Potoa

Life comes to a time when memories are more relevant than the pleasant present, when the better part is done, there being but at best a tuneful coda ahead.

Potoa to Mkokotoni is a morning walk we made to offer guests who asked for some local life. At Potoa,  a village,  the paved road from Nungwi moves away from the shore line thus between there and Mkokotoni Harbour the trodden paths remain.

We, the author and I, scoped the route I walked thirty one times between 2006 and my last solitary visit, a reprise, in June 2010. The walk starts through the the village houses, clay built, some made of concrete blocks, most with coral walls, through the shamba, cassava planted hopefully, some banana, the mango trees and tall coconut palms. Potoa to the coast has some earth and the sweet water is close enough to be welled. The coves have rocky beaches, more silt than sand, the hotels had not yet come this far. At the shore line the trading boats anchor. A captain looking quizzical and suspicious when first we walked there, perhaps quizzical and amused. I asked if it was his boat, it is my room, "chumba yangu", he replied. I asked what it was he plied between Poto and Tanga, "things" said he, for that is a question too far.

Then along the shoreline to the fish market, the dagaa, landing. The first visit was by chance the ideal time; all love affairs are that. The whitebait are gathered most plentiful in the full wane of the moon when the lamps deceive the shoals. In the full moon, the lamps are outshone. And then the tide must be slack enough to leave enough depth for the landing in the half hour after sunrise. On those occasions the landing there, if it happens still, is a busy beautiful foreground to the rising sun, a memory, her smile of love, that stays a beaming as today I write and remember "Hey Basset, how did you know about this place"

From the fish market across the rice fields, a crop dependent on a very capricious rain, across the creek accessible when the tide is slack and half, as am I, following the speed walking women pots on head trotting their ways to the better fields deep East of Mkokotoni Harbour. The mangrove is farmed a bit, for use by the makuti teams, a traditional use, the red mangrove crabs are plentiful still. Only take the males in the days before the full moon for only then are they full of flesh. The spring moon mating leaves them devoid of meat, as barren and limp as I in the evening.

Beyond the creek, along the beach past the ship yard of grand dhows, new boats big enough to go to Dubai to buy, others ruined now, their planks to be reused. There was always the signs of work there, wood carved to shape or in progress, twice in those thirty one weeks a boat was gone hauled away on the full spring but I never saw the shipwrights only the women rope makers. They laughed and asked many a question when we came a walking by their shop. On the beach I could show the guests the sweet water bubbling from the sand.  If you take from the spring the water is always sweet, if you dig a well and pump your source will soon be bracken.

Up away from the shore then, skirting close by the house where TISS operate: Tanzania Internal Security Serve. A good long name and a good short acronym. They are in my experience good at their job and use their information sparingly.

The Government building is very British. There is a lively school there and a court where matters of stolen cow and traffic offenses not resolved by street side bribes are heard. Then open air market where ornate flimsy beds are sold. We stop at the Mkokotoni fish slabs where the residue fish are sold. In that market there as all markets, mitumba, second hand clothes are offered. Later there will be an auction to work the crowd. On the low tide the Tumbatu passengers wade to and from the boats that ply that route.

This walk ends at the tea shop where just in the entrance there is a swing serving as a seat. My love sat on the swing and I ordered cakes for her.  He blond hair swung. Three years later, in London, long gone from me she said "There was a swing in the tea shop in Mkokotoni."  This is the nature of memory and loss.








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