When we turn up that afternoon, the queue of visitors is mostly Kenyan couples with school-aged children, on family holidays from Nairobi. We see only a handful of other mzungus, to my surprise. Then Sarah reminds me that I’m only seeing Mombasa because I’m not here as a regular tourist; most visitors to Kenya don’t realise there’s much more to do than go game viewing on the Masai Mara.
The next day, I see the modern side of Mombasa. Our hotel – a modest but secure mid-market lodging boasting a ‘Sports Bar’ that we never manage to find – is set a couple of streets back from the beach, to the north of the city. We head down in the morning for a walk along the sand, past the luxury resorts right on the shore. The sunbeds are full of middle-aged European women lying like frankfurters in the sun, while their fit black toy boys deliver rounds of drinks and rub suncream on to their shoulders.
Sarah and I find ourselves giggling at a man walking towards us. He’s wearing a jaunty captain’s hat with a pair of aviators, an enormous white stomach hangs over his tiny white shorts and white espadrilles. He’s roasted pink and holding the hand of a stunning black woman in a bright green sarong. Then we’re approached by a pair of young ‘beach boys’ who ask us where we’re staying. Sarah knows immediately to ignore them, but I unwittingly engage them in the prelude to a proposition. ‘Ohhhhh – noooooo, no no no no, no thank you! Asante, no, no,’ I say when I realise where this is going. They aren’t even dissuaded when Jack catches up and puts his arms around our shoulders.
A pair of scrawny old fishermen come to our rescue – ‘Hapana!’ they shout at the boys, and tell us to do so too, if we want them to go away. ‘Hapana! Hapana! Hapana!’ we yell, the fishermen elaborating on our behalf in more complicated Swahili, even writing it out in the sand. ‘Asante sana!’ we thank them, when the gigolos finally give up and slink away.
Then we see that the fishermen are doing something quite curious: throwing clumps of wet seaweed up at the dunes. One of them sees us staring and gestures to show that they’re enticing the tiny ghost crabs that scurry down from their holes when each clump lands. The crabs are almost invisible against the white sand, only detectable when they’re moving. We’re astounded to realise there are hundreds of them on the beach, virtually scampering under our feet.
The fishermen let us tag along with them as they walk along the beach, showing us every critter they can find along the way. The tide is a long way out, stretching back hundreds of metres over the gentle slope of the continental shelf before it drops off into a cobalt abyss. We plod through ankle-deep water and stop at rock pools and coral clusters for each show and tell. Out comes a starfish. Then a blobby mop of neon green polyps. And a terrifically spiky purple-black sea urchin, along with a whole lot of miming about how standing on one will cause our feet to be poisoned and rot off. The warning comes too late for Sarah: she points to the black spines stuck in her heel. The men react with mock horror – then tell her what she must do. ‘Maji, moto maji,’ they say, dipping their feet into imaginary buckets. One remembers the key English word: ‘Vin-gah! Vin-gah and moto maji.’ She’s to soak them in vinegar and hot water then pull them out carefully with tweezers. For now, she keeps limping along.
We’re summoned with great urgency when the fishermen find a cowfish. It immediately becomes my favourite-ever sea creature. It’s only a few inches long, bright yellow with white spots, aquamarine eyes and puffy sucker pout lips, yet somehow, incredibly, it does indeed look like a cow. The taller man rests it on his palm and holds it out to show us its little ‘horns’, sticking up from the top of its head. The shorter man moos at us and stamps his foot, like a musty bull. Eventually the cowfish flops into the water and swims indignantly back to its little cave.
A full two hours have passed by the time we find ourselves at the other end of the beach, where the men have left their fishing boat. Although they don’t seem to expect a fee, it feels like we should offer them something for being so generous with their time and knowledge. We scrape together all the cash we have on us: a few thousand shillings, about forty dollars, roughly a fortnight’s wage. They seem pleased.
We head back towards our hotel across the soft sand, in the shade of the palms that lean over the high-tide mark, passing parked banana-boat rides and fresh coconut stands and men leaning against a rock retaining wall in front of a posh hotel, half-heartedly spruiking curios and trinkets. Their wares are laid out on the beach in neat rows of propped-up paintings and rails of colourful scarves. A procession of carved wooden animals make their way along the shore in single file, all mid-step marching on a motionless journey; lions and baboons and giraffes stand from knee to shoulder height, oiled haunches shining in the sun. A sign points to a shop beyond the dunes – ‘THIS AND THAT SHOP’ – but when we pass by, to my disappointment the roller door is down, all the this-and-thats locked out of view.
The girl at the hotel reception manages to find us some vinegar in the kitchen, and we spend the rest of the afternoon painstakingly removing the tiny splinters of sea urchin from Sarah’s aching foot.
That night, over a seafood dinner in a restaurant on an old dhow, Sarah and Jack stage an intervention.
‘Piggy, you need to leave those nutters,’ Sarah says. ‘It’s such a waste of time. You should be focusing on your real career. You’ve got a job in television, for fuck’s sake. Why are you wiping an old man’s arse in Kenya?’
‘I don’t wipe his arse.’
‘It doesn’t matter! You may as well be. Why don’t you try to do some reporting or something? At least make the most of the fact that you’re here.’
‘Alright, shut up, I get it. I’ll find something real to do.’
I find something real to do later that night, at ‘The Hottest Place in Africa’: the Tembo Entertainment Plaza, the greatest pizza parlour/Bavarian beer garden/pole-dancing arcade you’ll ever visit. Tonight, it’s hosting the Miss Tembo 2010 Beauty Pageant – a bold euphemism for what turns out to be a good ol’-fashioned wet T-shirt competition, with a 15,000 shilling prize going to the girl who can pull her G-string the highest above the waistband of her jeans. But it’s the poster for next week’s event that catches my eye: the Mr Tembo Bodybuilding Competition, organised by the Kenyan Bodybuilding Federation. I’m intrigued by the existence of a subculture dedicated to bodily perfection in a part of the world better known, at least in the West, for physical struggle and deprivation. I take down the number and vow to follow up when I get back to Nairobi.
But then I drink too many Tuskers and forget.
I wake up with cotton teeth and a tender blue bruise on the top of my pelvis.
‘You were doing the worm,’ Jack tells me.
‘You weren’t very good,’ Sarah adds – which is bullshit, I’m great at doing the worm.
We spend most of the day in and out of the hotel pool, trying to rehydrate with cold lemonade and electrolyte sachets from my traveller’s first-aid kit. By the late afternoon we’re well enough to go for another walk. This time we head north up the beach, past the striped-umbrella resorts and a man selling camel rides to a point where a small cliff hangs over the water.
A group of local boys is playing up there, goading each other into jumping from the ledge into a small rock pool. It’s only a couple of metres across, and about the same deep. The water is clear as glass; you can see the grainy sand at the bottom. ‘Hell-lo-how-are-yooooooo?’ the boys over-enunciate in singsong voices, eager to show off their English when they see us picking our way over the rocks beneath them.
One of them has a snorkel. He lets us use it to see the tiny seahorse he’s found shivering in a crevice on the inside wall of the hole. He’s bursting with excitement when we emerge from the water together: ‘Did you see it? Did you see!?’
‘Ndiyo,’ I say, giving his snorkel back. ‘Ndiyo, yes, we saw!’
Flying out of Mombasa the next morning, I look down at the impossible blues, greens and violets swirling at the edge of the ocean, the white crust of sand holding it back. Fur
ther out, where Chinese and Dutch companies have been dredging, the colours go a murky, grey-brown.
Mombasa is a paradise crawling with parasites. I suppose it’s always been that way.
11
THE FINAL STRAW
The day I finally quit, I don’t see it coming – though in hindsight, it was only going to be a matter of time. I’m fresh back from Mombasa, with sand in my hair and a spring in my step. The taste of the outside world – of real Kenya – lingers.
But not for long.
As the taxi turns down the street to drop me back at the house, Fiona is waiting at the corner in the Peugeot to intercept me and whisk me away to the Club.
‘We’re just going to kill some time until dinner,’ she says, beaming, as I transfer my bags from one car to the other on the side of the road. The Kenyans who gather for lunch under the tree at the turnoff – mostly domestic staff from all the neighbourhood houses, here on their break – must think we’re mad. ‘I’ve told Alice to stay away a bit longer. I’ve been having such fun.’
The whole time Alice and I have been away, Fiona’s been stirring Walt up – literally whispering into his ear about his meddling, gold-digging wife, then disappearing unannounced, phone off, for hours at a time, leaving Marguerite to deal with him unaided, with no one to even stand in for two minutes if she needed to go to the loo.
‘Then I got the big, fat African man in.’
Oh god, she actually did it.
The man didn’t last a day. ‘Dad thought he was a politician,’ Fiona crows, ‘coming to repossess the farm. It couldn’t have gone any better, really! Marguerite’s in an absolute tizz.’
So, we spend another whole day sitting at the Club, my Mombasa glow rapidly fading, and this time when we get back to the house Marguerite is livid. Walt is following her around the place, carrying his best suit on a hanger and saying, ‘When are we leaving? I can’t be late – it’s my dear old mother’s funeral!’
Dead mum again. Apparently it’s been going on for hours. It’s Jua the golden retriever’s fault. Absolutely convinced him he was in England.
‘There’s no funeral today, darling! I’ve told you a hundred times!’ Marguerite shrieks. Then to me, while Walt anxiously checks his watch, ‘He’s been like this all day. And not a jolly soul around to help!’ It’s the first time she’s openly expressed anger towards me – and I don’t blame her. ‘Where have you been? I thought you were due back this morning? I missed my computer lesson! Alan was supposed to be coming around at four to show me how to connect the doodad to the whatsit, because you know I am quite quick to pick up these things as long as I have someone to teach me. Well, I had to tell him not to worry, didn’t I? It’d have been pointless with Walt hanging around in this state.’
‘Is Alan coming around, is he?’ Walt asks.
‘No!’ Marguerite screams. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a smile reclaims her face. The woman can switch gears so swiftly and severely it leaves me reeling sometimes. ‘Oh, I say, did you have a lovely time in Mombasa? You must tell me all about it. It is marvellous on the coast there, isn’t it?’
I snatch a moment before dinner to catch up with the staff around the side of the garage. David and Esther are there with James, helping him fill the wheelbarrow with firewood.
‘Hello! You are back! You disappeared!’ David says, shaking my hand. ‘We were wondering what happened to you! And where is Alice?’
‘I know, I know,’ I say, ‘sorry we didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Alice is visiting a friend in Tanzania. I was in Mombasa with my friends.’
What must they think of this – of our ability to just up and go on spontaneous trips to far-flung parts of the country on a whim?
‘But you are back now?’ James says.
‘Yes, yes, I’m back. And Alice will be too, in a few days.’
‘Oh good, good.’
‘Yoo-hoo!’ we hear Marguerite calling from inside the house. ‘Supper’s ready!’
And I leave my friends outside, while I go in to eat at the table with our employers.
Over dinner, I answer Marguerite’s questions about where I went and who I saw and what we ate in Mombasa, while Fiona sips her soup in smug silence and Walt asks what time we’re leaving for Nairobi in the morning, over and over and over again.
As soon as it’s polite enough to do so, I excuse myself and hide in my room. I start waxing my legs, figuring the pain will be a good distraction from the unspoken tension. Maybe there’s an element of self-flagellation in it, too. I’m growing ashamed at my spinelessness.
But the confrontation that’s been inevitable for weeks gathers pace, until they’re both at it in the hallway, right outside my door.
‘Fiona, this is my house and I do find it awfully rude for you all to just disappear without even telling me what’s going on!’ Marguerite says.
Good on her, I think. It’s the first time I’ve heard her really arc up.
‘And by the way, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I feel now I just have to. I know about that awful letter you sent around town. I think it’s dreadful. Really, I do.’
Holy. Shit. This is about to get wild.
Except it doesn’t. ‘Well, Marguerite, I felt people needed to know the facts,’ says Fiona, cool as ever.
‘They are absolutely not the facts! They are outright lies, and thankfully all my friends know me better than that, and do you know they all binned it straight away and called to tell me they thought it disgusting of you to do such a thing?’
‘Well, that’s their prerogative. At least they know my point of view.’ Fiona sounds barely rattled at all.
‘And I’ve got a copy myself. Dolly brought it over. I’ll be showing it to the lawyers.’
‘You’re entitled to do that.’
‘I just don’t understand you, Fiona!’ Now Marguerite’s voice starts to wobble. ‘I brought you up, I cared for you when you were sick. I don’t know why you’d treat me like this.’
Part of me wants to put earphones in and drown this out. The other part desperately wants to get to the bottom of what’s going on between these two.
‘I’m just trying to look after my father in his final years,’ Fiona says.
‘Yes, and for that I’m very grateful! I’m trying to look after him too! But this would all be so much easier if you would just tell me what is going on. This is my house and you’re just walking all over me.’ My door swings open. Marguerite’s on the verge of tears. ‘I suppose you’ve just heard it all,’ she says to me. ‘Well, I’m sorry but I must say I do think you’ve all treated me terribly badly.’
She’s right. I’m mortified. ‘I know. I’m sorry, Marguerite. Really, I don’t want anything to do with this …’
‘You know this is my house. You all just arrived here – no one asked me – and that’s fine, you’re a great help, but to be mucked around like this by everyone …’
I feel my face flush with shame. This poor woman. She really has been treated appallingly. And I’ve been a part of it.
Then Fiona rolls her eyes at me from the doorway, and something inside me snaps.
‘You know what, guys?’ I say, struggling to stand up as my half-torn wax strip binds me to the carpet. ‘I’m done. I’m out. I can’t take this anymore.’
I pack my bags and leave first thing the next morning for Sarah and Jack’s place, wondering what the hell I’m meant to do with myself now. It’s two months before my job in Sydney starts up again. My friends convince me there’s no point in going home early – that I may as well make the most of being here. At some point in the midst of a Bundaberg Rum–induced haze, I book myself a last-minute spot on a two-week overland safari to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, leaving in a few days’ time.
Best decision I ever made.
The next day, I have a chance to visit Claire again. Her girls have their school cross-country, and we head down to watch the race. Hundreds of children in house shirts of purple and green and orang
e run around, following the red flags that mark out the course. They’re black kids, white kids, brown kids. They’re African and European and Indian kids. They’re kids who seemingly don’t notice or care about skin colour – kids of every race, racing around a school oval, equals, competitors, friends, while their parents laugh and cheer and watch the next generation take for granted what in their day could barely be imagined.
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ Claire says. ‘Even when I was at school in Zim, what, twenty-five years ago, it was nothing like this. We had one or two black kids in our class, but that was it. For these kids there really is no segregation. Well, look, at least not for the middle class. There are no whites or Indians in the slums. But these kids will grow up and this will be the norm to them.’
I think back to a conversation I had with my mother once, about whether she – growing up in Rhodesia – knew there was something wrong with their society.
My mother is a good, kind, decent person. She was about to hop into the shower when I asked her, in our poky little bathroom on the farm in north Queensland, the one we always shared with green frogs and insect invaders. She stopped, stood stark naked on the bathmat, tilted her head to the side to think about it. Then she pulled the toilet seat down, sat on it, stared into the distance and the past. ‘You know, it was just the way things were. We were born into it. We didn’t hate Africans – well, maybe some people did. I didn’t. I didn’t know anyone who hated them. You must remember, it wasn’t like South Africa. We never had apartheid in Rhodesia. It was just – they had a different place to us. That’s just how it was. You know, black people didn’t come to the front door of our house – I only realised that many, many years later, when I read a book by an African maid about what it was like working for a white family. I don’t remember anyone ever telling me that was a rule. But when I thought back on it I realised that if anyone black ever came to the house for any reason, they knocked at the back door.’ Mum held her hands up in the air, in disbelief. ‘I mean, how bloody stupid! How awful! But you know – we were kids. It just seemed normal at the time. It wasn’t until I was much older – in my twenties, I suppose partly because of the war – that I really started to analyse things. My mother, being English, was far more progressive than my father. They’d have debates about it. She was on the side of the independence movement, but Dad would say “They’re just not ready to run a bloody country!” They used to cancel each other’s votes out. But I never really got involved in any side of it. I mean, obviously now, in hindsight, I can see how wrong it was. But not everyone is naturally political, you know?’
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