Language Barriers and other stories.

This had been posted elsewhere by an alter ego of mine, I now deem these words fit to grace these hallowed pages.

It is well documented that Italian is the recognised business language of a certain coastal town. Some hotels only have decidedly foreign lingua franca in their signs and computer software. But the new cosmopolitanism finding its way into the eastern seaboard regions is rather strange, to illustrate I shall regale you with this recent episode;

Sunday afternoon, I’m riding my bike at a funereal pace as usual, minding my own business asking myself systemic questions as one does whilst one is cycling.

“Does Koigi Wamwere insist on writing beautiful books on himself in his previous life fighting for freedoms, to purge his own fears that his current (somewhat) clean-shaven reincarnation is actually fighting freedom?”

“Why do I forget names of people introduced to me seconds ago, whilst I easily recollect names, faces and mannerisms of 300 plus footballers I’ve never met?”

“Is the seemingly effortless walking ass wiggle common amongst coastal girls an innate talent or an acquired technique?”

Out of the blue (really) and waving frantically rides up this white sexagenarian on a mountain bike shouting gibberish. Cyclists usually acknowledge their kind; they share a kind of kinship, a bond that makes them automatically salute other strangers on two wheels. But this guy thought I was someone else, I had my sunglasses and helmet on, so I stopped so he could catch up and clear the matter.

“I’m not whom you think I am” I say removing my eyewear. Whom? Well… moving on.

The guy who’s a dead ringer for Hollywood darkman Christopher Walken, spits out a truck load of German and continues unabated despite my protestations and signals of miscomprehension.

Michael Ballacks!

Turns out the only words of English he knows are danke, tschüss and nein. How is this possible, how can a man inhabiting my country be oblivious to the native tongue(s) spoken therein? Namely English and Swahili and _ _ _ _ _ _ fill in the blank.

Anyway or anyhoo… pick one, after the old man said something about my bike and my cleats being über-something I manage a smile and when he signs that I should ride with him I mount and follow.

The old man whilst uttering Germanic noises sets quite a pace, hurdles over rocks and avoids matatus with ruthless Teutonic precision and efficacy, apologies for the cliché, but it was that kind of day (small rhyme there). He was as fit as a fiddle, and having not ridden on a couple of months I was not in such fine fettle myself. But never one to be outdone by a ruin from the Ruhr, I peddled on.

I got as usual, more respect from motorists whilst riding alongside a white man, I would like to think it’s the extra luminosity of his skin that increases our average visibility, but you are free to make up your own minds (Racist motorist garbage).

There is a cycling community in Kenya of the bourgeoisie who are not in the bodaboda business.

The old fossil was a tough cookie; I should be so blessed in my senescence. He then realised that I was almost through with my ride when we met and that I was cracked like a cabinet minister’s butt in a tree planting PR charade.

Anyhoo, he offered water or a drink of some sort at his house. I cordially nodded my acceptance, as the only German word I know is “Achtung! baby” And I guess that’s frowned upon nowadays. (making friends, influencing people) oh and there’s “Ja”. You may question my judgment in following an old foreigner I couldn’t understand, with an uncanny resemblance to the weirdo Walken, but I was kaput, and riding buddies are few and far between so…

“I’m riding on the autobahn of where I want to be and yet I don’t know how to get here.” Quote me.

The lush and luscious, Greenwood Drive.

The ancient chap lives on a cul-de-sac off this, in a beachside manse flanking a gazebo bigger than my imagined future home. I get a warm “Willkommen” from a lady who also casually ignores the fact that I can’t speak German and chatters away while offering juice and/or schnapps. I’m a crackhead for sugar at this point. Danke schoen or bitte schoen or whatever in English.

A svelte twenty-something girl -daughter presumably-, is about to take two restless Rottweilers for an evening walk, a common practice in the leafier suburbs here. The dogs smell my fear and one of them discharges a guttural growl, this forces a siren of anxiety about my being here to the fore.

But the old Kaiser notices and asks the girl, who surely surely chose not to speak English to take them away.

auf Wiedersehen pets!

The most disagreeable reason for losing the Second World War given in popular culture is “we’d all be speaking German!” well I can confirm that I was in that alternate world, and I couldn’t understand a word.

The old relic shows me his map of cycling training routes, mostly off-road. I grunt indicating the unyielding sections, and explain in English my willingness to try out the rides comes from a deluded sense of my abilities. As he laughs and responds in his native lingo I feel the eerie sensation of déjà vu.

A month back I was in a business meeting with the director of Alliance Française Mombasa with an interjecting interpreter between us.

Te old couple are definitely not recluses, they seem quite friendly and the man is rather outgoing so how do they exist and/or subsist without language?

So in the end, with the wind whispering its own words, and oscillating palm fronds tickling surf from the reluctant blue horizon, a night owl joined in the conversation and we sat chatting away happily in a bizarre babelic babble but understanding each other imperfectly.

Casuist.