It’s like a reed-like bathroom. You can see outside through these interspersed reeds, but it’s useless because beyond the reeds is darkness. But there is a stone. Onto this stone, you balance the metallic stainless steel basin. The water is cold. I’m barefoot. There is no sponge. The soap smells like a whisk. Here, you bow and splash water on your back. You bath. The sound of water on your back is shored by the sounds of the restless murmurs of the cows in the kraal, the crickets and the cackle of a distant hyena. I’m showering in pitch darkness. I didn’t, for the life of me, see my Sunday turning out like this; with my ass pointed at the sky, collecting water with my cusped hands and wondering what the hell would happen if I walked out of this ninja bathroom and found a lion, or worse, leopard waiting for me with a toothpick dangling from his teeth. Dinner time. Zulu dinner all scrubbed up and shit.
The place: somewhere between Magadi and nowhere land.
Time: Night.
I’m typing this from my laptop and cynically casting a cursory look at the battery strength.
Let me back up a bit.
There is an acquaintance of mine who writes for some rag in Gaberone, Botswana. He’s from a tribe called the Bambukushu. He also claims to correspond for The Daily Mirror. We were introduced on email by a Kenyan friend of mine who works in Botswana and we have been talking on email since beginning of year. He kept “threatening” that he would come down to do an excursion on the Maasai near Lake Magadi, just at the border of Tanzania. Would I be able to accompany him and his photographer down? Yeah, I said knowing full well that he wouldn’t come
down. He was to come in June. He didn’t. Then he said he would come in August. He didn’t. Last email I got was three weeks ago, saying he will be coming in Nov.
So yesterday a number calls me at 2pm and says in some funny accent, “Hey, is this Biko?”
It’s Sunday, so I’m thinking it can’t be someone from Barclays Bank peddling loans. I say yes, this is him. “Hey, this is Letsego!”
So I’m like, who? Let’s go where?
“No, Letsego! From Gaberone! I’m in Nairobi!” he says excitedly. We haven’t spoken on phone before so I don’t place the voice. But I remember him promptly. So we catch up, he is on transit, where can I pick you up we go down to the “Maasai place”? He asks.
“Now?” I say incredulously. He says yes. I say, I can’t. I mean, I can’t just up and leave man. I mean, I have things to do tomorrow. And the next day. He says look, you promised. I hate when a man says that. So I balk and fill in a leave form and present it to the missus who looks at it and says, “ Magadi? Now? You got to be kiddin’ me!”
I beg and grovel. She signs the form. I tell the guy with the queer name to pick me up from home; meanwhile I throw in a few clothes in a hold all, some sunscreen (you will peel off in Magadi), my camera and I’m off. I forget my toothbrush and my boxers.
Letsego rocks up with some chic that he introduces as the photographer, but whom at some point during the trip down here, I see him touch on the thigh. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a Botswana thing to touch your photographer on the thigh. Maybe photographers in Botswana take better pictures when you touch them on the thigh. Who am I to judge, I’m just Kenyan.
To cut the long story short. The Land cruiser we are using stalls, a fan belt problem. The Maasai village we are to stay in is another couple of hours away. The driver – a sheepish chap, with a crooked hat – announces that we have to find a place to camp somewhere before they bring us another car from Nairobi. Some Maasais offer to house us for a fee. Yes, nothing is for free. For 2k we will get a small manyatta, and a meal. I want to ask why they shouldn’t throw in a Maasai dance as well now that we are here, but the fellows didn’t seem to be the kind who took jokes.
Our house stinks. We are offered two thin mattresses which, going by the smell, I suspect were formerly owned by a He-goat. At night we shall all sleep with our clothes on, sleeping next to each other in a file. My Botswana pal slept next to the photographer who, he placed – strategically – at the end of our line. At night they will talk in hushed whispers, in the strangest tongue ever, Setswana I assume. She will giggle a few times. So will our driver. At the end of the room, a fire made from cow dung will smolder the whole night, emitting heat and some smoke. I will doze off and dream of stir fry chicken.
But for now young Maasai women giggle around us. I try not to look at their perky tits which are all out (I swear) and are pointing at us brusquely.Then there are the naked children who mill around us. They touch the photographer’s equipment, not her thighs, like Letsego.
Supper is boiled maize and some milk. No meat. No vegetables. We sit around some fire where the main mzee of the boma and some of his sons chat us up in shaky English. Behind us, darkness stretches into nothingness. Behind us lives the untamed wild. The
night is still, so still it feels like time has stopped, like the earth has held its breath.
Letsego, 37, tells him about their culture and asks him questions. He is a seasoned interrogator, I can tell. I’m impressed by the kind of penetrating questions he asks the mzee. I enjoy listening to how he lures information out of the mzee. He’s artful. His photographer giggles with the children who are later forced to go sleep. She then sets up her imposing camera on a tripod behind us and every so often, the stillness of the night is interrupted by the whirring sound of her lens. Then, click: a picture of us seated under God is immortalized, because that’s how small you feel in the open night of Maasailand. You feel like you are seated under God. You feel like you are seated at the feet of your father.
I like it here. I like it like this. I like the hopeless state we are in. I like the fact that these Maasais could just – for the fun of it – decide to rob us and send us out into the night to get mauled by lions. I like the taste of smoke at the back of my throat. I like the sound of mouths ripping into their maize cobs and the monotonous chewing. We sound like feeding bovines. I like knowing that life has been stripped down to its bare essentials; milk, maize, silence, the night and a hope for sunlight tomorrow.
At some point I will want to shower because I can never get any sleep if I don’t shower. Some little girl will be asked to put my water in the reed bathroom which is at the edge of the boma, in deep darkness. The mzee will ask if one of the small boys can stand outside the bathroom for me to feel secure. I will say no. I will say I’m fine. But I’m not, I’m terrified that I might step on a snake, or a lion might pounce on my ass. I’m terrified like a female dog. But no way, I’m going to let some kid without pubic hair be my security, no matter how many lions he has killed. No way will I disgrace myself like that. I will take my chances with the lion. Bring it on Mufasa.
I want to write more, but I can’t. OK, I’m lying; I don’t want to write more. I want to stay here forever. I want to wake up tomorrow and smell a new day. Do you know how a new day smells like? It smells like goats. It smells like the mooing of cows. Of the hoofs rumbling out of the kraal. Of little Maasai herds boys whistling under their breaths as they herd the cows out. A new day smells like Letsego’s photographer watching me brush my teeth with a piece of a twig chewed at the end and saying, “that’s the coolest thing I have ever seen, can I take a picture?” and me posing goofily with a twig sticking from the corner of my mouth. Like I do this all the damn time. Like this is how I roll.
I like it here. I really do.