JIJI NDOGO: No coward to fear crocodiles in Coast

Mombasa, here we are. 

I’ve never been more excited in my life, probably because I’ve never ridden a train or been this far away from home. I might as well be in majuu. 

The Coast is overwhelming. Everything looks so different here. It’s like visiting an older, slower alternative universe. Like stepping into a time machine in 2025 and stepping out in 1800. 

I almost expect to see the infamous Tippu Tip storm into our small hotel, old muskets drawn, and take us to the slave market in Zanzibar. A little of what I remember from my history lessons.

“This is Old Town,” says our guide, Sgt Kwale. “Mji wa Kale, we call it locally.”

It’s beautiful, and old. And lazy. It’s like time slows down here and people have all the time to sit on front steps and sip something they call kahawa thungu. It’s so strong I feel drunk just tasting it. Which Kwale finds funny.

“Pwani too strong for you?” He laughs. “We love flavour here.”

With this last statement, he lowers his dark sunglasses to ogle a passing troupe of foreign tourists.

“Germans.” He spits. “Worst tippers in the world, or so I hear.”

I’m beginning to wonder if Sgt Kwale is a policeman or a regular tour guide.

“When shall we visit Mamba Village?” my partner Sgt Sophia asks.

Kwale’s eyes light up. “Oh, we have a feisty one among us. Dying to touch a crocodile, sergeant?”

Sophia smiles very invitingly. I don’t like it when she flirts — which she does a lot — and I’ve come to believe she does it just to make me uncomfortable.

“Actually,” she says, “I want to see my husband hold one. The smallest one you have will do.”

Kwale lowers his glasses again, which I’m beginning to really hate, and scans the group. 

I wonder if he’s trying to smell Sophia’s husband out of the gathering. Like a dog zeroing in on the guy who reeks of fear. I’m shaking so hard it wouldn’t be hard for him to point me out.

“You see,” Sophia continues, “before leaving home, we had this bet that he would take a picture holding a crocodile.”

It’s true. We did arrive to such a conclusion, but not because I am a man who’s not afraid of anything.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” I had declared to Sophia a day earlier, puffing out my meagre chest for effect. 

“As a boy, I used to go hunting deep into the forest. You know what’s in the forest? Things bigger than baby crocodiles. Things that can swallow you whole, dear. Ever come face to face with an anaconda?”

She had laughed. “There are no anacondas in Laikipia.”

“Well, whatever we have there are bigger, fiercer. They would eat any anaconda live. And did I flinch? Hell no. I dispatched it accordingly and recovered my kill.”

“Your kill?” I saw the scepticism all over her face. “What was it — a rabbit?”

“See? You know nothing about hunting. Rabbits live at home, hares in the forest. And no, it wasn’t a hare, it was a very large dik-dik.”

It’s one thing bragging to your wife about your wildlife-handling prowess, proving it is a whole different ballgame.

“Well,” she said, “it just so happens that there’s a place in Mombasa called Mamba Village where they let you take pictures holding a crocodile about this long.” She held her hands about a foot apart. “For a man who looked an anaconda in the eye and lived to tell the tale, that shouldn’t be too hard, should it?”

Never have I wished more that the ground would open and swallow me whole.