Outside the local mosque I greet people with (the Arabic but universal-Islamic/Muslim greeting): Salaam Aleikum / Peace Be Upon You; to their replies: Aleikum wa Salaam / And Peace Be Upon You.
For hours many smiles and long, curious looks or exclamations in Swahili: “Jambo!” (Hello) or “Mazungo!” (white person).
Two elderly tribal women stopped and stared. Ali, an English-speaking Muslim, laughed when he heard what they said to one another: He translated what they said of me: “How can a woman have so much facial hair?!”
Two small girls, watching from some metres away, found the courage to shake my foreign hand. They soon began plaiting my hair as Ali and I continued chatting, still seated on a log in a muddy lane alongside the village mosque.
A young woman stopped to talk. Soon she invited us to her house. There we met Consolota’s two sisters and four young brothers. She said her family was small; some here had 20 – 24 children (polygamy is common). Consolota had recently finished high school exams and heaps of Good Luck cards were strung above this room of bare concrete floor with two tattered sofas. The shack’s mud walls painted white - cracked but decorated with Jesus and Virgin pics. Consolota apologised for their poverty.
She made us a tasty meal of fried rice and tomato with lumps of meat. Afterwards, when we were wandering back Ali said Consolota had told him in Swahili that she liked me. “She was a tough woman, from the Meru tribe” he said. “She can suck all the water” (oral sex). And he recommended that I sleep with her.
I replied “Could get too complicated; maybe she wants to marry me.” “No,” insisted Ali, “she just wants to try a white man.”
On the way to my (rundown) hotel-room I pass one of the staff and she greets me with “I would like to spend some time with you.” I smile and continue. Then as I unlock my cabin door she shouts across the courtyard “I am coming.”
“Are you?” I reply (with a whiff of sexual inneuendo that was lost on her). She enters my room and gazing round, smiles and informs me she’ll return …
She’s now returned, having watched me wash my hair in the basin outside. “You have lovely hair,” she says. “Can I be in your company?”
I don’t answer.
“I want to sleep with you. I love you.” It seems she learnt English from T.V soaps. She has all the one-liners. I’m stumped. I haven’t asked her but now she’s making my bed. She’s no princess, rather big, with a braided mohawk, and wearing a t-shirt which states – Jesus sets you free.
I reply “But you don’t know me,” trying to put her off, “I could be a bad man -” But no … she responds “When I first saw you, my heart jumped.”
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