Echoes From a Distant Land by Frank Coates Page A

entrance test to Kinangop without you. And university would have been impossible.’
    â€˜If you owe anybody thanks, it is God for giving you that wonderful brain.’ Tears brimmed in her eyes.
    The whistle screeched again, and the train jerked forwards.
    â€˜Now go,’ she said. ‘And don’t forget to write to me.’
    Sam stood on the carriage step, waving to all as the train gathered speed. Soon Sister Rosalba and his school friends were lost from sight.
    Sam had never felt more alone.
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    Sam had seen the lake at Naivasha, but the blue vastness that ran from the ring of white stone buildings of Mombasa town to rendezvous with the sky was terrifying in its immensity.
    As the train snaked down from the hills above the island, Sam watched the Indian Ocean’s intricate colours blend from pale green near the shore to deep blue beyond the broken white line along the reef. Every feature of the land and the town seemed to invoke the sea. Nearest to the wharf, where a flotilla of boats and huge ships sat among a swarm of bustling watercraft, the buildings wereclustered around the shore like bees in attendance on the queen. From there, the paths and roads fanned out through lesser buildings set in clusters of greenery until, at the place where the long ribbon of the causeway anchored the island to the land, there was nothing but jungle and a thick mat of mangroves that swallowed whole sections of the silvered iron rails.
    Later, after he’d gathered his various woven bags together and collected his ticket from the agent’s office on Vasco da Gama Street, he stood on the dock with the black steel shell of the SS Madura looming above him. He felt so insignificant: he was a child again, holding his mother’s hand as they stood below Kirinyaga, the mountain where God dwelled and which dominated the sky above him. People with eager faces lined the railing overhead. They seemed completely at ease, even pleased to be there.
    He followed others up the gangway, which swayed, and something odd fluttered in his stomach. He clutched the handrail, but the feeling persisted. Even while standing on the deck, high above the water, which had now turned into a monolithic sheet of silver-blue, the world beneath his feet had become unnervingly indeterminate.
    A food hawker moved along the deck offering passengers a selection of hot snacks from a box hung from a strap around his neck. Sam was staring into the water thirty feet below him when the whiff of curry pies brought a rush of bile to his throat. He vomited copiously over the railing.
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    As the Madura steamed north, Sam became increasingly unwell. His seasickness hardly ever left him. He lost weight and his sallow eyes retreated into their dark-ringed sockets. The brief ports of call — Mogadishu, Port Said, Naples — were mere respites between debilitating purges. At Marseille, Sam was almost incapable of walking. He left the ship and staggered into a waterfront hotel.
    A bearded man sat at the bar with a glass half filled with a milky liquid. Sam watched as he lifted the glass to his lips and drained it.Sam’s stomach heaved, but only the bitter taste of the bile reached his mouth.
    He leaned against the doorframe; the room, the bearded man and the woman behind the bar became blurred.
    â€˜ Merde! ’ the woman muttered when she noticed him in the doorway. Wiping her hands on a cloth, she came around the end of the bar towards him. ‘ S’il vous plaît venez à, monsieur .’
    Sam took a step forwards and his knees buckled. The woman caught him under the arm.
    â€˜ Êtes-vous malade? ’ she said, helping him to a table.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ Sam said in English as he slumped into the chair. ‘I don’t speak French.’
    â€˜Are you ill?’ she repeated with only a trace of an accent.
    â€˜I … don’t know. I just feel … very weak.’
    â€˜ Un moment ,’ she said and