Richard Grant - Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa

Richard Grant is an award-winning travel writer who has published his work in Mens Journal, Esquire, and Details, among other publications. He is also the author of American Nomads and Gods Middle Finger. Grant currently lives in Tuscon, Arizona.

Nicholas Wiesnet

Into the labyrinthGolf pro on the skidsBat demonDoorsJaws CornerHope for the riverBurtons traceFish stew for junkiesProstitutes

ON MY FIRST evening in Zanzibar, looking for echoes and traces of dead explorers, I made my way through the teeming labyrinth of Stone Town to the old British consulate on the waterfront. Most of the building was now grimy, crumbling, and shuttered, but a small blue plaque on the wall confirmed that Burton and the others had been here, and one large room downstairs had been renovated into the Livingstone bar and restaurant.

I went inside and sat down with a beer and scribbled down my first impressions of the labyrinth. Turbans and prayer caps, souk-like alleys, collapsed buildings and amplified minarets, touts, and hustlers of extraordinary persistence, Hey tall man, how are you my friend? Yes I come with you. Africa blends and swirls with Arabia, India, the old Shirazi culture from Persia. Red-robed Masais from the mainland with knives and clubs on their belts, elongated earlobes, white plastic sunglasses. Arab women in long black robes and veils, talking on cell phones. Swahili women wrapped in bright patterned cloth, butterflies against the dirty old buildings. European tourists shopping for souvenirs. A muezzin calls from a minaretno, its a muezzin ring tone on someones phone. The air smells of cloves, bad drains, old fish, charcoal smoke, freshly peeled oranges, African bodies.

I paused at my labors to order another beer and noticed two men sitting further along the bar. One was dark-skinned, nonchalant, casually elegant. The other was thin, light brown, very alert, and slightly shifty. They looked like the only locals in this high-ceilinged bar slowly filling with tourists, so I went over and introduced myself as a writer and journalist just arrived in Zanzibar. The darker man was the owner of the bar. He spoke perfect English and seemed sophisticated, highly intelligent, and well educated. His name was Abeid, he was thirty-seven years old; later that night someone whispered in my ear that his surname was Karume and his father was the president of Zanzibar.

The light brown man was also thirty-seven and he made a great deal of this fact, presenting it as evidence that he and Abeid were soul mates and brother men. His name was Milan and he had a sharp, jumpy, fast-talking, ingratiating quality that reminded me of Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success. His short wavy hair was brushed back and until quite recently his face must have looked unusually boyish and innocent. Now there was some dark damage around the eyes, cheeks pinching in, a discolored tooth in front. He was wearing an ironed promotional T-shirt from the bar, ironed gray slacks, and a pair of brown-and-white golf shoes. I dont know what youre doing here, he said with a self-deprecating grin, but Im a professional golfer.

He wanted me to know that he was PGA-qualified from The Belfry in England, certified in teaching, playing tournaments, the rules of golf, club repair, merchandising, tournament administration, and first aid. Its a four-year course and I graduated in 1997. Ive got three course records in Holland. I won the Tanzanian Open as an amateur. I won the Swiss Air Open. I got second place in the Belgian Red Cross Open and won twelve thousand euros. I was the pro at a public course just outside Rotterdam and I won two Monday tour events, two Highlander events.

And what he was doing in Zanzibar, an island without a golf course? Im just living, bro, taking each day as it comes. Ive been here two years and I love it. This island is so mysterious. Its a magical place, bro, a crazy place, and the chicks! Augh! You are not going to believe the chicks, bro.

He was half-Dutch and half-Indian South African. He spoke English with a very slight South African accent, short clipped phrases, and a tense, insistent, hyped-up delivery, with plenty of knuckle-bumps and low-fives thrown in for emphasis. He showed me the Zanzibar handshake, a three-part maneuver that ends with a thumb swivel and a finger snap. Everyone knows me on the streets, he said. They accept me for who I am. We all help each other out, and its a good life, man.

After another round of drinks, he told me about the weeks he had been homeless in Zanzibar, sleeping on the beach with the junkies. The worst thing about it, he said, apart from the lack of food, was trying to keep his clothes ironed. As a professional golfer, youre expected to keep up certain codes of appearance, yes? Haircut short and neat. Clean shave. No jeans or trainers. Were ambassadors for the sport and the code of conduct and behavior that goes along with the sport. We wear golf clothes on and off the course, and were expected to keep them properly ironed.

He grew up in Durban, South Africa, and then Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where he and Abeid went to school together, and he learned fluent Swahili and the basics of East African street knowledge. Then, after winning the Tanzanian Open and playing the East African golf tour as an amateur, he went to Europe, turned professional, learned fluent Dutch, and almost succeeded in turning himself into a stable, bourgeois, suburban Dutchman. The truth is Im African and European, he said. I come from both worlds. I feel at home in both worlds. I need both worlds. He was drinking liter bottles of Kilimanjaro beer on Abeids tab, and there was something fierce and remorseless about the way he smoked his cigarettes.

The two of them had a system for women. The golf pro, who had extraordinary visual acuity, was able to carry on an animated conversation at the bar and simultaneously spot attractive women in the dark street outside as they approached the front door. If Abeid gave the nod, he would dart over to greet the women as they came into the room and escort them to the bar for their complimentary drinks, courtesy of the management. For the next two hours or so, there was a changing cast of slightly awkward, self-conscious young European women around us. Then all of them were gone, suddenly and mysteriously, and we were sitting there half drunk.

Milan felt like hed let me down. He belonged to that masculine school of hospitality that insists on trying to get your buddy laid, and he had been so sure that a certain young Irish-woman was mine for the night. I kept telling him it was fine, that I had a girlfriend at home and wasnt looking for another woman, but this didnt seem to register with him. Then he noticed one of the local prostitutes walking in the door, and he leaned in to my ear.

Look at the way she carries herself, bro. Five feet one, no hips, no tits to speak of, and she walks in the room like a queen. Dont you love it? Ah, Hindus a good girl, a good friend of mine. Come on, Ill introduce you, but hey, I wouldnt go there if I was you. Know what I mean? And definitely not without a condom, bro.

Hindu was wearing a long, sequined purple dress and a gold-threaded headscarf with frosted black curls spilling out of the front. She was beautiful, her face more Indian than African as her name suggested, and she did carry herself with a certain regal haughtiness. She asked me to light her cigarette and sit down next to her. When I said I had a girlfriend, she laughed a husky, sarcastic chuckle. Oh, youre one of the