The dhow tacks from side to side while its squatting boatmen take big unsuccessful swings at getting us to our destination. And the boatmen sit and chat as they miss the quay twice and chew quat. They manage to land us in the end, but unfortunately only while the tide is out. So we have to walk for another mile in shallow water and feel the shock and wriggle of rock pool life against our feet.
But on this small island, far from the Kenyan coast the people aren't black, but yellow. The people are sallow-skinned with intermarriage and poor and benighted and they stare at us from behind dusty stone arches. The children show us the only ruin the place has. It is an ancient well down which their whole history seems to have disappeared like a sump. No one can tell us anything about it at all. What language do they speak, anyway? It's not Swaheli.
But the history of Arabs and slaving and of boats lost and off course, perhaps on the way to the land of Punt, is here to read in their faces and in their bodies.
It's late, much too late. On the beach at dusk we see a thousand red, one-clawed crabs run, their eyes on stalks, up and down the gray, volcanic sand. The tide is in and we have to tiptoe through them and step into the waves and scatter them before we can haul ourselves, with help, on board.
It gets dark and now the dhow slowly enters a mangrove swamp where there is a cloud of mosquitoes waiting and they strike as we move through them and soon we are in their mist, dancing to the rhythm of their suck.
And then, something glorious happens. The sky clears and the first and last stars I will ever remember appear. And I am imprinted by them like a child looking at his mother's face and we float along with them in space.
We are out in the Indian Ocean again and the dhow is beginning to move, to rock and rock harder and tip the boat and in the growing blast of the storm the boatmen consign themselves to God saying: "Shwri ya Mungu. Shwri ya Mungu." They say. It's probably by way of an excuse for their incompetence and our adventure. But it doesn't wash with us. The three men, Antonello, Dad and I, throw ourselves from one side of the dhow to the other side to try and stop the boat from capsizing and lean overboard until we can feel the sea spray.
I cry and at 15 I say. "I don't want to die." And my twin brothers, 12 years old, and my mother curl up quietly in the flooded middle of the vessel providing extra ballast.
Suddenly, the storm, almost Galilean, just stops.The boatmen assure us. "The coast is very near." I don't believe them. But still, we dip ourselves overboard into invisibility and we swim a little until our feet touch the bottom. And now the sea is blowing softly, like a warm wind against our chests. It's 1 a.m., it's overcast and we wade forwards.
We reached Lamu beach intact and alive barely making out the shadows of the palms above. Face down in the sand I felt such a such a love of the Earth my family and friends. Such enormous gratitude to be alive.
We all got up and walked the last miles along the tarmac road to bed. That night I dreamed a dream of the world and it was very comforting.
. . . . .
* "Shwri ya Mungu" means we are in God's hands or alternatively: It's all God's fault. Take your pick.
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