20 Minutes of Terror and My Enduring Racism

With only one week to go before touching down back home in New York City, I had the scariest 20 minutes of my entire 4 month-plus trek in Africa.

On Friday, I traveled by train to Mombassa, arriving at 10am after a 12 hour train ride from Nairobi.  One of my fellow train travelers was a 21-year-old Kenyan student from the University of Nairobi whom I met at dinner in the cafe car.  We talked about the upcoming elections in the U.S. and in Kenya, Kenya's different tribes, university education, the economy, etc.

The next day, we decide to share a tuk-tuk to the ferry on the other side of town which brings you one step closer to Diani Beach.  Half way to the ferry, she realizes she left her phone in her cabin on the train. I go back with her, but the train is deserted and the phone nowhere to be found.  We check with the station master, train police, even go to the hotel where the train cleaning crew is staying so we could ask about the missing phone. The girl is outright distraught at this point so the staff suggests we check the dirty linens from the train.

Back on the train parked at the station, several staff start helping us go through dirty sheets until I think to call her number. Thankfully, from within the pile of untouched laundry emerged a muffled ring.  Ecstatic, the girl thanked everyone and went on her way, reunited with her phone.

On the ferry from Mombassa, which is an island and similar to Manhattan in that regard although much smaller, I run into the girl again and she helps guide me to the matatus (small vans) going south towards Diani Beach.  She happens to be staying at a place not far from mine.  With her help, I take 2 different matatus and end up right in front of my hotel.

Quiet, white sand, warm water and nice waves.  After a couple of lazy days on the beach, I start the multi-matatu ride north back to Mombassa.  As usual, I am jammed into these things by a human shoehorn and need to be subsequently extracted by similar means.

Night has fallen by the time I reach the ferry back to Mombassa.  It's a basic boat with open ramps at each end.  Only about a 10 minute ride across the channel, it is usually filled with vehicles and people mixed together.  At the front of the ferry, I see the young woman from the train.  We chat about the weekend, the weather and the waves.  The ferry was nearly empty except for a few cars, a truck and a couple hundred people.

As we approached the dock in Mombassa, we see and hear a commotion on shore.  In the midst of a growing swarm of shouting and whistling, people began appearing from seemingly everywhere on the side we are approaching and making their way towards the dock.  The sun has set and the dock is not well lit but you could easily see wave upon wave of crowds surging towards us.

The woman's immediate reaction was that it was some kind of protest given how they were shouting and moving so aggressively and organized toward the ferry.  In my mind, as I watch the entire space between the front edge of the boat about to make landfall and all of the ground I could see on the receiving side fill with people, I remember all of the warnings about foreigners being caught up in protests and demonstrations as foreigners may be seen as a threat or source of provocation.  The danger is very basic - in a sea of local discontent, you are the sole item that does not belong and you are completely powerless and at the mercy of the mob.  Were they just upset because they had been waiting a long time to board or is this a protest using one of the city's most important, visible and frequently used public transportation assets to make a point.

The shouting and hollering increase as the first people among the crowd reach the edge of the water just in front of where the ferry is about to land. The comparatively tiny number of people, like me and the young woman, wanting to get off the boat are looking around nervously, wondering how to physically get through wall after wall of people hell-bent on moving rapidly in the opposite direction.  For the locals getting off, worst case is they get jostled and snarled at and maybe pick pocketted, but for me the risk is a different one.  As the lone white face carrying a large backpack and a smaller one, I am super-sized, totally encumbered with gear, and am about to go head on into a very large, and aggressively impatient crowd at night.

The young student suddenly starts getting visibly panicked and says she's worried about being groped and physically accosted while trying to make  her way through the unrelenting crowd of predominantly men.  Not knowing the intent of the crowd, I decide not to risk wading into the middle of it and trying to get off the ferry.   I can't go back or to some other place on the ferry for refuge because there is none, and very shortly every available inch of space is about to be filled with people.  Not sure what to do and just before my own panic sets in, one last look at the unrelenting waves of humanity marching down the narrow passage to the now filled ramp, I turned and saw a large truck parked on the ferry waiting to drive off of it.

Only the driver was in the cab. "Brother," I shouted up to the driver, "can you let us in" as I point to the young girl.  "We have money." The driver looked at me and her and back at the massive crowd and nodded agreement. I threw my bags up onto the seat and when I turned to reach for the girl, another nervous passenger also wanting to get off the ferry leapt up into the small cab of the truck.  I jump in behind him as the boat ramp reaches the dock with a loud screech of metal on concrete and people start pouring onto the boat.

Just as the first surge of people reaches the front of the truck I reach down and pull the mercifully light woman up into the cab and shut and lock the door. A split second later the entire vehicle is swallowed up by people on all sides and the ferry itself looks like a hollow log now completely overrun with teeming ants.

Safely crammed in the cab, it is eerily quiet among the 4 passengers:  a career road man who keeps muttering "this is not good" over and over; the Kenyan businessman who is sweating bullets staring out the window trying (and failing) to say nonchalantly "that's A LOT of people;" Me, trying to hide my white face from the thousands of angry eyes intently peering into the truck as they pass by, and the young woman who is simply petrified to the point her only movement is uncontrollable shaking.

We spend several minutes in the truck just gazing in amazement and fear at the sheer number of people who just keep coming. Once we were completely surrounded, we experienced a sort of collective calm as we realized the worst would not occur and that the aggression we sensed heading towards us was based on the concerted frustration of thousands of weary passengers at end of a long wait for the ferry.  As it filled up, the rush to board subsided to a trickle, and then people spontaneously parted in front of us and the large truck gingerly descended the ramp on to the dock.  Once clear of straggler passengers heading for the ferry, the driver raced the engine and sped us all out of the port area and into the clear.

Once out of the port and far from its chaos, I climbed down from the truck with my things and happily volunteered 200 schillings to the truck driver for his kindness.  I shut the cab door behind me and the young student rolls down the window and says "asante sana" - thank you very much in Kiswahili - and the truck drives off into city traffic.

Epilogue:

I first wrote this shortly after it happened as a sort of self therapy because I was fairly freaked out by it.  The following day while in a meeting with a Kenyan businessman, I shared the story with him.  He listened patiently and at the end he said that although he understood my trepidation in that moment, that Kenyans would sooner put themselves between violence and a stranger than to do them random harm.  Indeed, having met so many kind and warm Kenyans these last weeks and having no evidence to the contrary, I feel ashamed that I panicked the way I did, and wonder if over these last months I have learned anything at all.  Racism can be subtle, embedded, and unintentional.