I take a deep drag on the embers of the day and draw in the lime blossom scented evening air shrouded by wafts of the overly heady nargis and frangipani. It's almost unbearable to breathe in as I try to run and work up a sweat. The sea breeze skims the long grass tickling my shins and rustles yellowing teak leaves which drop and crunch under my feet like absurdly enormous autumn leaves. The crescent moon's already high up, tinged with red. In the gloaming the muezzins begin their calls. I am alone in the field, grateful for the space.
I almost wish I had taken a photograph last night, but I am glad I didn't. Times change but I don't think people want an outsider's misguided nostalgia. Here's the town. It's crumbling. Here are a group of elderly women. Mostly widows. Here they are bound together for companionship, eating special food, playing card games. With small change, to add for a little flutter.
Fading pictures hang on the walls, bleached by sunlight, frayed by the salt air. Wives and husbands, shiny coconut-oiled hair, once young and handsome. Skinny children, with hockey sticks, now long gone: other continents, other lives, a different dimension where time, like this, can't exist. A bowl of garish plastic roses sits on the table, itself set crookedly upon spotlessly clean linoleum flooring, tattered at the edges. There's a calendar of a few years back, advertising some Tanga business, still on the wall, for the picture of a deity. All three clocks in the house have stopped, inexplicably, somewhere around noon.
A mix of languages has emulsified into seamless Punjabi, Gujarati, Hindi, Kiswahili and English. One minute I'm cruising, the next, I've no idea what is being said until the flow of words swing under my comprehension again. "Two fat ladies, an 8 and an 8" N. Aunty cries out. "Bugger" mutters B. Aunty under her breath in Punjabi "I needed a 7". She chuckles and slaps my shoulder.
And that's the photograph that would have been. B. Aunty with her hand clapped on my arm chuckling and half wincing at the pain in her hip; S. Aunty frowning as she tots up her winnings; N. Aunty cutting the deck to deal; and Aunty S. dipping into some sonf looking straight into the lens. Her face would be the focal point, a faint wry smile on one corner of her mouth, eyes bright, but if you look closely, a little drawn. The clattering, whirring old fan's frozen. A couple of cards blown out of place, a little wisp of paper curling up at the corner trying to billow. Three glasses and an empty coke bottle sweat beads on the plastic floral table cloth. An attending fly, drunk on sugar, is mated to the bottle neck. A couple of musty children's Ladybird books are used as weights to hold down the small currency notes. The air is so hot and heavy it's almost oily. Laden with the palpable feeling of a loneliness somehow embraced. Of people tolerating and drawing comfort from each other because they have become so few. Of time inevitably drawing to its ebb.
I've found my rhythm in the run: controlled breathing, legs working, heart pounding. Once action has become easier, natural, the mind separates. Bats swoop and dodge about my head. A light rain shower releases earthier notes, more pleasant to my nostrils than the oppressive floral sweetness. Things are neither happy nor sad, they just are. Decisions are made. Life must change, this is accepted, as certain as the tides that come and go. But who knows what the tides themselves will bring?
17 September, 2007
I almost wish I had taken a photograph last night, but I am glad I didn't. Times change but I don't think people want an outsider's misguided nostalgia. Here's the town. It's crumbling. Here are a group of elderly women. Mostly widows. Here they are bound together for companionship, eating special food, playing card games. With small change, to add for a little flutter.
Fading pictures hang on the walls, bleached by sunlight, frayed by the salt air. Wives and husbands, shiny coconut-oiled hair, once young and handsome. Skinny children, with hockey sticks, now long gone: other continents, other lives, a different dimension where time, like this, can't exist. A bowl of garish plastic roses sits on the table, itself set crookedly upon spotlessly clean linoleum flooring, tattered at the edges. There's a calendar of a few years back, advertising some Tanga business, still on the wall, for the picture of a deity. All three clocks in the house have stopped, inexplicably, somewhere around noon.
A mix of languages has emulsified into seamless Punjabi, Gujarati, Hindi, Kiswahili and English. One minute I'm cruising, the next, I've no idea what is being said until the flow of words swing under my comprehension again. "Two fat ladies, an 8 and an 8" N. Aunty cries out. "Bugger" mutters B. Aunty under her breath in Punjabi "I needed a 7". She chuckles and slaps my shoulder.
And that's the photograph that would have been. B. Aunty with her hand clapped on my arm chuckling and half wincing at the pain in her hip; S. Aunty frowning as she tots up her winnings; N. Aunty cutting the deck to deal; and Aunty S. dipping into some sonf looking straight into the lens. Her face would be the focal point, a faint wry smile on one corner of her mouth, eyes bright, but if you look closely, a little drawn. The clattering, whirring old fan's frozen. A couple of cards blown out of place, a little wisp of paper curling up at the corner trying to billow. Three glasses and an empty coke bottle sweat beads on the plastic floral table cloth. An attending fly, drunk on sugar, is mated to the bottle neck. A couple of musty children's Ladybird books are used as weights to hold down the small currency notes. The air is so hot and heavy it's almost oily. Laden with the palpable feeling of a loneliness somehow embraced. Of people tolerating and drawing comfort from each other because they have become so few. Of time inevitably drawing to its ebb.
I've found my rhythm in the run: controlled breathing, legs working, heart pounding. Once action has become easier, natural, the mind separates. Bats swoop and dodge about my head. A light rain shower releases earthier notes, more pleasant to my nostrils than the oppressive floral sweetness. Things are neither happy nor sad, they just are. Decisions are made. Life must change, this is accepted, as certain as the tides that come and go. But who knows what the tides themselves will bring?
17 September, 2007
