Coast, a people

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Coast-o

I was down at the coast over the weekend and this picture perhaps defines coast for me. It’s the endlessness of bliss, an infinite happiness. And happiness for me are boats like this that bob in the slight morning breeze. It’s the blue sky, and the gales that break that monotony with their chuckles. Coast is so orgasmic that someone from bara, totally taken by its beauty, decided to add an “O” at the end of “coast” just to try and transfer part of its ownership to the city sleekers.

 

Sometimes when you sit silently and listen to the sea, you will hear a distant groaning that is almost as spiritual as it is morbid, which goes to show that the sea has his owners. And the sea is inexplicably sexy.  The sea is like Toni Braxton when she steps out of the bathtub, wet and tugging at her white towel against her chest. And we all go down – with our hats in our hands – to pay homage, and worship this beauty. We go down with our cameras and intrude into this magnificence and with the clicks and whirs of our lenses we freeze coast-o so that when we come back to the rat race that Nairobi has become, we can once in a while, look at them from our screensavers and pretend that it makes us calm. That it insulates us from the madness of the city. That it’s therapeutic. I don’t know.

Germans in a boat

I hate ceremonies. They embarrass the hell out of me. I hate when you check into a hotel and find, at the entrance, a troop of Maasai’s (Kyuks more like it) bedecked in their reds, leaping in the air for your benefit. Or some Swahili dancers doing a chakacha or a Karibu Kenya, hakuna Matata gamut. Can’t stand it because apart from it being very embarrassing I find it hopelessly touristy.

The hotel I was hanging my coat in (Severin) organized a dhow ride that takes you around from Tudor creek through the bridge then to Old town where they show you around Fort Jesus and tell you about the Portuguese. The dhow was called Takdiri and when we rocked up we were met by a little crew who strummed a guitar and sung their poor hearts out. But carry a tune they definitely could. I find such scenes discomforting because you have to smile at these guys playing a guitar and you have to stop and listen raptly and act like you really love it, even if you don’t. Common decency dictates that you say something nice to them and perhaps drop a tip in their hat.

Anyways I was the only black guest on this boat. The rest were Germans. That’s not a good thing because Germans don’t smile. Germans have that constant frown that suggests that if they smiled their faces would crack and would never be the same again. The only German I know who smiles is called Mirjam and the only time she smiles is perhaps when I mispronounce her name.

 

So for an hour I suffered these guys, most of whom were aged. “They are rich,” the captain told me helpfully and I wondered what money has got to do with smiling. Shouldn’t rich people be smiling more because they have a good reason to smile; they have money?

Old Town

I go to Old Town because they have excellent food and I love the feeling of culture and age in it. I love the Tuk Tuks that zip loudly between the small corridors. The mysterious buibui clad women who peer from under their black ninja. And the guys who sit on doorsteps, shooting the breeze, I envy them because they seem not to have a plan for the day apart from sit outside those doors and watch time pass by. It’s blissful to let your hair down like that and not feel like the world is passing you by. They aren’t curious as to what happens beyond Mombasa.

I asked one guy who looked 27 what he did for a living and he said – in terrifyingly beautiful Swahili- that he doesn’t have a job but that sometimes he helps his father run their shop. His father sells spices. He said he doesn’t make much. He asked me where I was from and I almost lied to him that I come from Dakar, Senegal. But regretfully I didn’t because he seemed like an okay guy. I told him Nairobi. I asked him if he has been to Nairobi and he sort of snorted and said no. Which is just as well, I told him. “But aren’t you curious?” I prodded and he shook his head. I asked him if I could take his picture and he declined. “I will pay,” I insisted and he didn’t even think about it, he said no. And that guy spells the spirit of Old Town, little town locked from the outside world, a town that soldiers on a treadmill of time; going nowhere. A town that has successfully fought time.

Cassava man

He sells cassava chips at a street corner which in itself is somewhat unremarkable at first glance. A commonplace. But it’s not his trade that drew me to him. It’s his regard of it. How a man treats his trade gives away who he is as a person. This guy wears a work shirt to his work, not a tee shirt or anything loose like that. And although it’s so bloody hot I want to lose my t-shirt, he buttons up this shirt and tucks it in his official pants as if later he has a meeting at Rahimtulla Plaza. He speaks less, even ignores some of my questions. Although he might be a man of few words his mannerism speaks a lot as to what kind of a guy he is; a proud man. Proud of his trade, a man who respects his work and who in turn he respects himself. And he silently serves his cassava chips from this street corner while all around him laziness lurks, a laziness characterized by young men who sit in doorways, cackling and totally oblivious of time.

Blogs gone bananas

The first thing that struck me with this guy was his t-shirt (yes, gentlemen, I noticed the ass passing if you want to know). So I walked up and said, “For a banana can I guess what MM means?” He regarded me like a snake would regard a cat and said nothing. But I told him anyway.

“Media Madness,” I said, “That’s what it means right?”

He smiled, a confused smile.

I told him I knew who his boss was. He folded his arms across his chest which I interpreted to mean, “Oh is that right punk?”. So I told him anyway.

“It’s the guy who writes Media Madness blog. Yes?”

“What’s a blog?” he asked.

That explanation was going to last a whole day, so I told him it’s a newspaper.

“And what does he write about?”

“Mostly? He calls people names. He is your boss right?”

He proceeded to do something that people do when they are trying to ignore you; find something to do. So he started to arrange and rearrange his stock of bananas. I suspected that the guy for media madness supplemented his income by putting out banana carts like this in coast and hiring sales boys in t-shirts proclaiming that they love Media Madness. Talk of desperation and vanity; trying to sell bananas and push a blog at the same time. I told his employee that his boss was a mean guy, that he calls people bad names and that he is heartless brute. He looked at me sympathetically, like I was going bananas.

“Does he even pay you on time?” I said, trying to incite him. He simply went about his business.

“Tell your boss he is shameless!” that’s the message I left the boy with, then I split (pun intended).

Rasta planter

From a small radio placed on a stool under a tree trickles Metro FM. Reggae music. Jeff Mwangemi, I’m told and I remember thinking, Jeff? My goodness, that guy is still on radio?

All round are pots and pots of flowers and seedlings. That’s what Asmari does for a living. A rastaman turned gardener (times are tough gentlemen you got to re-invent yourself). Asmari is a former acrobat and he is Giryama. Thirty years of age. A father of one. His dreadlocks are five years old. But since he’s a rastaman art still haunts him so he does some paintings on the side when his plants aren’t moving. That piece of wood he is painting is for some acrobatic troupe that will be headed for Sweden tomorrow.

Asmari makes the cut here because he was hospitable to us, he offered us seats and we chatted about his life and his trade and most importantly he said he was happy…and he meant it. Not many people are happy and not many have the guts to admit that they are not happy. On our way out I asked him a very important question: “Do you by any chance have some weed?”

Maasais can’t swim

This picture is telling; a Maasai at the coast. Red against blue, both of which are fiery in their own right because indeed – if my Bunsen burner, chemistry lessons were any good – blue is the hottest fire.

His story –like many stories at the beach- is a story of woe. He came to the coast because his cows perished in the drought. But since he is a man with a family, a man who doesn’t back down to circumstances, he leaves them in Samburu and comes to the coast to search for better fortune. Only he doesn’t find it at the coast, or rather not yet. To get by he sells pitiful artwork at the beach. They don’t move, mainly because they don’t look good. I wouldn’t hang those things around my horse’s neck. But he is a man, so he doesn’t give up, he keeps trying. He wakes up each morning and walks the beaches selling his artwork. Selling ice to the Eskimos. Does he feel resigned? No, he doesn’t, he keeps moving because when you stop you sink. Life is quick sand.

I asked him if I could take his picture and he said fine. But he asks me not to publish his name which is weird really.

Anyway some smart Alec behind me, a beach boy, an aspiring director, goes ahead and asks him to jump in the air assuming that that would make for a good picture. I think he thought I was making a success card. So I asked the Maasai not to jump. A Maasai leaping in the air is a corny picture, like a Coke ad with someone chugging a coke with their eyes closed.

“Please don’t jump, please?” I pleaded with him. “Ero, please stop jumping, will you?”

“But it will look good!” the beach boy protested.

“No, it won’t. Now, please don’t jump.” I repeated.

“Why don’t you want him to jump?” Spielberg pouted, somewhat disturbed by my photography skills. Or lack of it thereof.

I would have told him jumping is corny, but I didn’t know what corny was in Swahili.

 

I think looking deep into another man’s eyes is not only inexcusable, it is very questionable. There are only two permissible reasons for looking deep into another man’s eyes; I you are an optician or if you are a photographer because that’s art. And so I couldn’t pass up the chance to take a picture of this Maasai’s eyes because they looked cuddly, like his whites were getting sour. He also looked like he could use some sleep. But to take a picture of someone’s eyes is to ambush them, to invade their space. To lay them bare and make them vulnerable. I didn’t see anything in his eyes, not a dream, not fear, not pride, not hunger, or anger, not a vice or any of that shit that you will read from the lips of hotshot photographers. I only saw a man who was thinking, “This pose had better be good for some money!”