Liana Malaika

The yellow ball of fire changed to hues of orange, and then almost tangerine. It merged with the sky, like juice-mix dissolving in a glass of water. The clouds were cotton-candy, as though they blushed at the warm touch of the sun. Silhouettes’ of birds flew home across a sky that was now magenta; the landscape had grassy plains and rolling hills, and was crossed by the Mara and Talek rivers. The area nearby was dotted with villages (enkangs) of Maasai people.

The maa community, the most cultured people in the world; the kind of people you hang around with and start hunting down lions and cheetahs as a rite of passage. This was obviously my stereophonic thought before I met Mr. Ole Sankole a well-spoken man; fluent in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese just to mention a few. He doubles as my tour guide and my friend, after our two minute ate a tet my guts trusted him and nature had it that he had to be initiated into my small circle of friends (who doesn’t need a linguist as a friend?).

Mr. Ole Sankole stood about six feet three tall, dark in complexion, bald head made red from applied ochre, wrapped in a red and black Maasai shuka. He stood on one foot and held a spear on his left hand. As I walked towards him he kept smiling I guess that was how I easily noticed his lower jaw which resembled a cow’s diastema. He still had a bright smile though, not the Colgate kind of smile; the kind you would give to a stranger and the stranger would feel comfortable. I was comfortable. I was ready for the safari, so was he, or so he seemed.

Being early October, the great wildebeest migration from Serengeti in Tanzania to Maasai Mara and back to Serengeti was on top of my list having read and watched so much about it; it was only fair for me to confirm this. After a little chit-chat we dashed into this Maasai Mara branded Toyota safari wagon and began traversing the grassy plains and rolling hills.

We had barely covered five minutes’ in the plains before Mr. Sankole’s walkie-talkie beeped instructing him to go back and pick another tourist. On our way back to the resort I thought of the fateful friendship I had struck with him, I guess it was only fair if we had a ‘ride along’ moment together; he being Ice Cube and me being Kevin Hart. I would run across the plains chasing after a limping gazelle but just before I got hold of it a three hundred kilograms lion would run after the same gazelle. Then out of the blues Mr. Sankole would race down the lion and throw his five inch spear at the lion, the coltan and brass sharp edge of the spear would pierce through the lion’s thick skin and burst open the it's coronary artery rendering the lion lifeless. Mr. Sankole would then give me his coveted Maasai sword which I would use to cut off the slain lion’s head as a sign of bravery. All this was now impossible, not with a third party in our midst.

The lady that walked in our safari wagon could have graced any billboard or magazine cover, but she was better than those two dimensional photoshopped models. Somehow her imperfections made her perfect. There was shyness to her, hesitation in her body movements and softness in her voice. Liana Malaika was her noun; her cream suit had a tailored look that was bold against her dark skin, but I could already see her in jeans and a t-shirt, feet up on the couch and painting her nails. She was right there, only a foot away, but in her understated glamour she might as well be on television or a girl in a pop video. Being a male millennial, my predatory instincts wouldn’t let such an unprecedented event simply pass by (ufisi) I gathered my charm and charisma and struck a conversation. The Samuel L. Jackson kind of conversion, hoping she had watched Pulp Fiction thereby falling madly in love with me.

Your perfume is intoxicating; I must be drunk in love right now. I whispered in her left ear seductively, she chuckles, ‘thank you’, she said while unwinding her long dark kinky hair from this strangely conspicuous luminous green hair band. She had beautiful hair. Beautiful is an understatement in this case, she had breath taking hair. I was literally out of breath for about a minute or so. Tell me you dropped down from space with other terrestrial beings I have always known aliens are finer than humans; she smiles helplessly, and sarcastically says she was from Jupiter and must have met me before. But just before I could respond Mr. Sankole who was now my wing-man says we should both go back to Jupiter and raise beautiful kids there. She smiles even more; a bright smile unlike my wing-man, she had the Colgate kind of bright smile.

To be continued…