Tea on the Blue Sofa: Whispers of Love and Longing from Africa

I had decided I was going to try to catch a big pike before I went back to Africa after a few weeks.

I talked to some people by the lake, they told me that an 8.5-kilo pike had been caught there two weeks earlier and that it had bite marks across the back. So the big one might still be lurking in the shallow waters. There was no time to waste. Especially as I had to catch one for you too.

I have packed away your favourite photograph of me, aged thirteen with the biggest pike I ever caught, nearer five kilos of pride. That one was caught at home. In the picture I am dressed in a blue and white checked dress (changed for the very important occasion. It seems I even brushed my hair for once) and my feet are perfectly together. I am holding out my pike on a big hook to the camera and my smile is proud.

You loved all water, as long as it wasn’t dead. (Swimming pools were almost sinful.) Water, salty water especially. But not only because you loved surfing or fishing, you simply loved water.

As far as water was concerned you knew it more intimately than almost all.

As far as water was concerned, it was the only thing you would never have been able to drown in. We spoke of waves and I wrote to you about waves. I said that waves had passed through me too, during those last few days you had been at the coast, even though I was just sitting at my desk in Nairobi. I told you how I found it funny, how some people seem to think that one is more likely to drown in a wave of water, than in any of the other engulfing waves one can suddenly be swept away with.

And that it is a laugh really, how mothers all flock on tropical holiday shores, like pink flamingoes (Spearing the half-shin-height water. Careful, knee-lifting steps on long slender legs, so as not to get too wet.), unblinkingly watching their young children laugh and show off their first method of swimming. (Their feet on the sandy bottom but arms pretending to swim). Making sure their little child is not swept away by a nasty wave, foaming at the mouth.

Meanwhile, their husbands, sisters or mothers sit far away from the water, perfectly dry, in the shade with barely a hint of salt-water-air in their noses, waving merrily, still, with heads and lungs full of a wave that makes it difficult to keep their balance (it is difficult to keep your balance when the inner ear is constantly tapped on by a wave). Doggy paddling while eating a cool piece of watermelon, drowning any moment now.

You knew that I saw your fear of drowning in your situation; we didn’t speak of it again.

I only told you later that I had a river that ran through my house. It would force its way in just underneath one of the windows in front of my desk and leave by the front door when it rained. And rained it did then, rained, rained, rained and I hardly had any dry clothes any more as only mad dogs and Englishmen stay well covered or inside when it thunders, flashes and pours in Africa.