White Lies

There were buses and taxis in the shabby township. I asked the boy which bus for Naivasha.

—Hey you, he said. You stay here and eat paw-paw. You go that way and those thugs there are the bad men. They will steal your bag.

—I must go to Naivasha, I said.

It was the middle of the afternoon and the township men were already drunk. Over the road, two North Yemenites were getting into a Datsun Cherry. I guessed they didn’t live out here so I waved and ran across.

—Salaam.

They greeted me back, we shook hands. They wore brown nylon and smelled of tea rose, their teeth were brown and one of them smoked an imported cigarette.

—Which road are you taking? I said.

—The road to there.

The driver pointed out of town.

—Away? I said.

—Yes, away from here.

—Will you take me?

—Welcome, they said.

They’d been chewing mirrah and were cake-eyed, judging by the pile of stalks on the floor in the back of the car. They asked the usual questions, like was I a tourist? A German? Why did I go to Kikuyu Junction? For the girls? The beer? Had I read the Koran?

In situations like those I usually kept it quiet, head down. I’d met too many travellers on the overland route who turned up the volume and tried to make the cross-over. They chewed the mirrah, grooved on the Koran, in for the ride like pocket Kerouacs, but it always turned bad.

If I was undecided about being in Africa anyway, it was best to keep to dignity, respect, and manners. That was my travelling creed. It avoided confrontation.

My gift, my real talent, was to go through life invisibly. I could be the only white man seen for twenty years but still dilute any interest in my existence. Other travellers were like the Pied Piper or the UN turning up with a lorry-load of aid. The whole district flocks out the bush to see and touch them.

It was my first real day back in Kenya. Since I’d last passed through a couple of years back, an attempted coup had sharpened security. Now I had a year’s open ticket, eighty dollars cash, and a couple of hundred shillings bummed off Austen till the end of the week. Khalid was a careful driver; his friend translated the Day-Glo quotes from the Koran on the fringed pendants hanging round the inside of the car. But we were only three miles out of Kikuyu Junction when Khalid said:

—Police. Alhamdulillahi.

It was a roadblock five hundred yards ahead, a blue Land Rover with light flashing, spikes across the road, rifles in the air. Without a second’s pause, Khalid opened the glovebox, took out two small packets and tossed them onto the back seat beside me.

—I give you one hundred United States dollars for putting these into your pocket and for the talking. In English. No Swahili. Is very important. English. The police are scared of good English. I know this for ten years I live in Kenya.

I put them in my pocket because Khalid’s logic was impeccable. There was no risk to me, whatever happened. I wouldn’t be beaten up, jailed or face extortion, but they would. If the police searched me I’d tell the truth and be believed. The point was, we all wanted to get to Naivasha and this was the best solution. I needed a hundred dollars and they knew it.

The police waved us down. I leaned out.

—Jambo, the policeman said.

—Good afternoon, I said. How are you?

I didn’t give him a chance to answer. He tried to lean in and take a look. He stank of millet beer too.

—How are you? he said.

—Very well, thank you. What’s the problem? I’m taking my two friends to Naivasha to have tea with my mother. We’re already late.

—Okay, he said. Go to Naivasha.

—Thank you. Goodbye.

The Yemenites were deadpan for a mile then praised Allah the Merciful. I handed back the packets and didn’t ask what they contained and they didn’t tell me. I saw one contained foreign exchange because they paid me from it, one hundred and fifty dollars US, a bonus of fifty.

—You, lucky charm, Khalid said.

—You could be professional, Jamal said.

—Will you do it again, one day? For us?

I knew exaggerating my own immunity would be dangerous, only the money was a good reason to consider it and I’d be free of Austen’s political hand-me-downs. I still needed a source of foreign exchange to act as a reserve against local shillings. And I’d been given a value by these two Yemenites, the threads of self-definition, the first contour in my personality. I felt anonymous, but anonymity didn’t just mean blending in with the wananchi. And it wasn’t only my skin colour which was opposite, it was my polarity. I always seemed to be travelling or just flowing in the opposite direction to everyone else. I emanated this lack of interest, this laissez-faire. It could’ve made me the perfect smuggler, if I wanted to be one. But my vocation was to drift. I could wait five days sitting on my rucksack at the bus station in Dar es Salaam for the bus to Zambia. Or five hours for my rice and beans in the New World Eating Bar in Wethefuckarwe. I didn’t need profit to eat githeri, just five bob here, five bob there.

So what else made me the perfect smuggler’s lucky charm? I could fake a plummy accent which wouldn’t fool anyone in London but could strike notes of authority in Africa. I failed to interest people, even prostitutes and beggar boys ignored me. And I knew every border, road, dive and dodge in East Africa, or would do soon enough. I could multiply the briefest details into facts, like my whole being was a vacuum that sucked in single experiences rapidly and completely, expanding them by intuition. In this way, places I’d never visited were familiar; places arrived at never confused or disoriented me. Yes, I was ready to accept I was the perfect smuggler’s lucky charm.

I wrote my name on a piece of paper with Austen’s PO box number. I said I’d do it again if they needed me, as lucky charm, that is. There’d be no compromise in that. Then Khalid said:

—You want to sell your passport? One hundred dollars?

—Yes, I said, why not.

—Hey man, Jamal said. You know Mr Schick? You do good business with Schick because he want lucky charm …

Three weeks and one expensive fever later I went to pick up some new passport photos in downtown Nairobi. Embassy Jagger, photographer. His studio was a tin hut behind the market place, beside a ten-foot pile of rotting fruit skins. His choice of backdrop was either a grey sheet or plastic shower curtain. It wasn’t my face on the photos. It looked like a carrier bag drying on the line, or a police identikit. I stared at the likenesses again for some sign of recognition. It was like he’d lost the film, or the camera hadn’t worked so he’d taken a negative of a long thin Luo’s face from his drawer, overexposed the print and tinted up the grey. My big lips and flat nose, fluked eyes, pocks and a scar. My first ever photograph, hence the fear, pride and perplexity.

I sat in the New Protein Best World Cafe and forged Austen’s signature on the back of the photographs then rushed to the High Commission to report my passport stolen and apply for another.

—Must we always have to tell people we close at 11.30 when it says so on the door!

—I need a fuckin passport.

He wouldn’t even let me leave the photographs.

I was meeting Schick for the first time at three, against all Austen’s advice. Schick needed a ‘passenger’ for a run into Uganda and I’d had a good recommendation from the Yemenites.

I thought I could kill some time in the park so I ran across to the traffic island, sprinting with the crowd as the buses heaved down. A packet fell from someone’s back pocket and bounced on the ground. A split second and the haze and clutter of legs left it behind. I was at the back. My instinct was to scoop, lift and keep going in one movement like nothing had happened and no one had noticed. But my balance was barged sideways by a man who fell on the packet, a fluke snatch which made us both lose momentum. By the time we’d saved our skins and backtracked out the road and onto the island, the crowd had left us and we were alone.

He was grubbier than me in his cockeyed cowboy boots and twenty-eight-inch flares with the linings dragging on the ground. His wide-lapelled pin-striped jacket was ripped to shreds and had red plastic pockets sewn on to the old ones. The stiffeners in the butterfly collars of his flower shirt were slipping out like false finger nails. His teeth were brown. His eyes bloody pink.

—Run after him, I said.

The crowd began to disperse on the other side. The man hesitated, holding the brick-shaped envelope. I could see a five bob note through its cellophane window, then slowly he began to slide the packet under his shirt. We were now alone on the traffic island in Kenyatta Avenue. Two hundred Kenyans were gathering each side for the next rush across. They must’ve all been watching us. People shouted at me from bus windows.