RE: White women -
03-30-2002, 04:07 AM
EVEN PEOPLE IN KENYA HAVE BEEN "WHITE-WASHED"
Passport to paradise
The beach resorts of Malindi and Watamu are scenic getaways for thousands of tourists from all over the world. For the some of the locals, these visitors are a passport to paradise. WAYUA MULI explores the issue of interracial relationships in these beach resort towns
About 111 kilometres north of Mombasa lies a little 'Italian' village called Watamu. The sun-drenched palms and makuti-thatched hotels and cottages here play host to the largest community of Italians in any one place in all of Kenya. 18 kilometres further north lies the larger Italian stronghold of Malindi. There is a more liberal mix here of Italians and Germans, give or take the odd American or Briton.
For the country in general, their presence here is a great economic boon, in terms of tourism and investment capital. This is certainly true for the communities of indigenous Kenyans living here, because they are entirely dependent on the tourism industry for their livelihood. There is a certain twist to the way their business affairs are conducted, though.
"You see that couple walking over there?" Pole Mwasambo says, indicating a middle-aged white man with his Kenyan lady companion. "When the man looks at the woman, he probably sees someone he loves. When the woman looks at him, she sees a bungalow, a Mercedes and a bank account." Pole, my host during my short stay in Watamu, and I, are walking along the pristine beach, him showing me the local sights. "White partners here are seen as ticket to a better life. Sometimes, you'll find a couple who are truly in love, but many of these couples are together because of the money."
Watamu, totally dependent on the tourism industry, is a place where money can be in desperately short supply - or falling from the skies, depending on which side of the colour divide you sit on. For the largely Italian community, who own a number of tourist resorts and other business holdings in the area, Watamu and Malindi are low-cost, no-holds-barred holiday resorts. For the Kenyans who depend on the largely erratic tourist industry, there can be good times, when the foreigners come to visit, and hard times, when retrenchment is the name of the day. Levels of education are extremely low here, with a large percentage of children dropping out of school almost as soon as they get there, becoming beach-children, learning Italian and begging for hand-outs from the tourists.
Business here is entirely dependent on the tourists; most men, for example, resort to fishing, with which they supply the surrounding tourist hotels. The community members also run auxiliary businesses - curio shops, small-scale travel agents and communication shops offering internet and 'phone services as well as the occasional guest house, for back-pack type tourists looking for cheap accommodation. For many, the primary source of income remains liaisons with the visiting tourists and local white community.
•••
The local Watamu disco is a lot more sophisticated than what we Nairobians call a 'local'. Instead of off-cut bits of timber for walls and a surly barmaid sitting on a high stool behind a metal-grilled counter, there's ultraviolet lighting, smoke machines and the most current music playing, to the most astounding visual effects. The music flows easily from techno to Kenyan hip-hop to rhythm 'n blues.
I am watching a tall, handsome, dread-locked young man parade himself on the dance floor. He saunters over to a group of young ladies and casually grabs one by the waist, pulling her to him, back-to-front, and gyrating to the music. "Who is he?" I ask my friend Rosie, one of the inhabitants of the little bay village, but native of Malindi.
"Oh, him," she says. "He's just come back from Switzerland where his wife lives."
"Hmm," I nod. "And where's his wife right now?" I ask, looking around for a frowning white woman watching her husband's girl-grabbing antics. "Oh, she's probably at their hotel, waiting for him to go back. Or maybe she's somewhere in the disco, talking to friends."
"What has he been doing in Switzerland?" I ask again, as I watch him abandon his earlier beauty for another one, this time managing to look even more intimate with her than he did with the other.
"Si he married a white woman and now they live together. Most of the lucky ones get partners who will take them to Europe to live. But they always make sure that they have a black girl back home so that when they come on holiday, they can always get together."
"And what about their white partners?" I query. "Don't they wonder about their husbands or wives if they keep disappearing to meet their girlfriends or boyfriends?"
"Ah" Rosie shrugs. "There are ways to hide these things... The important thing is that now he has a white partner who can take care of him!"
These words echo those of Muna Ahmed, a 19-year old Watamu girl whose wisdom is way beyond her years. "These white men, especially if they are old, are very easy to lie to," she says in that lyrical Swahili that comes naturally to her. Light-skinned, slim and very pretty, Muna is very popular with most of the white men who come to holiday here. "They are afraid to question where you have gone if you stay out the whole night because if they lose you, they know that they will not find anyone else back home since they have been ostracised because of age. Besides, if you know how to handle them, there's really no way that they can catch you out." She smiles, displaying one gold-capped tooth that an admirer, the old white Italian she affectionately calls her 'mzee', paid for.
Muna's old man (literally, since he's going on 70) fell for her last year when he bumped into her at a local five-star hotel where she had gone to watch her (Kenyan) boyfriend DJ-ing. In spite of the fact that he was there with his girlfriend, also a local lady, he watched Muna dance and fell for her straight away, taking the time to send drinks over to her table and find out what her name was. "He stopped me on my way to the ladies to ask me whether I had a boyfriend and I told him that I didn't have one. Then I went over to my boyfriend (the DJ) to tell him what had just happened and he told me to go ahead."
The next day Muna bumped into the old man at the local supermarket where he offered to buy her whatever she wanted. "He bought me shopping worth Sh2,000," she remembers. "I remember that I had just had my hair braided earlier that day. He told me that I looked nice then he asked me how much it cost. I said Sh3,000. He asked me where I got the money from. My mother, I said. So he gave me Sh3,000 and told me to give it back to her."
For the next 15 days, Muna literally moved into his hotel room, staying with him until his holiday in Kenya was over. "He was to stay here for a month and by the time I met him, he had already been here half that time."
By the time her Mzee left, Muna had extracted from him a promise of marriage, which she was hoping to have fulfilled when he came back, as he said he would, in December of last year. He wasn't able to make it, though he sent a friend of his over with money for her and has written to her and called her as often as he can. In the meantime, Muna has met another white man, this time much younger, and Scottish. "He doesn't really write that often," Muna says "and he hasn't sent me any money yet." On the other hand, he has promised to ship her off to Scotland within the next few months, a trip for which she is already trying to obtain her passport.
Should Muna's plans work out either way, she will join a growing number of Kenyan men and women who have found fortune through white partners. To be identified as one of these 'elite' - as opposed to simply being called a prostitute - takes some permanence in the nature of the relationship. This means that the white partner must be financially responsible for the Kenyan, including opening a bank account for them, through which they can send them money; trips to Europe and the possibility of sponsoring a business or the building of a house back here.
27-year old Dolly Melassi is an example of those who are to be envied. She has been married to Italian entrepreneur and former baseball star, Massimo Melassi, 41, for the last two years, and they have daughter named Tara. Together, they run the Market Village discotheque in the centre of Malindi.
Dolly and Massimo met in 1999, when Dolly was a dancer at the Bora Bora Nightclub in Mombasa, and Massimo was in Kenya on holiday. Massimo, taking break from the pressures of living in Italy, had been a fur-jacket maker and star baseball player for a top Italian team. Though he had been all over the world with the baseball team, he had never been to Kenya, and had not seen anything like it. "I like the weather - it's summer all year round, and I like to be surrounded by nature - the trees and the ocean, the forest, the mountains... you have all that here."
Dolly grew up in Mombasa where by the age of 14, she had already given birth to her first child. She had already discovered a love of dancing and it was this that was her refuge, taking part in music festival competitions and winning. She fell pregnant again in high school and moved in with her sister, who helped her take care of her children, as well as taking care of her own.
"I made sure I told Massimo all of these things before we became close. I didn't want any secrets between us," Dolly explains. Currently, Dolly's first two children still live with her sister, where they feel more comfortable. "They've grown up regarding her as their mother and it's very hard for me to uproot them from there. I want what's best for them and they choose to be with her." Both Massimo and Dolly go to visit them as often as they can, and Dolly has even set aside a piece of land - her dowry from Massimo - for them to take over when they grow up.
When they decided to settle down in Kenya and get married, an immediate problem became that of income. "We needed to earn some money," Massimo said. He bought the Market Village with Dolly in mind. "She loves to dance and this place is her chance to indulge this passion," he says. She is currently in charge of the Market Village dance troupe, as well as being co-partners with Massimo in the day-to-day running of the discotheque.
When we meet them, Dolly and Massimo are busy preparing for a six-month trip to Italy. This will be the first time since he came to Kenya that Massimo will be there for more than two weeks. This will be Dolly's third trip there. In Watamu or Malindi, this is a story of Cinderella-esque proportions. To find love, money and a trip abroad all in the same package is hard enough as it is. So most just settle for the money.
•••
Watamu may be a small village with the majority of Kenyans living in near-slum-like conditions, but every now and then, walking through the village, one comes across exquisitely designed houses that would cost lots of money to build, even in Nairobi. Walking through the village one hot afternoon, Muna indicates one of these buildings. "That was built by a white woman for her husband. He's in Europe with her now," she says. "And he has a Kenyan girl who he sees when he comes here."
"Does he send her money every month?" I ask.
"No. He doesn't need to. That's for her white partner to do."
A little further down the road is a large guesthouse on a beachfront lot, built for the Kenyan lady owner by her Italian husband, with whom she is in Europe. Everywhere, there is evidence of an uplifted standard of living because of the tourist presence here.
Pole Mwasambu, 27, a DJ at the local club, is one of these beneficiaries. His girlfriend, Marina Pratesi, is a 35-year-old gym instructor in Italy. Pole and Marina met slightly less than a year ago, when she first came on a visiting holiday. It was not long before she had fallen for Pole and was planning a trip back. Pole, better known as Flava of the singing group Majizee, is planning to open a recording studio in Watamu, and is currently in possession of two computers to start up with, courtesy of Marina.
Pole says his feelings for Marina are genuine, and have nothing to do with wanting to find a better life through a white woman. "You may be able to have everything you want, but there is no freedom being in that sort of relationship." His justification? The number of young men and women who have fled the poverty and squalor of their lives in Watamu and gone on to Europe with their white partners, who mistreat and subject them to all sorts of abuse. "I have friends here who have been dumped unceremoniously by their white partners because to them, divorce is not a big issue."
Michael Sulubu Kombe, a 23-year old DJ, is also in one of these relationships, though his girlfriend is, at young 19 years of age, exceptionally young. Cornelia Prill, who is German, and Michael met typically at a disco in Malindi where he was DJ-ing and she was on holiday.
"I'm going to Germany at the beginning of next month," Michael says, "to visit see her and also to look for work." Michael is already planning to re-locate so that he can live in Germany and marry Cornelia. "I'm going for a few months this time round," he says, "so that I can see if it is possible for me to move there." He has to wait until she has finished high school and is able to marry him, but they feel that they are serious enough to tell their families. Cornelia has offered to pay for Michael's trip. "What can I do," he says of this. "I want to go to Germany but I cannot afford the trip. She has offered to pay for it. Why should I refuse her hospitality?"
In spite of all the apparent love, most Kenyans here are of the opinion that black-white relationships are all about money, not love. "It's definitely not love," Muna says passionately. "It's just money. Most people here get together with a white partner and carry on a relationship with their black partners on the side." According to Flava, a number of female tourists come to Kenya with certain ideas about Kenyan men. "It's a sex holiday for them," he says, "so they come here and let loose. It's like someone told them that African men are a must-have life experience."
It's a thin line between love and prostitution, but it is one that a few of the residents of Watamu and Malindi are willing to walk.
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