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Despite it being not yet eight in the morning, the sun shone brightly in a clear blue sky, and within minutes of leaving the airstrip both Sam and Remi were sweating. They felt eyes watching their every step, many of which belonged to curious children who paralleled their path, waving and smiling shyly at the white strangers who’d come to their village.
After twenty minutes of walking down hard-packed dirt roads lined with ramshackle huts that ranged in composition from tin to brick to cardboard, they arrived at the beach. Equally dilapidated boat sheds and warehouses lined the dunes overlooking the water. A dozen wood-plank docks jutted into the surf. Thirty to forty boats, from decades-old motor cruisers to skiffs to dhows, both sail driven and motorized, bobbed at anchor in the harbor. Near the waterline, clusters of men and boys worked, repairing nets, scraping hulls, or cleaning fish.
“I miss the Andreyale,” Remi murmured.
“Well, now that it’s got a grenade hole in the center of the afterdeck, we own it,” Sam replied. “Maybe we’ll pull it off the bottom. We’ll call it a souvenir.” He turned and scanned the row of buildings along the dune. “We’re looking for a bar called the Red Bird.”
“There,” Remi said, pointing fifty yards down the beach to a thatch longhouse fronted by a black-painted four-by-eight-foot plywood sign sporting a crow painted in bright red.
They walked that way. As they approached the wooden steps, a quartet of men stopped their animated conversation and looked at them. Sam said, “Morning. We’re looking for Buziba.”
For a long ten seconds none of them spoke.
“Unazungumza kiingereza?” Remi said. Do you speak English?
No response.
For the next two minutes Sam and Remi used their limited knowledge of Swahili to try to start a dialogue but to no avail. A voice behind them said, “Buziba, don’t be a jackass.”
They turned to see a grinning Ed Mitchell standing behind them. He had a Tusker beer in each hand.
“Are you following us?” Sam asked.
“More or less. We’re probably the only three Americans on the island right now. Thought a little solidarity couldn’t hurt. I know old Buziba here,” Ed said, nodding to the gray-haired man sitting on the top step. “He speaks English. Playing dumb is his bargaining strategy.” Ed barked out a sentence in Swahili, and the other three men got up and wandered back inside the bar.
“Now, be a gentleman, Buziba,” Ed said. “These are friends.”
The old man’s dour expression dropped away. He smiled broadly. “Friends of Mr. Ed are friends of me.”
“I told you not to call me that,” Mitchell said, then to Sam and Remi: “He saw reruns of the TV show. He gets a laugh out of comparing me to a talking horse.”
Remi said to Buziba, “Your English is very good.”
“Fair indeed, yes? Better than your Swahili, eh?”
“Without a doubt,” Sam replied. “A friend of ours called you about a boat.”
Buziba nodded. “Miss Selma. Yesterday. I have your boat. Four hundred dollars.”
“Per day?”
“Eh?”
Ed said something in Swahili, and Buziba responded. Ed said, “Four hundred to sell. He gave up fishing last year; been trying to sell the thing ever since. The bar brings in plenty of money for him.”
Sam and Remi exchanged glances. Ed added, “You’d probably pay that for two days’ rental from anyone else here.”
“Let’s see it,” Sam said.
THE FOUR OF THEM walked down the beach to where an eighteen-foot aquamarine blue dhow sat atop a half dozen V-shaped sawhorses. A pair of young boys were sitting in the sand beside the dhow’s hull. One was scraping while the other was painting.
Buziba said, “Look. Inspect.”
Sam and Remi walked around the dhow, checking for signs of decay and disrepair. Sam poked the seams with his Swiss Army knife while Remi tapped the wood, sounding for rot. Sam walked to the stern, climbed up the ladder leaning against the transom, and stepped onto the afterdeck. He reappeared two minutes later and called down, “The sails have got some rot.”
“Eh?” Buziba replied. Ed translated, listened to Buziba’s response, then said, “He’ll throw in a new set for fifty dollars.”
Remi asked Sam, “How’s the cabin?”
