january-2011

ADVENTURE STORY PEOPLE
mango tree – bobbed
on its anchor of string
and a heavy rock. Two
young Africans lay back,
their bodies just barely poking up
above the sides. Clearly visible were the
soles soles of their feet, with fi shing lines tied to their big toes.
Another dugout with a large black plastic garbage bag
attached to a stick and used as a sail glided quietly passed the
sleeping fi shermen.
The patronsgathered patrons gathered around the small dusty bar in the
sand and knocked back one Tusker after another. Alfred and
Daniel, the two barmen, didn’t speak much English but it
didn’t take much to crack open a bottle of beer.
The din of bar talk would be briefl y overridden by the
roar of a low fl ying single-engine Cessna. A few would look
up, comment, then resume their amiable prattle. A half hour
later, Graham and his lady, Yo Yo – he a third generation
Kenyan and she a veteran of three and a half years – ambled
up to the bar. “Good fl ight?” someone asked the greying
pilot.
“Yes – the odd afternoon build-up – but quite normal,
actually.” Both squeezed their way to the bar and the arrival
of evening was heralded by the fl ight of hundreds of snowwhite
Cattle Egrets undulating just above the surface of the
water like a shining satin ribbon.
I joked with Mason about drinking the profi ts.
“Absolutely! What else are you going to do with them?”
he replied, and asked Jacqueline, past owner of restaurants
in Haarlem, Holland, and of the notorious Jungle Bar in
Langkawi, Malaysia, if she would redesign The Boatyard to
give it more of an upscale feel. She politely refused.
John Burnett is author of Dangerous Waters, Modern Piracy
and Terror on the High Seas and Where Soldiers Fear to
Tread, At Work in the Fields of Anarchy.
Find the cosiest holiday cottages
along the Dutch coast at www.aanzee.com
Illustrations: Allan Grotjohann