A Ilha de Inhaca reminded me of a coastal childhood.
It had cicadas which had terrified me when I found them, 3-eyed (ok, ok, third eye is something along lines of mimicry… of course it has only 2 eyes), loudly, shrilly screeching and flying around like banshees in my bedroom. They are, apparently, a bio-indicator of pollution and degradation. Cicadas and degraded places are incompatible. Let’s just say that in this one instance, I was glad my childhood home got polluted and degraded.
My first visit to the island had been in 2003, very perfunctory, more like the press of duty, and my not being in a position to refuse it. Didn’t see much beyond the Pestana hotel at the village. Boredom incorporated. Got a nice golf-shirt out of it though. And for the next 3 years, whenever I wore it in the summer, out at the mall or something, someone would walk up to me and ask, “you’ve been to Inhaca?” .
So, 2nd visit to Inhaca, the welcoming party? On a coupla trees that we had to walk past to get to the accommodation block (after paying an arm and a leg to get a truck ride from the village to the marine camp… surely ignorance/lack of info is a regrettable, regrettable entity), were cicada screeches ahem… i mean ’songs’. Lamented not bringing ear plugs, but then again, who knew it would be that loud? Would have given the other arm and leg for DDT (even being aware of all its setbacks). Right at that moment. Glad none was handy… though I did think several times about it…
And who said that in adulthood you wouldn’t relive those anxious childhood moments, where the sound of a screech has you scrambling for the highest post possible, hands over ears and screeching like a banshee yourself), much as you knew the lone cicada that accidentally slipped into your room (attracted by the light and the screen door you’d held open for a beat too long, no doubt) wouldn’t suck your blood or gouge your eyes out (I hope). I also found flowering grass. OMG! When’s the last time I saw flowering grass? Those blue flowers? (can you tell I live in a concrete jungle?) I was thereafter totally smitten, cicadas notwithstanding.
Went into the museum and noticed that the insect collection had ‘Mdudu Mombasa’ (and I is talking ‘bout the old school, real one; not the new school viral one). Those who aren’t familiar with that name may have seen an insect that looks like a masai shield (the curio shop ones). Mdudu Mombasa. I remember it well ‘cause a relative had stepped on one. He’d been found wandering around, lost, not 1 km from the house. It’s said that if you step on it, you get lost, confused, can’t find your way home for nothing! The cure (assuming in your confusion you realize it) is to switch stuff around. e.g. wear your left shoe on right foot and vice versa; or wear your shirt inside out. Only then will you regain your senses. Failing that, best hope your relatives have very quickly put out that APB on your behind, or a stranger, recognizing your confusion, urges you to switch your shoes.
Inhaca sent me back to a charmed childhood. Where down the street was a plot of land where these Somalis long distance drivers would park their trucks (not far from the harbor) and they’d say hi whenever we passed by (it helped that we had a young adult cousin who’d walk us by). Being taught the conventions of polite behavior: even if you were only sent to drop something off at the neighbors, it was impolite to refuse to eat/drink whatever was offered. It was impolite not to greet an elder with Shikamo, and even (in total coastal indulgence) do the curtsey that goes with it. Only thing we didn’t do was kiss the back of the hand. That was reserved for the bonafide wa-islamu/wa-arabu.
Hanging out at Indian friends’ houses, eating chevra, watching videos, playing marbles… before we got to teenage and our relationships got estranged… we moved from friends to competing races. I remember a John Bosco who was the toast of the hood ‘cause he rode a scooter. I remember that the then president paid a visit to a neighborhood primary school, and we were there in the jostling masses, happy to be in his presence. His head and shoulders, arms even (holding the flywhisk) were sticking out of the sunroof in that blue limo. Was surprised that he had blue-looking eyes (from my vantage point), and of course he treated us to a loud ‘harambee’, and we all responded, ‘hee!’ Now that I’m all grown, I can only imagine what a potent drug it must have been for him to know that we were hanging on his every word.
But Inhaca went beyond evoking childhood memories. It was rooted firmly in the present, and maybe even the future. There is incredible demand for beachfront property, and South Africans who have all the money are clamoring, fighting for, and sometimes getting, that land. A small part of the island is protected, same with some of the water that surounds it. But let’s see what government says, after all the pressure from private sector.
Somewhere in the visit I was told of a king? chief? of the island, and how most of the island’s population was related to him; about how most young people prefer to go to work on the mainland; the number of women is higher than the men… something to the tune of 70% female to 30% male. Then a comment on a recent national discussion about whether or not to allow polygamy legally.
Both sides of the argument were good. One wife/family focuses you and your resources, allows you to move yourself and your progeny forward, if you’re so inclined. Then again, what’s to be done with all the women who will miss out on husbands? Import foreign men? (anathema, if ever there was one). Given that in the greater population, to say the proportions are 60% women: 40% men is a generous pronouncement. Truly tough questions, and somewhere in the discussion is a statement that homosexuality simply compounds this problem (of gender proportion) and that homosexuals are generally frowned upon ‘cause there is a considerable number of women in need of manly men, but there they go, loving one another instead of the women that need them. But that’s just one opinion.
I once went to Club Coconuts and saw a gay couple (decked out in pink and anything else that would set off one’s gaydar). They seemed quite happy, and no one bothered them. Other thing I remember about them is that as the evening progressed into wee morning hours, they got into a fight (clearly ‘cause one of them had indulged their all-too-human-urge to check someone else out), and there was no mistaking that they were both male from the punches they threw and the shirt-grabbing they did! Perchance Lusophonia is more tolerant than Anglophonia?
) Go whisper it into a 
.
