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T he steward has said we will dock at 9:00 o’clock, but I am too excited to sleep, and I walk onto deck in the dark, long before the sun comes up, watching for the first sight of land. I pull a packet of cigarettes from my coat pocket, light one and inhale, smoke curling up into the warm night sky. My heart beats out a rhythm born of long anticipation. After six years I am finally coming home.
The lamp casts a small pool of light onto a black metal bench. Someone has left a book behind. The Settler’s Guide to Up-Country Swahili: Exercises for the Soldier, Settler, Miner, Merchant and Their Wives . I open it and cast my eye over the introduction: “This book aims at teaching, in a simple way, just that degree of Swahili that is understood and talked by the average intelligent up-country native.” A curious use of adjectives, not something you would find in England. It is a long time since I have used my Swahili and I wonder how much will come back to me. The book starts with greetings, and I turn the phrases over silently on my tongue, enjoying the familiar rhythm of the words: Jambo, Bwana. Jambo, Memsaab. Habari gani hapa? Habari mzuri tu, Bwana . What’s the news here? Only good news, master. I slip the book into my pocket, unconsciously reciting the phrases as I stare out into the dark, waiting for our arrival.
An hour later the sun rises huge and heavy from the horizon. Through a screen of mist I make out the shadow of Mombasa Island. A couple wander onto deck, clutching cups of coffee and bread rolls, whispering excitedly. My eyes are fixed on what lies ahead. Green coconut palms and a scattering of white buildings emerge out of water so blue that I realize I have forgotten the meaning of color. The sky is clear and limitless. In England-a country in the grip of rationing, where the sun struggles to illuminate even the clearest winter day-no one has understood my descriptions of the sky in Kenya. My skin burns in the early-morning sun, my neck damp beneath the weight of my hair. The white sails of the Arab dhows soar like the wings of huge, prehistoric birds, their decks crammed so full of men, grinning and shouting, clinging to every mast, that sinking seems an inevitability.
They shout up their greetings in Swahili. “ Karibu. ” Welcome . And I grin down at them, waving.
We dock, and I step giddily down the gangplank into a city that smells of fish, of salt, of acrid wood smoke and sewage-the smell of a city whose people live life outdoors under a hot sun-down into the sweltering heat of the customs sheds where I am left waiting, sweating for a few hours before being released onto the small, crowded streets of Mombasa’s port.
Bougainvillea tumble over white walls, purple, orange, crimson red, amidst the trumpets of white datura flowers and clusters of pink hibiscus. Dhow captains spread their intricately woven carpets on the street for sale, beating out the dust in thick clouds. Porters in bare feet and white lunghis pad across the hot cobbles between piles of old newspaper and fish bones, past the Arab men dressed in white robes, who sit on low wooden stools drinking tea. I can smell roasting fish rising from a charcoal fire tended by two sailors in brightly colored kikoys , who stand prodding the coals, spitting out jets of red betel nut into the street, while others unload their cargo-boxes of fish, dates, henna, great piles of copper wire. Indian women in saris gossip in close groups. I stand and watch, dazzled by so much noise and color, happiness soaring inside me. I have escaped England. I am back in Africa. But I am not home yet. There are still over four hundred miles to travel, up-country, before I see the farm, before I see my father.
“Aleela,” a voice says behind me, and a hand touches me on the shoulder. Aleela -“she cries” in Swahili. It was the name the Africans had given me as a baby, when I was born healthy, after my mother had given birth to a child who never breathed.
I turn and see Kahiki, our headman, standing there, his stick in one hand.
“ Jambo ,” I say, smiling as hard as I have ever smiled in my life.
“ Jambo sana ,” he answers, his eyes smiling back at me, grasping my outstretched hand in his sinewy one. And-just like that-I have come home.