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 thei
Left wing commentary from the heart and the head