black-and-orange cycling jersey. Some rummage through his belongings, occasionally pausing to further inspect a sock. Others question him directly, occasionally pausing midsentence to let some of the green miraa they’ve been chewing fall from their mouths onto the piles at their feet. It reminds me of when an elephant takes a shit. They are all sunglasses and camouflage and testosterone. They motion their guns menacingly.

  Simon and I need to catch the day’s final charter to Nairobi (we’ll be getting off in Nanyuki), and it is imperative that we obtain tickets before it leaves this hot and dusty place. I am personally shadowed by a haggle of elderly Rendile women who wish to sell me their jewelry, but Simon, who is Kenyan, remains focused on the task at hand.

  The driver sees that Simon is with me—I am wearing a tan bucket hat that says Ranger Rick on it, if that gives any indication of my skin color—and doubles the price. I tell Simon that I’ll just pay it, but privy to local sales practices, Simon is not so easily had. I can’t understand it, but I imagine he says the Swahili equivalent of “Naw, I don’t pay that shit.” The driver nods.

  “While you’re with me in Kenya, there is no need to worry,” says Simon with that bouncy Kenyan cadence that is somehow all at once innocent and wise. “You will always be fine.” The bus is nearly full. Eyes of our fellow passengers track us as we walk down the aisle. Outside, the jewel saleswomen push up against the bus windows. The sale is slipping away, and they are slashing prices like mad.

  Simon and I sit down in the back next to a 13-year-old boy named Patrick. I look out the window. The Pakistani man is arguing with the same soldier who had spent three minutes mistrustfully panning his face back and forth between me and my ID the previous day. The engine rumbles to life. The Pakistani man grabs his belongings and bounds aboard. Away we go.

  The road from Laisamis is not paved. Indeed, it is not paved in the Kenyan sense, meaning that it is borderline impassable without four-wheel drive. Our driver does not take this into account when calculating his velocity. Almost in rhythm, every five seconds, a powerful jolt launches the passengers up and out of their seats in an elegant synchrony. Unfazed, everyone maintains a blank forward stare. Patrick and I giggle hysterically in the back. The road from Laisamis meanders through a brown, hard desert interspersed with small acacia bushes and windowless shacks, whose chief structural components are newspaper and dried cow dung. Occasionally, we pass a shirtless citizen wrapped in a red kilt and colorful bead accessories, herding his cows and camels. I chat with Patrick, who explains that he is on the way to Nairobi to begin secondary school. “Ninajifunza Kiswahili”—I am learning Swahili—I tell him, and he tells me the words for chair and window.

  The pavement begins, and with it a series of police stops. The ritual is always the same. Angry guy in uniform snarls at me and the fact that I only have my ID and no passport, then growls at a few other people, and then pulls the Pakistani guy off the bus to see his bag. Onward ho. At one police stop there are men in dress shirts and neckties. They hold rifles. The bus driver grabs a briefcase and gets off the bus. I look around, all eyes are focused out the right window toward the three men. I ask Patrick what is going on. “We cannot go farther,” he says.

  I blink. “What?”

  No response. We watch the driver approach the men. They talk for some minutes. Lots of gesticulation. Silence in the bus. The driver hands the case to the tallest man with the smallest rifle. I look at Patrick. He smiles. “They accepted,” he whispers.

  Roadside charcoal vendors tie up their bags. Uniformed school children cheerfully waddle the final stretch of their journey home. Orange clouds, distant hills, and small acacia cast long shadows upon the plains of Samburu County.

  Day turns to night in Kenya.

  We are ten minutes short of Isiolo, an hour from Nanyuki, when a stout policewoman with tight short braids below her cap steps onto the bus. I relax. No testosterone-fueled power trip to worry about here. She comes to me first, holds out her hand. I nudge up toward Patrick like always, smile a winner, and nod as I give her my ID.

  She frowns. Where is my passport? I explain that I’d been warned against bringing my passport on account of the dangerous roads. Then she turns around and walks away without handing back the ID. I look at Patrick. He shrugs. I look at Simon. He shrugs.

  “Excuse me,” I say to the woman, but Simon holds me back. It’s not worth it.

  She takes a few more passports, and then grabs a few more still. A woman in a hijab says that she has no right to do this. The officer ignores her. Those who have had their passports taken disembark in outrage. I tell Simon the ID replacement fee is “probably like $300.” Simon agrees this is worth fighting for. We file off last, leaving our belongings in Patrick’s charge.

  Motorbike silhouettes zip and zoom through the night. The policewoman sits in a roadside shack with an authoritative chubby-faced man who gets a masculine thrill out of shining his jumbo flashlight directly into the eyes of those he questions.

  Initially there is a crowd, but slowly, fifteen turns to five, then to three, then, once all have retrieved their passports—it’s just me, Simon, and the police. The language jumps between Kikuyu, Swahili, and English. I catch flashes. They want money. No they don’t. No they do, they want 5,000 shillings—about $60 U.S. “Hapana,” says Simon (we have no money). I’m a mzungu (white man), so the assumption is, I have money.

  “Fine, 1,000 shillings,” says the woman.

  “Hapana!”

  The bus rumbles.

  “Five hundred.”

  It moves.

  “Four hundred.”

  It drives away. Our possessions are still on board.

  The cop shines his light in my eyes and sees the dismay. “Don’t worry, it’ll stop in Isiolo for a bit. How about 300?”

  Simon doesn’t let up. It’s standard to pay bribes in Kenya (though less and less so) but I get the sense that Simon’s determination is fueled by a sense of national pride in front of a visitor. The police eventually get the message and unapologetically hand back the ID. They tell us to scram, and Simon and I storm off down the unlit roadside.

  Bodaboda shadows continue to whiz by. Simon whistles. One of the motorcycles pulls over. No words are exchanged. The two of us hop on. “Isiolo,” says Simon.

  The air is cool on my face. I am in the center, the driver in front and Simon hanging on behind. We weave around a sand truck and a car weaves around us. Some motorbikes have no lights. You hear them. You don’t see them.

  Then it begins with the first speed bump—a stirring in the guts. A pothole: the bowels grumble. And then zero to a hundred in ten seconds. It’s a code blue.

  The faraway glow of Isiolo turns bright and immediate. Buses line the road. Which is ours? Has it left? I haven’t yet told Simon of my impending emergency. Beads of
sweat condense on my lower back. The motorcycle zooms onward.

  All at once there’s pain and numbness in my nethers. The internal sphincter has fallen. The external sphincter weakens. Adrenaline shoots from my kidneys. There’s the bus! No, wrong one! No, it’s that one over there! We motor. Bump, bump, bump. What kind of bullshit shocks are these? Then we see Patrick’s round bucktoothed face jammed out a bus window. He waves. Simon waves back. I can’t wave. It’s a blur. We get off the motorbike. I tell Simon about my problem. He asks the bus driver where I can go. Driver says, “No time.”

  We climb the stairs. All the passengers are staring and smiling. The mzungu made it back! A guy who speaks American English starts telling me about his week in North Dakota. I nod. My face is red. We head to the back. Patrick pats the seat he saved for me and I ignore him. I sit alone in the row in front of him and press my head against the window.

  It’s 50 minutes to Nanyuki. This thought zaps my aching sphincter of its remaining strength. Simon sees me.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Patrick. I glare at him. Poor Patrick. He could never understand. Simon and I lock eyes. He understands. The gate cannot hold.

  “One minute,” yells Simon to the driver as we hightail off the bus. The driver, who is leaning on the bus’s side, does not respond. Simon and I zigzag through the throngs. “Choo iko wapi? Choo iko wapi?!” Simon and I collide. Our heads turn. We see it together. A clinic!

  Inside, my eyes scan. Where, where, where??? I spin. I see something that says lavatory and I desperately shake the door handle.

  “That’s the laboratory,” yells Simon.

  Patrons of the clinic watch. I dance a frantic high-step jig and they gape in silence. I lock eyes with Simon again, and he is pointing towards the open back door.

  Yes, there it is—a beacon in the night. A corrugated metal shed housing a pit latrine. I make a bowlegged dash. Sweet relief is on the way. I pull the door. It’s locked.