01
AUGUST 2005 ‚ 1650 HOURS ‚ BREEZES BEACH CLUB ZANZIBAR TANZANIA
A bad dream awakened me from an otherwise restful night. In it I observed a woman
yelling for help and I stepped out and yelled at two men running away from her
with her purse. Hearing me they decided to make me their next target and came
straight at me. Instead of running away I attempted to reason with them and the
bigger of the two advanced on me reaching out for me with his right hand. I tried
to parry his thrust but missed and awoke physically feeling a zing from the spot
on my left side between two ribs where he came into contact with me. Oddly enough
my recollection was that he poked me with his right thumb, but more than likely
it was a blade of some sort.
Nothing like a dream of being mortally wounded ‚ or thumb pressed ‚ to bring the heart pounding hard and eyes wide open and me rubbing the point between the two ribs that felt tender for some reason. Why can't I dream of gazelles or wildebeast running across the Serengeti. I'm in Africa for crying out loud. Why am I dreaming of urban assaults?
Anyway, I grabbed Hemingway and my watch (without looking at it) into the bathroom because I knew I wouldn't be finding sleep again for sometime. And after parking myself on the closed throne and making it through the current chapter of ìGreen Hillsî that I'd been reading, I finally summoned the courage to look at the watch I'd placed sink-side, hoping for a miracle that it was somewhere after five in the morning. But it was 2:30 dammit, so I resigned myself to finishing the remaining 50 or so pages that Ernest wrote and then see where that left me. About 20 pages out from the finish, he writes:
"I did not mind killing anything, any animal, if I killed it cleanly, they all had to die and my interference with the nightly and the seasonal killing that went on all the time was very minute and I had no guilty feeling at all.î
Clearly. I'll tell ya, my impression of one of my favorite writers (it's usually a toss up between him and SteinbeckÖ with John usually coming out on top) has suffered a bit of a blow. I knew going into this accounting of his safaris here in Africa would be rife with game hunting and killing, but I still wasn't set to fathom how commonplace and comfortable he makes it ‚ and only at 36 years of age. Then again, it renders his suicide a little less tragic, as if he'd been hunting himself all his life and was finally able to kill himself cleanly and with no guilt.
I finished the book and it was 3:15 when I crawled back into bed. I briefly considered grabbing the camera and going out to experiment with shots of the surf and stars, but wandering about the grounds in the wee hours might not sit well with the various ìaskariî (guards) on patrol. So I just lay there until sleep grabbed hold of me again however much later and I snoozed dreamlessly until Susan stirred sometime after sunrise.
There was evidence of sunshine when we got up, but by the time we made it to breakfast, it had gone into hiding behind some thick gray clouds that hugged the coastline and robbed the beach of its usually breezes. After breakfast we laid claim to a couple of lounges and the most strenuous activity we engaged in was the watching of a small group of joggers move across the sand and a shore fisherman and a shore fisherman moving up and down the surfline casting out and reeling in his net. His efforts didn't seem to yield much.
Leaving
Susan to recline I returned to our room to drop off camera equipment
to the room so that we might make use of one of the resort's
paddle boats and putt-putt out the hundreds of yards out to where
the roaring waves endless broke
against the reef and had to make a detour after finding a note on
the made-up bed informing me that my mother had called requesting
I contact her. A number
of scenarios immediately raced around inside my head. One of the
pets was sick, missing or dead. She'd burned down the house with
a cigarette she'd fallen asleep
smoking and/or one or all of the pets was sick, missing or dead.
There'd been
a massive earthquake and all the animals were sick, missing or dead.
Hurrying, I made it to the hotel's reception area (no phones in the
rooms) and placed a call at roughly $4 per minute through the operator
on duty, even though it was
something like 2:30 a.m. over in Los Angeles. With relief, the call
went through and my mom answered. Much to my further relief there'd
been no fire or quake or animal emergency, in fact no emergence at
all. She just wanted to know the
number and time of our flight's arrival at LAX so she could be there
to pick us up.
Good old moms. We ended up chatting for an amount of time that
came to roughly $35, but it was worth it just to hear that nothing
was
wrong (other than
all the cats had bitten her at one time or another ‚ even Pepper
and Jig).
Signing for the call's bill
I headed out back to find that a squall had hit and that it was decently
raining ‚ something Susan
had said she would've liked to
see. It was entertaining to watch the guests that were poolside
go running for cover as if the rain was acid. Me, I just strolled
back
out to where Susan lay
in the lounge under our palm canopy and enjoyed the precipitation.
I filled her in about mom and after the first squall ended and
later another smaller one came
and went we made our way to the booth to inquire about the paddle
boat. Told we must wait until the person in 
charge of equipment
rentals returned from lunch,
we decided the time was right to get our complimentary henna tattoos,
administered by a petite local who after applying Susan's without
a hitch onto the back of her left hand was open in her disdain
for the amount of hair on the back of mine
and suggested perhaps a less follicle rich portion of my epidermis.
I regretted to report that I was a pretty hairy sonofabitch and
shaking her head began applying
mine, tsking and clucking whenever the hairs got in her way.
After they dried we hooked up with the boat and launched her into
the surf afterwards paddling out to within a couple hundred yards
of the
breakers,
which were much
larger waves up close. I was satisfied to keep my distance, but
my fearless Susan was all for getting a bit of a closer look so
we moved
in until
the water got
pretty trough-y. Even so far out into the Indian Ocean from shore
the crystal clear water was still not more than five or six feet
deepÖ and it was near high
tide. Out beyond the no man's land where the waves crash into the
reef, then I'll bet the bottom starts dropping.
Coming about, we
came about halfway in and rested a bit just bobbing on the surface
then we moved closer to the anchored platform that
people who
are
swimming can
climb up onto. Then the dive boat returned and we pretended they
were pirates before we ran our vessel aground and disembarked. We're
goofy like that.
After lunch of prawns and vegetable samosas and tomato and mozzarella sandwiches, the sun finally came out proudly and we explored a stretch of the pristine beach collecting sea shells for souvineers. I filled one of the small plastic containers with sand and seawater and then we laid out on the lounges for a bit until I decided to take a dip and a short swim in the water, which was really quite comfortable. Afterwards I recalled to Susan that having long eschewed immersion in the waters off our own coast, this was my first time tasting and swimming in saltwater in I couldn't remember how long. Laying down to dry off, the sun soon dropped behind some palms and we adjourned to check our flight with the Fisherman Tours representative, pleasantly surprised to find from him that it has been rescheduled three hours later than expected, not only leaving us more time here on Zanzibar, but less time in the airport in Nairobi to catch our flight back to London.
Tonight Susan and I will enjoy the private seaside dining experience offered by the hotel and known as The Tides. I believe lobster is on the menu. Tomorrow we'll be on our way at 3:30 p.m.