Mombasa Magic
By Rasik and Rinku
Swahili women in black buibuis, bustling
in Biashara Street,
bobber down the lanes of the old town,
into the fish market, past
Mkanyageni Mosque and Memon Bohra ironmonger, tinker tailor,
Tirthankar temple, tononoka, tatarika tatika, tatua taabu;
Haki ya mungu, chungu ya watu.
Taciturn and incognito, mysterious masquerade of women-
buibui also baibubi- cloak of woman, head to foot; also spider.
Spider women in black.
Houses of coral rag,
roofs of tile and palm thatch,
balconies with lattice barriers kiss
each other over narrow lanes;
intricately carved Lamu doors grace the entrances.
Smell of sea, fish, mango, jackfruit, mfenesi, papai mingle
with aromas exuding across Indian shops
selling spices, vikapu, kitungoo, khanga, kila kitu.
Pili pili manga banyani kanga.
Arab vendors on Salim Road
clink clank clunk brass cups in one hand,
dangling the three-footed coffee container on the other, atop
charcoal brazier bubbling the djinn in the yellow metal, hissing
kahaawa, kahaawa.
Feet on hot asphalt, melting tar.
Bitter strong arabica jazzed up by ground ginger
poured out of an old Cuticura talcum powder tin, burn brassy lips.
On the edges of the town, water, wind and sand.
Words take flight, fly away...
lingua lugha
funga franca
kiingereza hi kiswahili
yako maneno haki.
Cool
turquoise patches in navy blue,
shimmering white sand beneath.
Palm fronds
line the shore. The world is green blue.
Fertile, fecund. The world
is life and death.
Wacha maneno palaver prattle funga mdomo.
Empty noises. Hataki kelele.
We board the third class steam train from Nairobi
.
We see the engine fired up by the Sikh driver.
Red-hot fire burning logs,
steam hissing out whish whoosh whish whoosh
monster bellowing furnace
stroking, stirring.
The steam whistle pierces our eardrums.
We run back to the compartment
to where my uncle has laid the rough woolen blanket
on the length of the wooden bench.
The wheels set in motion.
We rush past the railway quarters, past
Shauri Moyo, my heart is tender,
only here they already have Shell and Caltex tanks.
Then the city's game park on the right-
herds of zebra, punda, milia skedaddle away,
the giraffe running around acaciathorn trees
twigtwigaing in ungainly strides,
gazelles- gracefully sprinting,
swala granti swala tomi Bwana Grant Bwana
Thomson gets to name all things living----
Here cometh the white man, the end is at hand.
That time I went to Thomson's Falls
Was he the one who fell out with the maasai duiker
dik-dikking peterbearding
the end of game millennia of historia ua nyamaote?
We cross the river Tsavo
the engine stops under the station trunkhose thirsty for water.
It was here the coolies got dragged away
by man-eater lions:
we saw it all in the Capitol Cinema
one shilling for evening matinee at
5.15
just opened to non-Europeans.
I got to see Bwana Devil in 3D
wearing cardboard plastic dark lenses.
The lion jumped straight out of the big screen
and unwary ones screamed
Big hero Patterson Stewart Granger, facing
one man-eater in front, the other charging from behind- quick!
turn around!
warning shouts from the audience and
he felled both monsters
in a flash
Early morning,
after restless night on luggage rack,
my nostrils get gingered up by the sea air…
the sight of the first madafu on slender bending palms…
elixir in white, soft unguent flesh,
hard shell sliced open by the coconut vendor at the station in Mazerus;
the air stickymoist
Arabs in khanzus,
big-hipped women in bright yellow orange khangas
intoxicating
promise of adventure...
as in the movie
at the Empire Cinema,
they didn't let me in
to see West of Zanzibar, for adults only.
We guzzle the milk of coconut
on the steps of the third class carriage.
We jump down on the redbrown earth, and
run towards the engine hissing streamjets,
the voice of my uncle calling, quick! quick!
past the red hot charcoal logs burning
clouds of moistwet steam,
enveloping us------
I hold tight to my cousin,
the swishing whitegrey wet serpent gushes
out from the bellows of the monster
in a mighty blast.
Joy pierces the air
We run back and collapse
into the seat of the carriage
convulsing with laughter
Too soon the Beelzebub* enters Mombasa
,
the sea calm on both sides.
I look at the big ships brooding
passively at Kilindini...
All is stillness.
We slowly cruise down Makupa Road
,
Indian shops and whitewashed houses slide by
gently
We are in the belly of the station
and come to a stop, exhausted.
My brother is at the station
in the open boxbody chevrolet.
He tells us
Gandhiji is shot
Gandhiji is dead
Something dreadful has happened in the world.
*Beelzebub - BEELZEBUB: Evil Demon Prince of Hell, Lord of the Flies and SATAN's Bastard-in-Chief. Beelzebub was next to Satan in power.
He's the cause of more superstitious dread than
SATAN himself. Which is odd, because he started out as a local variant of the perfectly respectable
BAAL. He was a Top God of the Middle-East and had fan clubs everywhere.
The Philistines worshipped him under the name Baal Zebub, meaning 'Lord of Flies'. Which seems like a strange thing to be Lord of - until you realise that flies carry disease and plague. Anyone who can boss flies around just has to be respected.
1769 - James Watt invented a better steam engine called the Beelzebub (because of its devilish looks and violent motion).
--
"Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves.They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision."
V. S. Naipaul
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