Mombasa Road Retravelled

by KJ Griffin

  Chapter 14

  We stay for a few days at Sand Island, but even these low-key beach huts aren't really our thing, for there are proper tourists staying in some of the other chalets. Out of one of these a young British honeymoon couple strolls over the next morning to say hello, she sporting corn row braids and sunburn on the exposed streaks of scalp, he in traditional McDollar's-cum-Weatherspoon's bare gut-flab torso that's gone pink in the sun save for a few flecks of white, where chunks of overhanging belly have shielded secret, inner layers of concealed substrata.

  This pleasant but dreary couple asks where home is; I tell them we haven't one, and that deadpan rebuttal swiftly proves to be a substantial conversation killer. So getting no joy out of me, they hang around for a few minutes trying to make conversation with Little Stevie. I conceal a malicious smile and vindictively leave them to it, giving no explanation about my son's habits or condition, and taking the opportunity to call Luxmi on my mobile instead.

  'Come on, Tom, I don't think we're wanted here,' I hear the woman complain after much commendable persistence with Little Stevie.

  And so we're left alone again. But not for long. For no sooner have the honeymooners sulked off back to their banda than we hear the sound of a vehicle pulling up at the end of the track. Doors are opened. One in particular is heftily slammed shut, and almost immediately the sound of Big Evans Majengwa singing to himself can be heard above the steady, slap-slap of wind-tossed palm leaves murmuring all around our chalet. In a few moments Fingers, Kevin, Big Evans Majengwa and Little Stevie's running partner, Farah, come into view.

  'Little Stevie!' Kevin shouts out stern and unsmiling as ever, as if he's summoning my boy to a bare-knuckle fight. 'Give me five!'

  Fingers and Big Evans Majengwa are chuckling to themselves while Little Stevie performs the required combinations ever more proficiently. Eventually, even Kevin surrenders a smile, and Little Stevie turns to Farah:

  'Can we go running now?'

  Farah is wearing the shoes I bought him in Meru and he turns to me for guidance.

  'Of course,' I say. 'Go for it!'

  But Farah doesn't leap for the road. Instead, he looks rather sheepishly at me:

  'I do not know my way to go, Mr Brian. I am not from the coast.'

  'Well there's the sea,' I point. 'Why don't you use that as a reference point and go in one direction as far as you both want, then turn and come the other way back.'

  Farah nods energetically, like I haven't been stating the bleedingly obvious but have just said something unexpectedly clever. There must be a touch of the Kenyan Forrest Gump about this young man from Meru, but at least Farah is as keen on his running as the screen character was, and he hasn't lost his new shoes yet, so in no time at all, Fingers, Kevin, Big Evans Majengwa and I are sitting on our verandah, watching the backs of Little Stevie and Farah disappear down the beach before cutting inland to the track.

  I call the white manager over and get him to send some drinks our way. It's coffee for me, but Fingers and the boys already have only Tusker - and warm Tusker at that - on their minds. Perhaps I should invite over the male half of the honeymoon couple? I bet he won't mind quaffing his first beer of the day at ten in the morning.

  'Everyone is wondering when the next selection meeting will be, Mr Brian?' Fingers asks.

  He's got a neat, Bob Marley t-shirt on and a non-reversed, Wimbledon 2006 baseball cap on his head that looks as clean as if it's only just been released for general sale to the public.

  'Our selection meeting's been and gone, I'm afraid,' I shrug. 'And we've come up with two games tomorrow, one in England and one in Italy, and two on Sunday in Germany and Spain. But there's something more important than that that I want to share with you guys,' I add, and I begin to give them an edited version of what I told Dismas yesterday afternoon.

  'Air?' they each question in turn when I get to the heart of the matter.

  'That's right, air,' I answer with conviction. 'The football can't go on forever, boys. We're already becoming nearly too big to get our bets matched. At least with your plots of air you'll have a fixed, steady income.'

  'But air?' Kevin repeats, 'Who will pay us for owning air?'

  'Did the Masai ever think a hundred years ago that they would have to ask, beg and even pay other people to let their cattle graze where they had freely been grazing them for generations, or that they would be completely shut out of some of their best waterholes and pastures when colonial Kenya created those magnificent national parks? The whole concept of owning land was as alien to the Masai then as the idea of owning cubic meters of air is to people today. But look who wins!'

  Touch?! My point seems finally to register and what starts as a gentle snort of approval from Big Evans Majengwa eventually matures into a fully-fledged guffaw, which soon spreads to Fingers and then to me, and in time, even to Kevin too. Soon we're all roaring with tears in our eyes, and I wish I wasn't the one sitting so close to Big Evans Majengwa every time he lands one of those hearty back slaps on my spine.

  Eventually the laughter subsides into muted chuckling and we sit there staring at the sand bar now exposed in shimmering stripes of gold by the low tide and the midday sun, listening to Big Evans Majengwa's ensuing bout of hiccups. Fingers and the boys are happy enough with my big sky grab, but they still want to talk football more than free air and that suits me fine, so we do that for a while. They are keenly anticipating the Champions League semi-finals, where only our not-so-solid benefactors, Juventus, are a surprise package in the company of Barcelona, Chelsea and Real Madrid. But for me, football is for once taking an unwonted backseat, so I wait till we've milked the different permutations of the semi-finals dry and have become more aware of the sighing palms all around us before I ask Fingers what's really on my mind:

  'Do you think Vic Hanson has got any idea of who Yasmiin really is?'

  'No way, bwana, it cannot be this way,' Fingers replies. 'Even if Halle Berry came to knock at your door, Mr Brian, and you know you have killed her father, you would not start to date this bibi, I am sure of it!'

  I chuckle softly to myself and wonder as I often do why Halle Berry still passes for the ne plus ultra of feminine beauty round these parts. If anything, Yasmiin is several cuts above the movie star's looks. But there's still more I need to clarify:

  'But why does Yasmiin come to Nairobi to meet Vic Hanson, if he lives for much of the time far closer to her home in Lamu?'

  'Your girl would be recognised too easy, man,' Kevin chips in. 'The security all around Pwani Oil is very tight and one of Vic Hanson's own men would be sure to recognise your kichuna. Only when Hanson goes back to Nairobi can this girl move without anyone knowing who she is.'

  'And one last thing,' I continue. 'If Yasmiin wanted to buy a gun, would she do that in Nairobi or at the coast? Which is easier?'

  Fingers rotates his Wimbledon baseball cap, then smiles:

  'For us, getting a gun is easy anywhere in Kenya, especially in Nairobi. But if your girl is from the coast, Mr Brian, she would surely ask in Mombasa, not in Nairobi. Who can she trust in Nairobi, where she knows nobody?'

  That pretty much confirms my suspicions, but all the same, it's good to hear it from these boys, from Musembe's heirs themselves. If Vic Hanson kept the company of conmen like these instead of the Chief Super of CID, he might be better informed that he's in danger of sleeping with the enemy.

  I'm on my feet and pacing now, as my own plans for today don't centre around getting pissed on this verandah. Far from it, I need to go for a little run of my own in this energising wind, do some exercises on the beach and taste the ocean's healing balm. I want this enemy inside my guts to know that it's up against a fighter who intends to fight it, quite literally, to the death.

  'Cheers guys,' I say, getting to my feet. 'The only other thing is, we need to move from here. Somewhere more local. But somewhere fairly close to the beach and within easy distance of live football.'

  The boys talk among themse
lves in Kikuyu for a few seconds, then Fingers says:

  'Come up to the north coast near us, Mr Brian. There are some clean and cheap apartments near the public beach, Kenyatta beach. Mostly Nairobi Asians use them. But you will be near our people there - near your people.'

  Which settles it, so I take the name of these apartments and leave the boys to finish their beers and make their own way off, while I change into shorts, ready for a jog along the beach.

  The tide is out and there are luscious, golden stripes of coral sand left uncluttered by algae and they make perfect running lanes to guide me south towards Tiwi beach.

  The roar of the ocean, the sun on my back and the onrushing wind combine to a perfection that is only marginally spoiled by two curio sellers, who emerge from the shade of a coconut tree to chase me for a couple of hundred yards along the shore, each entering the race with the handicap of a large gunia bag stuffed with ebony Masai heads, wooden lions and herds of hardwood giraffe.

  'Hey nice muscles, man,' one shouts, 'I give you special Rambo discount!'

  I know that there's no chance of convincing this pair of enterprising businessmen that I'm not a genuine tourist and that I've seen their type and their wares countless times before, so instead I just jog on increasingly resolutely and wait to see whether my sickness or their curio hoards will prove the greater handicap.

  Mercifully it's the former, so I capitalize on my advantage with rejuvenated vigour, splashing barefoot through the water before stopping to put in a few sets of press ups at the water's edge. On my fourth set of twenty, the thin, watery vomit that's been dogging my mornings for the past few days returns with a vengeance and hangs in rubbery globules from my mouth, buffeted endlessly sideways by the wind.

  The accompanying pain in my abdomen is stronger today than I can remember, so I just lie in the shallows, immersing my face deeper and deeper, writhing in the hot water as if the froth and the algae can wash away my pain.

  All I can see in my mind's eye is a picture of me and Little Stevie: It's sunset and we're on the cusp of some mighty escarpment. The sun's giant red orb is lowering on the western horizon straight ahead of us and there's a stiff, dry breeze to cool our faces. We're jogging side by side down a long, deserted sand track that is flanked by acacias and outcrops of red, volcanic rock. We have found the rhythm, that perfect rhythm, where runner and breathing are intuitively synchronised. We could go on like this for miles. And miles. So we do. For miles. And miles. We are gods! We are running to Valhalla! And here we will stay together, Little Stevie and me, for all eternity!'

  'Dad, what are you doing?' I hear above me.

  It's as if my feverish hallucinations have conjured the real Little Stevie from his hiding place in the depths of my soul. He's panting hard, and next to him Farah looks like he's been made to work a little harder than usual too, despite the drop in altitude he's enjoying between here and Meru.

  'I'm relaxing in the sea,' I tell my son deceitfully. 'You should come on in. The water's perfect.'

  'But why are you groaning, Dad?'

  'I wasn't groaning. I was humming to myself.'

  We stay like this at a stand-off for some time, while Little Stevie and Farah regain their breath. I can see the curio sellers reappearing from the direction of Sand Island and I know that Little Stevie won't want to join me in the sea.

  'Why don't you two go back to the hotel while I have a proper swim? We're moving out as soon as I've finished here.'

  But Little Stevie is not buying my lies. Instead, he sits down resolutely in the dry sand a few paces from me and waits. Brooding. That's tricky because I'm not going to be able to make a convincing show of the swimming, nor swagger out of the surf like a Californian beach boy.

  Almost by divine intervention, the curio sellers come to the rescue, shoving a couple of carved rhinos under Little Stevie's nose. That's about as popular with Little Stevie as a pack of condoms in the Pope's back pocket, so he wrenches his face violently away from the batik boys, flopping onto the sand and burying his face in his hands.

  Under cover of curio seller assault, I'm now able to scoop myself gingerly to my feet and stagger out of the shallows. The first couple of paces hurt deep and hard, but I manage somehow or other and call for Little Stevie and Farah to follow.

  Little Stevie jogs up level with my shoulder and I put an arm round his shoulder, while with my other hand I'm swatting a couple of batiks like sand-flies from my face and have to tell the vendors to get lost. I need to pause now to rest, almost doubled up on Little Stevie's shoulder:

  'I'm tired, son, that's all. I went for a long run too while you were out with Farah. My longest since Meru. You should have seen me go! I'll be running with you and Farah soon!'

  There's no response to this, no comment whatsoever, not even the merest flicker of an old score from Scandinavian football.

  We make a lugubrious trio, trudging with the wind behind us and sporadic attack from resurgent curio sellers all the way to Sand Island, with me wincing and panting, Farah silent and enigmatic, and Little Stevie supporting my weight, but more of a concern in this new ominous silence of his than he would be rolling around on the sand with his hands over his ears, screaming the right ascensions and declinations of every star from Ares to Vulpecula.

  Back at our chalet, a shower does me some good but the silence is still funereal. We pack. The joyless Farah does little to ease the mood, so I despatch him on ahead up the track with some more money for his bus fare and the name of our new beach apartments on the north coast. The mzungu manager looks like he's glad to see the back of me and Little Stevie, so there's no send-off party for us when I start the bike and we leave Sand Island.

  Sitting on the Africa Twin I still feel emaciated. I must resemble that ridiculous scene at the end of the 1960's Charlton Heston and Sophia Lauren epic, El Cid, when the dead king is strapped to his white charger, galloping gloriously across the long, sandy beach at Valencia with the fearful Muslim hordes scattering in terror before his necro-heroism.

  There's not much strength in my arms either right now, and it's an effort sitting upright. We wobble precariously over a few of the worst potholes the dirt track can throw at us and can only manage a brief toot and a furtive wave when we bypass Farah, who's now waiting for a Mombasa-bound matatu by the side of the tarmac road.

  At the junction we head north towards Mombasa island through busy roadside villages, where everyone has decided to pour out of the lush vegetation and block the oncoming traffic by balancing loads of bananas, cassava and coconuts on their heads.

  But as we slow for one of these traffic snarl-ups we finally get our first coastal recognition. A couple of young lads in tatty clothes shout, 'Football Kenya!' at our backs and for me, it's the tonic I've been waiting for.

  All of a sudden my strength starts to return from nowhere. Strangely invigorated, I flash these loud-mouthed lads a prolonged thumbs-up and rip back the throttle, which sends us hurtling past the long line of vehicles all concertinaed up around the speed bumps, and we charge riotously the last few miles to the Likoni ferry, which takes us back onto Mombasa island and the hubbub of town.

  Our lunch stop is taken at a small Indian restaurant in the backstreets away from the centre of town, where the shaded sections of the pockmarked pavements are densely packed with street hawkers and shoeshine professionals.

  Little Stevie is still acting sulky with me, a mood that is further underlined by an insistence on returning to his old diet of roast chicken and soggy chips, and he won't eat any of the chicken till I've sliced the meat from the bones and removed these from under his nose. And while he picks disinterestedly at the bone-free meat, he refuses several attempts to be drawn into conversation about our positions for the Champions League semis, so I leave him by himself and cross the road to a kiosk on the far side, where a banana leaf hanging from the roof proclaims miraa is on sale.

  The vegetable thali and now the qat complete a full recovery, so back in the restaurant I make gela
da baboon faces at Little Stevie, now having abandoned the meat and consuming soggy chips one by one, till eventually I do get a smile out of him and now we're back in business:

  'Come on, son, there are good friends waiting for us at the north coast. Let's get out of the sticky heat of Mombasa town and back to the fresh air by the sea.'

  'OK, dad,' he answers, at last with some enthusiasm.

  Then:

  'I'm glad you're better now.'

  'So am I,' I grin.

  It's good to be back to normal and good to be back on the bike. We treat ourselves to riding helmetless through the stifling lunchtime heat, so I have to take it carefully as we wind through the swerving matatus that congest the coastbound road all the way out of town and over the Nyali toll bridge to the north.

  Everyone in Mombasa has just bought either a Nissan pickup or a Toyota Corolla, all in white, with gaudy, golden tassels hanging from the dashboard, and all of them are either in our way or heading our way, leaving little room for overtaking, even for bikers like us.

  The roadside towns this side of the creek have musical names like Bombolulu and Shimo la Tewa, and they're even busier than their south coast counterparts too. Some people wave and shout as we pass, but I'm not sure if it's anything to do with Football Kenya or just the sort of thing they do round here. There are drab new concrete buildings lining both sides of the road all the way up to Kenyatta beach, and all this faceless development combines to make my memory of this north coast road very hazy indeed.

  But if we wondered before now why we have passed so few Football Kenya supporters on the ride up, the question is soon answered as I turn right off the Malindi-bound road and approach the tatty, Asian-owned beach apartments Fingers recommended to me yesterday.

  Both Little Stevie and I sit for a while aghast at the sheer size of this gathering, and every time I twitch the Africa Twin's throttle, yet more people pour from the dense shade. This is the sort of adulation Cristiano Ronaldo and David Beckham can only dream of. I nudge the bike hesitantly through the midst of these smiling, sweaty faces and every inch of the way we are patted on the back by so many waving hands that I can soon hear Little Stevie trilling a few mole rat noises in the early stage of Little Distress Mode.

  'Hey, Mr Brian! Hey, Quiet Boy!' we hear people shout from every direction.

  And now Fingers, Kevin and Big Evans Majengwa are standing in front of us like a guard of honour that is lining our path to the reception, where a bemused old Asian fellow signs us in and takes a week's rent money off me as quickly as he can, no doubt in case I waste it all on this mob.

  We don't need the old Asian gent to show us to the apartment, though, for Fingers and Kevin are fighting over our rucksack like they've got money on it, while Big Evans Majengwa clears a path in front as efficiently as the lead lictor of Liechtenstein.

  I'd like to stay and chat a little longer with some of these adulating faces, but the mole rat noises have been stymied behind me, only to be replaced by flashing-red star data. Like the celestial orb itself, what goes around surely comes around, I suppose, for I note that Little Stevie is back to the early alphabet, to the constellation of Bootes, in fact. With visual gems like the orange giant Arcturus on its books, Bootes would be worth hearing under other circumstances, but that's not really the point, I guess, so I must concentrate as usual on what my son's really trying to tell me and refrain from indulging in my own nostalgia.

  With this in mind, I glance backwards for further mood clues and see that Little Stevie is pulling off this recital with his hands clasped firmly over his ears - not a good sign at all, so I grab Little Stevie by the wrist and push on through the melee.

  We nearly make it too, but just as we reach the steps leading to our apartment a wad of batiks is thrust almost straight into my face.

  'Hey bwana, buy batik?' a gruff voice asks, and what's more it's a voice I recognize, so for once I turn and look:

  'Jonas! What the hell are you doing here, mate? And why do you still need to sell those bloody batiks?' I ask with a big grin on my face.

  Jonas smiles back, slyly at first and then wide enough to suggest he's started to get used to exercising his facial muscles in this way:

  'Batik business is only part-time business these days, Mr Brian,' he laughs. 'Now we eat football money in Naivasha!'

  'That's good to hear. But why did you come here to Mombasa? Is Naivasha too cheerful for you?'

  Jonas grins even wider now, like he's really getting the hang of this happiness thing after all.

  'We were in Nairobi collecting our money from the Asian lady,' he chuckles. She said you and the Quiet Boy were making safari to Mombasa. So we came, also us!'

  It's the sort of half-explanation I love about Kenya, but there's no time for more of that now, however much I'd love to haul Jonas off to the nearest bar, stuff a crate of beers down him and ask him how life's treating him now. But Little Stevie won't give me a second longer, so instead I pat Jonas on the back and grip Little Stevie's arm even more tightly, helping him through the gap in the ranks Big Evans Majengwa has just cleared, up the steps and into our apartment.

  'Where are they all staying?' I ask Fingers, once we're safely inside an apartment that might have been in vogue in the early seventies, slamming the door shut with a final wave to the crowd.

  Fingers smiles, fidgeting with the back of his baseball cap:

  'In local places all around here. Kenyatta beach is public beach, Mr Brian. Even local people can come here, not just tourists!'

  'Don't worry, mate,' I smile. 'Soon you guys will own all the sky above these expensive beach hotels!'

  Which makes us all laugh even louder. And this should be party time, for there's a buzz in the air and we're all on a high, all except for Little Stevie, that is. In dismal contrast, he's well into Bootes and might soon even reach Caelum, Camelopardalis or even Cancer, so with a heavy heart I give Fingers, Kevin and Big Evans Majengwa the brush off and tell them we'll meet later in the bar by the sea.

  'Someone else is looking for you too, Mr Brian,' Kevin almost whispers to me from the door. 'I told her to come back here tonight.'

  'Yasmiin?' I ask aloud, and at the mention of her name even Little Stevie stops chanting his way through the tail end of Bootes and looks my way.

  'That's right,' Kevin nods seriously. 'Miss Yasmiin.'

  'Chew your miraa and enjoy, bwana!' Big Evans Majengwa laughs, almost making me choke as he slams his fist into my back. 'And tonight you will see your kichuna too!'