To the Tanzanian Boy at Church Camp in Mwanza
I meant to write to you. I had your address safely written down in a notebook—I remember it was of a school in Dar. And when you wrote to me, I meant to write back.
I can’t see you. I close my eyes, and your face is blank, the features vacant. Rather like an approximation of a Magritte portrait. What drew us to each other? Perhaps it was that, in a camp of thousands of kids, we each sensed a certain solitude in the other. In your group of boys, you’d retreat to the back. And I, in mine, was shy and aloof. Already then, I kept away from the worship, came alive at the prospect of a trip from the camp to Sanane Island on Lake Victoria, took whatever excuse I could to skive off the morning prayers.
That August, all of us came together on one campsite on the outskirts of Mwanza, under the auspices of our church. Kids from Kenya, and from Tanzania, and from Uganda, and from DR Congo and Ethiopia and Sudan and Somalia and Djibouti (who I obsessed with, because I had never seen anyone from Djibouti, or anything from Djibouti). All these children of faith, gathered to worship. We all believed, or our parents did, and that was enough to make us profess the faith. I wonder, are you still a part of this community of believers? Or did you lose your religion—your parents’ religion—as I did?
You came into my life three, maybe four, days into my stay in Tanzania. I was out for an evening walk, and must have said something I shouldn’t have, in my usual way, as your group of boys came my direction. Instead of having a go at me, your group adopted me. I remember your leader was a Kenyan boy. He, like the rest of you, had grown up in Dar, and spoke crisp Swahili. He was tall and huge, I remember, but then at that time, with my age and tininess, everyone seemed tall and huge to me.
Suddenly, in our church, I was the popular one. “Carey, a group of Tanzanians are here for you,” one of the camp guides would tell me. My friends would ask me, “Your Tanzanians, where did you get them?” “Just around,” I’d say. Then I’d turn and walk out with you. I was part of the gang.
Though I walked with the Tanzanians, I was aware that we, the Kenyans, were the loudest. We were from across the border, yet here we were attempting to dominate everything. There were soccer matches every day, and the Tanzania-Kenya one attracted the biggest crowd: the host country versus the loud country. I remember one side scored a goal (I forget which), but the referee chalked it off for offside. The supporters, angry at the referee’s decision, invaded the pitch, the match abandoned to farce.
You resented this, our loud Kenyanness. You wanted to be president of Tanzania one day, you told me, as we sat on the grass somewhere in the campsite. Then you’d attack Kenya, you promised. I laughed. This was all new, and funny to me. A lot of things were funny to me that August, and I liked this version of me that laughed a lot, this version of me that was happy.
“I wonder what you became, who you became. Do you still want to become the president of Tanzania and order an invasion of Kenya? Do you still live in Dar? Is your English still halting and soft?”
The version of myself at that church camp is a version that I’ve lost. Other things that I’ve lost: the knowledge of street signs and road names in Swahili, which I learnt at the camp; the notebook where I scribbled notes from the astronomy classes I took those eight days in Mwanza, and the maps of the cosmos I drew; your address. I remember once, back in Kisumu, staring at it, meaning to write to you. I meant and I meant and I meant, and here’s me now, finally writing.
I wonder what you became, who you became. Do you still want to become the president of Tanzania and order an invasion of Kenya? Do you still live in Dar? Is your English still halting and soft? I wonder what you did when I didn’t write back. But what would I have written to you about? Would I have told you of my obsession with Harry Potter, of a crush I’d had on a girl in my class, of the post-electoral violence that had left buildings in Kisumu pockmarked and burnt, of the empty seats in my class, one of which had been of the girl I’d had a crush on? Would you have cared? I imagined you would have—in the version of this story where I reply to your letter, after I tell you that the girl and I have reconnected years later and are now friends, you laugh and say, “See, I told you!”
Instead, things changed. Mwanza was the last church camp I ever attended. Mwanza was also the last time I ever camped anywhere. My parents’ faith lost its importance in my life to books. I haven’t been back in Tanzania, except for one brief dip across the border last year. I often think about going to Dar. I wonder if, were I to go to Dar, I’d think of you. I won’t look you up, hamstrung as I am by having forgotten your name. Maybe ours was a fast and furious friendship, doomed not to survive outside the enclave of the camp. I wonder if we expected that we’d actually write back and forth to each other, the teenager in Dar to the twelve-year old in Kisumu. I wonder whether we understood the futility of exchanging addresses, as if our school addresses—like our religion and our heady innocence—would remain the same, and always be available to us.
But what did we know—we were all kids then.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carey Baraka is a writer from Kisumu, Kenya. He sings for a secret choir in Nairobi. You can find Carey’s writing on his website.
Read Carey’s “Behind the Essay” author interview in our newsletter.
Header photo by Leon Bublitz.