I awake to the sound of the Indian Ocean lapping lazily at the sandy shore. I’m still trying to fathom the journey that brought me here.
Thoughts of a full breakfast reduced to coffee and juice by an onslaught of cereal.
I sit looking out over a pristine white beach quietly observing; after a few wine-glasses of tepid Limousine brandy with gassy Coke Zero and only yearning thoughts of ice, I speak to a member of the staff and am given directions.
I stroll along the beach slowly filling, smoking on my way to town which is familiar even though it is my first visit. Holiday-makers!
Bananas and peanuts; and a roast chicken with fresh, baked bread; and vodka with juice and ice: the afternoon passes sipping away, watching. So many toned bronzed bodies; as many flabby and pale; everyone has children. Holiday-makers!
Scrimped and saved all year maybe; or more likely just saved or blowing the annual bonus; privileged, not in their whiteness but in their ability to afford a holiday at all: and yet they don’t see themselves as being privileged any longer, just holiday-makers enjoying the seasonal migration of the herd to dip their manicured and wrinkled toes into this salt water of their content.
A tipsy and toasted Christmas Eve drive into the unadorned heart of the community where old friends and neighbours become new acquaintances over a smoke and an uninspired conversation: the old days are alive in the dying moment, dying because the passage of time doesn’t ever change the grinding reality of impoverishment and drugs and the bemoanable truth of apathy.
The stars are dulled by ambient light as I lay in my narrow bed, drifting to the crash and thunderous hiss of the surf pounding away at the shoreline beyond my open window.
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