Yesterday evening our cook took us on a little tour of the village – something he does for the backpacker lodge as well, so it’s a fairly well trodden route, with stops that are intended to introduce visitors to points of interest for donations, future stays, buying drinks etc. It was quite pleasant, and interesting to learn about Giriama culture in a non-exploitative sort of way and to be able to ask questions freely. He showed us two of the local schools – one the village’s most exclusive private school, run by a very glorious gentleman who bridled at what he thought was his position being questioned when we asked about the round tables for kindergarten and rows of desks for class 1 students: it’s Kenya’s tradition, he said, and then demanded the GF tell him who discovered America. The GF, unwilling to play that game perhaps, said the native Americans would probably object to saying their land was discovered, which only annoyed the headmaster further so he gave us a little lesson on the definition of a product in business and asked us to identify the presidents of various African countries. I did moderately well, missing out on Angola (I said the previous president’s name) and, embarrassingly, Kenya, which broke the tension a little. He also took us to a corner of the school plot where, he said, he had a Vision, which was to build a chicken coop. And finally, we met the English teacher, a small and very upright man who seemed to have stepped out of a postcolonial novel.
The other school was visited in two parts: one was the original building, and the other the empty plot of land where it will be moved as a pre-requisite for accreditation. This is a low-cost school though there is still a cost. The empty plot had a rather lovely bas relief mural on it, made by our cook (also a sculptor) with some Polish visitors, showing the Giriama anticolonial heroine Mekatilili, in the baobab tree where she lived.
Another stop was at what our guide called the Giriama pub, a little set of scattered benches with a couple of canopies under the trees, where the villagers come to drink mnazi, or palm wine. This, we were told, came in three vintages: one tapped on the spot, one tapped this morning, one the previous morning. On day 3 it became a spirit and on day 4 a disinfectant. Since day 0 vintage wasn’t available since they hadn’t started tapping it this evening, we opted for a bottle of day 1 which we were told was like beer. Most villagers prefer day 2 as you need to buy less of it (for the same price) to get fully drunk. I must say, day 1 was rather stronger than beer, which doesn’t affect me on the rare occasions I drink it, but with this I definitely staggered a little. It was poured out of a glass bottle into narrow tubes of white plastic, snipped from I dare not guess what container (one was a glass container of ground cinnamon from Tesco), and sipped from a thin reed with a little ball of coconut fuzz at the end to act as a filter. A couple of metres over some men had already started the day’s drinking – the women would come later – and shouted out that we should buy them a bottle, but frankly they didn’t seem to need it. One very elderly man rose and, solemnly, began to dance to an unknown beat looking, the GF said, like the dwarf in Twin Peaks. And so he danced off into the surrounding forest.
Our final stop was at our guide’s home which is perhaps the most stunning location in Kilifi, a promontory overlooking the creek with a 270 degree sweep from the bridge all the way to the end of the creek and the beaches below. They jokingly called it the Giriama palace, and the beauty of the spot was such that it wasn’t really a joke. His father, a wealthy medicine man, had nine wives, but the eldest sons took the fortune, leaving the offspring of the remaining eight to share the land. Unsurprisingly, they’ve had offers from hotels etc to buy it, but so far the family seems determined to keep the land, at most giving it on a 20 year lease, Like in Sumba, the graves of the dead are on family land, and in their homes are wooden statues that hold the spirits of the dead.
We ended with a meal overlooking the creek. It was very dark as the land is not connected to electricity, but the moon was bright, and a younger brother kept us company, telling us about his mangrove restoration efforts, currently stymied by the large population of land crabs which each the seedlings. The food itself was simple and stodgy, but quite tasty. There were three different types of greens, one of which was moringa and another was a similarly bitter green. All three were boiled. These were eaten with ugali, along with a cinnamon flavoured root vegetable mix, and some cold banana mashed with maize flour and steamed in maize husks, rather like sweet tamales. The second course was a kind of chapati, different from the oily cinnamon flavored paratha that the Swahili people cook, with some beans. All pleasant, and nice to try it all.
Then back, and though my wobbliness due to the mnazi had worn off, I was very, very sleepy and in fact dozed off in my chair while the GF made tea.