Africa39 by Wole Soyinka

Author:Wole Soyinka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

The man in whose boat she rides to Shela Beach later that morning has long curly locks, all dyed brown. He does not remember her from before. She asks him if he enjoys what he does, just like Issa asked him when they were riding in his boat a year ago.

They talk about Nairobi, and he refers to it as if it is another country. He tells her that in his thirty-two years, he has never taken the bus. She has heard this story before.

‘I have no need for the bus. I don’t want to know what’s beyond the bus.’

‘They hate us there,’ he says, after a long silence. As he says this, he cuts through the water with his speedboat, angrily.

She knows what he means. She wants to contribute to this conversation somewhat, to tell him about the pool of blood that day on the street. Before she speaks, he points at another island across the lagoon where mansions and luxurious guest houses stand, their oppressive and clean white almost swallowing the blue in the ocean.

‘Two years ago, those used to be our wells.’

He cuts through the water angrier this time.

‘A woman was killed there, and then the others started to leave. No one lives there now.’

He asks her what she would do if a man walked into her house and started bringing down the walls. She does not answer.

Later, she walks on a thin pavement at the edge of the ocean, walking back to where schoolgirls seem to be coming from, where everyone else seems to be coming from.

She spots more writings on walls, more writings on docked boats and others that bob in the ocean. MRC (Mombasa Republican Council), Lamu sio Kenya. Pwani sio Kenya. Lamu is not Kenya. A flag here, and a sketch of a currency there.

She comes back to a restaurant and looks for somewhere to sit. She asks the waitress if she can get a table for one. They offer her a table for two. The binaries of the world refuse to leave her alone.

In the evening, the sun sinks and the lights come up. In the darkness, the shacks in Lamu town and the private guest houses on Manda beach become equal, reduced to light bulbs, each one of them a mote in the oppressive darkness, squeezed into size by the pompous ocean.

Beyond the shack under which she listens to the ocean and watches a Swahili pre-wedding celebration on the street, the water is a few inches away from her, but quiet in the dark. The man wearing the embroidered hat from the night before is leading the dance procession of men. He is the groom’s father.

She thinks about the previous year’s Maulidi festival.

She wants another cigarette.

She should call her father.

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