No Hurry in Africa (34 page)

There is only one ATM on the island, which of course was broken when I arrived. The bank was closed; no reason was given, but perhaps it was because of the
Maulidi
festival. The ATM remained broken for several more days, and I promptly ran out of money. On my travels in remote places, I sometimes got caught out for money. I was mightily relieved when the bank finally opened its doors again.

After I withdrew some shillings, I visited a cinema that was showing a pirate copy of the latest
King Kong
movie. The audience kept shouting and gesticulating through every scene, until the film broke down. There was a crescendo of booing and tut-tutting until it started up again. This audience participation was like the time I went to see the
Da Vinci Code
in Nairobi. Noisy exception was taken to the idea of Jesus’s bloodline. Near the cinema, a Rasta hawker was offering a seven-films-in-one pirate DVD for only 300 shillings (three euro).

‘Would you like to see the special price DVDs?’ he then asked me.

‘And what are the special price DVDs?’ I responded, in my innocence.

I was thinking he meant regular pirated DVDs at reduced rates. He promptly cascaded me with movies of a distinctly adult nature.

Most of those who were hawking trinkets to the very occasional
mzungu
in Lamu were Rastas. The island is popular with the Rastas because of the ready availability of marijuana. I enjoyed talking to these drop-outs; they could be very entertaining characters. I discovered that one of them was from Kitui. In truth, he was more of a capitalist tycoon with business interests as far away as Akambaland, but he was masquerading as a real Rasta. Some Rastas I found to be the most money-grabbing people in Kenya.

I became friendly with one young local Rasta man of stocky build named Abdullah. He was the real deal. His well-trimmed black dreadlocks hung around his pleasant light-chestnut face. He had pensive eyes and could simultaneously give the impression of being both engrossed and detached in conversation. It was uncanny. But everything about him oozed a carefree, sunny disposition.

At first sight, he came across as a bit of a smooth operator, but once I made it clear I was uninterested in purchasing his merchandise, his real personality emerged. True Rastas believe that Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. With a name like Abdullah, I assumed he was more interested in the Rastafarian lifestyle rather than in any religious aspect.

In his unique accent, he invited me to his home place, another island in the archipelago named Pate Island, a few lazy hours from Lamu aboard a slow dhow.

‘Brendan, I’m going home to my mother for the village festival on Paté. She would love to meet you. Paté is far superior to Lamu, Heaven’s over there!’

Who could refuse an invitation like that?

A journey by Arab dhow is always exciting, but there are always health and safety issues. The voyage to Paté in a heavy swell was no exception. The craft was impossibly overcrowded and in the course of the journey, the captain invited the male passengers to help bail out the in-coming water. Of course, there was no such thing as safety rails around the perimeter, or any sign of life-rings on board. The dhow was strictly segregated too, with all the women and children at one end, and all the men at the other.

When we reached Abdullah’s island, the next leg of the journey was up a shallow inlet in a dodgy wooden dug-out canoe. Then I had to wade ashore carrying my bag over my head. Finally, after riding on the back of a donkey, along a one-foot wide dirt track, through thick bush and forest, we were there.

Paté is indeed an island paradise, but is remote far beyond remoteness. The only Western visitors it attracts, according to Abdullah, are anthropologists—once in a blue moon. The islanders are supposedly quite distinct in dress, culture, dialect, and even ethnicity. The village dwellings are fairly simple—made with coral stone as well as daub and wattle, with thatched roofs. As a friend of Abdullah’s, I was warmly welcomed by the villagers.

There was yet another Muslim festival on Paté Island while I was there; each island celebrates the prophet’s birthday on separate dates. I was invited to attend the celebration by an elder of the village (one of the few villagers who could speak English). I was declared to be the only outsider on the entire island. The elder made one condition, though.

‘You will have to wear our gowns. Abdullah, find some spare robes for him, won’t you.’

And that is how I became ‘Omar Al-Jazzera,’ dressed in a purple single-piece Muslim robe and a white
kofia
hat provided by Abdullah. I thought it ironic that I, a Christian, was allowed to attend their
Maulidi
celebrations, while the Muslim women of Paté were excluded.

The form of Islam observed along the Kenyan coast is, by and large, tolerant and inclusive. Their acceptance of the Rastas was evidence of that. Shortly after my visit to the Lamu archipelago, on the fifth of June 2006, Islamic extremists stormed Mogadishu and seized control of Somalia. The puritanical Taliban style of Islam imposed on Somalia is completely at odds with that practiced across the border in Kenya. Paté’s religious festival was both solemn in parts, but joyous too—albeit in the absence of alcohol and women. After the tuneful chanting, and the rising and falling of the assembled on their mats to the rhythms of prayer, it erupted into a climax of genuine celebration. The faithful seemed to get the same buzz from it as Westerners might from a boozy weekend disco. Abdullah gladly partook of the ceremonies with all his friends and relations, even though he could best be described as a lapsed Muslim.

After the religious celebrations, we all sat on the ground in the middle of the sandy unpaved laneway, and ate rice and coconut beans with our bare hands out of the same wide communal dish.

‘It saves on the washing up afterwards at any rate,’ I joked with Abdullah.

At a hint from him earlier, I had bought several lobsters for the crowd. I had paid the full asking price of forty shillings for each lobster off a fisherman who had just landed his catch. That equated to less than fifty cent for a full adult lobster, and the naive
mzungu
may well have paid over the odds.

It was all washed down with delicious, spicy, Swahili-style tea with a hint of sugar. Gradually as the evening wore on, the numbers dispersed. I stared up at a perfect star-filled night sky as a few stray children played in the alleys lit by paraffin-lanterns, before their parents rounded them up for bed. I lay down to sleep on a bed of reeds upon the uneven stony floor of Abdullah’s home, having been fussed over by his mother—as he had predicted. I drifted off to sleep thinking of the many diverse things that make humans happy.

The following day, Abdullah and some of his friends escorted me through the bush to the even smaller and more remote villages of Paté. We travelled on the back of donkeys. The scene was almost biblical. It seemed to me as if the whole island had gone for a day-long siesta—it was the same every day. Languid does not begin to describe the lifestyle. The only movement was of children playing football with a hollow coconut, or youngsters raiding the mango and coconut orchards before being chased away by Abdullah and his comrades. Just as in Kitui, children would run away from me, scared, and hide from the
mzungu.
I thought about getting back to Lamu.

‘No hurry,’ said Abdullah.

We called on ‘the mayor’ for a couple of hours on our way back. A reclusive old
mzee,
his three-sided home of coconut-leaf walls was surely unique: one side was entirely open to the elements. He quizzed Abdullah about his life in Lamu. As darkness approached, we rode back through the coconut trees, being tortured by mosquitoes along the way. Back at Abdullah’s place, I showered from a bucket at an ancient stone well.

A fisherman friend of Abdullah offered to take me out on his sailing dhow. He even suggested that I spend several days fishing with him, using methods that had remained unchanged for centuries. No wonder the anthropologists love this place, I thought. I was forced to decline, though. Time was pressing for me even if the locals were in no hurry. But truthfully, I was also a bit concerned. I could not be sure the dhow would be safe in a storm. Also, few enough people even knew my current whereabouts to chance venturing onwards. All in all, as much as I would have loved to, I could not take the time or the risk.

I ended up on Paté Island a day more than I had intended. I was stranded because the dhows are not allowed to sail on Muslim holy days. When I eventually got around to leaving, several of us set out in a dug-out canoe to make contact at sea with a dhow crossing back over to Lamu. When a large rotund man tried to climb aboard the dhow, the canoe tipped over and sent Abdullah and another man flying into the water. Luckily, I had just clambered out of the canoe onto the dhow seconds before.

‘There are many sharks around here,’ Abdullah commented, still breathless as he dried himself.

Fortunately, he saw the humour in the situation. The passengers on the dhow were in stitches.

The dhow was overcrowded as usual. For the next few hours, Abdullah and I had to perch on top of a pyramidal mountain of luggage, the only space available.

‘Here, look, do you see the dolphins, Brendan?’ Abdullah pointed excitedly.

As he gestured, he lost his balance on the pile of luggage and ended up smothered in bags and cases. Everybody was in stitches again. I made my way to the side of the dhow, and sat down with my legs dangling over the water. A large school of cartwheeling dolphins escorted us the whole way back to Lamu.

The Lamu archipelago did hold one last surprise. On what I assumed to be my last day in Lamu, I was having a drink at one of only two bars in the whole archipelago. There I met Stephen, an unshaven Englishman in his late thirties. A small ring dangled from his pierced ear. He was drowning his sorrows.

‘Mate, my girlfriend’s just left me. She’s been paired off at the
Maulidi
matchmaking festival.’

He went on to tell me that he would be sailing out to his home at a seasonal hippie commune on one of the islands. He had been living there for ten years, on and off.

‘You should see it mate, you’d love it there,’ he assured me.

How could I turn down an invitation like that? I spent a day and night there.

It was nearly straight out of Alex Garland’s novel
The Beach.
Young people were skinny-dipping on the paradise beach, playing volleyball, and smoking dope around a campfire on the sand at night. The commune declines to be in any of the guidebooks, and they just bribe the authorities to turn a blind eye to their activities. I wanted to stay longer. Maybe forever! But I had to leave.

T
HE MUEZZIN IN THE MOSQUE
roaring over a loudspeaker at 5am outside my bedroom window (I just could not seem to escape these religious loudspeakers anywhere in Kenya) woke me just in time to catch the dhow from Lamu back to the mainland. I had to catch the only bus going south to Mombasa that day. If I am ever lucky enough to return, Lamu may be irrevocably altered in its way of life. I noted, somewhat regretfully, that building is due to begin soon on a new super-port that will rival the port of Mombasa. I know progress should be welcomed, but it is a pity that such a unique place has to change, especially as it has avoided modern ways until now.

My bus south was having a race with three other buses for the first part of the journey. The crammed passengers, caught up in the excitement of the race, were speculating communally and noisily in Swahili on the likely outcome. As we attempted to overtake on a hill, I had a feeling that one of the juggernauts thundering towards us might well determine the outcome for us. It was almost a relief when, after an adrenalin-fuelled hour, our bus broke down. Further on, it broke down again, and again. I was wondering now about whether I would arrive in time to catch the night-train to Nairobi. The communal conversation had turned to the possibility of pushing the bus to Mombasa. When we finally neared the city and the police checkpoints on the outskirts, the passengers standing in the aisles dived for the floor in unison.

After a good night’s sleep on the train, it was Nairobi again, and
ugali
for breakfast. On my way back to Kitui later that day, it was
déjà vu,
as they say, all over again. This time I did have to get out with the other male passengers and push our minibus; it too kept breaking down. Finally, away out in the open countryside, it spluttered to what sounded like a terminal standstill. In quite a stroke of luck, the Nyumbani truck approached. Cecil recognised me, stopped, and gave me a lift. After a bit of banter about married life, he filled me in on developments in the Village project. Phase III of construction was still on hold.

‘In fact,’ he said, ‘there is not even a sign of a firm starting-date. The organic farm is the only part of the project that is continuing. Now, Brendan, tell me all about Lamu, please. I have never been there.’