Orders

We had a few celebrity visits to our humble restaurant on Granby Street. Cassidy came looking much taller than he did on tv. He came with a whole entourage that took up the most part of half our restaurant. He allowed the staff to take a few pictures and then politely asked us to keep fans at bay until he had finished eating his spicy chicken wings with chips while his boys finished two whole chickens.

One of Blu Cantrell's dancers came. She performed at Zanzibar the previous night, more precise than natural with her moves. She sat by the window, alone and ordered a quarter chicken (we gave her a leg) with rice and coleslaw. She must have been staying at the hotel just opposite, I thought.

That's all we can remember them by, these glam-life living people, by the orders that they make.

Other customers were more easy to distinguish even before they made their orders. The Indians ordered chicken or veggie pittas, the Brits ordered burgers with chips, the Chinese ordered anything with rice, extra rice at that and the chicken itself (whole or part) belonged to everyone.

there can be menace in lamu (august 2008)

Lamu is a safe place, they say. And so I let that be my guide. Our evenings were planned in any event with film screenings and dinners. And our days were up to us to spend as we saw fit. As it was intended as a writer's retreat, we spent the majority of these reading and writing and exploring the town. I would swim, visit the hotels and museums.

Email home: I went to the silversmith and bought myself a ring and told myself it was from you. Because when you told me that you couldn't come as early as we'd hoped, I didn't want to think that it would be another month before you could buy me something. so you followed me to main street and you waited with me for the ring to be fitted. And now it twists perfectly around my finger in a henna design of silver. And it gleams like I gleam because its from you.. Xxx

I picked up an idler on my walks and he insisted on taking me to the market. We saw the market. And then he insisted on taking me to the schools. We saw the schools. They were beautiful with their 1930's facades, inscribed with scriptures from the Qur'an.

I wanted to try to read them but Idler jumped at the opportunity and read them for me.

Note to self: Good teachers are hard to find.

He then offered to write my name in Arabic on some piece of wood. I declined and thought how both silly and desperate he was. How much more did he think he could extort for that?

I did in the end, pay him more than I thought he deserved. But in a place with little opportunity, what harm is a little more giving?

I traversed the streets some more and made my way back to the converted old houses we were staying at. The proprietor had taken an interest in rescuing old Lamu houses from demise. They had been filled with garbage, he said.

He had done an amazing job, altering nothing about the original architecture and decorating the interiors with authentic pieces. His most recent project was his biggest house yet. And this was to be an artist's residence. "All artists are welcome to stay for free," he said, " as long as they leave me with one book or painting."

There were what may have once been grand salas which he now filled with easels and long tables. And they gave way to a long rectangular pool I would swim the length of in peace and quiet.

I met a strange man on the way to the house. He spoke with a blend of Effort verging on Forceful Intonation in his broken English. His clothes fitted his slim frame and his trousers were too short for him even by Qur'anic expectations. But he was agreeable and he invited me to coffee someplace with his friends and guests at 8pm. I was either way about it. Until he declined to take my number. He said it would be ok whether I came or not. That he would be waiting for me by the dock. That was the clincher I suppose. I took it to mean that he was acting in good faith (compared to the harassment I received earlier).

And so when 8pm arrived, I excused myself from a film screening and met him at the dock. There was a French girl there and another one of his friends and we made our way to the beach.

The coffee drinking had disappeared from the programme and instead we sat around a fire, him and his friend beating the drums they had brought, singing songs they understood the words to be of songs in English. You could tell that he hadn't been to school because his words were strung together like he couldn't differentiate them, repeating d'youknowwhatimeans and inventing what he thought Bob Marley was singing..

There was weed to be shared and in my content, I thought that at that moment; I was happy, utterly happy and the happiest I'd ever been.

Carlotti described beauty as being the summation of things working together so that nothing need be added, taken away or altered.

I thought of happiness in this way. But then it vanished as easily as it had come. The strange man sat directly in front of me, his legs stretched out so that they were on both sides of me, urging me to beat the drum he placed before me. I was uncomfortable with our positioning but I beat it anyway. And then he insisted on hugging me one too many times, saying that this was how things were done in Lamu.

The French girl and his friend seemed comfortable enough and I was grateful for their presence. "We're going to get more firewood," they suddenly rose and said.

I said, "ok" and hesitantly watched them walk away.They came back soon enough though and we continued to sing and drum to whatever songs we all knew.

But then Strange Man said we were going to get more wine and motioned for me to go with him. Lamu is a safe place, I repeated to myself and we walked to a man's house who sold wine. He had been sleeping but he opened his gate at our knocking and sold us two bottles of wine. Some kind of fruit wine. I wondered why he was so willing to spend so much...

We were finally making our way back to join the French girl and his friend again and I quickened my pace toward them. He held my waist as we walked as if it were the most natural thing to do and I made as many excuses as I could to be apart, oops I dropped something, oh what's that over there?

But he kept taking me back into him when the diversion was over.

Lamu is a safe place I reassured myself, maybe he's just very friendly and very tactile? ... And then he reached for my lips - at which point there could be no more excuses and I bolted for the town.

"Wait," he called after me, "this is how we do in Lamu," he reasoned. But I didn't stop and I ran until I was lighted by the street restobars again. I panicked because it was late and I couldn't tell which street was mine but I would rather have lost myself in the maze of narrow alleyways than anymore of myself with him.

Cry-wailing Memories

When I was about 8, my mother took us to her village. The village she was born in and avoided ever returning to. I don't remember what was the occasion, if there was one. But it so happened that during our stay, someone had died. Someone elderly and the body was to be at our house for a wake of sorts.

A wake here meant that the whole village would come. We would slaughter pigs, boil them and have the stew with rice. The rice would be served on the same rice baskets they used for sifting stones and husked grains from the rice you could cook. And you would, with as many other people as a basket could feed, gather handfuls of hot rice into your mouth, alternating or mixing the handfuls with pork stew.

You would sit around and talk to your relatives (the whole village was related in some way or another) and those who knew her would sit by her and cry-wail.

They were beautiful in their red woven cloths. These were usually one metre long and half a metre wide and wrapped just above the waist and secured with a woven belt with tassles at the ends. They were signatured cloths like you initial handkerchiefs. And my grandmother's name stopped being woven when her eyes began to fail.

They didn't use to wear tops either and the men used this same cloth as a g-string. It is for this reason that they consider us backward in the capital or "savage" if you must, considering our history of headhunting. One housemate on Pinoy Big Brother said, "he should go (be evicted), because he is an igorot."

So she is covered in this red woven cloth, lying now in a wooden box cum stretcher as two more elderly ladies cry-wail for her.

And when a few hours have passed, the attendees will go home and she will be carried to the next house the next day for another slaughtering until they have passed every house that can accommodate her. It could take weeks to go round and if another death occurs, they might combine wakes.

I remember this because it was the first time I smelt death. Or rather decay. And I remember this now because the last time I went, nobody but close friends or family stayed to eat together. Children were sent with plastic bags they asked you to serve the rice and stew into and went away again. You would see them from the window, climbing rice terrace after rice terrace away with those black plastic bags.

And there was no more cry-wailing. No more ritual form of lament.

There was a show on RFI's programme, Crossroads last night about dying languages and studying them in order to preserve them. And when the women cry-wailed on the show, I remembered this event. And I remembered that I should go back.

"It is a chant," the correspondent described, "that follows a formula and has a recognisable melody. In Bom, the word "crying" means both the tears come out of your eyes and the song you use to grieve with. Cry-wailing first announces the death and then is used for mourning. You learn to cry as a child, you learn the melody, what to say and then how to improvise, weaving your own feelings into the song." The song aired and translated went as follows, (and though it isn't my grandmother's song, it took me the closest back);

Eeooyah
I'm alone yah
My people have gone oh
My people have been buried oh
Who will come for me
Who will take care of me oh

... I'm all alone oo-eh!
(and the women in support respond with:) Manu eh!

Vigan Dust (April 2006)

I think I must have been in between work when I thought of Vigan. It came to me like some exotic place in the North, "a place where time stood still," the brochures say! lol. A UNESCO World Heritage Site they mean to say.

So I recruited my cousin for a companion and we set off for Ilocos Sur. I didn't book any hotels nor call any travel agent. But I did do my research as to what we could do there. There would be a street parade they said. And we could tour the old town. We bought the bus tickets at the bus station itself an hour before departure time. We fought our way to the bus door, waving our money at the conductor, yelling "manong! dua!" (mister, just the two of us).

When he had arbitrarily selected who could go on, we made ourselves comfortable - it would be an 8 hour ride.

We slept most of the way as it was a night bus. But I did delve deep into my cousin's life which was the reason I found out later was her reason for distancing herself from me. "It hurt too much," it was reported she had said.

But for the meantime, I am naive. And lonely. I had only moved to the Philippines four months back on a whim. Should I stay? I ask my best friend. (I had come originally for Christmas). Yes! she replies. And that was that. It was April. And I was still here. [There would be 3 more Aprils! But that's another story...]

There is an information desk on arrival. And we ask about hotels. We take a mid-range one with a/c and unpack.

We then go back into the centre of town and take a calesa ride. The carriages are much bigger than the ones in Manila and the horses seem better cared for. The World Heritage Site however, turns out to be only two streets long. Everything after that is like every other small town in the Philippines.

And so we visit the shops and museums. And as they are all on the two World Heritage Site streets, it feels like being in the old world. I always loved museums, the opportunity to touch, bear witness to and read about things of old.

That night we watch the centre of town (the grounds near the church) fill with crowds. Several boys make a pass at my cousin. And the black nazarene parades from afar on a float. The crowds flock to follow it.

We devour the famous Vigan empanada and longganisa. And retire to our mid-range hotel with an a/c room.

I wake up the next morning and think first of him. And I find it strange to be so far away from him and to still have him as the first thing on my mind. I almost laugh at the irony. Laugh - cry - it would be the same to me.

They say that before names and details, we remember how someone made us feel. I remember Vigan because it was perhaps the last of those anguished mornings. A stark realisation that henceforth I would only be tasting the dust of what once was.

And unbeknownst to me at the time, the beginning of the end of some family ties.

loiyangalani - the cultural festival

its 11am when we arrive at loiyangalani. but the programme doens't start until 3pm after the planes have arrived and the arrivals have had their lunch.

we set up our tents and lounge by the pool and watch the planes land and the arrivals saunter in with their heavy american or german accents.

and then we walk to the end of the "high street" where the festival is supposed to happen.

the rendille, samburu, turkana, gabbra and el molo are arranged in a semi-circle facing the crowd. they are decked in "traditional" wear and ready to sing and dance.

the MC introduces each song and dance. most of them as love songs however so i begin to wonder how much of that is true.

the rendille begin. followed by the gabbra, samburu, el molo and then turkana. a lot of it is jumping and so i wonder how related they are in customs.

one german afterwards at the pool says he prefers this melange of old and new, socks and spears, beads and skins. says it's more authentic than enforcing on them something seemingly more "traditional" because it has nothing "western" about it. he has a point and i wish i knew more about their history.

we retire to the camp and fill the pool with talk of politics and bodies that are more interested in staying out of the pool after dipping for the refreshing feel of evaporation than in it for actual swimming.

it's 37C.

come 7pm dinner is served and i reheat my goat from lunch.

day 2 of the festival begins with a trip to the rock art sites. and i am keen to hear if there are any differences between rock art in east africa and rock art in south africa since i had read up about san rock art and continued to read up about it when i realised it was all shamanistic. but the guide from the national museum alternates between them being 2,000 and 20,000 years old. he also says that no studies have been done to which his colleague encouragingly suggests that now they can be done with advancements in DNA analysis.

DNA analysis?? on rocks?? very disappointing.

we return to the hotel for lunch and are out again at 12pm for the boat racing and museum tour. the boat race is short and one traveller comments on it being culturally insensitive. so you tell them to race for the mzungus?

there is prize money i try to compensate. there is always prize money, he says. indeed it was 15,000/-

the swimming competition was more interesting :p since the water was so shallow and perhaps because they couldn't swim as well, the swimming contestants ended up throwing themselves into the water and then just running to shore! lol.

by the end of sunday i'm glad that i drove. the trip was worth a thousand times more because of the journey and i think i would have felt short-changed if i had flown in only to see two rock art sites and the boat and swimming race (on top of the festival) .

it feels both long and short this trip. long because i have travelled 320kms away and short because it will only be 6 days. 2 of which are spent driving there and 2 driving back.

it'll probably be my last safari in kenya. and i'm glad i went so far in tribute of a place i might not see again for a long time.

on saturday i exchange photos with erhard on the occasion of a leaving dinner for him too as he heads to cape town.

loiyangalani

it's 7am and we have left for rumuruti. 5 hours on hi-way as we pass through naivasha and somewhat through nakuru...

we take the road coloured red on erhard's map. he says this is the best way and so we follow it. it is however also 1/2 hour longer but i find this out only when we take the yellow road on the way back. we pass tea plantations and trucks. i wish i had taken pictures but i was driving.

we stop at rumuruti where the convoy is to begin. we wait for the 8th car which arrives an hour late only to be sent back for being too small. a maruti.

and so the journey to loiyangalani really begins. and the road to maralal begins where the tarmac ends.

we pass forest and bush and wadis. we drive on rocks and sand and pools of water. and 6 hours later we are in maralal where we stay for the night.

10C outside.

at 6am we prepare to leave. i make eggs and toast on a pan and by 7am we are on the road again.

there are a lot more mountains in these landscapes. and though i sleep on this leg, the terrain is as dangerous as the scenery is exquisite.

the surrounding turns into badlands and i think to myself that i am in love with a desert. that i understand what MK said about crying for joy. because i feel like it now. and it's a stange feeling to be in love with something so unforgiving. something so remote and uninhabitable.

i am overjoyed by the first glimpse of the lake. one year, it has taken me, to finally see the jade sea.

The end of Puerto

I get back into White Beach and buy some kind of acid (don't remember which) for Potential Diving Mate's water-clogged ears. He is happy to receive it and regales to me about how his travel buddy was checking out the trannies-he-didn't-know-were-trannies last night.

Oh well! lol. We played pool, the three of us. The first time I've ever played a game of pool with three people.

We have a late lunch. I order squid spaghetti which was overrated. Ordinary spaghetti - just black.

And then we waited for tomorrow.

---------------------------------------------------

Tomorrow came and I was supposed to leave. I ordered a Filipino breakfast and queued to take a larger bangka than the one on the way in.


The waters were still rough from the rains which I find out later were really a typhoon! lol. And so it isn't long after we set off that I am puking my breakfast and begging to be left lying on the boat floor to be as "stable" as possible.

3 hours of hell; my head dizzying, the Koreans screaming and the water thrashing and throwing us every which way before we're back on dry, non-moving land. I'm so dizzy however that I opt to lie on the waiting chairs for a few hours. And a few hours later, though I'm only a little improved, I head off to the bus stop. I take the same bus back and I call in sick for work that evening.