Brakes straining, we descend the rocky hill and drive slowly through the deep sand. Wiser now about the average quality of our instructions, we decide to ask for directions at every available opportunity. After one kilometre, we ask two staring children:
Pwani iko wapi?
(Where is the beach?
possibly subject to a grammatical error)
The children's arms swing eastward, through the vegetation.
Barabara iko wapi?
(Where is the road?
The arms swing south, curling to the left.
We ask again a hundred metres later, with the same response. We drive over a pile of garbage on the road and ask some other children. This time, our broken Swahili seems inadequate. We were expecting people to point; but instead they empty the entire village, surround our bike, and joke about us. Amused mothers stand behind the children, who hover just out of reach, chattering endlessly. A detachment scampers off and fetches the only grown man in sight. He begins to give us detailed instructions. Sensing our confusion, he draws a map in the sand. There are two left turns and then our right turn is after that.
Sputtering through the sand, we finally see another motorcycle parked on the beach. Our destination! We park and unpack our lunch. The white sand stretches for miles in either direction. The beach is nearly deserted: a few locals go about their business in the distance. To the north, a few boats lie on the sand. Even the guidebooks have overlooked this corner of the world. We sit on a fallen tree and eat.
Children find us. They seem to have boundless energy. They climb some trees to show off. I climb onto a twisted tree myself as a sign of welcome. They seem keen to be around us, but they make little effort to interact with us. I play catch with them a bit with their coconut ball. After, I watch as they invent games, fight playfully, and have fun.
Time seeps away and we hear one of the children say something about saa kumi
(4:00 pm). Wanting to get home before dark, we leave the beach and the children. We take a picture of them as we leave.
The road home is overrun with people because of Eid al Hajj. A girl takes a lollipop out of her mouth and offers it to us as we zip by. We navigate the deep, sandy road; we continue on the trail through the forest; and we finally arrive at the paved road.