When Guide Books Just Don't Work
by Brendan Harding

My Kenyan guide-book ceased to be of use about twenty kilometres back; almost about the same time as the road gave up being a road and transformed into no more than a rough goat path leading through the scrubby African bush. The book now lay open beside me on the seat of the jeep offering no clues; its pages flicking in the breeze from the open window, in the manner of a child amusing itself on a long road journey.

Its last official duty as a guide-book had been to inform me that the town I was about to pass through was called Mwingi and existed only as a quiet staging-post on the road between Nairobi and the Somalian border. And then it fell silent.

I suspect it may have been the thousands of people who swarmed the centre of the town's wide street which made me recognise the books fallibility. There had been no mention of the market which was now, quite obviously, in full flow.

Both sides of the street were lined with boxy, open topped trucks, a variety which only seems to exist in developing countries. Their peculiar shade of pale-blue paint flaked from the dilapidated bodywork as noisy crowds struggled to untie giant bundles which had been loaded onto every free space. Bales of sugar cane and green bananas were passed hand-over-hand from the heights, and sacks of spinach-like greenery were thrown down into the waiting arms of wildly smiling men. I had never seen men so obviously pleased to see spinach before, and then it dawned on me that this particular vegetable matter was more likely to be Miraa, the chewable, cocaine-like stimulant of Africa's poor.

The jeep crept achingly inch by inch through the thronged and dusty street. Sweat trickled down my back.

Standing high like dark Statues of Liberty, chocolate-coloured, bare-chested boys held single items aloft; a pack of batteries; a football shirt; a pair of live chickens held upside-down by their feet watching the world with tiny white eyes; and from the step outside a tumble-down shack – exquisitely named 'The Faith Generation Hair Salon' – a man offered what appeared to be hand-made wooden bicycles. But that may just have been the equatorial heat taking effect.

In the shadows of dark bars red-eyed men lurked, watching my slow progress, beers in hand. By the door of a Catholic church half-naked children sat splashing in a pool of stagnant, black water and from somewhere an invisible Muezzin called his faithful to prayer. And all the while my guide-book lay ignorant by my side.

“Jambo mzungu, hello white-man,” a young man said politely through the window which I'd meant to close.
“Jambo yourself my dark-skinned friend.” I wanted to reply, but as I was possibly the only mzungu in town I thought better of it.”
“Would you like a nice gerull?”
“I'm sorry,” I replied, “A gerull? What is that? Can you eat it?”
He was now joined at the window (or should I say in the window) by another youth sporting the muscles of a gymnast. They shared quick words in a syrupy language and laughed loudly slapping each other with high-fives.
“A gerulllllll,” he insisted, stretching the word to breaking point, his perfect, white teeth bared. But still I smiled stupidly.
“A lady,” his hands drew curves in the air. “A gerull, wooo-man.”
Comprehension struck like a panga blade behind the ear.
“Oh a girrrrrl. I see, you want to know if I'd like a girl.”
The two young men cackled threateningly. An albino wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat joined in the laughter, this was truly getting strange.
“Ermmm... Not just at the moment.” I answered in as macho a tone as I could muster, “if that's alright with you? But thanks for asking.”
They walked away in to the living mass of people laughing so loudly I could still hear them long after they'd disappeared from view.

“Can you eat it?” I said aloud as the jeep slipped through the last of the crowds. “What an idiot...”

And then somehow I was here, on a dry, rutted excuse for a road beneath a cloudless African sky. The blue volcanic hills circled the scene like a vast empty stadium. Fat baobab trees stood erect like sentries with wooden, drum-shaped, bee-hives cradled in their strong arms. From a thorn tree a flashing, silver-cheeked hornbill flew low across my path screaming my presence. His wing beats stirring the still air.

And all the while, the guide-book lay useless by my side. If this is lost, I thought, I don't want to be found.