Love, Africa by Jeffrey Gettleman

Author:Jeffrey Gettleman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-05-16T04:00:00+00:00

Nine

Nairobi, 2006

Anthropologists have a theory that every mzungu who arrives in Africa eager to make his mark falls into one of the three classic “roles”—though “holes” would probably be more apt—that the first white men on the continent occupied: the Mercenary, the Missionary, and the Misfit. Alliteration usually carries the day for these sorts of things.

The Mercenary comes to exploit Africa’s weakness for personal gain. Some of the most celebrated Victorian-age explorers, like Henry Morton Stanley, blasted their way across the continent, stepping over dead Africans, in the service of a powerful boss—in Stanley’s case, King Leopold II of Belgium, who was obsessed with the idea of swallowing Congo. The Congolese called Stanley Bula Matari, “Breaker of Rocks,” such was his penchant for destruction. These days, there are still plenty of white men laying wastage across Africa. I meet them all the time. Some are quite affable—just don’t ask what they did in the Comoros in 1995 or Somalia in 2011.

Then there’s the Missionary who brings the gospel. It could be the gospel of the Good Book or the gospel of aid work or even the gospel of Coca-Cola—any alien belief system foisted on the unsuspecting, for their own betterment, of course. I tried to play this role once, in Ethiopia, when I didn’t know what my What was.

The Misfit, well, he didn’t fit in back home, so he escaped and ran off to Africa. As the fidgety young man pulling up to the jua kalis or trying to scale Mount Kilimanjaro on a diet of cream wafers with white athletic socks on his hands, I’d played this role as well. I was a natural.

But now, as our 747 began its initial descent through the night sky, I wasn’t sure what my role was. The well-worn story of the white man with a bad case of le mal d’Afrique was now my story. I was thirty-four years old, married, working for a big company, and about to touch down at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. It was July 2006. What would be my M?

* * *

The rush of nervous excitement intensified as Courtenay and I swung out of the airport onto Mombasa Road. I associated this part of the world with so much—youth, wonder, discovery. I credited it with making me who I was. And I wasn’t returning to see anyone specific or do anything in particular that I used to do; I just wanted to tap into the spirit of this place and feel how I used to feel. That, I think anyone would agree, is dangerous.

As we drove north toward the glass towers of downtown Nairobi, the boulevards of my dreams were reassuringly as dark, deserted, and slightly menacing as they had always been. The streetlights still didn’t work. A screen of dust and smoke hung in the air, making our headlights seem weak. Nothing had changed. I couldn’t help but think of Dan as we skirted the bushy turnoff to his old place. I looked down his road and missed him.

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