Mists of the Serengeti(83)

“Jambo,” the waitress greeted us. She was so busy she wouldn’t have batted an eye if we’d shown up in burlap sacks. “What can I get for you?”

“Coca Cola, baridi,” said Jack.

“Umm . . .” I looked around when the waitress turned to me. “Is there a menu?”

“A Stoney Tangawizi for her,” said Jack. He reeled off a bunch of things in Swahili, before sitting back with a grin.

“I have no idea what I’m about to eat. And you’re enjoying it, aren’t you?”

“Having you totally at my mercy?” said Jack, when the waitress brought our drink order. “You bet. Tonight, you dine like a local. None of the touristy frills.” There was a mischievous glint in his eyes as he slid a brown glass bottle across the table, his fingers marking the droplets of condensation that clung to its surface. “Take it slow, baby.”

I turned the label toward me, but it didn’t give anything away. “What is Stoney Tangawizi?” I asked.

“Tanzanian ginger beer.”

“Ginger beer? Pfft.” I rolled my eyes and took a healthy swig, tilting my head back.

The burning sensation began while I was still swallowing. Hot, effervescent bubbles tickled my nose. My tongue started zinging. The back of my throat caught fire. I slammed the bottle down, tears streaming from my eyes. “The fuck!” I inhaled. Big mistake. It set me off on a coughing spree. More tears. More spluttering. It was ginger on steroids—sweet, bubbly, and fermented, with a pungent kick. And it was good, so good that I took another sip as soon as I’d caught my breath, but this time more slowly.

“Like it?” Jack leaned over and ran his thumb under my eye. It came away black and smudged.

“Great. My mascara is running. I must look like a raccoon.” I dabbed my eyes with a napkin to take it off.

“You look exactly the way I’d want you to look after I’ve made mad, passionate love to you. Except that dress would be on the floor and you’d be wearing nothing but a smile.”

It was a heady brand of foreplay, exchanged in the middle of all the noise, the people, the traffic around us. I blinked, flushed and a little lightheaded.

“Mishkaki wa kuku, samaki ndizi, mbuzi mbavu choma, ugali, maharagwe . . .” I didn’t catch the rest of what the waitress said as she placed heaping platters of food on our table. She held a kettle over a wash bin so we could rinse our hands with warm water before eating.

It was a feast fit for the gods, and it smelled just as incredible: crispy fried fish and plantain, boneless cubes of chicken on wooden skewers with pili-pili sauce, goat ribs so tender that the meat fell clean off the bone, leaving charred bits of salt and chili to savor, a polenta-like dish to counter the flavors exploding in my mouth; bean stew, tamarind sauce, and sips of ginger beer to wash it all down with.

“Leta chipsi,” said Jack to the waitress, as I mopped up the last of the plantain. There was no cutlery, so I had to lick the sauce off my fingers.

“So chipsi is chips?” I asked, when she brought us a plate of sizzling french fries.

“Yes, you just add the i at the end. A lot of English words get assimilated into the local dialect like that.”

I nodded, watching two school-aged boys rinse dirty plates by the side of the road before bringing them back to the kiosk. Somewhere across the busy streets, evening prayers blared from a nearby mosque.

“Ready to go?” asked Jack, summoning the waitress as I sat back, staring at the empty plates before us. We’d managed to demolish everything on the table.

“Wait. I’ve got this,” I said, turning to her. “Leta billi.”

If chips was chipsi, then bill must be billi. I held my breath, wondering if I’d gotten it right.

“Yes, madam,” she said. And off she went.

“I’m getting the hang of it.” I shot Jack a victorious grin. It didn’t last too long.

The waitress returned with a man by her side. He wiped his rough, wizened hands on his apron and looked at me expectantly.

“You asked for Billy,” the waitress prompted after a few awkward ticks, where I glanced from her to him and back again.

“I’m sorry. I meant the bill.”

Billy muttered something in Swahili and stomped off. He was clearly not pleased at having been called away from his grill.

“Would you like to practice your Swahili some more, or shall we get goingi?” Jack teased, as he paid our bill.

I exited as gracefully as I could, my heels getting stuck in the gravel just twice. I waved at Billy from the car. Billy did not wave back.

Jack and I kept a straight face as we waited for someone to let us merge back into the street. Then we burst out laughing. Around us, horns honked. Night markets passed by in a blur of kerosene lamps and bargaining. A canopy of stars materialized as we drove away from the heated haze of Amosha.

“Where are we going?” I asked, when Jack turned onto a moon-bleached path between silver cornfields.

“Right . . . here.” He stopped, backed the car up into a clearing, and turned the engine off. “Come on,” he said, grabbing the box of sugar cookies from the back seat and getting out.

The air was thick and warm with the fragrance of night jasmine. There was a gentle humming around us, like a swarm of bees.

“What’s that sound?” I asked, kicking off my heels and following Jack to the back of the car. The grass was suede soft and silent under my feet. “It reminds me of . . .” I trailed off as I followed his gaze.