Morning, Mombasa Ferry

Mombasa. What a great name. Mombasa, Mombasa. I like saying it out loud. It conjures up exotic mental images of African sheiks and sultans, of clove tea and British sailing ships. We are packed into a matatu, one of the ubiquitous and careening minivans that the Kenyans use for public transportation. There are comfortable seats for nine people. This morning, we have twelve passengers. My Kenyan friends tell me that oftentimes the matatus hold as many as thirty. I try to imagine thirty sweating people crammed into this Nissan minivan.

We’re headed for the SGR rail terminal in Mombasa, a ninety-minute drive of just 20 kilometers. The driver, a man named Njuguna (I am no doubt misspelling his name), races from speedbump to speedbump, dodging predawn pedestrians and motorcycles and goats and tuktuks and cars and other matatus (and a guy rolling a heavy cart loaded fifteen-feet high with some kind of wheat-straw), sometimes squeaking by at high relative velocities just millimeters away. Kenyan traffic is indisputable proof that there is a God. Only a supreme being could guide all the moving parts and prevent cluster-collisions of a devastating magnitude.

As the morning twilight lightens, the outskirts of Mombasa are revealed. To me they are indistinguishable from the outskirts of other Kenyan cities: narrow rows of crude storefronts pressing up against both sides of the road, many of them brightly-painted in the colors and logos of the competing telephone service providers (in Kenya, buildings are billboards, and Airtel, Safaricom, Telkom seem to have painted half of them). There are few sidewalks, only muddy tracks, courtesy of last evenings rains. Busy people move purposefully along the tracks and in the road, women gracefully carrying awkward bundles perched on their heads, men pushing carts, children darting between the forest of moving wheels and legs. The stench of diesel mixes with a soup of unidentifiable odors. This is raw free-enterprise in its purest form.

Every few blocks a modern concrete-and-glass building sprouts from the low ranks of shacks. A gleaming Audi dealership. A supermarket. A bank. Though they share adjacent street addresses, the gulf between the corporate and family businesses is mind-boggling. There are several different economic models on display, and is seems unlikely that they overlap. I try to imagine the people I see in the doorways of the ramshackle shops purchasing a new Audi or entering the gleaming bank to apply for a mortgage.

The driver is whizzing down a series of side streets, taking broken roundabouts fast enough for the bus to lean on two tires. The local passengers seem unconcerned. The person next to me, a beautiful young woman in expensive Western clothes, is asleep. The people crammed into the back seats are chatting in casual Swahili. I take this as a good sign, and try to relax. Although many of the matatus are dented and bruised, in a month in Kenya I’ve yet to see one involved in an accident. Once again, proof of cosmic intervention by a greater power.

The morning sun is minutes away from breaching the horizon when we arrive at the ferry landing. The sky is gray and heavy, and when the narrow canyon-streets fall away to reveal Mombasa harbor, it reminds me of… of… something. Something literary. I can’t put my finger on it.

The road widens as we emerge from the mouth of a traffic funnel. Suddenly we are surrounded by… zombies. A whole sea of zombies. No, not zombies… morning commuters. They only look like zombies, with their empty, sleep-deprived eyes and shuffling gaits. Men, women, children, some dressed in bright tribal attire, others in dirty reeboks and t-shirts, others in business suits. A great many are pushing bicycles, others are carrying heavy and mysterious loads, usually stuffed into a massive sack that they carry on their backs or heads. One woman in a bright yellow dress is casually balancing a full load of firewood on her head, a bundle of four-foot-long sticks secured by a clever wrapping of her headdress. She never touches the precarious cargo with her hands, and her grace makes her ponderous feat look easy.

Ahead of us is a vast and sloping concrete ramp that descends into a channel of black water. On the other side of the channel, perhaps half a mile at most, is the island of Mombasa. The distance across is surprisingly small. Why haven’t they built a bridge? Then I think of the culture of corruption, and suspect that the ferry operator is probably related to a high-ranking official in the Kenyan government.

Nothing green is visible, only freight piers and giant cargo cranes and grim concrete warehouses. I suddenly realize what the scene reminds me of… Dante’s Inferno. This is an industrial version of the River Styxx, and the ferryman is about to transport the teeming, shuffling masses across the black water to their eternal damnation.

The ferry loading process is a fascinating mix of chaos and cooperation. The handful of security personnel waving instructions to the crowd have barely any impact on the mass-migration. Thousands of souls shuffle down the ramp, some hurrying, some rushing, but most plodding without any zeal whatsoever for what lies ahead. Our driver moves slowly down the long ramp, literally nudging his way through the sea of human bodies like an icebreaker pushing aside floes.

The silence is striking. Other than the slap of ten-thousand flip-flops on the concrete ramp and the subsonic rumble of the ferry’s massive diesel engines, there is no other sound. Nobody is talking or laughing. Nobody greets a friend, or waves to a colleague across the ramp. Their journey down the long ramp is singularly introspective. I recognize the mood. Like morning commuters stuck in L.A. traffic or riders on the Washington DC Metro, these people are in automaton mode, simply enduring the commute with the least amount of energy possible.

Then something happens. The ferry lets loose a short, high whistle, and the entire sea of humanity surges forward. The rain-like patter of slapping flip-flops becomes the roar of a summer downpour as the crowd, now a single ameba-like entity, tries to squeeze as much of itself onto the deck of the massive ferry as possible before the gigantic ramp lifts and splits it into two separate organisms.

Our matatu is swept along as a part of the organic mass. The tires thump as we leave the concrete for the steel deck of the ship. And ship it is; this is no small river ferry. Despite the fact that the far shore is so close, the vessel is massive. Across the narrow channel, I can see another, similarly gigantic ferry leaving the island ramp. There is another blast of the ship’s horn and the rumble of the engines becomes more insistent. Our minivan comes to a stop and bodies crowd around the vehicle in a tight press. The temperature inside the vehicle is immediately unbearable. Nobody else seems to mind.

From my vantage point in the matatu I am about a foot above the heads of the surrounding people, so I can see past them and out the steel framework of the sides of the ferry. I happen to be looking at the river horizon when the sun peaks above the black water. The faces of the people outside the van are suddenly bathed in a soft golden light, and the dark emotional weight of the scene lessens. Now, instead of a gray mass of faceless, despondent humanity, the people on the ferry radiate soft light, like the subjects of a 17th-century Dutch oil painting. A woman wearing a colorful hijab glances up at me and nods with a trace of a smile. The man next to her is hauntingly thin and it has been a very long time since his clothes have been washed or mended. He glances at me too, but without a trace of emotion. Behind him are dozens of other faces, most empty, a few looking at their phones. As far as I can tell, my wife and I are the only white people in the entire throng of over a thousand workers.

The stifling heat has reached hellish proportions by the time the ferry lowers its ramp on the island shore. I am resigned to wait for the mass of passengers to exit while the few vehicles wait, but that’s not how it happens. The entire contents of the ferry deck move together as a single, compact mass—people and vehicles. Its hard to see how nobody will be injured, but then we are thumping off the ramp onto the concrete shore of Mombasa and the ferry ride is over. The driver guns the matatu and the crowd parts and then we are free, once again careening down crowded streets as we hurry to our destination. The young woman on the seat next to me is still asleep.

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