THE IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD CUPPA
George Orwell was one of the seminal writers of the 20th century, his works undisputedly changed the course of human history; 1984, Animal Farm, The Road to Wigan Pier all reflected the change that was monumental in the latter first half of the century while also being prophetic about the dangers to come from totalitarianism. All that said the most moving writings of Orwell were on tea; he loving wrote in great detail about the importance of a good cup of tea. He was meticulous about the process of tea-making, the basic elements of water, tea leaves, milk and sugar should all be balanced perfectly to make the perfect cuppa. The fact is that there are so many ways to make a cup of tea, as many as people who drink it.
When the British colonised the world; they used tea and coffee as a major driver of their economy, tea was the main reason for slavery, or more precisely the sugar in it. Sugar in the 17th-19th Century was as profitable as is cocaine today, when the USA was fighting for independence in 1776 their economy was only 10% of Jamaica which was the main producer of sugar. Imagine a country the size of Jamaica outstripping USA; that was the power of sugar. India was colonised for tea, the Caribbean for sugar, the milk came from down the road.
The legacy of colonialism is hard to define but the 3 C’s are always there. Christianity, Cricket and Chai; former colonies are usually addicted to at least two out the three. Rwanda recently joined the Commonwealth after applying in 1995; the delay was probably caused by the lack of a Cricket board and a good cuppa. The one thing I miss about England is a proper cup of tea; you never know how important it is until it is gone. It has been three and a half months since I had what I could call a cup of tea, I love my country but the tea is truly awful. Ask for tea and what you get is hot milk with so much sugar you’ll throw up while contracting diabetes. The sugar is already mixed in for you and you cannot decide how much you want.
My cousin who is a government operative chided me for my lack of patriotism but I countered that true patriotism is fighting for your country, not drinking tea. I could not walk into an RPF veterans meeting and claim to be their equal because I drink Rwandan tea. The line between jingoism and patriotism is clear. Let’s just say that Rwandan tea is terrible, it is weak and terrible. If Rwandan tea ever got into a fight it would get its butt truly spanked because it so weak beyond words. I thought this was just a Rwandan problem but I was sadly mistaken, when I was in Kenya I was drinking Brooke Bond tea and was really disappointed. PG tips in the UK uses the same tea but it tasted horrible; I came to the conclusion that all the best tea is exported.
The lack of basic quality control when making goods for Africans is astounding; when it is for foreign consumption all the steps are taken to maintain quality; but for the African? Any shit will do. In the UK, the more discerning Brit gages human character on how one makes a cup of tea. I confirmed that I was in love with my first love when she made me the perfect cup of tea. It was just so; not too strong, with just the right amount of milk, it is a perfect compatibility test. I can never make my mother a good cup of tea and this is cause of constant friction between us, it usually takes five takes to satisfy her and I usually give up.
There are so many ways to make a cup of tea; just in the UK these variations are stark. Yorkshire people make their tea so strong that you can tarmac roads with it, Londoners like it weak, Scots like with a drop of whiskey and I know I am stereotyping but I have seen this first hand. One tragedy about USA is that they do not drink enough tea; you can divide humanity into two groups; tea-drinkers and coffee-drinkers. Coffee-drinking affects the character of a nation; when the USA and French were feuding over a UN resolution, I couldn’t help but think the situation was exacerbated by the fact that they were all jacked up on coffee and looking back now it was a stupid argument.
I know that most people drink both, as I do but if there ever was a war between Tea-Drinkers Liberation Front (TDLF) and the Coffee-Drinkers Liberation Movement (CDLM) then I would be firmly in the tea-drinkers camp. Tea is more conciliatory, it is impossible to fight when you have had a good cup of tea; which doesn’t bode well for the TDLF. Coffee is really evil when you think of it; I need coffee when working, it is worse than crack. I have resorted to coffee in Rwanda since I can’t get any good tea. Today I was in Bourbon café with an insane Dane who went apoplectic when he didn’t get the cappuccino he ordered. I thought he was insane but blamed it all on the evils of coffee.
Rwanda is symptomatic of Africa; while the West in well into the age of customisation, in Africa you get what you are given. I was in Kampala when I asked for black tea and was nearly slapped; I asked for one sugar and was nearly beaten. We have a long way to go in realising that the customer is right; ask for tea and you get hot milk with so much sugar that your spoon can stand in the cup. Rwandans are addicted to sugar in a big way, as are most Africans, the dangers of sugar are not known here. I long for the day when a waiter asks me how I want my tea and I will say the following.
Take a pot full of water and boil it
Take two tea-spoons of tea leaves and put in the pot
Allow to brew for 3 minutes
Pour into cup, strain the leaves
Add milk to taste, as well as sugar
Or have it your way; you can have it black, spicy, green, camomile, milky, with ginger, cinnamon, vanilla, and a thousand other ways. When I can have that in Africa then I will know that we have taken a massive step in development. Even if we have new roads and buildings; what good is it if we can’t get a good cup of tea? We need to move to customer-driven innovation, after who is paying?
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
GHOSTS OF GENOCIDE
WARNING: THIS IS HARDCORE, VERY DISTURBING, DO NOT READ IF EASILY OFFENDED
THE ECHO OF GHOSTS OF A TRAGIC PAST
Rwanda is a new country; only 13 years old, it is racing towards modernity at a speed unseen before. You can feel the progress on an hourly basis; there is strong leadership at the top which guides this often wayward nation on a sound path. Being from Rwanda I now feel a strange sensation; I joined Facebook and have been reunited with so many University friends and they all say the same thing. I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE FROM RWANDA! I told them a thousand times but it didn’t register; now they’ve all seen Hotel Rwanda and think they know us thoroughly.
“It’s really tragic what’s happening out there.”
“When will they stop killing each other?” That ended 13 years ago.
Then the next question is; “Are you huti or tuti? Are you tuti or fruity or whatever the name is?”
“It’s really sad, the huti’s killed tonnes of tuties or was it the tuti’s killing the fruities? So sad, I sometimes just cry.”
I remember walking into a Rwandan party in Coventry when a woman fainted and had a fit, when I tried to approach her she got worse. Apparently I looked like her son who died and when I saw his picture there was a definite match. I was ordered to leave the party lest I make her have a stroke. In the April rains in Rwanda, survivors suffer from deep depression and psychosis. It is simply called “April Madness” as psychiatric illness is not a recognised fact of life, despite our tragic history.
That is the supreme irony of the genocide; nobody really cares and if they did, it was for the wrong reasons. Now the Genocide is an allegory of human intolerance but is rarely understood nor can it be understood even this long after 800,000 died in 3 months, plus the domino effect of 4.5 million Congolese. I have steadily avoided writing about this topic on this blog but I feel I must now; I don’t know why maybe just because it is logical to do so. There is no logic to the Genocide, one game people play is “the what if game”; what if the world intervened? What if the RPF never invaded? What if the peace deal was respected? What if this? What if that? The sad conclusion is that it was maybe inevitable, it was not random violence it as meticulously planned to the final detail and it would have been carried out whatever.
There are numerous myths about the Genocide; it is used by various parties to promote whatever theory they espouse. Being in England at the time, I had the pain of watching it live on TV while the world did nothing. It affected me in various ways, though indirectly. Firstly was survivor guilt; the fact that I was in a comfortable safe country while people were hacked to death on national TV; this destroys the first myth, that the world didn’t know. It was live on TV, so they knew, they debated in the UN, so they knew. The world still denies this till this day; as if to say “if we only knew”.
The second myth is “the domino effect”; this is mainly peddled by France and other apologists for the Hutu extremists. It says that Rwanda was a powder keg waiting to explode and the death of Habyarimana was the first domino to set off the genocide. His death was planned for what was seen as betrayal in signing the Arusha accords. The swift reaction of the extremist core is proof that they were ready to exploit the situation.
The next is that of a “Dual-Genocide”, Africa is always portrayed as a savage heart of darkness where tribal violence springs up from time to time. Like flash-floods or earthquakes; they are an inevitable inconvenience of life in Africa. Making it look like both sides killed eases the conscience of a passive World Community. But how is that so?
In Rwanda massive steps have been made to reconcile the survivors and killers; the government has made a conscious decision to do so. This is because it could not afford to wait for people to gradually feel the need to forgive; it had to compel them to, for it was too dangerous to wait. In Rwanda the development is compensating for the years of decline, when in 30 year after independence almost nothing was done to develop the country. Rwanda has never had it so good; now it produces more graduates annually than in the previous 30 years put together, in has nearly all the young attending primary education; nearly half finishing secondary, nearly 30,000 skilled graduates annually. But that said the legacy of 30 years of despotic rule still burdens this country. 70% of over 35’s are illiterate; most educated professionals were either killed or took part in the Genocide. Doctors killed, Nurses killed, Engineers killed, Lawyers killed, Admin clerks killed.
The only undisputed fact is that Rwanda was a deeply isolated country, and when faced with a threat it could only internalised it and turn in on itself; like someone slitting their wrists or cutting their leg off. The true tragedy is not what the Hutu extremists did to Tutsis; but what Rwanda did to itself. In Rwanda there is still an imbalance; those from the Diaspora are at an advantage, while the “Sopecha” who is born and bred in the country is lagging behind due to a lack of exposure. The Sopecha is often scared of change, slow to adapt, stuck in their ways. While the Diaspora is the opposite, due to the fact that they had to adapt and had be useful in foreign lands. Talking to a Taxi-man you hear this first hand, “That’s the estate where they only talk English.” As if it was pure evil he was describing.
Due to Rwanda’s small size and high population density there is a need to have intimacy rather than avoid it. It is not Gay for men to hold hands as they walk down the road; it is a sight you have to get used to. Imagine soldiers with AK-47’s strapped to their backs, walking hand in hand as they giggle like school-girls. It is common for people to touch you while they talk to you, as if to make you understand better. In a country where contact cannot be avoided, it is embraced. So you have killer living next to survivor, greeting each other over the garden fence. When I was flying here from London I met an acquaintance who was shivering with fear, he said “The people who killed my family now live in my house.” In the end he failed to board the flight as it would have been too traumatic.
That is the crux of the issue; the past is here with us today, most people just choose to ignore it. There is a blissful peace here but the threat of violence that sometimes lurks beneath the surface. A balance of fear and loathing as some unrepentant killers bide their time; waiting for the day when “The work can be completed.” In the Congo 35,000 soldiers of the FDLR await an evil second coming, but if they returned they would get lost as the whole of Kigali has changed. Rwanda is like Israel; surrounded by enemies waiting to destroy it, it is always outnumbered but never outgunned. It has one of the strongest armies in Africa. The stories you hear are amazing and worth having a book written about them; I sit with men who have killed dozens in battle. They laugh about how they shot POW’s all night after torturing them. That is against the Geneva Convention but when hear what these POW’s did then you are less sympathetic.
My friend had just finished fighting in 1994 when the real trauma started; he was charged with removing bodies from pit-latrines in Nyamata. Imagine descending into a pit full of shit, maggots and rotten bodies. I don’t know what hell is but it can’t be worse than that. He said he was looking for a particular girl, an ex-girlfriend who was the beauty queen of the town; she had been raped for 3 months and only released from her miserable life when she was killed by ramming a wooden stake through her vagina. Hers was the first body he found, I saw a photo and even while dead and covered in faeces she was still as beautiful as her reputation said. He spent days diving down the pit to harness ropes to the bodies to take them to a proper burial, after a while the maggots start to eat you like the corpses around you. The he found the soldiers responsible for this and spent several days torturing them before he killed them and narrowly avoided a firing squad as a lesser ranked soldier took the blame. For the record it didn’t make him feel better, revenge is pointless.
This is what Rwanda is dealing with; how do you undo that kind of trauma? In the West people go to a shrink because their mother didn’t give them a toy they wanted. Western psychiatrists have tried to come and give care here but have found it too traumatic. What do you say to someone who was buried alive under their family and had to eat the remains of his mother to stay alive? I wonder what Freud thought about the matter? Perhaps it is better to forget it and move on, what is left is a tragedy so great it defies logic. In the holocaust there was an industrialised murder that was cold and distant; it is silly to compare tragedies but Rwanda was personalised murder like no other. Neighbour killed friend killed school-mate killed drinking Buddy killed babysitter.
The scars are so vivid; going to an Estate Agent today, I tried not to focus on his huge machete scar across his forehead. A pretty waitress I usually see has an awful scar on a crippled arm, missing limbs and digits never surprise you. And yet these psychos run free, driving past the 1934 prison yesterday I smelt the filth of thousands of killers compacted into a hell of a stench, as if sin had a smell. The shear numbers (100,000) are what prompted their release as much as a need for reconciliation, like when someone does something so bad you just leave them.
The most powerful story I heard was told to me by a soldier; he had joined the RPF and left his family but when he returned he found them all slaughtered gruesomely and the villagers all claimed to have been out or not to have seen anything. Eventually the culprit was found returning from the Congo in 1996 and interned in 1934 prison. In about 1999 the soldier persuaded a friend who was a guard to leave him alone with the killer for a while so revenge could be dispensed. When he got there he saw such a pathetic sight he lost his anger. The killer said. “I’ve been waiting for you, I’ve always hoped you’d come. I am so glad to see you, they were brave till the end, they didn’t cry. We’ll make it look like I tried to kill you and tried to escape, use a knife it is better. Cut here.”
At that moment the soldier broke down and cried in front of the killer, the killer tried to touch him to comfort him, first he shrank from his touch but he collapsed into his arms. He lost his rage and walked out crying, the killer was pleading. “You must be crazy, I killed your mother, raped her, tortured your little sister, I raped their corpses, you coward, kill me!” That is the story of death and rebirth of Rwanda. If you don’t believe in God, you should believe there is a devil and he was in charge during the genocide. You still see his face now and again; there is sometimes an implicit look in some people’s eyes that says, “Just wait, we’ll show you”. If ever there was a lapse in security then that demon would return to haunt Rwanda.
Since I became a serious Christian I see all problems as spiritual; an evil spirit had incubated in Rwanda over centuries exploded in what we call the genocide. A spirit of self-hatred, a spirit of jealousy, a spirit of murder, a spirit of bloodlust. Killers talk of really enjoying it at the time, of rapturous joy, of carnal pleasure and joyous pain. Most of the population were infants or not born in 1994, the words; Hutu and Tutsi are alien to them but the older generation cannot expunge those words from their lexicon. The killers are as much victims of their own brutality; how do you live with yourself after that? Anyone who thinks it cannot happen again is sadly mistaken, but it won’t happen spontaneously there are 5 steps to genocide that have to take place before it explodes.
1. Identification – You identify and separate a group, nothing ill is said of them, you merely show the difference.
2. Stigmatisation – You point out negative aspects you associate with them, remember you audience has friends from this opposing group so you have to separate them.
3. Juxtaposition – Point out that your destinies are opposed, how the other group favours their own and will always seek to destroy your group.
4. De-humanise – Make the other group less than animals, remove any lingering forms of humanity left. Tutsi were called “Inyenzi” cockroaches that had to be eradicated like vermin.
5. Compulsion - Make it a duty to extinguish this other group, include all official state, religious and social institutions to give it legitimacy. Hence all government arms were involved, as were churches and societies.
So it could not happen spontaneously, the symptoms are there to be detected in advance. Sadly next time will be the same; we can never see a conflict in its own context. Darfur is the new Rwanda, Rwanda was the new Somalia, Somalia was the new Cambodia, Cambodia was the new Biafra and so forth. Just like Britney Spears is the new Madonna, George Clooney is the new Clark Gable, Pepsi is the new Coke so we can never see a tragedy for what it is. So the architects of the genocide still go largely unpunished as they sit in grandeur in France, Belgium, Kenya, USA, Canada and Congo while being heroes to millions of like-minded fools. Their pathetic minions are left to face the Gacaca court system.
The Gacaca system is not perfect but it the best we can have, it would take 200 years to try the killers in the court system so killers are left to be tried by their peers. This is the true sphere of reconciliation for the Genocide, listening to the victims is the most worthwhile aspect, they want to be heard. It is painful for all involved, to the victims, the accused and the court of local neighbours. The perpetrators will always have the net closing in on them however long it takes. One undisputed result of the Gacaca is that it has extended democracy to the lowest level of society, whatever happens at a national level, local people determine their own destiny in all matters of life.
I don’t want anybody to get the impression that Rwanda is in any way lawless, it is beautiful and progressive on a level never seen before. The astounding beauty and kindness of its people still surprise me everyday. Humanity died and was reborn here; you can trust even your enemy here. Rwanda is a nation that knows what it is capable of; it was taken to the brink and back. Not many Nations know what they are capable of, nor people neither, to quote the venerable Kanye West “the most beautiful people do the ugliest things.” Even you, the reader, are capable of the utmost cruelty and vicious murder. In certain circumstances you will kill, torture, rape, practice cannibalism and a lot easier than you think. If you disagree then you aren’t human, because Mankind is not Kind.
THE ECHO OF GHOSTS OF A TRAGIC PAST
Rwanda is a new country; only 13 years old, it is racing towards modernity at a speed unseen before. You can feel the progress on an hourly basis; there is strong leadership at the top which guides this often wayward nation on a sound path. Being from Rwanda I now feel a strange sensation; I joined Facebook and have been reunited with so many University friends and they all say the same thing. I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE FROM RWANDA! I told them a thousand times but it didn’t register; now they’ve all seen Hotel Rwanda and think they know us thoroughly.
“It’s really tragic what’s happening out there.”
“When will they stop killing each other?” That ended 13 years ago.
Then the next question is; “Are you huti or tuti? Are you tuti or fruity or whatever the name is?”
“It’s really sad, the huti’s killed tonnes of tuties or was it the tuti’s killing the fruities? So sad, I sometimes just cry.”
I remember walking into a Rwandan party in Coventry when a woman fainted and had a fit, when I tried to approach her she got worse. Apparently I looked like her son who died and when I saw his picture there was a definite match. I was ordered to leave the party lest I make her have a stroke. In the April rains in Rwanda, survivors suffer from deep depression and psychosis. It is simply called “April Madness” as psychiatric illness is not a recognised fact of life, despite our tragic history.
That is the supreme irony of the genocide; nobody really cares and if they did, it was for the wrong reasons. Now the Genocide is an allegory of human intolerance but is rarely understood nor can it be understood even this long after 800,000 died in 3 months, plus the domino effect of 4.5 million Congolese. I have steadily avoided writing about this topic on this blog but I feel I must now; I don’t know why maybe just because it is logical to do so. There is no logic to the Genocide, one game people play is “the what if game”; what if the world intervened? What if the RPF never invaded? What if the peace deal was respected? What if this? What if that? The sad conclusion is that it was maybe inevitable, it was not random violence it as meticulously planned to the final detail and it would have been carried out whatever.
There are numerous myths about the Genocide; it is used by various parties to promote whatever theory they espouse. Being in England at the time, I had the pain of watching it live on TV while the world did nothing. It affected me in various ways, though indirectly. Firstly was survivor guilt; the fact that I was in a comfortable safe country while people were hacked to death on national TV; this destroys the first myth, that the world didn’t know. It was live on TV, so they knew, they debated in the UN, so they knew. The world still denies this till this day; as if to say “if we only knew”.
The second myth is “the domino effect”; this is mainly peddled by France and other apologists for the Hutu extremists. It says that Rwanda was a powder keg waiting to explode and the death of Habyarimana was the first domino to set off the genocide. His death was planned for what was seen as betrayal in signing the Arusha accords. The swift reaction of the extremist core is proof that they were ready to exploit the situation.
The next is that of a “Dual-Genocide”, Africa is always portrayed as a savage heart of darkness where tribal violence springs up from time to time. Like flash-floods or earthquakes; they are an inevitable inconvenience of life in Africa. Making it look like both sides killed eases the conscience of a passive World Community. But how is that so?
In Rwanda massive steps have been made to reconcile the survivors and killers; the government has made a conscious decision to do so. This is because it could not afford to wait for people to gradually feel the need to forgive; it had to compel them to, for it was too dangerous to wait. In Rwanda the development is compensating for the years of decline, when in 30 year after independence almost nothing was done to develop the country. Rwanda has never had it so good; now it produces more graduates annually than in the previous 30 years put together, in has nearly all the young attending primary education; nearly half finishing secondary, nearly 30,000 skilled graduates annually. But that said the legacy of 30 years of despotic rule still burdens this country. 70% of over 35’s are illiterate; most educated professionals were either killed or took part in the Genocide. Doctors killed, Nurses killed, Engineers killed, Lawyers killed, Admin clerks killed.
The only undisputed fact is that Rwanda was a deeply isolated country, and when faced with a threat it could only internalised it and turn in on itself; like someone slitting their wrists or cutting their leg off. The true tragedy is not what the Hutu extremists did to Tutsis; but what Rwanda did to itself. In Rwanda there is still an imbalance; those from the Diaspora are at an advantage, while the “Sopecha” who is born and bred in the country is lagging behind due to a lack of exposure. The Sopecha is often scared of change, slow to adapt, stuck in their ways. While the Diaspora is the opposite, due to the fact that they had to adapt and had be useful in foreign lands. Talking to a Taxi-man you hear this first hand, “That’s the estate where they only talk English.” As if it was pure evil he was describing.
Due to Rwanda’s small size and high population density there is a need to have intimacy rather than avoid it. It is not Gay for men to hold hands as they walk down the road; it is a sight you have to get used to. Imagine soldiers with AK-47’s strapped to their backs, walking hand in hand as they giggle like school-girls. It is common for people to touch you while they talk to you, as if to make you understand better. In a country where contact cannot be avoided, it is embraced. So you have killer living next to survivor, greeting each other over the garden fence. When I was flying here from London I met an acquaintance who was shivering with fear, he said “The people who killed my family now live in my house.” In the end he failed to board the flight as it would have been too traumatic.
That is the crux of the issue; the past is here with us today, most people just choose to ignore it. There is a blissful peace here but the threat of violence that sometimes lurks beneath the surface. A balance of fear and loathing as some unrepentant killers bide their time; waiting for the day when “The work can be completed.” In the Congo 35,000 soldiers of the FDLR await an evil second coming, but if they returned they would get lost as the whole of Kigali has changed. Rwanda is like Israel; surrounded by enemies waiting to destroy it, it is always outnumbered but never outgunned. It has one of the strongest armies in Africa. The stories you hear are amazing and worth having a book written about them; I sit with men who have killed dozens in battle. They laugh about how they shot POW’s all night after torturing them. That is against the Geneva Convention but when hear what these POW’s did then you are less sympathetic.
My friend had just finished fighting in 1994 when the real trauma started; he was charged with removing bodies from pit-latrines in Nyamata. Imagine descending into a pit full of shit, maggots and rotten bodies. I don’t know what hell is but it can’t be worse than that. He said he was looking for a particular girl, an ex-girlfriend who was the beauty queen of the town; she had been raped for 3 months and only released from her miserable life when she was killed by ramming a wooden stake through her vagina. Hers was the first body he found, I saw a photo and even while dead and covered in faeces she was still as beautiful as her reputation said. He spent days diving down the pit to harness ropes to the bodies to take them to a proper burial, after a while the maggots start to eat you like the corpses around you. The he found the soldiers responsible for this and spent several days torturing them before he killed them and narrowly avoided a firing squad as a lesser ranked soldier took the blame. For the record it didn’t make him feel better, revenge is pointless.
This is what Rwanda is dealing with; how do you undo that kind of trauma? In the West people go to a shrink because their mother didn’t give them a toy they wanted. Western psychiatrists have tried to come and give care here but have found it too traumatic. What do you say to someone who was buried alive under their family and had to eat the remains of his mother to stay alive? I wonder what Freud thought about the matter? Perhaps it is better to forget it and move on, what is left is a tragedy so great it defies logic. In the holocaust there was an industrialised murder that was cold and distant; it is silly to compare tragedies but Rwanda was personalised murder like no other. Neighbour killed friend killed school-mate killed drinking Buddy killed babysitter.
The scars are so vivid; going to an Estate Agent today, I tried not to focus on his huge machete scar across his forehead. A pretty waitress I usually see has an awful scar on a crippled arm, missing limbs and digits never surprise you. And yet these psychos run free, driving past the 1934 prison yesterday I smelt the filth of thousands of killers compacted into a hell of a stench, as if sin had a smell. The shear numbers (100,000) are what prompted their release as much as a need for reconciliation, like when someone does something so bad you just leave them.
The most powerful story I heard was told to me by a soldier; he had joined the RPF and left his family but when he returned he found them all slaughtered gruesomely and the villagers all claimed to have been out or not to have seen anything. Eventually the culprit was found returning from the Congo in 1996 and interned in 1934 prison. In about 1999 the soldier persuaded a friend who was a guard to leave him alone with the killer for a while so revenge could be dispensed. When he got there he saw such a pathetic sight he lost his anger. The killer said. “I’ve been waiting for you, I’ve always hoped you’d come. I am so glad to see you, they were brave till the end, they didn’t cry. We’ll make it look like I tried to kill you and tried to escape, use a knife it is better. Cut here.”
At that moment the soldier broke down and cried in front of the killer, the killer tried to touch him to comfort him, first he shrank from his touch but he collapsed into his arms. He lost his rage and walked out crying, the killer was pleading. “You must be crazy, I killed your mother, raped her, tortured your little sister, I raped their corpses, you coward, kill me!” That is the story of death and rebirth of Rwanda. If you don’t believe in God, you should believe there is a devil and he was in charge during the genocide. You still see his face now and again; there is sometimes an implicit look in some people’s eyes that says, “Just wait, we’ll show you”. If ever there was a lapse in security then that demon would return to haunt Rwanda.
Since I became a serious Christian I see all problems as spiritual; an evil spirit had incubated in Rwanda over centuries exploded in what we call the genocide. A spirit of self-hatred, a spirit of jealousy, a spirit of murder, a spirit of bloodlust. Killers talk of really enjoying it at the time, of rapturous joy, of carnal pleasure and joyous pain. Most of the population were infants or not born in 1994, the words; Hutu and Tutsi are alien to them but the older generation cannot expunge those words from their lexicon. The killers are as much victims of their own brutality; how do you live with yourself after that? Anyone who thinks it cannot happen again is sadly mistaken, but it won’t happen spontaneously there are 5 steps to genocide that have to take place before it explodes.
1. Identification – You identify and separate a group, nothing ill is said of them, you merely show the difference.
2. Stigmatisation – You point out negative aspects you associate with them, remember you audience has friends from this opposing group so you have to separate them.
3. Juxtaposition – Point out that your destinies are opposed, how the other group favours their own and will always seek to destroy your group.
4. De-humanise – Make the other group less than animals, remove any lingering forms of humanity left. Tutsi were called “Inyenzi” cockroaches that had to be eradicated like vermin.
5. Compulsion - Make it a duty to extinguish this other group, include all official state, religious and social institutions to give it legitimacy. Hence all government arms were involved, as were churches and societies.
So it could not happen spontaneously, the symptoms are there to be detected in advance. Sadly next time will be the same; we can never see a conflict in its own context. Darfur is the new Rwanda, Rwanda was the new Somalia, Somalia was the new Cambodia, Cambodia was the new Biafra and so forth. Just like Britney Spears is the new Madonna, George Clooney is the new Clark Gable, Pepsi is the new Coke so we can never see a tragedy for what it is. So the architects of the genocide still go largely unpunished as they sit in grandeur in France, Belgium, Kenya, USA, Canada and Congo while being heroes to millions of like-minded fools. Their pathetic minions are left to face the Gacaca court system.
The Gacaca system is not perfect but it the best we can have, it would take 200 years to try the killers in the court system so killers are left to be tried by their peers. This is the true sphere of reconciliation for the Genocide, listening to the victims is the most worthwhile aspect, they want to be heard. It is painful for all involved, to the victims, the accused and the court of local neighbours. The perpetrators will always have the net closing in on them however long it takes. One undisputed result of the Gacaca is that it has extended democracy to the lowest level of society, whatever happens at a national level, local people determine their own destiny in all matters of life.
I don’t want anybody to get the impression that Rwanda is in any way lawless, it is beautiful and progressive on a level never seen before. The astounding beauty and kindness of its people still surprise me everyday. Humanity died and was reborn here; you can trust even your enemy here. Rwanda is a nation that knows what it is capable of; it was taken to the brink and back. Not many Nations know what they are capable of, nor people neither, to quote the venerable Kanye West “the most beautiful people do the ugliest things.” Even you, the reader, are capable of the utmost cruelty and vicious murder. In certain circumstances you will kill, torture, rape, practice cannibalism and a lot easier than you think. If you disagree then you aren’t human, because Mankind is not Kind.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
AN ODE TO AN OLD BEAUTY
AN ODE TO BEAUTY
It is one of the oldest inhabited cities in Africa, it has attracted travellers for at least 1,000 years and has accommodated every kind of change during that time. It is where Africa collided with Asia as two cultural tectonic plates smashed and created a new culture, new race, and new language. As long as 2,500 years ago, Persians, Pre-Islamic Arabs, Indians and even Chinese sailed down the shores of East Africa. The Trade winds made navigation easy as all you had to do was follow the wind, these same winds would return you after a few months of a joyous relaxation. The word got round that if you followed the winds then you would reach an enchanted place with lustful natives and true beauty.
Ibn Batutta sailed here in about 1100 and this is the oldest record of the town, nobody really knows where the name Mombasa came from, there are a number of theories but it was coined by Arab traders. The Arabs had a number of trading post dotted along the coast, from Mozambique to the Horn of Africa. These places are now legendary, Kilwa, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Mombasa, Malindi, Lamu, Mogadishu, Kismayu, Berbera. Before the White man brought “civilization” this was the realm of the Arab trader. They brought Islam, Silk, pottery, jewellery, learning, muskets, cannons, and everything the locals could imagine. They took back spices, exotic foods, ivory, gold, silver, iron, and eventually slaves.
Sitting on a jetty in Mombasa, with a dhow floating in the harbour in a scene that hasn’t changed for 1,000 years, you get a timeless exotic feeling. You can still catch a dhow to any city you want on the trade-winds; Dubai, Muscat, Mecca, Karachi, Doha, Aden and all manner of places that evoke Arab exoticism. Except now it isn’t slaves and ivory being loaded now, it is now plasma screens from Dubai, cheap electronics from Taiwan and Khat goes the other way.
Mombasa is the place where I became a man, a place that shielded me from the big bad world and exposed me slowly like a big brother. Mombasa is a jewel in the sea of hope, a place where the people believe it will be better everyday; if you ask how someone is they say “Nime furahi,” I am happy, you answer “nime furahi zaidi!” I am happier. Optimism is the drug of choice and all people are high.
Mombasa is divided into three parts, North Coast, Mvita, and Likoni. Mvita is the heart of it; the rest of the city has mushroomed as the trade has boomed. The original city was Mvita, the island that has now ceased to be an island now that a causeway connects it to the main land. There are districts that are all unique and different like Makupa, Tudor Docks, Majengo, Kibokoni, Ganjoni and the business district.
As a child it was like a theme park for the imagination, we would play hide and seek in Kibokoni, the Old Town, which looks more like Arabia than Africa. The streets are narrow and close together to keep the sun out of your eyes, it can be as much a 10 degrees cooler than the rest of town. It is more like the world of Ali Baba with veiled women, dusty streets, bazaars, spice stalls, donkey carts and a cool breeze. Then you turn a corner and you are in different place as the business district is all skyscrapers and plate glass. Then you can be in India with Gudwaras, Hindu shrines.
Mombasa is small and cannot afford to give everyone his own quarter so they all live side by side. A mosque next to a church, a temple next to a cathedral, there are so many denominations it can boggle the mind and they are all intermixed. Mombasa is the only place you can see a church with a minaret, St. Johns church is built in the finest Islamic architectural style. This is where Islam and Christianity coexist perfectly; intermarriage has been the founding ethos of the city ever since Arabs and Persians arrived 2,500 years ago and took African wives, their children were called the Waswahili. The language was Swahili, a mixture of Arabic and Bantu that has blended so well that it is one of the most spoken tongues in Africa with more than 100 million speakers and expanding. It is always succinct and to the point, no room for ambiguity, that’s why it is the language of business and trade and wherever there is trade Swahili can be heard.
Mombasa has such a faded beauty and easy charm, it is so understated and calm, the white-wash on the buildings always stains due to the sea air. The iron-sheets always rust to a perfect brown, the palm trees curve and swing in the wind. Houses are never flash, modesty is the way, so poor man and rich man live cheek to cheek. There is no way to tell the wealthy from the paupers, maybe from the size of the satellite dish. Tudor docks is one of my favourite suburbs, with all races living side by side. You get Muslims called Steve and Christians called Muhammed, you never know who is who.
Everything in Mombasa is just so, the best thing about it is the sunrises, being on the East Coast there are no sunsets over the sea. I wake up at around 5 AM run to Likoni; which is about 15 minutes walk from where I stay in Ganjoni, about this time the early throngs of people are making there way to the city from the South Coast. The South Coast is the cheapest place to live so every morning about 500,000 people make their way into the city on the ferries. By 5:15 the masses are a tide of bodies, there is a park full of Matatu’s by the ferry docks but if you turn left then peace abounds.
The seafront is a quiet walk away from the chaos; it curves with stone and concrete benches it is here that you see some homeless people that sleep along the shore and are woken by the sunrise. When I was young I used to jog with my friend Roger and in the morning we would jog through the parks with thugs still asleep with machetes lying in wait for unsuspecting victims. The place is floodlit now so there aren’t any people to rob now. I walk to near the Florida 2000 nightclub, just before it is a cove which you can walk down and my favourite beach is there. It is perfect, around 20 metres wide with sea hewn rocks that look like a dragon in profile. It is always low tide in the morning and only the crabs keep you company; at first they cower and run away but after a while they realise you aren’t a threat and become brazen, flashing their huge claws in a threatening manner.
I sit in the cove, awaiting the best view in the world; the sun is silhouetted under the horizon as a golden purple hazy light creeps into view. The first glimpse is the true magical moment; it is as if it peeps to see if it is safe to come out then pops up to illuminate the world. There is nothing like sunrise; it is worth getting up for, nothing fills you up with hope like a sunrise. A sunset has a certain tragic beauty like a lost dream fading; but a sunrise is pure optimism, anything is possible at sunrise and you conquer the world.
The little bay has the best view; with clouds it is even better, like shrouds of mystery and ribbons of enigmatic light. The low tide lets you walk into the bay like you are walking on water; the bay between the sea and port is actually a flooded creek, that is really deep but a ledge extends into the bay and you can walk along the reef unto you fall off the ledge. My favourite rapper Rakim said “Knowledge is: knowing the ledge”, this ledge invites you to walk it every day I used to go further into the sea but I never fell off.
You sit in the cove until the tide turns, which comes at different times; some people are picking for whelks and cockles and are amazed that you are just sitting there. Then I get up and walk up to the coconut sellers on the side; I get one costing about 20/= or 30 cents in dollars. It a serious process choosing the right one; just because they are big doesn’t mean they have the most juice, the smaller ones are sweeter, then the creamy pulp is wonderful and you can have that till lunch and you’ll be fine.
The walk back is not as relaxing as the masses chatter away as they go to work people strike up friendships for the walk to town; you can meet up with someone and chat away for fifteen minutes telling all your secrets only for them to disappear and never see them again. Everyone walks at the same pace; like the rhythm carries you along and soon I was back at the flats. The crows are always screaming away; one thing about Mombasa is that aren’t any seagulls, they are the usual soundtrack to the sea but this is the land of the crows. They make the most awful racket that drills inside your head but you learn to live with them. The crows cannot tolerate any competition; pigeons cluster in gangs to hold off the bullies. They have a curious existence; they are the most anti-social of social animals, they should avoid each other at all costs but they are stuck together.
Mombasa has a certain charm; most people are rude as drunken sailors but nothing is taken seriously. Sitting on a matatu I saw a young Arab girl arguing with the conductor; the conductor was red-eyed from stonking marijuana and with a mouthful of Khat as is the norm. She insulted him in a way that made all in the van cringe. “Your Daddy was a faggot who shat you out of his ass!” Ooh we all said, he tried to come back but he was as stunned as the rest of us. Trust me in Swahili it sounds much more painful. But we all laughed and no offence was taken and he just munched on his khat and giggled as he gave her a discount for wit. Apart from her wicked putdowns she also scented the van; no self-respecting Arab Girl would leave the house without dousing herself with at least half a bottle of perfume. For 15/= you can travel all over the city, that is like 10p in UK.
You can eat like a king for 100/= that is like $1.50 or 75p; you can have chapatti, omelette, shish kebab, a mahamri and all this on the street with out any risk of food poisoning because the food is scorching hot and all germs are nuked in heat. The Mahamri is a wonder of cuisine; it is a standard triangular donut but seems to taste magical when in Mombasa. You can catch the minibus to Reef hotel, for about 25/= most locals avoid swimming in the sea and prefer pools. Here you see a sad fact of life; all the hotels have cordoned off the beaches and you have to pay a toll to swim in them, this is to keep out hawkers and beach-boys that harass the tourists.
Instead the hotels employ their own beach-boys to keep the old women company; I felt awkward being a Black man swimming in their beach and whenever a pretty tourist girl approached me I ignored her. I was afraid to talk to them because they would have thought I was a gigolo and I was lucky to be with Roger and talking sign language so I pretended to be deaf. This American girl said I was “sweet” but I pretended not to hear, it was only when she heard me ordering drinks that she rebuked me for lying. When I was last here I met a beautiful Norwegian girl with stereotypical Nordic features, I spent a glorious few days with her but was stunned when she paid me a paltry sum for my kindness and I was so offended I almost cried.
These beach-boys are a wonder in themselves; with typically lithe bodies, dreadlocks, gold chains and gleaming white teeth. They prowl the beaches looking for lonely, old fat, divorced women who are stranded like beached whales. A young gorgeous model wouldn’t be worth their time as they wouldn’t pay as much. They are fluent in any number of languages; I remember when I wanted to take French lessons but the class was fully booked up with gigolos. These guys are thorough; the concierge briefs them in depth about their prospective victims. Something like “Alice Jones, 49, just divorced, six figure settlement, 220 pounds, 3 children, was left for an anorexic secretary”. If you were from Beloxi, Mississippi then they would tell you everything about the town and how they visited their brother there.
The sea is hot as a warm bath; I had gotten used to the utterly freezing seas of the UK, the last time I had been in the sea was when I jumped off Hastings pier in a drunken state however the cold water and the waves bashing me against the wooden columns instantly sobered me up. This was a more sedate affair despite the choppy waters; I had ignored numerous warnings of the rain but I was determined to see the sea, besides Mombasa weather changes so quickly that by the time I got there the rain had gone but the sea was still swirling. The tide was high and the boats that were usually near the shore were halfway to the reef. There is a strange sensation as the top waves are hot and the lower waves are cooler.
Sitting in the hotel I was stunned to see the prices they charge, a burger was about $8, a soda $2 so I reassured them that I wasn’t a dumb tourist with too much to spend and held my nerve until I could get some street food. I saw a French-speaking gigolo plying his trade on some gullible mademoiselle with the fattest legs I ever saw, rubbing sun-tan lotion on the smalls of her back before they retired to more suitable quarters. I left with a bitter sadness that nothing changed, all the waitresses were potential hookers and the waiters were also up for sale; tourism is like selling your body and soul.
The day after that I went to a rally competition and I saw a gaggle of mad dogs and expat Englishmen racing in the midday sun. It was crazy sight for myself as well as the locals who were befuddled by the scene as people smashed and destroyed their cars in the name of fun. We had woken up at 5 am. Waited for about an hour for our lift, got on the ferry around 6.30 and raced down the South Coast highway in a convoy of rally and support cars. Then there was a rough ride to the actual course as we drove through endless coconut groves, being Africa the 9 o’clock was actually 11. I was driven round the course by Ahmed Musa, an old childhood acquaintance who hadn’t changed much except he now was richer and more spoilt. He was now pushing 1,000 BHP round corners sharp as elbows, missing locals by whiskers while gulping Red Bull and pumping techno music.
It is good to hear Swahili spoken fluently, mine isn’t perfect but the Asians spoke it so proudly; the biggest shock was to hear Chris Bird who looks like a sunburnt toff lost in the Dark Continent but speaks it perfectly as any native. The winner was immaterial as the chaos lost the details, the best car won in the end and kudos to him. The most amazing scene was the Lionnet family; a group of motor-cross fanatics with the youngest being 10, they raced devilishly round the circuit as they trained for the Kenyan championship. By then I was traumatised by the music on the tannoy, Germans should be legally restricted from making music but German country music is truly awful and nobody seemed to care.
We drove back as we raced for the ferry and when we got there it was a 30 minute wait to board and I fell asleep in the cue with my hand hanging out of the passenger window and I woke just in time to see a thief creeping up my blind side in the mirror, I could see him crouched like a lion in wait to snatch my watch. By the time he came by I was awake and he was disgusted with the delay.
Being welcomed to people’s houses is the best feeling; I ate at my friend Ralph’s and got so used to playing with his kids, I wish for that kind of family contentment. He came home at lunch to play with his kids, and he just rolled around with them. His older kid Jeremiah was truly insane and utterly lovable, capable of the most random acts of randomness while being borderline normal. It made me wish I was kid, a kid again, it is a shame we have to grow up and lose that innocence but I suppose someone has to pay the bills.
I never say goodbye to Mombasa, I just say I’ll be back and I will, I want to retire there and just lie in a hammock while the ships go by and say farewell to time.
It is one of the oldest inhabited cities in Africa, it has attracted travellers for at least 1,000 years and has accommodated every kind of change during that time. It is where Africa collided with Asia as two cultural tectonic plates smashed and created a new culture, new race, and new language. As long as 2,500 years ago, Persians, Pre-Islamic Arabs, Indians and even Chinese sailed down the shores of East Africa. The Trade winds made navigation easy as all you had to do was follow the wind, these same winds would return you after a few months of a joyous relaxation. The word got round that if you followed the winds then you would reach an enchanted place with lustful natives and true beauty.
Ibn Batutta sailed here in about 1100 and this is the oldest record of the town, nobody really knows where the name Mombasa came from, there are a number of theories but it was coined by Arab traders. The Arabs had a number of trading post dotted along the coast, from Mozambique to the Horn of Africa. These places are now legendary, Kilwa, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Mombasa, Malindi, Lamu, Mogadishu, Kismayu, Berbera. Before the White man brought “civilization” this was the realm of the Arab trader. They brought Islam, Silk, pottery, jewellery, learning, muskets, cannons, and everything the locals could imagine. They took back spices, exotic foods, ivory, gold, silver, iron, and eventually slaves.
Sitting on a jetty in Mombasa, with a dhow floating in the harbour in a scene that hasn’t changed for 1,000 years, you get a timeless exotic feeling. You can still catch a dhow to any city you want on the trade-winds; Dubai, Muscat, Mecca, Karachi, Doha, Aden and all manner of places that evoke Arab exoticism. Except now it isn’t slaves and ivory being loaded now, it is now plasma screens from Dubai, cheap electronics from Taiwan and Khat goes the other way.
Mombasa is the place where I became a man, a place that shielded me from the big bad world and exposed me slowly like a big brother. Mombasa is a jewel in the sea of hope, a place where the people believe it will be better everyday; if you ask how someone is they say “Nime furahi,” I am happy, you answer “nime furahi zaidi!” I am happier. Optimism is the drug of choice and all people are high.
Mombasa is divided into three parts, North Coast, Mvita, and Likoni. Mvita is the heart of it; the rest of the city has mushroomed as the trade has boomed. The original city was Mvita, the island that has now ceased to be an island now that a causeway connects it to the main land. There are districts that are all unique and different like Makupa, Tudor Docks, Majengo, Kibokoni, Ganjoni and the business district.
As a child it was like a theme park for the imagination, we would play hide and seek in Kibokoni, the Old Town, which looks more like Arabia than Africa. The streets are narrow and close together to keep the sun out of your eyes, it can be as much a 10 degrees cooler than the rest of town. It is more like the world of Ali Baba with veiled women, dusty streets, bazaars, spice stalls, donkey carts and a cool breeze. Then you turn a corner and you are in different place as the business district is all skyscrapers and plate glass. Then you can be in India with Gudwaras, Hindu shrines.
Mombasa is small and cannot afford to give everyone his own quarter so they all live side by side. A mosque next to a church, a temple next to a cathedral, there are so many denominations it can boggle the mind and they are all intermixed. Mombasa is the only place you can see a church with a minaret, St. Johns church is built in the finest Islamic architectural style. This is where Islam and Christianity coexist perfectly; intermarriage has been the founding ethos of the city ever since Arabs and Persians arrived 2,500 years ago and took African wives, their children were called the Waswahili. The language was Swahili, a mixture of Arabic and Bantu that has blended so well that it is one of the most spoken tongues in Africa with more than 100 million speakers and expanding. It is always succinct and to the point, no room for ambiguity, that’s why it is the language of business and trade and wherever there is trade Swahili can be heard.
Mombasa has such a faded beauty and easy charm, it is so understated and calm, the white-wash on the buildings always stains due to the sea air. The iron-sheets always rust to a perfect brown, the palm trees curve and swing in the wind. Houses are never flash, modesty is the way, so poor man and rich man live cheek to cheek. There is no way to tell the wealthy from the paupers, maybe from the size of the satellite dish. Tudor docks is one of my favourite suburbs, with all races living side by side. You get Muslims called Steve and Christians called Muhammed, you never know who is who.
Everything in Mombasa is just so, the best thing about it is the sunrises, being on the East Coast there are no sunsets over the sea. I wake up at around 5 AM run to Likoni; which is about 15 minutes walk from where I stay in Ganjoni, about this time the early throngs of people are making there way to the city from the South Coast. The South Coast is the cheapest place to live so every morning about 500,000 people make their way into the city on the ferries. By 5:15 the masses are a tide of bodies, there is a park full of Matatu’s by the ferry docks but if you turn left then peace abounds.
The seafront is a quiet walk away from the chaos; it curves with stone and concrete benches it is here that you see some homeless people that sleep along the shore and are woken by the sunrise. When I was young I used to jog with my friend Roger and in the morning we would jog through the parks with thugs still asleep with machetes lying in wait for unsuspecting victims. The place is floodlit now so there aren’t any people to rob now. I walk to near the Florida 2000 nightclub, just before it is a cove which you can walk down and my favourite beach is there. It is perfect, around 20 metres wide with sea hewn rocks that look like a dragon in profile. It is always low tide in the morning and only the crabs keep you company; at first they cower and run away but after a while they realise you aren’t a threat and become brazen, flashing their huge claws in a threatening manner.
I sit in the cove, awaiting the best view in the world; the sun is silhouetted under the horizon as a golden purple hazy light creeps into view. The first glimpse is the true magical moment; it is as if it peeps to see if it is safe to come out then pops up to illuminate the world. There is nothing like sunrise; it is worth getting up for, nothing fills you up with hope like a sunrise. A sunset has a certain tragic beauty like a lost dream fading; but a sunrise is pure optimism, anything is possible at sunrise and you conquer the world.
The little bay has the best view; with clouds it is even better, like shrouds of mystery and ribbons of enigmatic light. The low tide lets you walk into the bay like you are walking on water; the bay between the sea and port is actually a flooded creek, that is really deep but a ledge extends into the bay and you can walk along the reef unto you fall off the ledge. My favourite rapper Rakim said “Knowledge is: knowing the ledge”, this ledge invites you to walk it every day I used to go further into the sea but I never fell off.
You sit in the cove until the tide turns, which comes at different times; some people are picking for whelks and cockles and are amazed that you are just sitting there. Then I get up and walk up to the coconut sellers on the side; I get one costing about 20/= or 30 cents in dollars. It a serious process choosing the right one; just because they are big doesn’t mean they have the most juice, the smaller ones are sweeter, then the creamy pulp is wonderful and you can have that till lunch and you’ll be fine.
The walk back is not as relaxing as the masses chatter away as they go to work people strike up friendships for the walk to town; you can meet up with someone and chat away for fifteen minutes telling all your secrets only for them to disappear and never see them again. Everyone walks at the same pace; like the rhythm carries you along and soon I was back at the flats. The crows are always screaming away; one thing about Mombasa is that aren’t any seagulls, they are the usual soundtrack to the sea but this is the land of the crows. They make the most awful racket that drills inside your head but you learn to live with them. The crows cannot tolerate any competition; pigeons cluster in gangs to hold off the bullies. They have a curious existence; they are the most anti-social of social animals, they should avoid each other at all costs but they are stuck together.
Mombasa has a certain charm; most people are rude as drunken sailors but nothing is taken seriously. Sitting on a matatu I saw a young Arab girl arguing with the conductor; the conductor was red-eyed from stonking marijuana and with a mouthful of Khat as is the norm. She insulted him in a way that made all in the van cringe. “Your Daddy was a faggot who shat you out of his ass!” Ooh we all said, he tried to come back but he was as stunned as the rest of us. Trust me in Swahili it sounds much more painful. But we all laughed and no offence was taken and he just munched on his khat and giggled as he gave her a discount for wit. Apart from her wicked putdowns she also scented the van; no self-respecting Arab Girl would leave the house without dousing herself with at least half a bottle of perfume. For 15/= you can travel all over the city, that is like 10p in UK.
You can eat like a king for 100/= that is like $1.50 or 75p; you can have chapatti, omelette, shish kebab, a mahamri and all this on the street with out any risk of food poisoning because the food is scorching hot and all germs are nuked in heat. The Mahamri is a wonder of cuisine; it is a standard triangular donut but seems to taste magical when in Mombasa. You can catch the minibus to Reef hotel, for about 25/= most locals avoid swimming in the sea and prefer pools. Here you see a sad fact of life; all the hotels have cordoned off the beaches and you have to pay a toll to swim in them, this is to keep out hawkers and beach-boys that harass the tourists.
Instead the hotels employ their own beach-boys to keep the old women company; I felt awkward being a Black man swimming in their beach and whenever a pretty tourist girl approached me I ignored her. I was afraid to talk to them because they would have thought I was a gigolo and I was lucky to be with Roger and talking sign language so I pretended to be deaf. This American girl said I was “sweet” but I pretended not to hear, it was only when she heard me ordering drinks that she rebuked me for lying. When I was last here I met a beautiful Norwegian girl with stereotypical Nordic features, I spent a glorious few days with her but was stunned when she paid me a paltry sum for my kindness and I was so offended I almost cried.
These beach-boys are a wonder in themselves; with typically lithe bodies, dreadlocks, gold chains and gleaming white teeth. They prowl the beaches looking for lonely, old fat, divorced women who are stranded like beached whales. A young gorgeous model wouldn’t be worth their time as they wouldn’t pay as much. They are fluent in any number of languages; I remember when I wanted to take French lessons but the class was fully booked up with gigolos. These guys are thorough; the concierge briefs them in depth about their prospective victims. Something like “Alice Jones, 49, just divorced, six figure settlement, 220 pounds, 3 children, was left for an anorexic secretary”. If you were from Beloxi, Mississippi then they would tell you everything about the town and how they visited their brother there.
The sea is hot as a warm bath; I had gotten used to the utterly freezing seas of the UK, the last time I had been in the sea was when I jumped off Hastings pier in a drunken state however the cold water and the waves bashing me against the wooden columns instantly sobered me up. This was a more sedate affair despite the choppy waters; I had ignored numerous warnings of the rain but I was determined to see the sea, besides Mombasa weather changes so quickly that by the time I got there the rain had gone but the sea was still swirling. The tide was high and the boats that were usually near the shore were halfway to the reef. There is a strange sensation as the top waves are hot and the lower waves are cooler.
Sitting in the hotel I was stunned to see the prices they charge, a burger was about $8, a soda $2 so I reassured them that I wasn’t a dumb tourist with too much to spend and held my nerve until I could get some street food. I saw a French-speaking gigolo plying his trade on some gullible mademoiselle with the fattest legs I ever saw, rubbing sun-tan lotion on the smalls of her back before they retired to more suitable quarters. I left with a bitter sadness that nothing changed, all the waitresses were potential hookers and the waiters were also up for sale; tourism is like selling your body and soul.
The day after that I went to a rally competition and I saw a gaggle of mad dogs and expat Englishmen racing in the midday sun. It was crazy sight for myself as well as the locals who were befuddled by the scene as people smashed and destroyed their cars in the name of fun. We had woken up at 5 am. Waited for about an hour for our lift, got on the ferry around 6.30 and raced down the South Coast highway in a convoy of rally and support cars. Then there was a rough ride to the actual course as we drove through endless coconut groves, being Africa the 9 o’clock was actually 11. I was driven round the course by Ahmed Musa, an old childhood acquaintance who hadn’t changed much except he now was richer and more spoilt. He was now pushing 1,000 BHP round corners sharp as elbows, missing locals by whiskers while gulping Red Bull and pumping techno music.
It is good to hear Swahili spoken fluently, mine isn’t perfect but the Asians spoke it so proudly; the biggest shock was to hear Chris Bird who looks like a sunburnt toff lost in the Dark Continent but speaks it perfectly as any native. The winner was immaterial as the chaos lost the details, the best car won in the end and kudos to him. The most amazing scene was the Lionnet family; a group of motor-cross fanatics with the youngest being 10, they raced devilishly round the circuit as they trained for the Kenyan championship. By then I was traumatised by the music on the tannoy, Germans should be legally restricted from making music but German country music is truly awful and nobody seemed to care.
We drove back as we raced for the ferry and when we got there it was a 30 minute wait to board and I fell asleep in the cue with my hand hanging out of the passenger window and I woke just in time to see a thief creeping up my blind side in the mirror, I could see him crouched like a lion in wait to snatch my watch. By the time he came by I was awake and he was disgusted with the delay.
Being welcomed to people’s houses is the best feeling; I ate at my friend Ralph’s and got so used to playing with his kids, I wish for that kind of family contentment. He came home at lunch to play with his kids, and he just rolled around with them. His older kid Jeremiah was truly insane and utterly lovable, capable of the most random acts of randomness while being borderline normal. It made me wish I was kid, a kid again, it is a shame we have to grow up and lose that innocence but I suppose someone has to pay the bills.
I never say goodbye to Mombasa, I just say I’ll be back and I will, I want to retire there and just lie in a hammock while the ships go by and say farewell to time.
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