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William ShawBINGWA Thirty years ago Bingwa Njoke Silongooi is born near Arusa, Tanzania, and grows up there in a Masai village. His family own cows; to the Masai cows are everything.Bingwa has a knife; he keeps it in a red cowhide scabbard. Unlike others in Tanzania Masai are allowed to carry weapons. The government encourages them to stick to their traditional ways. These traditions represent the African values tourists like to see. At 15 Bingwa kills a lion with his knife. At 16 he is circumcised. He becomes a Morani – a young warrior. As when the removed his two bottom front teeth (which the tribe do to all young men), or thrust a burning stick through his earlobes, there is no anaesthetic. You’re not even supposed to blink when they cut you. ...He stays at home watching junk TV... When he is a young man, Bigwa travels to the Kingwengwa region of Zanzibar where he becomes a security guard for a building site. They’re building an 88-room luxury resort there. It’s going to be called “The Blue Bay Hotel”. All the rooms will face the white, sandy beach and the ocean beyond. There’s to be a luxury pool, a fitness centre, diving facilities and floodlit tennis courts.When they finish it, Bingwa stays on and becomes a watchman at the hotel. When he’s not on guard, he sells Masai jewellery. On Sunday evenings he dances for the tourists at the hotel. In his high, reedy voice Bigwa sings about the lions that kill their cows back home, about coming home triumphant after killing a lion. Wendy arrives on Zanzibar with her 15-year-old daughter to spend Christmas on the island. Wendy’s never travelled outside Europe before. She brought up her daughter on her own since the age of five; in those ten years she hasn’t had a single boyfriend. One day Wendy and half a dozen hotel guests go on a walking tour of the local Zanzibar villages. Two Masai accompany them; one of them is Bingwa. What Wendy is struck by, as her feet begin to ache from all the walking in the Afrian heat, is how courteous this man is. Seeing her struggling with her bag, he offers at once to carry it. It’s more than just a sense of duty, she decides. It’s chivalry. And he’s very handsome; a younger man. Looking back, she says, with an embarrassed laugh, “I suppose it just started from there.” She didn’t go there expecting this to happen. It comes out of the blue. Maybe if she were younger herself, she would be frightened, but she’s older and embraces the adventure. Wendy doesn’t speak Swahili. She is in property management and letting. Bingwa doesn’t speak English – not at first anyway.He is a watchman at a hotel; his only possessions are a watch an Australian tourist gave him, a mobile phone, and the knife he once killed a lion with. It doesn’t seem to matter though. Back home in England, holiday over, she continues to text and email him; his English improves. She misses him so badly. The British immigration authorities turn down Bingwa’s application for a tourist visa; he clearly doesn’t have enough money to support himself. Mind you, that said, they don’t refund the £40 application fee, either. Missing him like crazy, Wendy flies back in mid-February to spend a week with him. Some people Wendy know tut-tut when they hear he’s coming over here – not on a tourist visa this time, but on a fiancé visa. “It’s like taking a lion out of the jungle and putting him in a cage.” But at home in Arusha, Bingwa’s father gives his formal approval; yes, his son can travel to England to meet Wendy again. As long as he doesn’t eat chicken or fish. (The Masai regard them as dirty meat – as taboo). So, in April, Bingwa boards the plane, in full Masai dress. It’s two months later; Bingwa is adapting as well as can be expected. There are, as you’d expect, moments of confusion. Like, the first time Wendy loaded the dishwasher, Bingwa was shocked to see her putting dirty pans into it. He thought it was a cupboard. But there isn’t much call for a Masai warrior here. He stays at home and watches some junk TV. Sometimes he does the gardening, using his knife to cut back weeds. He’s discovered the World Service broadcast in Swahili on the internet. Mostly he’s quiet. It’s hard for Wendy to know whether he’s happy or not. He’s grown up in the company of men. Now he lives with her. He misses his old friends. He misses the singing and dancing too. She worries that life here is boring him. In August, an Asian friend asked him to help out at a wedding, preparing coconuts. Bingwa duly helped, dressed in full Masai gear, cutting the coconuts with the sword that killed a lion. He seemed to enjoy that. Time is passing. The fiancé visa has four months left to run. She knows how it will end. He’ll tire of her, she expects. The thought saddens her. William Shaw runs Un-Made-Up. The photo was taken earlier this year on Zanzibar by Matt Corks. Un-Made-Up says: This is a story that arose from a classified advert that someone sent me when I was writing stories for Superhero For Hire. 11:14 PM - 7/8/2006 - post comment
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