The Game

A boy walks with cleets, and two rare air-filled footballs. He leaves the beach brimful of children. Girls in bright frilly dresses nearly falling off. Boys in stained t-shirts and trousers. Running, playing, screaming on the pearl-grey sands of a Zanzibar beach. A little girl comes to ask me for my pen, then screams in ecstasy rolling in the sand. Dangerous to sit so near the beach. The wazungus a few meters down are drawing a crowd. One girl is older, perhaps 13 or 11. She wears a kanga, pink and black, as a headscarf. A little boy in loose pink trousers and a black shirt throws a water bottle into the sea, then moments later a piece of driftwood. They are the same--washed up, thrown to sea. A boy in the water wrestles with a huge log. The base of a palm tree. It is black, and heavy in the water. He rights it and toys with it and the water until it comes crashing down. Blue football jersey attempts cartwheels. One success. There is just a touch of fading in the light, crabs--small white ones--begin to scuttle across the beach, leaving their holes for the sea. The game begins.