Sal Island, Cape Verde: A Homosexual Brushing.

It’s a random afternoon.

I’m walking around Santa Maria. I’m going somewhere.

I’m walking by Ocean Cafe – a really cool bar/restaurant/lodging space in front of the small city square, close to the beach.

Someone calls out to me.

I turn around to look at him.

Ah. It’s this guy.

It’s this guy – some Spanish speaking guy. He looks like he’s in his late fifties- or maybe he’s older, I’m not quite sure.

Every now and then we come across each other, and he’s always trying to start up a conversation somehow.

He’s from the Canary Islands I think. He speaks Spanish.

I don’t speak Spanish. I’ve been learning a little Portuguese-esque here and there, from my interactions with Cape Verdean natives in their Creole version of the language.

I’ve realized Spanish and Portuguese are actually very similar. Normally I would expect to still understand this Canarias guy somewhat, but his unfamiliar accent adds a-whole-nother dimension to his speech.

It feels like he’s talking very quickly, and so I never understand a word of anything he’s saying.

There was this day he invited me to join him at a table where I think he was having a drink. He looked very frustrated.

“Tralsjo su jasnxihsbal ciuhnxah fawusknfbahb kxaiusn,abx hkjknfxalwjk xbk aiskgjxfla!”

He ranted, waving his arms about in the air.

In my head I was like Okay, from the look of things there’s an issue. Okay.

I just sat there and tried to be empathetic.

---

Now I’ve come across him again.

One of his knees is in a brace. And he walks with a limp. I’ve always known him like that.

He also looks frustrated again today. He walks up to me and begins to utter some more utterly unintelligible sounds.

At some point he offers for me to come along with him. Says I look very untidy. Says I should come spend some time at his apartment.

I can make out that much from what he’s saying.

I say okay.

The past number of months have been me seriously thinking about my life. I’m currently on a gap year from college with practically no money. My intention is to utilize the ample time and space I have right now, to figure out my life direction.

My problem right now isn’t money – not really.

If I put in some effort I could probably get a job working hospitality somewhere on the island. Job in a hotel or something. I speak English, and that’s valuable here because you’ve got a good number of English-speaking tourists in a country that speaks primarily Portuguese (Creole).

But that’s not my issue. Working a job in hospitality somewhere and having enough financial resources to procure access to the usual living amenities – “Condição” as Cape Verdeans would call it – That has absolutely no effect on the higher-order ambiguity of overarching life direction that constitutes the existential quagmire I’m currently embroiled in.

What I need right now is time. Time time time time time.

Hygiene hasn’t exactly been on top of my priority list for a while.

So yeah. I probably look very untidy. He most likely has a point.

I go along with him. The Canarias guy.

---

We’re at the building where he stays.

It’s actually right behind the defunct hotel where I live.

The building where I live used to be a hotel owned by an airline. “Aeroflot” or something. Their air crew and flight passengers used to lodge there during stopovers, from what I heard. At some point the airline ran into some sort of a disagreement with the Cape Verdean government, and they were dispossessed of the hotel – something like that.

The building is fine – the location is actually great, it’s like 10 – 15 metres from the beach.

The studio apartment where I stay, has a super cool beachfront view.

The only issue is amenities. The building isn’t actively maintained by the government, and so that means there’s no electricity, running water, etc.

Over the past year I’ve really begun to deconstruct all of the different components that constitute living spaces. Usually when you rent out a living space, it’s really just this black-box that you procure access to, with money. It’s not exactly clear how all of the different components of the living experience, relate in a nuanced way to the money you just paid.

At Hotel Aeroflot I’ve got shelter, and I’ve got privacy. I’ve also got a super-cool view. I’ve got no security though. Those pesky Cape Verdean neighbours keep burgling the apartment every now and then – it’s so frustrating.

Electricity and money are the things that make it necessary for me to leave the apartment on a frequent basis.

---

We’re at the building where the Canarias guy stays.

We walk by the security guard. He’s a tall, muscular and very-dark-skinned Senegalese guy. I know him. Well, kind of. We have lunch together every now and then at Nongo’s place.

Nongo is a Senegalese artist who works from a studio apartment at Hotel Aeroflot. He makes interesting artwork of dancers I think, and silhouettes of people with wide straw hats paddling on canoes against the backdrop of idyllic sunsets.

We’re on the same hotel floor.

He’s got a group of like six people who work with him on the art. They make the pieces with paint, brushes and sand somehow. They use a good amount of sand.

In addition to working on the art, I believe Nongo manages the relationships with his retailers and stuff, who eventually sell the artwork to tourists on the island.

We met for the first time, on some random day. I was extremely hungry. I had absolutely nothing to eat. I was sitting down in front of the apartment where I stay, staring listlessly at the beach ahead. I was probably on the verge of dropping dead or something. Spending my last moments as a sentient instance of the Homo Sapiens species, staring at the glistening crystal-blue beach ahead of me – Praia Antonio Souza.

Wonderful. Because I can eat the beach.

Nongo was walking by. He could probably tell I was hungry somehow.

At some point he invited me to come join him and his artisans for lunch.

“Come come! Comé! Comida! Mangé mangé!”

He made gestures with his hand – moving his hand towards his mouth.

I gladly obliged. With the final quotient of energy left in my body, I lifted myself up to my feet.

They were having Chebujeri – it’s a Senegalese dish of rice cooked in spicy tomato sauce. They had seasoned cabbage and fish and all sorts of good stuff. Apparently there are a number of Senegalese spots in Santa Maria that make traditional Senegalese food for the community here.

Chebujeri is similar to Jollof rice – a dish found in a number of West African countries. Like Nigeria.

That was a wonderful afternoon. That was an immensely wonderful afternoon. Nongo is such a great guy.

---

We’re at the building where the Canarias guy stays.

We just walked by the tall muscular Senegalese security guard.

He also works security at Odjo D’Agua hotel. Odjo D’Agua is a beachfront four-star hotel about five minutes away from here.

There was this day he saw me at Odjo D’Agua. Having something to eat and using the internet. I was with my computer. It’s a 15″ MacBook Pro I bought in San Francisco.

I imagine it was an astounding sight. There I was, sitting at a four-star hotel with a computer that was worth like a few thousand dollars (or something), but I was frequently in situations where I had no food to eat.

I was eating food at this really-nice hotel not because I had ample money, but because I needed a reason to spend as much as time as I could using their wonderful Wifi network.

That Odjo D’Agua wifi is something else.

I imagine it was extremely confusing for him. The Senegalese security guy. I imagine it was.

Honestly it’s confusing for me too. I myself don’t understand my life.

The next time I was at Nongo’s place for lunch, I could hear a conversation erupt between the security guy and everyone else the moment I left.

He was about to regale them with tales of me and my expensive computer.

As I walked away, I could hear him yell “Original!” amidst some other things he said in Wolof.

---

We’re at the Canarias guy’s apartment.

It’s an interesting space. It’s on the topmost floor of like a four-storey building. With an interesting view of the beach.

I would probably have found the apartment much more awe-inspiring if I didn’t live in the building right in front. With an even closer view of the beach.

We talk for a bit. He says he used to be a journalist. He’s retired now.

He shows me a couple of newspapers and stuff.

I say Hm interesting, interesting stuff.

At some point he suggests I should go take a shower.

I oblige. I could definitely use a warm shower right now. There’s no hot water at Hotel Aeroflot.

---

I’m in the shower. Covered in lather.

At some point the Canarias guy walks in.

I’m not sure what he’s doing.

Like dude I’m naked, can’t you wait till I’m done.

I’m not too bothered by it though. I spent about four and half of my six years of high school in Nigeria, in boarding school. In the male hostel I frequently had to take baths in an open space with tens of other flailing, naked, lather-covered boys.

And so I’m not entirely uncomfortable being naked around guys. Not really.

I keep washing my body.

At some point I feel a hand trying to slither through my legs.

HAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHAT IS THATTTT?????

I open my eyes.

MISTER CANARIAS!!!!!

CANARIAS GUYYYY!!!!

AHHHH SO THIS IS WHY YOU WERE PERSISTENTLY INVITING ME OVER TO YOUR APARTMENT!!!!

AAHHHHH!!!

OHHH SO YOUR PLAN ALL THIS WHILE HAS BEEN TO GET ME NAKED IN YOUR BATHROOM!!!!!

Ahhhhh, now I get it. Now I get it!

I express to him that I’m not homosexual, and that I’m not up for any of this.

He tries to persist.

I express to him some more that I’m not interested.

I’m careful not to physically touch him.

He’s this very frail-looking guy limping about in his knee brace.

I can touch him ever so slightly, and he’ll end up falling on the floor and hitting his head on something.

I’m not interested in being the guy who killed a Spanish tourist in Cape Verde. I’m still debating with Cape Verdean law enforcement on the validity of my visa-free stay in this place.

I don’t want problems please.

I verbally express some more that I’m not interested in his current intentions.

I finish up my bath and quickly head out of Mister Canarias‘ bathroom.

---

Image: In the bathroom mirror of the Hotel Aeroflot studio apartment.

Dinner At Kottbusser Tor.

We met one evening a few weeks ago. Me and Ryan.

I was skateboarding along Berlin’s streets, and getting angry at the cobblestones. I had spent the previous year in San Francisco, and Berlin just felt so annoying because there were cobblestones everywhere.

You can’t skateboard on cobblestones, not really. Not with smaller harder wheels, at least.

I think we met at an intersection of two streets.

I’m not quite sure how we started talking. I probably started the conversation because he reminded me of someone else. Someone I met in San Francisco. With his blondish hair and general vibes.

We began to talk.

He was an artist. Had an art studio here in Berlin. He was also an Art teacher at some tertiary institution.

We talked some more. At some point we exchanged contact details.

---

It’s a few weeks later.

We’re having dinner.

Well it’s not like a full-blown dinner or anything, we’re just having light stuff to eat and it’s dark outside.

I think this restaurant/bar is interesting. It has these fun multicoloured lights over the doorway. I think they’re cool and kinda trippy.

The guy at the bar is stocky-looking, with a blonde beard.

We’re chatting.

A group of people walk into the restaurant. They walk by and sit at a table not far off. They work in the Tech team of the university I study at. It looks like they’re having some sort of Tech team dinner.

I worked on somewhat close terms with one of them last summer in San Francisco. Jason. It was really interesting. I learnt a lot. It was fun getting immediate answers to my questions about code deployment frameworks and opensource communities.

I was very shocked to see him effortlessly bypass a security mechanism on the login page of the bank I use in Nigeria. It was also really interesting to hear he studied EECS at MIT. A few years back I spent some time going through some of their Computer Science course material on MIT’s OpenCourseware.

I think his girlfriend was pregnant then. With like the fourth or the fifth kid. In my head I was thinking, Oh wow that’s a lot. He seemed pretty young to me, and so it felt like they were still going with the kids. He had a picture of she and the kids on his desk.

And then he also described her as his girlfriend.

At the time I thought a couple with that number of kids and such an established, well-defined plan for a joint future would unquestionably be married. My accrued ideas at the time of how adults ideally lived their lives, was along the lines of the “Get married and then have kids” formula.

But apparently people attach different levels of significance to words like “girlfriend” and “wife”. And some people’s notion of a “girlfriend” is about equivalent in meaning to some others’ notion of a “wife” – Something like that.

We met again a few weeks ago at a small restaurant along Adalbertstrasse. It was our first time meeting in Berlin since I moved here for the Berlin semester, and he with the tech team deployed to Berlin.

I talked with him about my challenges with the second-year curriculum. I was taking a Social Sciences course, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go through with it. Initially I thought it would provide breadth in combination with the Computational Sciences courses I was taking, but at the time I was thinking of switching it for one in the Natural Sciences.

He talked about his experiences with settling in Berlin with the family, given the work move.

---

Ryan and I are talking.

He’s talking about a space in Berlin he and a friend jointly got. I think it was a living space, or some art space, something. He and his friend both moved to Berlin from the US.

He feels resentful about how things turned out with the space. I think his “friend” moved to Berlin before him, and for such a reason had more relatively-established relationships with people in the city. Somehow he leveraged that to oust Ryan of his part ownership of the space. Something like that.

He feels bitter and hurt about it. I try to empathise.

We keep talking.

At some point I ask about clubs in Berlin. Where can I find cool clubs. He says Berghain is a very popular one. Tells me a bit about it. I say Hm, sounds interesting. I take note of it.

We keep talking.

At some point dinner is over, and we’re concluding our conversation.

He seems somewhat surprised by the current direction of things. He says he thought this was a date.

Like, a date.

In my head I’m like Wait Hold up. Hold the fuck up.

What?

Wait, is this guy gay?

Is he gay? Oh man, I had absolutely no idea!

I thought this was just two guys hanging out?!

He’s gay?

Wait, I thought I saw a picture of a wife and a kid on his Facebook?

Wait, What the hell is going on?

I say Haha no. The thought that this was some sort of a romantic outing, never even crossed my mind.

I have a girlfriend.

---

I’m still trying to make sense of all of the homosexual attention I’ve been getting in Berlin- I honestly don’t understand it. Usually there’s a way I make sense of interactions with a biologically male person. This whole sexual thing is adding a dimension to it, which is just very unfamiliar to me.

Especially when it’s like just, everywhere. In Berlin it feels like there’s no specific social context where I should prepare for and expect homosexual inclinations. It’s just everywhere and anywhere.

We finish up dinner.

I like his boots. They’re high-heeled, goth-style boots.

It almost feels like after-the-fact he looks obviously homosexual, but I think that might just be confirmation bias.

We head out of the restaurant. As we walk by the open-air stalls of fruits and vegetables in the farmer’s market at Kottbusser Tor, I mention my struggles with academic coursework. The issues I’m facing with classes, and how I’m beginning to question the fit of the academic programme I’m in.

We walk a bit further until the paths to our apartments diverge.

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Image: Somewhere in Lekki Phase 1, Lagos.