The Parents in Africa

Mom and Dad had brought a heck of a lot of luggage – three suitcases and two backpacks – and they unloaded a few things for me, including some sunscreen and T-shirts, both of which I desperately needed. I did some laundry and started shedding some clothes that were just too ratty or stinky to continue wearing or carrying around. After moving from our hostel to the hotel, I decided I really needed to pare down what I was carrying to make it easier for myself to get around on matatus and buses and stuff.

Anyway, they didn’t have much to say and they hadn’t seen much, so we simply went to bed. We were up early the next morning and headed off to the airport for our flight to Lamu. Emily negotiated cab rides, which was great, and we left Mom & Dad just briefly to get money. The flight was quick but bumpy, really heaving and rolling and by the time we landed in Malindi, I was feeling a bit nauseous. It was much hotter than it had been in Nairobi – Emily and I spent a day at the mall and walking around Westlands exploring – and that was a good sign as we were both wondering how we were going to spend any time at the beach.

We got to Lamu and landed at an airport that was essentially a thatched-roof hut. We were met off the flight by a few guys who were touts for the hotels on the island, exactly as the guidebook predicted, and decided to go with a guy named Abdul who was working with the White House in Shela, the place that Rhonda had recommended. We negotiated, lightly, for the room and ended up paying $20 a night for the second floor of the home.

It was hot and a bit humid, with a good breeze and some nice beach and palm trees. It wasn’t exactly hot, but we went for a walk f-a-r down the beach to a fort that was built a few years ago by a really rich Italian guy. We walked back up the beach and found a little place for dinner and had some simple meals with a small Swahili flare and fended off the guys trying to sell dhow rides and day trips and things. By the end of the meal, I was exhausted of having to listen to pitches and sales speeches. I didn’t want to make any more decisions about where we were going to go or when or how or for how much.

Our first night was loud. Very loud. I was sleeping out in the dining room and the bed was insanely uncomfortable and the people walking by were talking as loudly as if they were standing in the room with me and then in the wee hours of the morning came the loud and overly stylized call to prayer. But we were up and sitting at the breakfast at the appointed hour, delighting in fresh tropical fruit. Then began the parade. First, a woman selling massages. Then a woman selling henna. Then Abdul, looking to sell us a dhow ride, a sunset cruise, a trip to the ruins, whatever we wanted, however he could manage to help us. For a fee, of course.

I started to feel grumpy at how we were going to be relentlessly hounded, but we decided to walk to Lamu and make decisions about booking dhow rides later, when we all felt like we had a better sense of how much things should cost. Even walking to Lamu we got constant shouts about dhow rides.

Lamu was like a low-rent version of Zanzibar, with overcrowded streets, overflowing sewers and a general dilapidated, dirty feel to everything. There were donkeys everywhere and children and men hauling things on and off boats, the usual shouts about dhow rides, women draped in black robes with only slits in their veils, Rastas offering their services as touts. We just kept walking and walking, stopping at the museum for a while and then on to the Donkey Sanctuary, which was a bit of a bust, to be frank. The donkeys certainly are not treated well – they are beaten with sticks, overloaded to the point of exhaustion and don’t appear to be watered or fed. They’re left to scavenge garbage, which cannot lead to a very long life, but I’m not really sure where island dwellers would find grass or other kinds of feed. The sanctuary itself was simply a covered concrete block where 20 donkeys lay in various states of recovery, some covered in sores, others with bits of fur missing. In the back were individual pens for the sickest cases. It was a pretty sad operation overall, and you’ve gotta feel mighty sad for the donkeys when this is their “sanctuary.”

My mom had turned brilliant pink by this point, so we decided to stop for a juice and a bit of shade, then make the walk back. It was far too hot and we dipped into a side street to see the doors and the market and were caught up in the labyrinth of people and the twisting streets. There wasn’t much to see and we stopped at only one store, an upscale gallery with lots of beautiful African art, clothing and jewellery.

By the time we staggered back to our hotel, my Mom was in full-on heatstroke and my Dad had a massive blister on his foot from walking for too long on a pebble in his sandal. They basically laid up for a while, Mom recovering from too much sun, travel and time zone changes. They emerged in the late afternoon to soak Dad’s foot in the sea water, but neither of them are big swimmers, so the only real joy the ocean held for them was providing a walking path, which they used often.

We decided to take Abdul up on his offer of dhow rides and arranged for my parents to go on a sunset cruise for Dad’s birthday, while Emily and I would park ourselves at the swanky bar at the upscale Peponi’s and sip a Tusker. The boat arrived decked out in bougainvillea and Mom and Dad were whisked away for a ride they thoroughly enjoyed, with a talkative captain who pointed out some of the private homes (including one monster belonging to Princess Caroline of Monaco), gave a good history on the nearby Manda Bay and told them they were lucky that the clouds co-operated and they were able to see such a magnificent sunset.

We were approached by a man named “Ali Samosa,” who recited his recommendation in the Lonely Planet guide and convinced us to try him out for Dad’s birthday meal. He was offering a mix of Indian and Swahili food, which should have been the red flag, since my parents don’t eat exotic food very often and flavour their homecooking with nothing stronger than garlic and salt and pepper.

We started with samosas and some sort of fried potatoes, then had fresh tamarind and mango juice and Ali kept bringing dishes, including tunafish curry, chicken pilau rice, prawn chapatis and coconut rice and ending with a watery flan. But Dad was already feeling the effects of the greasy samosas and Mom was already worried about what all this spice would do to her digestive system. They picked away at their food, but gave up before even a quarter of it had been eaten. I’m sure Ali was disappointed, but so were we. He was virtually silent and had disappeared for most of our meal. Part of the reason why I’d agreed to eat in his home was based on customer comments about his storytelling and his excellent cuisine and a night spent getting to know more about Lamu’s history and Swahili culture. Eventually Ali opened up a bit, talking about his arranged marriage and things like that, but overall, the night was a bit of a bust. It was saved by a night of Rumoli, the first time since my parents arrived that we were able to just sit around and relax like a family.

The next day we met on the jetty early for a ride out to the Takwa ruins, the remains of a 16th century Swahili town that was abandoned when war and water woes combined to make the place unliveable. Most of the residents of Lamu and Shela trace their roots to this village, tucked away in a dip in the landscape off the Indian Ocean. The ride out was quiet, as we moved further and further into the shell-encrusted roots of the mangroves. Captain I’ll be Back, so named for his panache for slipping away, told us a little more about the history, about the elders’ desire to see the archipelago remain the way it was and their refusal to allow more private development. He told us the Americans have a military base not far from Lamu and showed up offering promises of aid, but were really trying to ferret out how closely these Muslims are aligned with Al-Qaeda and other groups. (Imagine finding Osama in the labyrinth of Lamu, or sunning himself on the beach at Shela? Seems unlikely!) The captain told us the villagers were glad to see the soldiers go, as they brought profane American slang with them and treated the women horribly.

The ruins were hot and humid, but the tour was informative and thorough and I convinced the guide to let us taste a bit of baobab, which was strangely gross, like eating insulation. I have a feeling it was too old to be eaten, but I wasn’t going to argue. Mom and Dad had a chance to dip their feet in the Indian Ocean.

We headed back with the sail up, but then asked for the motor to be turned on when Mom started to feel sick. Let’s just say she performed a McGyver-esque maneuver that allowed her to be sick without anyone really taking notice. She jumped off the boat and headed for the bathroom, while Dad and I climbed out and waited while Emily paid Abdul. He started screaming and flailing his arms at Emily, who had offered him 2,500 Kenyan shillings, about $40, for the two boat cruises. “No! No! No! This is not what we agreed!” he shouted. Emily was so taken aback she stared at him. We had negotiated the price the day before in our dining room. Abdul offered the trip to the ruins for 4,000 shillings and we laughed. We would look elsewhere, we told him. He tried again, asking if we wanted to do any other trips. We said the parents might like to do a sunset cruise for Dad’s birthday. Fine, he would do both trips for 5,000. Much discussion ensued and finally Abdul said his best price would be 2,500. We talked about what time to meet and where and that seemed to seal the deal.

But somewhere along the way, Abdul had decided that he was negotiating for one trip at a time and rather than say to us that his best price was 2,500 PER trip, he just talked about the two trips, agreed to 2,500, went away and then went berserk when the inevitable happened.

Emily talked back, something I don’t usually do, almost matching Abdul’s volume. By now, a small crowd had gathered. Abdul was sputtering about how we obviously thought he was crazy, how he would never do a trip for so cheaply, how anyone could attest to the price of these trips and that we were crazy. Emily responded that this was no fair, that he couldn’t change the price now, that we had agreed on this much and that was all the money he was going to get from us.

I tried at one point to interject, talking low and using my hands while saying, “Wait, wait.” Abdul turned to me, shouting “Wait for what, huh?” I have to say, I’ve seen Ghanaians give pretty good bluster, but this guy turned it into an art form. Unfortunately, right about the time that I figured Abdul was realizing that we with the money hold the power in this negotiation, Dad whipped out his wallet. “Only one way to solve this and that’s to pay the man,” he said as he flipped through numerous bills to come up with Abdul’s demanded balance. I was shocked, since after months and months living here, this is something I would never do. I would never advertise how much money is in my wallet and I would never, never cave without any form of compromise. The guy was being a crook and even if there was a miscommunication, there were four of us saying we’d heard one thing and one person saying he’d meant another. I could understand paying maybe 3,000 as a way to smooth ruffled feathers, but the full 5,000? Forget it. We never would have agreed to that price.

But it just goes to show you that when you’ve been in Africa for a while, you bend to her ways. I think Dad was just supremely uncomfortable at the accusations being thrown around, about the humiliation of being screamed at by a grown man about thievery. But I’m used to it, not because I make a regular habit of getting into yelling matches, but because I realize that this is the way Africans speak to one another. The Senegalese scream at each other in regular conversation. Liberians are unparalleled hotheads. Ghanaians are all bluster and bluff; it’s theatrical and dramatic and upsetting when you’re not used to it, but all part of their negotiation game. I have had so many fights with touts and punks, people demanding money or coming up with spurious reasons I should have to pay more that I’m used to it and I guess I see through it and, in the end, I realize that the only one who’s going to stick up for me is me and I’m going to do it in my own way – without the yelling, gesturing or vein-popping -- but I’m going to do it nonetheless. Abdul certainly wasn’t interested in being fair, he was interested in getting his share.

Emily and I hastily changed into our bathing suits. Mom went to lay down. Dad followed her. Both Emily and I were still burning about that exchange and its rather unfortunate end. Abdul snatched up the money without so much as a word of apology or placation and stalked off muttering to anyone who would listen in Lamu’s particular blend of Swahili and Arabic about the crazy muzungus thinking he would charge so little for a dhow ride.

The more I thought about it, the angrier it made me. I could recite our negotiation nearly word for word, a freakish talent that’s only been strengthened by six years of full-time reporting. I knew we were not mistaken. And besides, when Abdul asked if we were crazy, did we seriously think he would agree to that price, I saw no reason why not. In all of our negotiations, from rooms to dinner, we had managed to slash the price by at least a half if not more.

We never saw Abdul again and arranged our own transport back to the airport. I vowed to plaster every single travel website I could find with warnings about the Shela White House.

We took our wounded pride and bobbed in the beach, then gathered at the Peponi for a little liquid therapy and enjoyed one of our best meals on the island. We made another trip to Lamu the next day, but took a dhow back, and had one last meal at the hotel where we should have stayed – the Sunset – and enjoyed prawns and fish and a banana pancake for dessert. I think we were all a little wiser when we left Lamu, all more than ready to go.