We arrived in Dar es Salaam on a Friday. It was a girl’s holiday and we were heading to the beautiful island of Zanzibar.
The scenery was magical. Turquoise water, white sand, tanned bodies, spices, sunshine and the prospect of endless cocktails.
Just when I thought that the day could not get any better, the hotel set up a solo dinner table IN the shallow water of a beautiful private beach, at sunset. And right before I was about to die from sheer bliss, I learnt that the menu for the night included spicy prawns, grilled before my eyes. We were in the land of spices and I wanted to cry! Haleeluuuuuia!
The next morning, we decided to go local. We ditched the tourists from our resort and went exploring.
Before we left, I met a girl in the loo. Her face was bust up. Black eye, swollen lips, cut on her eyebrow. My instincts told me not to trust her and NOT to make eye contact. She said “clumsy me! Too much tequila last night”. She told me that she had fallen down the stairs in her drunken state. I have been acquainted with tequila a few times in my life. Not as well as her, but still – I knew its power.
My friends laughed when I told them about her. They had heard from the guy cleaning our room that there had been a domestic abuse drama. “Same old story!” he said to them.
That night we went dancing. I saw the girl. She was drunk. She was dancing with a group of guys. One guy had his arm around her. I figured he was the baddie. What an idiot, I thought.
I was glued. I could not stop staring.
When they moved to another bar, I said to my friends “Hey! Let’s go next door. I love the sound of the music there”. They bought it. We moved and I positioned myself strategically.
Now, one of my friends is an ACTION girl. She is driven by her heart and when she is confronted with a situation where she feels that there is an injustice, she acts. Mostly its heroic but there are also times when it isn’t very pretty. I did not want her involved in my movie. I needed to act cool.
Now, acting cool got hard when she saw me talking to security. She knew that something was up. She said “What are you doing? It’s that girl hey!?” and as much as I tried to deny that I even remembered the girl, Action Girl saw right through me. She said “don’t tell me you believe her story?”
I had zero chill.
Action Girl said :
“Look, you have two choices:
- I help you get to the bottom of this shit
- You forget about this shit.
BUT we can NOT spend our holiday with you obsessed with some drunk hooker who invents stories of an abusive husband to scam strangers, steal their money, their boyfriends and their memories of their dream holiday.
Make the choice”.
I chose option 2. More out of fear of Action Girl in scenes from Option 1.
I decided to honour my company and resist the pull from the drama magnet, filled with its lies and deceit.
I chose instead to order more spicy prawns and a Long Island Ice Tea (with a little tequila because I was still on drama-detox and had to slowly let go of the memory of Tequila Girl).
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Lee Mayimele - Writer 