Part One: Blantyre

Reaching the village of Kabinje, in the evening he sent us a present of tobacco, Mutokuane or “bang” (Cannabis sativa), and maize, by the man who went forward to announce our arrival, and a message expressing satisfaction at the prospect of having trade with the coast. The westing we were making brought us among people who are frequently visited by the Mambari as slave-dealers. This trade causes bloodshed; for when a poor family is selected as the victims, it is necessary to get rid of the older members of it, because they are supposed to be able to give annoyance to the chief afterward by means of enchantments. The belief in the power of charms for good or evil produces not only honesty, but a great amount of gentle dealing. The powerful are often restrained in their despotism from a fear that the weak and helpless may injure them by their medical knowledge. They have many fears. A man at one of the villages we came to showed us the grave of his child, and, with much apparent feeling, told us she had been burned to death in her hut. He had come with all his family, and built huts around it in order to weep for her. He thought, if the grave were left unwatched, the witches would come and bewitch them by putting medicines on the body. They have a more decided belief in the continued existence of departed spirits than any of the more southerly tribes. Even the Barotse possess it in a strong degree, for one of my men of that tribe, on experiencing headache, said, with a sad and thoughtful countenance, “My father is scolding me because I do not give him any of the food I eat.” I asked where his father was. “Among the Barimo,” was the reply.

Tyler arrived in Blantyre late at night at the back of an open bakkie driven at speed from the Mozambiquan border by a crazy Portuguese priest. The Priest picked up Tyler somewhere past Tete as the sun was beginning to set and hadn’t released the speed pedal until they reached the border with Malawi. Freezing from the winds and exhausted from the extended hitchhiking that took him from Harare to Blantyre in one day, Tyler was more than happy to be let off, at last, at the main bus station where Blantyre’s only backpacker hostel, often-renamed but currently “Wayfarers”, was situated.

Tyler’s first experience of Malawi was the taste of fried chicken and chips. The bus station was lined with metal pushcarts, each burning a small fire underneath a deep wok, cooking piles of thick, freshly-peeled potatoes and pieces of chicken coated in batter and deep-fried. He was in heaven. He picked up three chicken pieces and a large packet of chips rolled in a newspaper and ate them then and there, squatting beside one of the stalls, then made his way slowly to the hostel, which stood some way at the back of the station.

Wayfarers was packed, a situation Tyler discovered later was not unusual. The Kiwi who sat in the small reception room was happy to give him a dorm bed in exchange for his dollars and pointed him in the direction of the outside bar. Tyler slung his backpack on the top of a two-tiered bed, stripped naked and, wrapping his sarong around him, strode towards the shower. It was a one-person shower, soap was provided — and it was hot.

He scrubbed himself, luxuriating in the sensation of burning hot water, and watched in satisfaction as brown pools collected underneath him and disappeared into the sluggish drain.

Finally, and feeling better, he dried himself with the sarong and went back to the large dorm room to put on some clean clothes. The night’s air was cool and pleasant and he settled for his one clean T-shirt and a pair of baggy shorts. Barefoot, he walked outside, where the lights and noise of the bar hit him like a rolling wave.

There were people everywhere, talking and drinking and smoking, huddled in groups, lined around the circular bar, sitting by the swimming pool, camping in the grass. Tyler spent a couple of minutes observing without being disturbed, listening to scraps of conversations and trying to figure out the easiest way to get a drink.

“So we take this mushrooms and then bam! we are seeing this big hippo come out of the water and snorting at us like so! —”

&ldquo—You’re so full of shit Johann. Don’t listen to him, he’s stoned. I’m Charlie by the way—”

“Diving in Mozambique is excellent. Awesome. I mean, obviously the Red Sea is better, and some sites in Malaysia are the business, but let me tell you, Mozambique has a lot to offer if you’re a diver&mdash”

“Yes, yes, but what’s the dope like? I have to tell you Tanzania was very disappointing on that account—”

“So you’re travelling on your own? I mean, isn’t it a bit dangerous, you know...”

“—As a girl you mean? Not really. I think Australia is probably much more dangerous for a lone girl than Africa. People here are so gentle—”

“—and the hippo is charging at us — you know hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa? It’s true, they—”

“And what about you? are you travelling with anyone?”

“—this site near Xhe Xhe, and we saw the most amazing coral reef, you know? We’re swimming over it, chilling, then my diving buddy Oliver gives me a tag, nearly pushes me on the reef. A fucking shark man, a—”

“—Had some good ganja on Zanzibar, though we mainly did Charlie up there. Yeah! Amazing, I know. Is it true they produce most of it in Mozambique?”

Tyler took a deep breath and tried to temporarily block the swarm of voices. He stepped up to the bar, pushing against people, and cleared himself a small space on the side of the camping ground.

“A beer please,” he said to the barman, another Kiwi.

The barman nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Which would you like?”

“What have you got?”

“Carlsberg Green, Carlsberg Brown, Carlsberg Extra...”

A dark-haired man bumped into him, said, “You must visit the Carlsberg brewery while you’re here,” and wandered off with two glasses of what appeared to be Coke.

Tyler raised his eyebrows at the barman. “I’m sorry, I just got here from Harare,” he said.

The barman nodded again and handed him a green bottle. “It’s what everyone drinks,” he explained. “The rest taste like shit, if I’m honest.” He shrugged. “That’s twenty Kwacha, or I can put it on a tab for you.”

Tyler put his un-tasted beer on the counter and reached for his wallet, pulling out a twenty and handing it to the barman. He had changed some money at the border before getting one last lift on a truck.

“Thanks. I’m Tyler.”

The barman extended his hand. “Billy. Nice to meet you.”

They shook hands briefly and the barman turned to serve someone else, only commenting that “You really should visit the Carlsberg brewery. We do trips from here every Wednesday,” before disappearing like the Cheshire cat from Alice, leaving only his words in the air.

Tyler found himself wondering if the two Kiwis were a couple, then abandoned the thought for the taste of cool, Green beer. He let the tide of conversation wash over him once more—

“—tattoo? Got this one in Thailand last year, see it’s like a Thai dragon, took three hours to put on my shoulder like this, and had to come back for the colours the next day—”

“So your friend is sleeping in the dorms tonight? You’re all alone in your tent?”

“Dope, gear, blow, weed, grass—”

“Why, would you like to keep me company?”

“—ganja, dacha, chamba, smokes, mari-jew-anna, Mary Jane—”

“Dive in Lake Malawi? Yeah it’s nice, but it’s a lake for fuck’s sake—”

“—Zanzibar man. Seashells you wouldn’t believe. Miles and miles of empty sand beaches. Picked up enough seashells to start a museum, you know what I’m saying?”

“—hashish, puff, skunk—”

“Sounds good to me.”

“—Malawi Gold, Swazi Red, Malawi Black, Durban Poison—”

“—Now the Red Sea, that’s where you wanna go if you know anything about diving...”

Tyler put down his beer and lit a cigarette.

The smell of weed was coming discreetly from the dark camping area, and a couple he suspected he half-listened to slunk away to a remote tent. A group of drunk Australians started an a cappella rendition of “Puff The Magic Dragon” accompanied by two guitars and a harmonica, and a young guy covered in soap and wrapped in a towel jumped into the pool, throwing away the towel and complaining bitterly that the water in the shower stopped running again.

Tyler was tired. Sleep, he decided, might be the best course of action. He’d talk to some people tomorrow; find out what there was to do in Blantyre apart from drink and smoke; and start planning what his next destination might be. He had no immediate plans.

He crunched the cigarette in the ashtray half-smoked and pushed through back into the building, where he made his way to the now-dark dorm and climbed gratefully up into his bed.

It takes the average person exactly seven minutes to fall asleep, Tyler had read once. He considered himself above average in this respect, taking a long time each night before he finally managed to drop off, but that night he passed out the moment his head touched his makeshift pillow, a rolled-up top.

He slept, and in his sleep he dreamed.

The man walks through drying shrubs and drooping trees. His face is darkened by the sun, his eyes are slits through which he tries in vain to block the overwhelming light. Yellowing stones and dust the colour of bricks fall behind him...

“Where am I?” he asks. The world is in darkness. He moves his hands, feeling himself. He is lying down, his eyes shut. He opens them, shuts them again.

“Who are you?” he asks after a moment of silence. And again, “Who are you?”

He opens his eyes and looks at the man crouching by his side. The man is short and dark. His bright eyes stare, unblinking, at the lying figure.

The man nods his head. He smiles, a bright white grin which splits his face like an earthquake. “No sleep,” he says. “Tokolosh.”

He moves away and disappears into the darkness.

He walks up a steep hill, his breath coming rugged and short, like persistent coughs. The sky is like a painting, a magnetic, acidic blue he is beginning to loath, The very blueness of the skies hurting his senses. He tries to put a name to things, and fails. Tries to conjure a sense of time, but nothing comes to him. He walks on towards the summit.

A bright round moon is hanging in the sky, as large as a mountain. He can see the craters clearly, as if they are only over the next hill, only a deceptive, short distance away.

The night brings relief from the sun, but calls for new terrors.

He feels the first mosquito as a sharp pain, sees a tear of blood forming on his leg. He curses as dozens more fly at him, hungry.

He knows then that he must reach the river, that he has been walking towards the river for some time, and he moves on.

His blood leaves little marks on the dry ground, like very small footsteps.

Later still, the moon is hanging lower in the sky, and he prepares to sleep. He drags four nearby rocks and lays wood over them. He wants to sleep on the ground, just curl up and sleep, but the words come to him again and he doesn’t. No sleep. Tokolosh.

Little figures dance excitedly around his makeshift bed, little grubby fingers trying to reach for his prone body. The stones keep him above them, and he knows he is safe.

In the harsh sunlight the dark man is back, walking beside him, smiling.

“Who are you?” he says.

The dark man smiles wider. He seems to think about the question.

They are walking down a hill. The earth seems to the man to be a little darker here, the trees a shade greener. Then he hears a voice, full of laughter, answering him.

“N’Kosi,” the dark man says. He moves ahead and soon disappears into the distance.

He sleeps in random patterns of light. The Tokolosh are again there, surrounding his bed, watching and waiting. He dreams memories: his pale body naked in the moonlight, exulting in clear white water; a brown woman running away, her face frightened; the barking of wild dogs against the silence of the night.

His body shakes when he sleeps and he cries out.

The Tokolosh come closer, fidgeting in anticipation, like fat little kids, who find the sight of a sweet overpowering. Their fingers brush the air below him.

He crawls through the dying trees and billowing dust, naked body baked black and made lean and emaciated, stripped of excess flesh and modesty. His memories are clearer now, hurting inside his head like sharp pebbles.

Later again, he leans against the trunk of an ancient Baobab when the dark man appears. He avoids his eyes, sinking to his knees in front of N’Kosi. The sound of water is much closer, and he can feel moisture touching his cheeks.

Soundlessly, he cries, and N’Kosi watches.

They walk the rest of the way together. He has to stop many times, and N’Kosi is always there, waiting. They approach the river.

The sound of the water comes roaring at them from a great distance. He can see water billowing like smoke in the distance, feels the earth tremble.

The sky is riddled with rainbows.

He is standing at the top of a cliff, overlooking the falls charging into the river.

A long way below he sees a converted tree trunk — a long dugout — with mischievous little figures waiting inside. Tokolosh.

He falls to the ground, sits cross-legged. His hand scoops earth and lets it settle back on the ground in little mounds.

He cranes his head up, locking eyes with the dark man who watches him impassively.

He searches for words, finding them unfamiliar.

“I’m sorry,” he says, finally. The dark man nods.

He stands up and turns to the falls, to the waiting dugout.

Not looking back, he says “N’Kosi Sikelele iAfrica.” He bows.

Then he jumps.

The dark man stands alone at the top of the cliff, watching as the man is being ferried away by the Tokolosh.

“God Bless Africa,” he says.

Morning came, as Cummings may have said, like a perhaps hand. Bright sunlight streamed into the room through the shutters, creating an illusionary zebra skin in gold and black over the room’s surface.

Tyler opened his eyes slowly and stared at the ceiling.

Noises were coming from the other sleepers in his dorm as they slowly woke up, some springing up to tackle the new day, some groaning and cursing and wanting to know who kept the bloody window open?

Tyler turned on his side and lay with his eyes closed into slits, so that he could observe the room while seeming to be asleep.

He was rewarded by the sight of two Australian girls getting dressed, a most welcome sight that woke him sufficiently to start contemplating getting off the bed.

Eventually, having lain there for fifteen minutes he grudgingly jumped down and made his way to the toilets, wadding in his flip-flops down the corridor like a slightly bad-tempered duck.

Feeling lighter, he walked outside to the pool area. It was much quieter now, with only a few people sitting on wicker chairs on the esplanade, drinking coffee or eating a heavy English Breakfast. Tyler noted the number of tents had been reduced by half since the previous night.

“Can I get some coffee, please?” he asked the man behind the bar.

“Sure-Sure.”

“Sharp,” replied Tyler, familiar already with this seemingly universal African form of confirming agreement.

“I’ll just sit over there, then,” he said, pointing at an empty table.

The man nodded again. “It’s ten kwacha,” he said.

Tyler handed over the money and the man disappeared inside. Tyler hoped it was in the direction of the kitchen.

He sat down by himself and lit his first cigarette of the day, a red Life, manufactured in Zimbabwe and purchased the previous day.

He looked with interest at his surroundings in the daylight. He was sitting in a large yard surrounded by a tall, closed wooden fence. Sitting with his back to the building he looked directly onto a small swimming pool surrounded by a stone surface and with a swing to one side. Behind the swing was the camping spot — a shaded area where trees gathered in disorder. Tents were pitched between the trees, a couple of hammocks strung, and several people were sitting on the ground drinking from Thermos mugs.

On the other side was Wayfarers’ gate, a sturdy contraption with large chains keeping it closed.

Outside the gate the bustle of the bus station was in full swing. Horns were hooting like perched owls, accompanied by the frenetic shouts of ticket touts in multiplications of three: Mangochi Mangochi Mangochi! Lilongwe Lilongwe Lilongwe! Monkey Bay Monkey Bay Monkey Bay!

A short woman approached him with a steaming mug in her hands and laid it on the table for him.

“Thank you,” Tyler said as she walked away.

He put out the cigarette in the ashtray and took charge of the milky coffee, adding two spoons of sugar and mixing thoroughly. He took a sip, felt his mind clearing.

He sat there for a quarter of an hour, slowly drinking his coffee and finishing three more cigarettes. He tried to remember his dream, but all he could see were shadows.

Do I really want to stay here? He asked himself. In the light of day the hostel looked dowdy and somehow soulless, as if the evening’s party atmosphere had been only a charade, a cover-up taking on a somehow sinister aspect when viewed from a distance and with a clear head. There were too many of the same conversations, and too many ex-pats, he remembered, who looked like they had been coming here every night for years to drink and ogle the backpacker girls.

“Howzit Dave!” the bartender said to someone behind him and, turning, Tyler saw a big white man put a set of keys on the counter and ask for a coffee. “I’m going back down to Cape Maclear in an hour,” he said. “Just came up for some provisions for Patrick. He’s got malaria again.”

“Miserable sod,” the bartender said.

A thought crystallised inside Tyler’s head, as sharp as an arrow-point, and he turned and said politely, “Excuse me, did you just say you’re going to Cape Maclear?”

“I did,” the man said. He was in his late twenties, large in the kind of well-fed North American way, and had what Tyler thought was a Canadian accent, though in truth he could never quite tell Americans and Canadians apart. Both seemed to him too-large and too-loud, and in their walk was the unmistakable assumption of ownership, their strides suggesting that everywhere they stepped, they owned. “You need a ride?”

“That’d be fantastic,” Tyler said. “And I’d be happy to split the cost on petrol.”

The man shrugged. “Buy me a beer tonight.” He came over and sat down on a chair opposite, laying his coffee carefully on the table. “My name’s Dave.”

“Canadian Dave!” the bartender shouted. Canadian Dave grinned. He seemed full of energy and health, a robustness that emanated from every pore of his body. “You a diver?”

“Nah,” Tyler said. “Just thought it would be nice to stop by the lake for a few days.”

Canadian Dave smiled. “That’s what I said when I got to Cape Maclear,” he said.

“Why, how long have you been there?”

“Six months.”

“Then maybe,” Tyler said, and the tip of the arrow in his mind swung like a compass, telling him where he must go, “maybe I’ll check it out.”

When he got out of the car and smelled the night air, it almost overwhelmed him. It was clear and sweet and in the distance came the hint of fresh pizza cooking in an oven. He walked under the moonlight to the Gap, and rented a room for a dollar a night. He felt like he was swimming. Swimming in the night that seemed so thick with magic and enchantment. The room was concrete and small, almost like a cell. He lit a candle and rolled a joint.

Part Two: Cape Maclear

The Batoka of these parts are very degraded in their appearance, and are not likely to improve, either physically or mentally, while so much addicted to smoking the mutokwane (Cannabis sativa). They like its narcotic effects, though the violent fit of coughing which follows a couple of puffs of smoke appears distressing, and causes a feeling of disgust in the spectator. This is not diminished on seeing the usual practice of taking a mouthful of water, and squirting it out together with the smoke, then uttering a string of half-incoherent sentences, usually in self-praise. This pernicious weed is extensively used in all the tribes of the interior. It causes a species of phrensy, and Sebituane’s soldiers, on coming in sight of their enemies, sat down and smoked it, in order that they might make an effective onslaught. I was unable to prevail on Sekeletu and the young Makololo to forego its use, although they can not point to an old man in the tribe who has been addicted to this indulgence. I believe it was the proximate cause of Sebituane’s last illness, for it sometimes occasions pneumonia. Never having tried it, I can not describe the pleasurable effects it is said to produce, but the hashish in use among the Turks is simply an extract of the same plant, and that, like opium, produces different effects on different individuals. Some view every thing as if looking in through the wide end of a telescope, and others, in passing over a straw, lift up their feet as if about to cross the trunk of a tree. The Portuguese in Angola have such a belief in its deleterious effects that the use of it by a slave is considered a crime.

It was early morning when Mr. Ten called for him outside Tyler’s hut.

“Mr. Tyler!” The voice was low but persistent and Tyler finally propped himself up against the bed’s railings and groggily decided it must be a new day. Good. He quite liked the days here. Only, when he was sleeping, he preferred sleep. It was, he decided some time before, the transition that he resented. Someone once said “every day I do two things I hate: go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning”. Tyler agreed with the sentiment with all his heart.

He stood up, wrapping his cheap sarong around his waist, and went barefoot to the door. “Coming!” he shouted, looked at the lock, looked at the door, walked back to the bed, extracted the key from the unused sleeping bag, walked back to the door, inserted key in lock, twisted and the lock sprang. Mission accomplished. So far so good. He pulled the door towards him, flattening the sand and creating lines in an arc, like an uncompleted toy train-line. Groovy.

The sunlight hit him and he instinctively put his hand up to shield his eyes. Walked back, this time to the wicker stand in the corner, grasped around, found the shades, put them on, walked back to the door.

“Muli Bwanji,” he said politely to Mr. Ten.

A short, balding man stood in front of him, a man Tyler has never seen before. His head was wrinkled, with a crown of white-grey hair ending at his temples. He wore an old suit-jacket with a white shirt underneath, and dark trousers that ended neatly above his bare feet. In his hands was a large brown suitcase. His whole image, like his suitcase, proclaimed him a travel-worn man of business.

“Good morning,” he said. “Mr. Andrew said to me I should come to find you at Bodzalekani, sir.” He nodded gravely. “Said you are needing some goofting. I,” he added as an afterthought, “I am Mr. Ten.”

“Mr. Ten!” Tyler was dumbfounded. He wished suddenly Tamsin was there to see it. He wondered where she was. He wanted to... He sighed inwardly. He really needed to get the courage together to tell her how he felt.

“Please, come in!” He said. “I’ve heard of you, of course. Honoured. Come in, come in.” He walked back into the shade of the hut and took off his shades. Mr. Ten followed.

“So.” Said Tyler.

“So.” Said Mr. Ten.

He put his suitcase down onto Tyler’s unmade bed.

He carefully opened the clasps, and in one fluid movement had flung the suitcase open, stepped aside — and with a dramatic flourish of his hand said, “Here!”

For the second time in so many minutes, Tyler was dumbfounded. Shocked into silence. And, seeing what was in the suitcase, positively glowing.

The suitcase was full of cobs.

They were different shades and sizes, some green and young, others brown and mature. Some were small, the width and length of two fingers. Some were as large as Tyler’s arm.

Mr. Ten followed Tyler’s gaze. “Arms,” he said with some pride. “From the north. Nkota-Nkota plantations. Very good.”

The Traveller’s Guide to the Lake Nyassa Region has an entry dedicated to cobs. In there, it says: “Cobs are the breath of Malawi, the water and food and music of Malawi. In the fields Cannabis plants grow and prosper, some in the back yard of a mud hut, some in the large plantations to the north, some in pots in the rich white houses of Blantyre and Lilongwe. The plants take water from the lake of stars, and light from the strong African sun. They are a weed, and they grow everywhere, like an African sort of Triffid.

“When the leaves are ready they are plucked from the plants and left to dry in the sun. Then, they are rolled together and compressed, until they look like a cigar, wrapped in banana leaves and tied at both ends. They are left buried in the ground, until the banana skins have dried and the Chamba, the marijuana, is so compressed it will stay whole, like an obscene Cuban, even without the wrappings. They are called cobs, for their resemblance to corn, and they are food and water and music, not to mention hard currency.”

“How much?” asked Tyler.

He had been testing the cobs in silence for the past few minutes.

First, pressing with thumb and forefinger to determine hardness. If very hard, the cob is probably tight and full. Soft, and it just might be it’s banana skin all the way.

Second, smell, lifting the cobs to his nose and passing them from one end to the other. An old cob would smell slightly musty, and must be discarded.

Third, after setting aside the ones who found his seal of approval, is the pinch. Without untying the knot at the end, he carefully peels back the outer layer, the banana skin, to reach the Chamba inside. Smell again, check texture, look for seeds, the colour of the grass - all important factors for the true connoisseur.

He put aside three cobs, two Arms and another, a small, dark cob, and waved his hand at them.

Mr. Ten, who had been observing the ceremony with approval, lifted his palms in the air. “Small one thirty, big ones sixty and sixty, together one-fifty.”

Tyler’s lips moved as he worked out the small cob is roughly one American dollar, the large ones two dollars each.

“Give you one-hundred,” he said.

Mr. Ten shook his head. “Me, I don’t bargain,” he said. “Is good price. You ask, everyone know Mr. Ten. Always good Ganja. Okay?”

Tyler nodded. He slipped his shades back on and stretched his hand out to Mr. Ten. “Deal.”

They shook, and Tyler located his wallet, also inside the unused sleeping bag, and slipped out a one-hundred note and a fifty.

“Will you stay and try some of it?” asked Tyler, always the gracious host.

Mr. Ten shook his head. “Work,” he said, regretfully.

He closed his suitcase, tightened the clasps, and made for the door.

Tyler walked him out and watched as Mr. Ten, official drugs dealer for Chemba Village and Cape Maclear, went off to continue his rounds.

Tyler left the small cob in his wicker stand and tried to carry the two arms close to his body, so that they would not be seen by any casual observers. He closed the door behind him and, with some manoeuvring of cobs, managed to lock the door with the key and saunter the few meters to Jeremy’s tent.

“Hey, Bong Man!” he shouted, banging on the silvery material.

The tent rustled and the zip was pulled cautiously down to reveal a dark, shaggy head with blinking eyes.

in a flat voice, full of suffering and pain, the head acknowledged him.

“Tyler.”

Tyler waved his hands like Big Bird and ran around the tent a couple of times, grinning. The look of suffering on the head intensified.

“Here.” Tyler thrust the two cobs at Jeremy’s head.

“Dude. Dope.” Pause. “Mr. Ten.”

The head changed its expression. It was now warm and friendly, and the eyes looked up at Tyler and smiled. The whole head smiled, mouth and eyes, with little laughter wrinkles appearing everywhere, like eddies in a pool of water. It was a very expressive head. And then its body followed it out of the darkness of the tent and into the glaring sunlight, tied carefully the flaps of the tent and made a space for its friend to sit down.

“I’ll get my bong.”

Tyler sat down and began untying one of the cobs while Jeremy hunted for his bong through the tent.

“Got your Frisbee?”

The Frisbee was passed over and Tyler emptied the contents of the cob into the plastic bowl. The Chamba was dark and sticky, collecting in clumps of twigs stuck together, which he started to rub and crumble in slow, rhythmic moves.

“You know, I have a theory.”

“Great. I think everyone should have one.”

“Look, seriously. Did you ever notice how Israelis never travel alone?”

“God yeah. Mind you, not unlike most English backpackers, when you come to think about it.”

“Yes, but — and this is a big but — Israelis, and I’m talking about the guys here, always travel in groups of four. Notice that?”

“Yeah. And they always travel in a car. At least here in Africa.”

“Buy it in Jo’burg, sell in Nairobi...”

“And go home. The jeep route. What’s your point?”

“Well, I have this theory...”

Tyler stopped and accepted the joint from Jeremy. Sticking it between his first and second fingers, he bunched his hand to a fist and sucked hard through the hole thus created. “To. Bob. Marley.” He gasped, as the thick smoke escaped slowly through his lips. “Oh yeah.”

They sat quietly for a few minutes, watching the beach entranced, two cinema-goers sucked into the silver screen of life. The wind blew gently at their faces, and the small waves from the lake hit the sand, content, with a gentle sound.

“Sounds like bell chimes, don’t you reckon?”

“I could sit here and watch people for hours.”

To their left, Reggae music was coming faintly out of The Gap, and the muted sounds of backpacker conversations mingled with commerce—

“You want bracelet? Good bracelet? How about marijuana? Want to buy pipe?”

“So anyway, where are you from?”

“Germany, we only came to Malawi three days ago from South Africa — is wonderful, no? And yourself, where are you from?”

“Marijuana very cheap, here see? So, what about washing?”

“London mate. Just came up from Mozambique.”

“Oh, it is nice there?”

“Wicked mate. Wicked.”

“Necklace? What about beach barbecue?”

A lone chicken was pursued energetically by a naked boy. Some of the women from the nearby huts were washing clothes in the lake, up to their waists in water, their breasts free. They held thick bars of soap and were slowly rubbing the clothes as they chatted. A dugout went past.

Tyler passed the much reduced joint back.

“Cheers.”

A motor boat carrying several black-clad divers roared as it streamlined through the water, heading towards the islands. Tyler was becoming hypnotized by the sound of the engine, began to feel himself lifting out of his body. The way the sunlight hit the waves, the way the flickers of light danced and moved as if viewed through a kaleidoscope all meant something, he knew that. They were a pattern, a message, a crypto-code waiting to be cracked, waiting to be understood.

He was a passive observer. A cinema-goer with the best seat in the house. Life was this stretch of beach, the stage upon which the comedies and tragedies of the world were enacted. And just by sitting here, by being quiet and smoking a doobie, he became those people he observed, knew them, felt with them.

It was beautiful.

“Tyler.”

“Huh?”

“Snap out of it, will you?”

“Huh? Oh, hi Jeremy. Wicked. Wicked.” He grinned enthusiastically, his pupils as bright and large as a couple of twin moons in his eyes.

“Tyler,” said Jeremy patiently. “What the fuck is your theory about Israelis?”

Tyler reached down and with some difficulty located a pack of Ascots. He took out a cigarette, lit up and exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“Well, it’s obvious really.”

“Ye-es?”

“Look at the evidence. Four guys and one jeep per group, always moving around, prefer driving at night — I mean at night for Christ’s sake! — lots of them all over the place, all with military background — it’s obvious they’re not here as tourists at all.”

“What are they here for then?”

Tyler shrugged and inhaled from the cigarette.

“They are still in the Israeli army. Obviously they’re here on a military mission. Get this: they never left the army. They go around the place until the order comes, and then they’re going to take over.”

Jeremy looked at him incredulously.

“Over what?”

“Over everything. Malawi. Tanzania. Kenya. Mozambique. Zimbabwe. Can you imagine how many units are riding around as we speak, just waiting for that order? Going through the motions of being tourists when really they are here as a fucking occupation force?

“And that’s your theory.”

“That,” declared Tyler, brandishing the cigarette butt in his hand, “Is my theory. Pretty good, huh?”

Jeremy sighed. “Go get us some scones and tea will you? I’ll get the bong going.”

The Israelis swamped over Cape Maclear like the Golden Horde that, centuries before, reached and sacked Jerusalem. The first backpacker, a rare Israeli venturing out to Africa instead of the dope-and-party beaches of Thailand and India, has passed the message along as soon as he came back home, and every year more and more people arrived. They would land in Johannesburg, where a large community of Israeli ex-pats existed, sometimes in uneasy peace with the larger Jewish community. Johannesburg meant contacts already established, Western convenience, a chance for easy employment and a car heaven: an ideal starting point for the Dark Continent.

For those who needed money there was the picture trade: oil and acrylic paintings imported at dirt-cheap prices from Asia and sold door to door by enterprising backpackers. They would buy the paintings from the dealer at a fixed price; afterwards they could charge as much as they wanted, and as much as they could get away with, sometimes three or four times the original price.

Eventually, after doing the South African circuit of Cape Town, the Garden Route and Durban, most Israelis headed out and up - through Namibia, Zimbabwe or Mozambique, they all eventually ended up in Malawi, where the combination of cheap, plentiful dope, cheap accommodation and attractive beaches kept them until their money ran out.

They were a source of vast amusement for the Malawians, who regarded these abrupt, loud and cheerful backpackers as long lost cousins and took great delight in spending hours bargaining with them over every item of commerce and pleasantly reciting Hebrew swear-words for each new visitor.

The first Israeli Tyler met in Cape Maclear was Moran. She was a large girl, her hair cut short and her skin darkened to a rich brown tan that showed through her sarong. “Tyler?” she said dubiously when they met, “What kind of a name is that?”

They have both joined a beach fire by the Gap. More fires burned to either side of them, where different groups of Mzungus had a fish barbecue prepared for them. As every beach boy was quick to explain, they had “fish, beeg Kampango fish, and potatoes, and rice, and tomatoes!” Which translated to barbecued fish with a lukewarm stew of potatoes and onions in a watery tomato sauce, with a huge bowl of rice on the side. Tyler had joined one when he first arrived, and although he’d said it wasn’t bad he preferred to cook for himself these days. And get the fish directly from the fishermen. Or, more to the point, get Alekelangi to get him the fish, as the fishermen normally arrived back on the shore very early in the morning.

The stars shone like bright torches in the night sky. The hum of the generator, the thrum of conversation, the smell of burning ganja mingling with barbecued fish all acted to calm Tyler. But Moran, from the first moment she turned around to talk to him, made him stressed. “Stressed man,” he told Jeremy after another Moran visit. “She fucking stresses me out.” He took a long drag on the joint, singeing his fingers.

She was living with one of the beach boys, Samson, in a hut that was part of the Gap’s accommodation but which was set apart from the other rooms.

“He’s a good screw,” she explained.

Tyler nodded in what he hoped was an understanding, unconcerned gesture.

“It’s true what they say, you know.” Moran said.

Tyler was getting annoyed.

“What do they say then?” he found himself asking.

“Black guys have much bigger dicks,” Moran smiled at him. “And they know how to please a woman. Samson can go for maybe four, five hours with no problems.”

“Thanks,” muttered Tyler. “Just what I wanted to know.”

“What?” said Moran.

“Oh, very pleased for you. Very pleased. Good stuff. Right.” He said in his best Public School Voice and stiffly got up on his feet. “No beer.” he said by way of explanation. “Better stock up. Nice meeting you.” He marched up to the bar and lit a cigarette.

The problem, he reflected some weeks later, was that Tamsin and Moran were best buddies. And, since he was hopelessly in love with Tamsin, he couldn’t help but feel that his instinctive dislike of Moran complicated the situation. But there it was. It was a difficult situation, just as his infatuation with Tamsin was a difficult — not to say embarrassing — situation, since she regarded him, he thought glumly, very firmly as a “friend”.

He resented being a “friend”. He wanted... he wanted more. For the hundredth time, he tried to convince himself to tell Tamsin how he really felt. Instead, he wrote a poem.

This was Tyler’s poem. He called it, To Another Place:

We live our social lies in comfort.
Like the fireflies, perhaps, creating
In the dark glowing blueprints of flight
And fractal chaos.

You steal our smiles
The dead addresses in a thousand small
Worn notebooks from African journeys,
And our lies made truth, our memories.

The juggler flows with the Anima Mundi in the hours of the afternoon
His clubs arc in the sun, create a complex blueprint that bears no truth
No lies, no substance, no reality.

The cigarette smoke covers your face
In a gentle mask; if you smile
A storm might erupt in Cape Town, a butterfly may die in Zaire.

When the sun sets the juggler packs up:
He leaves behind him an address even he doesn’t remember
And steps towards the road, hitchhiking again
To another place.

The night before, Tamsin was having a long conversation with the night watchman of the Gap.

The campfire she was sitting by was slowly abandoned by its occupants, a mixed group of temporary Mzungus — backpackers who normally only passed through the Cape, staying for a few days, a couple of weeks before moving on, up north to Nkhata Bay or South to Blantyre, the gate to Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

She stayed behind as sleepy goodnights were exchanged, and now warmed her hands against the dancing fire.

The watchman was an old man with no teeth, his dark skin wrinkled like the scales of a fish. He carried a short stick in his hand and was on duty from sunset to sunrise. He joined her at the fire, squatting down and passing his hands through the fire in circular motions. He saw Tamsin looking at him and smiled. She reached her hand to him and offered him the reminder of the joint she has been smoking. “Would you like some, Madala?” she asked.

The watchman took the joint from her in his right hand, his left creating a square as it held the right hand’s wrist. He took a long drag on the joint and exhaled slowly through his nose. Sliding comfortably into a cross-legged position, he beckoned for Tamsin to come closer. He pointed to the joint in his hand, then to his mouth. Tamsin nodded.

The old man slowly described an arc in the air with the glowing tip of the joint. The arc ended close to his mouth, which he opened to reveal his gums. Then, to Tamsin’s delighted amazement he closed his mouth around the burning joint and sucked loudly. Thick Marijuana smoke began streaming out of his nose and his cheeks glowed a dim red. Then he opened his mouth, displayed the now-finished joint, spat it into the fire and loudly exhaled the rest of the smoke.

Tamsin clapped her hands enthusiastically.

“He did what?” asked Tyler incredulously.

“He sucked that joint in like a penny sweet,” repeated Tamsin. “I had a really long conversation with him last night — we must have talked for about three hours. Or rather,” she added, “I talked. I realized after three hours he didn’t know any English, apart from ‘thank you’.” Her eyes twinkled, and Tyler had the first of the day’s urges to grab Tamsin and kiss her. A course of action perhaps best left for the imagination, he finally decided, as in fact he always did, from the moment he first met Tamsin.

She met him at Always Happy when he finally went for some scones. As always, Tyler was captivated by her: the way she craned her neck, the way she smiled as she thanked the silent woman who sold the sconos, the way she held herself, one foot on the ground while the other seemed poised on its point in the stance of a dancer. She walked back with him and told him about her conversation of the night before.

Always Happy was the small tea-room across the road from their isolated habitat, the guesthouse Bodzalekani. Bodzalekani was a small, ground-hugging stone building that had several small rooms to rent, a space on the sand for tents, and two bamboo huts. The huts were built a few months before by an English traveller and his Mozambiquan wife who planned to build a bar at the quiet guesthouse. All that came from that were the two huts, which Tyler regarded, quite proprietarily, as prime real estate. They had long bamboo curtains that opened up directly onto the lake and Tyler lived in the one closer to the Gap. He, too, had plans to open a bar. He was currently talking to the madala and Mamma about investing his money. He was going to call it The Pink Elephant.

Tamsin lived in the second hut. The two were close enough to touch and in fact, whenever Tamsin wanted to borrow one of Tyler’s books, she would insert her hand through the wall and remove it directly from the small shelf Tyler had had constructed especially for his collection of used paperbacks. Book selling and trading was a part of beach life, and Tyler was a willing customer.

“I’ve been having these dreams,” he told Tamsin and Jeremy while rolling another joint. “Weird dreams. Ever since I arrived in Blantyre.”

“Are you still taking malaria pills?” Jeremy asked, but Tyler shook his head. “What’s the point?” he said. “If you’re going to stay in Africa, you’re going to get malaria. Right?”

“True,” Tamsin said, “but if you’re not taking them, what’s causing the dreams?”

“This?” Jeremy said, lifting the Frisbee full of dope. Tyler, again, shook his head. “They’re not that kind of dream,” he said. “I keep seeing these tiny, weird little men-shaped creatures. Tokolosh. Not doing anything, you see, just moving without making any sound across an empty landscape. It’s like they’re moving away from something, or running towards something, like their refugees from another time who can’t find anyone to take them away.”

“Sounds vague,” Tamsin said.

“Hey,” Jeremy said, “He’s not the one who’s been talking to a guy for three hours who doesn’t understand a word of English.”

“He understood me,” Tamsin said. “We had a very deep conversation.” She sniffed and said, “Where’s your bong?”

Jeremy passed it to her.

Then Tyler saw the Acid Man, and groaned, and Jeremy sniggered.

The Acid Man had a name, of course, which Tyler never bothered to remember since their first meeting, when the Acid Man approached him in a manner Tyler could only describe as a “nervous swagger” and offered to sell him the usual trinkets, curios and dope before suggesting “some acid.”

“Acid?” This was new to Tyler. While cocaine was certainly available in Blantyre and on the Mozambiquan border, the more chemical substances were unheard of, unless some idiot backpackers brought them with him and tried to sell them on the beach. Which was, in Tyler’s experience, very rare.

“Sure,” he said. “How much?”

A long bargaining session started at leisure, during which the Acid Man stung Tyler for three cigarettes and they finally decided on a price of fifty kwacha for a trip, a reasonable price by all accounts.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s see it then.”

The Acid Man frowned. “But of course, I don’t bring it on me,” he said. “Very dangerous. Many, many police.”

Tyler looked around him at the quiet beach. With the exception of a couple of women washing in the lake it was deserted. “What police, achimweni?” he demanded good-naturedly of the Acid Man.

The Acid Man wouldn’t budge, and Tyler finally agreed to follow him. They walked slowly on the heating sand until reaching the giant baobab that marked the beginning of the village proper: a maze of mud huts and sandy alleyways and small plots of land with maize, chickens and children on them. Tyler followed the Acid Man to a house where a silent woman sat on a wooden stool reading an English magazine. The Acid Man took an advance from Tyler on the acid and disappeared back into the village to “get hold of the stuff.”

Tyler and the woman sat silently for the next thirty minutes, Tyler’s attention swinging between his watch and the woman, who was showing him pictures of the British royal family in their various houses and estates.

“Look,” she would seem to say, pointing with obvious affection at a young-looking Prince Andrew with his red-haired bride in a glorious mansion, the couple dressed in the best fashion and smiling bright Colgate smiles at the cameraman. “Aren’t they lo-ve-ly?”

It was growing hot, and Tyler was getting increasingly pissed off by the second.

Finally, at his hand gestures and broken Chichewa, the woman pointed off in a direction that englufed the mountains, the village and beach. “Chibuku, Chibuku,” she repeated.

Jeremy was besides himself when Tyler, hot and angry from his walk back, repeated the story to him.

“He took you there, took your money and went off to drink Chibuku? Tyler, man, you’ve been ha-ad. Oh boy, were you screwed. Oh, just wait till I tell everyone. Oh you just wait.” He was so excited he rubbed his hands together.

“Will you please stop doing your Father fucking Christmas impersonation?” Tyler said. “I am so gonna get back at that son of a bitch.”

But now, with a bong in his hands, sitting in the sun so close to Tamsin he could smell her skin, a warm and windy smell with only the hint of sun-cream, Tyler couldn’t feel the old anger.

The Acid Man, he saw with the wide-eyed clarity of the truly stoned, had changed overnight his profession. He came towards them, barefoot in the hot sand, and he carried a bag on his back, and in his hands he held books.

Tyler, who could never resist buying them, tried to focus his attention. “Hello Tyler,” the Acid Man said. He put the books on the sand with care and unslung his backpack, which he opened to reveal more books. He didn’t speak more for a long while, just looked at Tyler with a knowing, sideways glance. It was a contest, the Acid Man unwilling to concede his earlier desertion while Tyler couldn’t berate him at the sight of the well-thumbed paperbacks. “Muli Bwanji?”

“Ndili Bwino, Kaino?” Tyler said, well and you?

“Ndili Bwino, Ndili Bwino,’ the Acid Man said amicably. Tyler reached out for a paperback of Catch-22. “How much are they?” he asked, trying to sound casual. As he spoke he had picked up three more books and held them.

“Twenty Kwacha,” the Acid Man said and grinned.

Tyler made as if to get his wallet. “For the four, yeah?”

The Acid Man’s grin terminated at that station. “For each, no.”

“I’ll give you twenty kwacha for these four,” Tyler said. “Come on, you know it’s a good deal.”

The Acid Man sighed, the long drawn-out sound of the market, of a man deeply disappointed and yet willing, against his wishes, to come to terms. “Forty Kwacha.”

Tyler made to give the Acid Man the books. “It is very hot today,” he said. “Very hot.”

The Acid Man gave him a look of reproach, then sighed again and squatted in the sand. The books were spread before him in a fan and behind him Domwe Island floated in the silvery lake, a lonely dugout journeying from its shore back home. “Twenty five kwacha,” he said.

Tyler took back the books and stood up. He walked to his hut, unlocked it, fetched his wallet from inside the sleeping-bags and extracted from it a bill. Then he put the wallet back in the sleeping-bag, locked the door behind him, and came back to the tent.

“Here,” he said. he gave the note to the Acid Man.

“But it’s only five kwacha!” The Acid Man looked angry for the first time. And now Tyler’s anger was also returning. “You still owe me twenty kwacha, remember?” Tyler said. “The twenty kwacha you took when you left me with that woman who grew peppers? So I owe you twenty-five for the books, minus twenty for the acid, which leaves five kwacha. There.”

The Acid Man gave Tyler one long look that was full of hatred. Then, with bad grace, he turned his back and walked away.

Part Three: Malaria

On the 30th of May I was seized with fever for the first time. We reached the town of Linyanti on the 23d; and as my habits were suddenly changed from great exertion to comparative inactivity, at the commencement of the cold season I suffered from a severe attack of stoppage of the secretions, closely resembling a common cold. Warm baths and drinks relieved me, and I had no idea but that I was now recovering from the effects of a chill, got by leaving the warm wagon in the evening in order to conduct family worship at my people’s fire. But on the 2d of June a relapse showed to the Makololo, who knew the complaint, that my indisposition was no other than the fever, with which I have since made a more intimate acquaintance. Cold east winds prevail at this time; and as they come over the extensive flats inundated by the Chobe, as well as many other districts where pools of rain-water are now drying up, they may be supposed to be loaded with malaria and watery vapor, and many cases of fever follow. The usual symptoms of stopped secretion are manifested — shivering and a feeling of coldness, though the skin is quite hot to the touch of another. The heat in the axilla, over the heart and region of the stomach, was in my case 100 Deg.; but along the spine and at the nape of the neck 103 Deg. The internal processes were all, with the exception of the kidneys and liver, stopped; the latter, in its efforts to free the blood of noxious particles, often secretes enormous quantities of bile. There were pains along the spine, and frontal headache. Anxious to ascertain whether the natives possessed the knowledge of any remedy of which we were ignorant, I requested the assistance of one of Sekeletu’s doctors. He put some roots into a pot with water, and, when it was boiling, placed it on a spot beneath a blanket thrown around both me and it. This produced no immediate effect; he then got a small bundle of different kinds of medicinal woods, and, burning them in a potsherd nearly to ashes, used the smoke and hot vapor arising from them as an auxiliary to the other in causing diaphoresis.

Something had shifted and changed inside Tyler, and he knew he had malaria. At that time a fever of literature gripped the village. Paperbacks were for sale on the beach and in the bars. He remembered that look of the Acid Man then, when the malaria gestating in his blood finally erupted, taking over his body and his mind, bringing with it the tokolosh. He wrote in an old, textbook copy of Cry, The Beloved Country, his fingers bloodied with ink.

Puking and shitting I sit, wrote Tyler, in my bamboo hut overlooking Lake Malawi puking and shitting as the parasites gestate in my body camp in my liver shitting and puking as the drugs course through my bloodstream like hounds following the smell of blood of rotting carcasses of rain as I waste away here overlooking the lake and the blue waters smoking chamba and puking and puking and puking until I have nothing left to puke and the shadows rape the light in the canopy of the trees.

How long have I been here, dreaming this dream, how long had my body shrank? I taste water and let it dribble out of my lips onto the ground where the children died. In the roots of the trees I found a skull, soft like a toy, hair still stuck to the dome of the head and the teeth smile, baby teeth smile and I dream of foods I can no longer taste and I shit myself, and return to the magazine lying by the mattress on the barren floor and wait and wait and wait.

I watch the fishermen bring the haul of kampango early in the morning as the sun rises beyond the hills. I try to remember the taste of the fish as it roasts over coals and combines with the flavour of the yams buried in the sand but all I can taste is the sour stench that my mouth has become. Try to roll a joint, try, but the fingers shake, the hands shake, the body shakes, and the chamba goes scattering over the floor and through the cracks onto the ground below, a rainpour of weed washing away as the sun rises and the light comes crashing through the walls like the whisper of an execution.

It starts with innocence, a mosquito bite, settling on the skin and then the puncture, the droplet of blood almost unseen, and the parasites crawl through the hole into the blood stream seeking liver and brain and death. Or it starts with innocence, with a mosquito bite, and the nails pick and pick and pick at it until infection settles like a fine mist of dust and the leg inflates like a balloon filled with blood. The earth about me is filled with tiny Christs, they are planted in rows and rows of perfect beautiful crosses and the nails driven through their hands and feet are beautiful, precision-tooled in a factory in Johannesburg, and I pluck a Christ and eat it and taste only ash.

My moans attract the tokoloshi at night; I hear their tiny ugly feet shuffling outside as they climb through the shadows and into my head. They tear at my hair, my clothes, pull out my nails and I feel as light as rain and am reined by night. The tokoloshi dance, oh look at them dance!, ugly little mandrakes twisting and turning a canopy of branches over my body like a temple like a coffin like a sickness in the blood.

With the coming of the new sun I see a hippo in the waters, see the children run on the beach throwing stones. The lake’s only monster, it disappears into the protection of the water and waits for the sun to set beyond the hills, waits to return for human flesh. The children run and laugh and in my isolation in the hut I run and laugh and bend over the side and my damaged insides try to fall from my loosening mouth, my liver plops on the ground like a gutted kampango and my kidneys try to follow and throw their own stones. the hippo and I wait as the sun traces an arc in the blue, cloudless skies and disperses in the water in a shower of sparks and the dark assassin hippo clambers on to the beach searching for its own sweet-tasting medicine.

The drugs are the worst, the pills upon pills upon pills but really they are only the road that must be travelled, and the body will renew itself, return alive and healthy, scarred but not yet dead. I walk to the hospital beyond the hill in the village down to Nkhata Bay up and down the hot hot hills my body dragging behind me as I walk. In the hospital they are waiting to be dying, scored through with the other virus, the other disease, body upon body upon body like the parents of my grandparents in the camps in Poland. They lie together and wait as the women cook outside the maize meals they can no longer eat. The doctor lets me skip the queue of silent dead and pricks my thumb with an uncleaned blade. He gives me pills to make me better again and I walk away, leaving the dying behind.

Grass scatters into the paper and mixes with tobacco from the broken cigarette. Grass scatters and is sealed within the paper tube. I click the lighter, tease the flame closer to the joint, watch it burst into flame; the smoke travels down the tube, collecting THC; it tickles the caves of my mouth, infiltrates the lungs, swims in the blood. Fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds from inhalation to brain, and calm descends like an alien starship across the minefield of my mind.

I take baby steps down the hill and on to the shore of the lake. The hippo is gone, and in his stead is a row of women, washing clothes in the water. Soap and sand, to scrub and clean. I step into the water, the cold sending heatwaves across my exposed skin, and I submerge myself, feeling the dirt and the stench of my body disperse into this giant bath, this combination of laundry, dishwasher and shower. Small fish nibble dead skin. Later, I lie on the sand and the sun dries me, leaving me as light and numb as a leaf.

Scars slowly fade. I leave the lake. The passage of time returns into focus. Sunrise, sunset, their rhythm is replaced by the ticking of an electronic clock, by the horns of cars playing complex symphonies. I watch a shower of dust, smell the scent of the road stretching ahead, infinite-long, sour-promiscuous. The sickness sleeps, and I step over it carefully, like stepping over the corpse of a dog by the roadside, and hail a car going anywhere and nowhere, on a road rolling on to forever.

Tamsin left after the trial. There was nothing Tyler could have done. A group of them were making space pancakes on the beach — a cob or two, a bong, some rizla papers, a small fire — when three overly-dressed policemen walked up the beach.

They found half a Nkhata Bay cob in Tamsin’s place. They took her and the tall Englishman whose girlfriend left him to shack up with the Swedish dive master to the police station. They were amazed a girl was smoking. They had a picture taken with her, a lone tree at their back, and the dust of Monkey Bay. Everyone is smiling.

The judge, a week later, gave her ten days to leave Malawi, and a ten dollar fine.

Now she was gone, unsaid promises remaining unfulfilled, futures unexplored, roads not taken. Tyler had read Frost.

The sunsets lost their colour, and were dismaying in black and white. He wrote her a poem, knowing it was a lie as he wrote it. He called it Zanzibar:

Like a sailboat your body
An Arab dhow painted white
Pale as the deposits of chalk on the shores of the Indian Ocean

When I board you, my hands
Knowing and warm in the African sun
unfurl your sails

That have lain folded and still
Throughout the long winter
That we have been apart

And breathe wind into them
Into your waking body
Into you

When we sail together
The shore kingdoms vanish from view
As if they had never existed

And we go around that
Great big island
That we had colonized long ago

Like a testament to love.

Tyler knew it was time to leave. Jeremy had gone two weeks before, when Tyler was deep in his malaria trip. Jeremy went to Dar, and took his silver tent with him. Tyler pictured him flying high above the clouds in a silver flying saucer, floating, rotating endlessly in the air.

When Tyler boarded the bus, he wasn’t sure where he was going. Maybe to look for Tamsin, he thought. Maybe go home, for a while. It was strange, he thought. Home. This had been his home, for a short while. But was it really? Was it his? Or was he just a house guest who had overstayed his welcome?

He didn’t know. There would be other homes, he thought, other places in which to settle for a while. And there was, out there in the real world, work, and responsibility, the whole intricacy of being ... being an adult, he thought, and then he smiled: there was time yet.

The bus came to life with a roar of the engine, a plume of smoke and the nervous calling of a chicken in the seat behind Tyler.

The sun was setting in the lake as the bus left the village along the dirt road. Shadows fell away from the bus, lengthened and seemed to dance in a jerky movement, like Tokolosh.

Then the bus joined the asphalt road and gained speed, the engine groaning, and Cape Maclear disappeared behind the bend.

For a moment, they seemed to wave.

©2007, Lavie Tidhar