The Beach Boys

People on the road in Nairobi barely make eye contact with me as I walk down the street, but here in Kikambala, everyone wants to say �hi.� In this tourist town, most of them aren�t offering the kind of friendly I�m looking for.

I�ve come to Kikambala with Rosemary�s brother Paul, his wife Jane and about a dozen of their friends. Naomi�s father is selling his Continental Beach Resort property to a developer who wants to raze the dilapidated guest cottages and patchy thatch-roofed dining room, and build luxury vacation condos for the international market. Paul and friends are here for a weekend retreat before the deal closes.

It�s clear that business at the Continental has been good enough to wear out the plumbing and to leave years worth of grime on the walls. But business has clearly not been good enough to warrant investing in a fresh coat of paint and new ceiling panels where the roof has leaked during the short or long rains.

The tourism business here slumped in 2002, after three suicide bombers killed themselves and 13 other people at an Israeli-run hotel on the coast. Only when I return to Nairobi will I learn that the Paradise Hotel site is just down the beach from here.

But even before I learn about the bombings, Kikambala Beach feels post-apocalyptic. There are abandoned resorts on either side of the Continental. Shells of vacation cottages grow emerald moss on interior walls. Once-fashionable carved concrete block breezeways crumble under the persistent wind off the Indian Ocean.

Kikambala reminds me a bit of New Orleans, minus the music and the crowds. Humid and tourism-driven, it is also decidedly gothic. And like New Orleans, there is a dark underbelly of poverty and crime that the tropical splendor of palm trees and startlingly white sand can�t disguise.

There are a couple of operational resorts further down the beach from the Continental. They generate enough business, at least, to keep the local Beach Boys around. They are the wiry-looking guys who are so eager to greet me as I walk along picking shells. The boys, most of whom don�t look older than 16, make their living by befriending tourists or stealing from them.

An old poster on the side of one of the resorts exhorts visitors to �Protect Our Children. Sex With A Minor is a Crime.� But Naomi tells me that most of the boys end up as temporary �boyfriends� of the men and women who come to vacation at Kikambala. Naomi says there are girls working this way too, though on my two forays down the beach, I only see one woman. She tries to entice Naomi�s boyfriend Bryan through the frayed cloth door of the massage parlor and salon that she operates out of the remains of a beach cottage.

The boys, on the other hand are everywhere. They are tall and short, well dressed and ragged. They walk along the beach in groups and, no matter what their age, are quick to greet my white skin with �Jambo! How are you!�

On my first evening in Kikambala I walk down the beach toward distant point break. My Kenyan hosts have warned me to stay on the beach and to return before dusk settles in. I�ve just turn back at a low building, its flaking paint advertising the now-defunct �Kikambala Water Sports,� when a group of boys emerges from a path nearby.

�Jambo! How are you?�

�Nzuri sana,� I say, hoping some Swahili will at least tip them off that I am not entirely green.

�Oh you speak Swahili?� The tallest boy walks up to me.

�Only kidogo,� I say.

As we walk down the beach and make small talk about Nairobi and the resort here that burned down last week, I am nervous for the first time in Kenya.

I�m thinking about the necklace I�m wearing. Robert gave it to me, saying the hand-cut peridot, adventurine and citrine would protect me in my travels. For all its protective powers, the necklace is understated. I�m hoping the boys will think it�s just beads, like the Maasai jewelry sold alongside the fake ebony carvings and kanga cloths in the small beach market a mile from here.

I'm making casual conversation about Canada and journalism and the weather as I try to look relaxed and keep track of where all the boys are. The younger ones are trailing behind the older kids who are walking abreast with the tallest boy, who�s talking to me. Everyone seems to be listening in on our conversation. I notice I�m slowly (and probably unintentionally) being herded deeper into the water.

I hate feeling like this.

The kid seems nice. His English is good (Naomi says most beach boys speak five or six languages), he is pleasant enough. I want to be able to like him. I want to relax. It feels wrong to be scared of ten kids who are just walking down the beach. I keep thinking about Mark Walker�s story about violent swarms of glue-fume-crazed kids in Eastlands, and Naomi�s story of a Kenyan friend who was grabbed by beach boys when she was walking this beach at night with her boyfriend.

I am relieved when the tall boy says, �we turn off here� and they head in-land. Dan says there�s a high drop-out rate in Mombasa and along the coast, as kids find they can make an easy living off tourists. It breaks my heart that kids anywhere might see theft, exploitive friendships and �light prostitution� as their future.

The only time I see one of the beach boys without a crew, he is walking beside a middle-aged mzungu in a olive green bikini.

�He gets money and she gets attention from a young �exotic� man,� Paul explains as we all sit around talking about the boys.

I can�t stop thinking that that kind of friendship is doubly exploitive. The boy or girl is sexually exploited because of his or her economic status. I wonder if the visiting man or woman is also exploited because of the emotional isolation of the over-developed world.

When Naomi tells me that these �friendships� often include unprotected sex, I�m incredulous. It�s one thing for a tourist to try to ignore the reality that economic deprivation is motivating their new friend to be friendly. It�s another thing to ignore the reality that HIV is rampant in sub-Saharan Africa. And for the young men and women on the coast, it�s hard to believe that a life of anti-retroviral drugs and self-compromise is preferable to the subsistence farming that happens on the inland side of the road.

But I know the Beach Boys are right about one thing. I�ve never had to make that kind of choice. My white skin, education and the Canadian social welfare system have meant a life of privilege and, as far as most Kenyans are concerned, wealth.

By the time I get back to the Continental, the party has already started. The lone barkeep is roasting meat from the goat Githege had slaughtered in Mombasa this morning. Mucheme has pulled his SUV up to the lounge chairs and is playing a mix of new |R&B and disco oldies off the stereo. I make jokes about British colonizers as I accept Wacu�s offer of gin and tonic.

Soon I�m dancing and laughing along with my Kenyan friends. But when I step into the shadows to take a better look at the moon rising over the Indian Ocean, I can�t help noticing the thin silhouettes of young men as they watch us from the beach.