Secret Agent Man
Most of the time I had been at the Pink Papaya, I had the place to myself. After a long day of travel, I was looking forward to a nice quiet night. It never happens that way, though. Usually when you want a quiet night, you find a place full of people; when you want a friend or two, you find yourself in a place alone. Without fail, this is how it works. Arriving back at the Pink Papaya, I was greeted by nearly a full house, although Helen wasn’t there. She had taken a group of people out to her Forest Retreat, the original reason I seeked out the Pink Papaya, and a place I never went to.
With Helen gone, I was the resident expert, and was bombarded with questions about bus departure times, places to eat, and information about other destinations where I had already been. I wanted none of this, and escaped shortly by sitting out on the veranda by myself. I was soon joined by an older South African (Afrikaans) man, who started ranting about black people, this and that, using a lot of pretty derogatory words. Africa has its own words used in reference to blacks, corresponding to the American “N” word, and these words are often times even more cutting. I asked the man nicely to please refrain from using such words as, even though they really had no meaning to me, I knew they were full of mal-intent and didn’t appreciate it. He retorted with some sort of comment explaining that I didn’t know what I was talking about and him and his buddy would be glad to explain it all to me; in the end, though, he stopped with the language, which was all I was concerned about.
His timing couldn’t have been any more perfect when out walked another guest – John. John was a very large black South African man; I don’t even want to think about what could have taken place if the aforementioned conversation would have continued any longer. The unbelievable part was that one of the two South African guys enthusiastically greeted him and started talking with him in Zulu. (If only he knew…I thought.)
Later that evening I started talking with John; he recognized me from the internet cafe. After he mentioned it, yeah, I remembered him too. He just sat there in the back, never using a computer. He seemed to remember a little more, though: “You come in wearing your headscarf, sunglasses on top of your head. When you sit down, you wrap your legs around the legs of the chair. You were in Beira for nine days.”
“What?!? How do you know all this?” Man, I thought. I mean, the headscarf and sunglasses, sure. The wrapping my legs around the chair, well, I don’t even know if I do that. But I was in Beira for nine days?!? I remember writing an email to someone about that, but that’s about it. “What, are you reading my emails behind my back?” I asked half laughing, half really weirded out.
John told me that he was a bodyguard for Ziggy, who was Indian royalty. Ziggy was actually out with Helen at the forest retreat, so John had the night off. We went out to grab some food, where John imparted some of his knowledge on me: “All you need to survive in Africa,” he said, “is a knife, matches, and a jacket.” “A jacket?” I asked. “Yeah, it gets cold in Africa.” Hmm. Yeah. He’s right about that one.
The next morning, while having my coffee, John greeted me. “You sleep very still,” he said. “You don’t move. You lay on your back and stay that way the whole night.” “How the hell do you know that?” I asked, bewildered again, and slightly freaked out. “We slept on complete opposite sides of the room and under mosquito nets – you can’t see well through those things.” I never got a real answer to that question, but it is obvious that, as a bodyguard, John’s attention to detail is far superior to that of anyone I’ve ever met.
Helen returned later that morning with a her very motley crew of tourists who had joined her out at the forest retreat. Amongst them were Ziggy (the guy for whom John was the bodyguard), Taka (a Japanese guy traveling now for 4 years), and an English know-it-all bloke who, well, everything that he knew was half-assed or completely wrong. As I came to know Ziggy more and more throughout the day, his story got more and more complex.
I never heard anything else about Ziggy being Indian royalty, although he did mention that he was from the Brahman class in India, which I confirmed with Umesh is the highest class there is. He lived in South Africa, England, but now in Brazil, and he was here working on some project to bust people regarding illegal arms trade. He had two laptops, one real one and one a decoy. The one he was charging the battery for, he said, was a decoy. But not only a decoy, it was a GPS tracker; in case he had any serious security issues, he would have a helicopter there to scoop him up in a very short time. Basically, Ziggy was a secret agent man, and I’m sure his name was not Ziggy.
Whoever they were, international men of mystery, as I called them, Ziggy and John made interesting companions for the next few days. We cooked dinners together, with Ziggy conspicuously doing most of the cooking and me just contributing food to the effort. I have to admit abusing John’s bodyguard status…I had an overzealous suiter with a destructive affinity for whiskey and John came to the rescue. He did nothing, just walked with me. But, everywhere we walked, I felt safer than I ever had in my whole entire life. Bodyguards are cool.
John was my favorite guest at the Pink Papaya ever. Helen does it up – she says Pink, she means Pink. Everything is painted pink – pink walls, pink furniture, pink toilet paper. And then there’s John, answering his phone amongst all of Helen’s pink peraphernalia: “Yeah. I’m at the Pink Papaya.” You’ve never seen such fruitiness roll off such a large black man’s tongue so casually. Ever.
The night before I left to go to Zimbabwe (forced to go in lieu of an expiring visa), Ziggy and I had a long heart to heart over a few beers, where he talked more about his work. He talked about how John would talk about lots of different topics, meant to confuse you so you never really are talking about anything. He explained that the reason why John knew so much about me at the internet cafe was because he had seen me a few times, which raised some suspicion on his part. They apparently liked to scare people sometimes, telling people that John’s been watching them – they know he rinses his mouth after brushing his teeth three times (apparently, most people rinse their mouth three times, which is reasonable), and they’d better be cautious of their toothpaste because maybe they now know too much information (implying they might poison it).
I told him I didn’t believe his name was Ziggy, and he all but agreed with me that it wasn’t. At this point, I couldn’t really believe anything he said. Of course, that was the point, but he admitted it had ruined relationships for him.
He mentioned an incident I remembered thinking was a little odd a few days ago. John said he needed to make an international phone call and asked Ziggy if he wanted to go with him. If John’s the bodyguard, why does he want Ziggy to come with? I thought. Ziggy said they were going to meet with some informants (or whatever you call them…other secret agent men?!?), and John was very punctual, making sure they were there on time.
The next morning, I was slow to leave. Ziggy, John and I planned to make some lunch together before I left. “We need eggs,” said Ziggy. “I have eggs.” “Are you sure you want to share your eggs with us?” he asked. “No problem,” I assured him. “We need bread,” he said. I had bread, and I was going to mention it, but I realized at this point what was going on. “Yeah, John, let’s go get some good fresh bread from the bakery.” “Yeah, bread would be a good idea,” I agreed, looking at him, knowingly. And he knew I knew, too, as I gathered from the little smirk we each gave each other.
John walked me to the bus after lunch. For the whole bus ride, across the border into Zimbabwe, and for a few days afterwards, I was singing “Secret Agent Man” in my head. And sometimes outloud.
Tags: Chimoio, Mozambique, Mozambique, Tag Index
Tania