After a few more minutes I messaged her: Where r u.
I thought she’d ditched me — at the side of the road, waiting outside a random apartment building, on the outskirts of Nairobi. But then she returned, smiling, as ever. And all was forgiven.
She got in the car and said, ‘I know a place where we can eat — they’re open all night — and we can get roast chicken and samosas and — ’
‘I’d love to keep going all night,’ I said, ‘but I’m flying out to Lamu tomorrow.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We’ll get you back to the hotel.’
We rode back to the hotel in silence. MC Karen put her head in my lap and closed her eyes. My hand was on her shoulder, and I wanted the ride to last for hours.
When we pulled up to the hotel’s gate I was disheartened. The security guard recognized me and opened the gate.
I said, ‘Well, thank you.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It was fun.’
Then she kissed me on the lips, a brief kiss.
‘Goodnight,’ I said, hesitated, then started to get out of the car.
‘Do you have money for the driver?’ she said.
I gave her two thousand Kenyan shillings and she said, ‘More like three thousand.’
So I gave her another thousand and got out of the car.
‘I’ll SMS you while you’re in Lamu,’ she said. ‘Goodnight, John!’
Back in my room I packed a knapsack full of clothing for Lamu. I lay on top of my sheets and looked at my Nokia. MC Karen had messaged me: Thx for night:) c u soon.
I faded off.
The flight out took longer than expected. There was a problem with the plane so we departed late, and then we were in the air for about two and a half hours. We flew out of a small airport, Wilson Airport, close to the hotel. But it’d been a long day, with a lot of waiting, which started with a quick trip into the city with Mark and Jason to a Nakumatt supermarket. I bumped into the two at breakfast so we ate quickly and then took a car downtown. In front of the supermarket, which was inside a mall, sat a squat, robotic Santa Claus. Ho ho ho, it said, stiltedly, robotically, ho ho ho. And sleigh bell sound effects rattled and jangled and their relentless insistence sounded sinister, hair-raising, bone-chilling even, especially with the psychotic little Santa’s ho ho ho. Santa looked dangerous, like sparks should come shooting out of its mouth, like it might burn the place down.
Everyone who passed the demon Santa Claus made comments, or terrified faces, laughing afterwards, so I knew I wasn’t alone; I wasn’t just imaging the festive fiend in front of the Nakumatt.
We walked down all the aisles but wound up only buying liquor. Mark and I, however, decided we’d come back to buy some coffee and tea as gifts. I wasn’t sure what to buy, in terms of alcohol. I wasn’t particularly excited to drink, so my heart wasn’t in it.
‘Try Kenya Cane,’ said Jason. ‘Have you tried Kenya Cane?’
‘No.’
‘It’s kind of like a drug, more than alcohol.’
So I bought a bottle. And they bought a few bottles, a few different liquors.
‘We’re going to be in Lamu for Christmas,’ said Jason. ‘That’s so awesome.’
Back at the hotel we waited for at least forty minutes in the lobby for the shuttle to the airport, approximately fifteen minutes away, and for people to get organized. I stood with Boris, dressed in his beachwear, that is, long linen shorts and a lightweight pale blue dashiki — he was excited to get to Lamu. He was happy and not overly perturbed with respect to the delays.
While we were waiting in the lobby, Boris poked my arm. ‘You know who that is, right?’ he said, discreetly motioning in the direction of a man walking away, his back in a blue blazer.
‘Who?’ I said.
‘Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.’
I followed the back of this great writer as he made his way through the crowded lobby — the author of Petals of Blood, once imprisoned by Daniel arap Moi, Ngũgĩ had written a novel in Gikuyu on prison toilet paper and was later forced to live in exile, his books banned in Kenya for years. I got gooseflesh. Over the years I’d met some quote-unquote famous writers and artists but even catching a glimpse of Ngũgĩ affected me. Nothing like that had ever happened before. I felt a deep, instantaneous reverence for the man, even from only seeing his back.
But the rest of the day consisted of waiting, namely, waiting in the lobby, in the small airport terminal, on the sunny hot tarmac of the small runway, aboard the small plane on the runway; the flight, however, was spectacular, as we weren’t that high up, so I watched the Kenyan landscape go by, more and more beautiful the closer we got to the coast.
We stood in an airfield, or an outdoor airport, as carts were loaded with our luggage, waiting to be ferried to the island. I had my luggage on me, one piece: my knapsack. I’d left my suitcase in storage at the hotel because we’d be back there in a few days before heading home. But my knapsack was over-packed, bursting at the seams. A writer from the U.S. south said, ‘We don’t need to worry about a bomb going off. It went off in your backpack.’
By the time we took the ferry — which was essentially a barge — from the airport — which was an open field — to the island, it was after nightfall. The ferrymen were referred to by those in the know as beach boys, that is to say, young athletic guys who spend their days playing Frisbee, smoking weed and performing tasks around the jetty, of myriad varieties.
The twelfth-century town of Lamu from the water on a dark night looked wondrous and beautiful, with its white buildings sparsely lit. The boat rocked as it slowed and approached a set of landing stairs, where it docked. Beach boys unloaded the luggage after we all disembarked, but I had my knapsack with me.
I stood beside Boris on the jetty, looking out at the dhow-speckled harbour, under a crescent moon and starry sky, and he said, ‘Not bad, right?’
The boats rocked gently, some lit up, some shadowy, the sounds of the town behind us.
A boy, armed with a flashlight, guided me to my hotel. The group had significantly shrunk, but there were still far too many people to all stay in one of Lamu’s many tiny hotels, so we were spread out around the island. I was staying in a place called Yumbe House, according to Anita Khalsa, who booked the rooms. The boy lit up the labyrinthine alleyways to Yumbe House, as we dodged donkeys and walked fast because it had started to rain. There were no cars on the island, though there were plenty of donkeys, and, ergo, plenty of donkey shit, which we sidestepped in the rainfall.
I kept thinking, There’s no way I’ll ever remember the route to the hotel.
The boy got me to the old stone hotel, where I attempted to tip him, and he refused my money, running away when I pulled out my wallet, and I checked in at the Staff House, a small hut made of bamboo and thatched, where a young thin man gave me a key with a wooden keychain. Checking in took all of a minute. I didn’t give him any money, or my passport, simply said my name, and he walked me up a set of wooden stairs in the small courtyard, open to the elements, full of beautiful flora, to the second floor, where I was in room fourteen. The key on the wooden keychain opened the padlocked wooden door onto a small room, with a bed in white canopy mosquito netting, a little old worn desk for writing, or an escritoire, and there was an en suite washroom with a toilet, shower stall and sink. The walls didn’t quite reach the thatched ceiling, so there was a gap, exposing the room to the outdoors, but that seemed necessary for air circulation. The floors were concrete, with a small throw rug near the bed.