I don’t say aloud the words I am thinking: Quit. Go home. Take a plane tomorrow.
It would be so easy.
IN TAIWAN, someone made the grave mistake of allowing me on a scooter under the ill-conceived notion that the faster you went the easier it was to keep balance. Go fast, go straight. Why does everyone want to go in a line? I swung my leg over the bike, placed my hands on the accelerator, pulled the throttle, lurched forward abruptly, a large bunny hop.
‘A bit jumpy isn’t it?’ I said to the spectators.
I turned back, pushed my helmet down further, repositioned my hands. Brake off. Throttle on. I sped up, too quickly, lurching forward. The momentum made my hands jerk and I must have twigged the bars, because I turned suddenly, veering 180 degrees, off the road. Running straight into a parked car.
In Obertsdorf high in the Bavarian Alps, I was convinced the fresh mountain air, and the city’s passion for two-wheeled transport, could help me ride. As if by osmosis, biking would somehow permeate my body. In stumbling German I managed to hire a bike for a day, from a rounded woman with grey hair and a plump bratwurst stomach. Ich mochte ein fahre rad fur ein tag bitte.
She seemed perturbed that I didn’t jump on immediately and ride out of her shop, but instead guided the bike while walking next to it, as though I were chatting to a shy pony. Only when I was away from any watchful eyes did I swing my leg over, let my feet scrabble to find the pedals and move forward, inch by wobbly inch.
The stony bike paths were beautiful. They could take me to river edges, where poplar fluff of summer drifted like fairy crowns caught in the water’s lip. Across paddocks, glossy mares with manes of spun gold tossed and snuffled in their fields. Surrounded by such beauty, how could I not be able to ride? How could such things not be possible?
I managed to go straight for a little while, but then I got the wobbles and couldn’t master the art of turning without ending in a jack-knife position. Which at one point, threatened to topple me into the river, a three-metre drop below. I returned the bike to the German lady before part of it embedded into me permanently.
I spent most of my childhood balancing on a gymnastic beam. I found it easier doing a handstand on ten centimetres than I did pedalling on a road ten metres wide. During my attempts to learn to ride my mum ran after me, holding onto the bike, steadying me on countless occasions. ‘I’ve got you, I’ve got you!’ she shouted before letting go.
For a few seconds, I held it. I was riding! My white wicker basket leading the way. Pink painted flower handles glinting. Two wheels spinning madly in the dirt. It happened in an instant – I tilted awkwardly – lost momentum – and came smacking down cheek and elbow first, hitting the earth. When my head stopped spinning and the world around me settled, I wheeled that contraption into the back of our dusty garage and left here there, to rust.
At our Kenyan campsite, we are waiting for a new bus, a new driver. Sarah also offers an escape route: at dusk a bus will arrive at camp to take those who want to leave back to Nairobi, to the airport.
We could all so easily go home.
Until then, we have hours to fill, so when a local guide arrives offering a trip through the national park – a twenty-six kilometre ride by bike – I say yes. How hard can it be, I think, to ride a bike?
THE WOODEN gates to the Masai Mara are as tall as a two-storey building. Cracked and peeling green paint. Summer sun bleaches the sky, so it’s dazzling and white. On either side of the gate, green hills and sandy pathways. Far off in the distance, the earth erupts in a series of rocks and boulders, crouching on top of each other, tall as a monolith, their pointed fingers reaching into the sky, trying to pierce the clouds.
The tour is led by a young, local man with wiry thin arms and wide eyes. He’s wearing jeans that sit right below the slash of his bottom, revealing white boxer shorts that read KLEINE around the band. He has short, curly hair and reflective Oakleys perched on top. Around his neck he wears a knotted red bandana.
He introduces himself as Kobi. We follow him through the gates stepping over: dust, paint, old shoes, rubber casings, a small slender white rock that could once have been a pinky finger. Off to the left, a small dusty shack sits, a mottled green. Inside old bikes, sans helmets, are lined and waiting. He walks towards the smallest blue bike, a rusty old thing, leaning against an old splintering fence and wheels it towards me while it shrieks like something alive. I feel quite similarly – about shrieking – and think perhaps this makes us a good pair. The blue bike is as rusty and filthy as the pink one I left in a garage twenty years ago would be now.
Shamil hops on a tall black bike with ease, one leg over, and starts riding away. He yells something over his shoulder about giraffes, but the rest of his words are swallowed by the wind. He stands on his pedals with grace, looking like a jockey heading down the straight. Ailie whoops into the air like a kid on Christmas morning, mounting her white bike like a gallant steed and pedals furiously to catch up with Shamil.
Ant looks at me, ‘You got this, possum?’
‘In the bag,’ I tell her. She pedals away on a slender red bike. Like a woman from the 1920s, she could only have been more graceful had she chosen to ride side saddle.
I start off a little wobbly. Okay, a lot. A dust cloud billows in front of me and I stop to cough and clear my nose. Each time I hop back on I hope it will be easy. Everyone else makes it look easy. Despite panting and puffing, it takes all my might to get my bike to go forward.
I look ahead at the large rocky hills. A dust cloud puffs. I sneeze. I can’t see anything. My tyre hits a rock. Suddenly I’m skidding in the gravel. When the dust settles, it appears I have managed to do a 180-degree turn and am facing the entrance. Is this a sign?
I can still back out. The exit is only a hundred metres away. I could say thanks, hand over blue rusty and bid adieu to Kobi. Back at camp, I can lie by the river somewhere and watch hippos and drink Coke out of glass bottles. I could swat away mosquitos, make a creamy coffee, eat buttery toast until I am stuffed, and finish reading the rest of my book.
Kobi stops and looks back at me. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m not sure I can ride a bike,’ my voice wavers.
He looks at me like I’ve just told him I don’t know how to breathe.
I pick up the bike like a frustrated toddler and stamp it down with force. THE. RIGHT. WAY. When it happens a second time just minutes later, I feel like screaming. It isn’t until I see the sign hanging in white above the entrance that I understand. Hell’s Gates.
It seems I’ve followed my own Virgil in the form of Kobi willingly into Hell. And here we are waiting. I’m thinking of everything – the truck accident, the unmarked speed bumps, riding a bike when I can’t. What if I die? What if I hurt myself? What if I fall? What if I fail?
But also: What if it’s magnificent? What if I’m happier? What if this place changes me?
These are the questions people asked me, before I left. Ahead the grey clouds fill the Kenyan sky. A few stripes of sun still find the ground. The land spreads out before me, honey-coloured sand, soft-grey rock sides. I blink and the sun beams, then, the muted swish of zebra tails flicking flies off rumps. The wind comes fast. Sand gets in my mouth, on my face. My eyes start to water. I think of Dante, standing amongst the rotting souls of the underworld, fearful but pressing on.
‘Let go,’ is all Kobi says.
I think he meant, Let’s go, but then his words swim in my head. I realise they are by a strike of fate much better placed for this moment.
My feet find the pedals. I push and heave – it isn’t easy – and begin to move. My knees creak like the bike, my bottom hurts from the hard seat. My thighs feel hot and thick and out of practice. My breath sounds like the short, wheezy heaves of someone with asthma. I sweat and grunt and my face becomes quickly caked in a layer of dust.
I think of people at home and work – sitting at desks, going to meetings, sweating on buses, cramped on the train, stuck in traffic. It makes me
pedal faster.
Eventually, I catch up with the others. When we ride as far as we can go on bikes, we leave them perched against each other and begin to climb the rock faces, metres high, without rope. Has the gorilla trek helped? I find myself discovering muscles I don’t know I have, pulling me up, helping me find balance in tiny footholds.
Sweat drips into our eyes. At small ledges we stop to catch our breath, downing water thirstily, before continuing upwards, grabbing plants and rock edges, working our way towards the sky.
We find respite for a few minutes at one of the highest points, a peak that overlooks the entire park. We are as high, if not higher, than the birds. We can’t hear anything below. Instead of the wind reverberating from the cavernous mouths of caves, it’s utterly silent. The earth unfolds before us. Lizards creep across the sand near our feet, tiny feet, quick heads dart to and fro, hearing things we don’t. The sun has grown in size and rips a hole through the clouds; the weight of it softens us – I feel like dozing. The colours of the earth seep together – mottled olive and spongy ochre. Someone drops a hair band and it disappears. The world drops away into tiers of rock, sloping and falling. We stand then, the five of us, too close to the edge. Despite the possibility of falling, we think instead of flying.
Before the sun sets we descend through the layers of rock, back out the way we came, and begin the long pedal back to the gates. I can’t feel my bottom for the constant bumping of bike over rock sending shock waves into my legs. Ant is behind me and calls out something, but I have momentum now and don’t turn around.
Sometimes when we look back we lose the momentum to keep going forward, finding the places where we were, rather than those we should be.
I keep facing forward, feeling glorious.
When we return our bikes to Kobi, the Gates of Hell close behind us. I look over at Ant and say, ‘Yes.’
‘Yes?’ she asks.
‘Yes. We keep going.’
And I keep repeating Dante’s words to myself like a mantra:
Do not be afraid; our fate
Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.
THE COUNTRY is parched. We’re told it’s normal for it to be so hot, but even moving feels unforgiving. It takes every ounce of energy just to lift our legs.
Closing my eyes, I wait for the wind. It doesn’t arrive. Thirst marks every second. We drink more than we ever have. We pass a cow lying by the side of the road, her belly distended, her thick lips parted. Her gasp for air haunts me even now, the spittle bubbling and frothing like a toad as she grunts, but is unable to get up. Too hot. Too old. Too late. I want to stay with her, to reach down, to pat her shin, to take her large head in my lap and let her pass like that, with someone hanging onto her, but the game park driver steps on the accelerator and we keep going. The sand burns in the sun, hot and hard. The wind picks up the dry ground and tosses it aloft. It finds its way into every crevice. There is sand in our truck, on our seats, in our hair, crunching in our teeth. Ragged red tree trunks are exposed like blood and flesh. The skin has split and the bark hangs off in strips like a long laceration.
Everywhere feels dry. I can’t remember how it felt to be cold and blue in Uganda, when the water in my body had frozen, icicles forming on the rungs of my ribs, splintering my chest. We haven’t seen water in days, and I am beginning to dry out. I have started – like a selkie – to gaze out at the horizon longing to catch a glimpse of water.
My hands are stained with the dirt of this land. It won’t budge under water or time. My eyebrows grow thicker and more quickly than I remember, and I discard my tweezers one day into a passing town’s bin because, who cares? I stop applying make-up in the mornings, even tinted moisturiser, and move through the day, my face nude.
At first this scares me. It has been years since I discovered that my face was growing its own dark brown shade of distaste. In patches, my skin has been consistently darkening. As I went from doctor to expert to dermatologist, they mentioned words like hyperpigmentation and melasma. Each of them wrote hurried prescriptions for creams and salves and ointments that made my wallet lighter, but never my skin.
I allowed bold beauticians to zap it with lasers and peel layers off with chemicals. Once, I took home a face of puffed, new red raw skin and had to stay indoors, and out of sunlight for a week. And still the dark patches remained. Some had become thicker, darker, until almost black. Worst I think was the spread of it underneath my nose, and on my upper lip. From far away it was as though I’d taken a finger of dirt and wiped a clean line, or more unfortunately, a moustache. I wonder if perhaps these marks are oozing from the past, through gaps I have allowed, parts of myself desperately trying to come out.
I look at myself in cracked mirrors of old bathrooms and see myself as these brown spots walking around. I do not see my red lips or my hazel eyes or my long tangle of brown hair, any of which could possibly be beautiful.
Fellow travellers have also begun a stripping-back process. They discard hair gel and moisturiser and coconut body butters and things that mattered to us at home. Our hair is left to how nature intended it. No straighteners or dryers, mine hangs heavy, wavy and thick down my back. Our legs scaly for a few days, perhaps a week, have begun to remember how to make their own moisture. Body balms are no longer needed.
We speed along highways further south, away from the central dry sauna of Tanzania and edge closer to the capital, Dar Es Salaam, sitting squat on the coast. I am grateful for the humidity that begins to collect in the wind. As the air gathers more moisture, it makes us swelter and sweat. Until we all smell like day old ham hanging from the eaves.
THE BELL in the stone tower tolls two. Loud chimes strike off the sandstone walls, reverberating around the town square. A flock of seagulls take flight, coasting on the onshore breeze, riding higher into the coral blue sky. The waves whip froth and the breeze carries specks of water landing on our shoulders. The ferry docks in pure aquamarine water. Transparent to the bottom, I can make out schools of fish darting in and out of the wooden pylons. The sea stretches in all directions like a lazy cat.
Stone Town, the main port of Zanzibar, is welcoming. I feel like I’m in Europe rather than Africa. Arched tunnels. Sandstone buildings. Grand buildings. Palaces. Winding staircases. Bougainvillea-lined streets. Cafes with roughly written chalkboards, specials – crepes, seafood, ice cream. Ice cream! It’s been so long since we had ice cream.
Bicycles zoom past. People saunter slowly, stop to talk to old friends, taking time to light a cigarette and blow smoke into the cloudless sky. Green grass perfectly cut, signs that say do not step here. But we do anyway because it’s softer than plush carpet and our feet have only felt dust and sand and rock for weeks. An old wall crumbles near us. Ruins from history, when Zanzibar used to be a trading spice market and the origins of the first black slave market. We’ve been returned to a lost time.
The first thing we do is order an iced coffee. ‘Yes, double ice cream. Yes please. You have wi-fi?’ Oh, I think I’m in love.
As Ant and I take a walk down to the water’s edge, she picks a bright fuchsia bougainvillea and sticks it behind her ear. The water, crystal clear; the sand so white in the sun’s brilliant reflection that we need sunglasses. We hike up our skirts and dip our toes in. Warm. Who would have thought Africa had such a tropical hideaway?
Stony streets – where will they take us? Jewellery shops hidden down alleyways so narrow, we walk shoulder to shoulder and still touch the walls. Parasols for sale. Hematite rings. Handwoven silk scarves. Stuffed with ice cream, we keep walking. Discovering. Through a window we see a woman bent over the sink scrubbing at potatoes. Guards stand and smoke outside a stone facade turret. We walk the streets for hours, only returning to the hotel after the sun loses her hold and slips into the sea.
I dream that night of the delectable lightness that comes with being near the ocean – and wake up feeling new.
ON A Tuesday morning we leave Stone Town and drive across the island in old
minivans heading east. Plantations are abundant. Dates and bananas, palm trees reach into the sky large like giant beanstalks. They’re tall enough to graze the clouds.
The island feels distinctly Fijian in the east. Long white sandy beaches. Palm trees and coconuts. Hibiscus flowers, wild red and sunshine yellow. Frangipanis, white and muted yellow, soft pink, falling around us. Bursts of colour everywhere.
We stay in simple beach-side huts. Cool tile floors. Thatched roofs. White walls. A rough timber shelf for our clothes. Before we unpack, Ant and I run barefoot to the beach. I need a swim more than ever. We leave a string of clothes as we disrobe running towards the water’s edge.
Dive into the coolness, there aren’t any waves. I swim out, and out, further and further until the beach starts to disappear. I dive and duck. Feel the gentle glide of the current. Float on my back. Watch the clouds drift past. Water in my ears. I can’t hear anything but the beat of my own heart.
Underneath is another world. Fish bigger than my hand, and quick, they avoid my legs treading water, darting like black bullets. Resting on the sandy floor are sea urchins, black with spindle spikes, each tip carrying soft poison enough to numb a hand for days.
Crystal clear water as far as I can see. Old dhows, African fishing boats, sail by, coming in with their catch of the day, fish flapping on the old wooden decks, their torn sails flapping in the sea breeze. I could float here forever.
I can’t keep away from the water. Every time I’m dry I dive back in again. My skin tans quickly. I turn the deep black of a kalamata olive.
The beach sunbeds are made from timber frames and twine crisscrossed into rectangular patterns. It may as well be wire, biting into our skin leaving red raw marks. We have to turn ourselves like pigs on a spit every three minutes or it starts to draw blood.
Ways to Come Home Page 11
