Poa Poem by Jo Beckett

We caught a Dala Dala to Paige,
with sacks of rice, old tin cans, rusty bikes, strong African men with no shoes and shiny beautiful African women with their heads covered.
The heat burnt through our clothes as we plodded along the deserted white beach and found your cousins hut
"Jambo" they twinkled as they warmly shook my hand.
We swam in the blue blue sea and played like 4 year olds, pulling each other around.
Then we sat frazzled by the sun and salt water sticking to us
talking and laughing in broken English.
For an hour we played house as you dried our sarongs and clothes on the hot, dry grass.
We sat on the balcony and you chopped up fruit and fed me juicey mangoes that dripped down my chin and we laughed the laughter of being carefree.
Listening with one earphone each as we sang out of tune to Bob Marley
and danced along the beach.
Feeling in this moment, for now my heart is resting and my mind is free.
Knowing with my long hair twisting into knots and my sticky mangoe salty streaked shiny face, all is well. Poa
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2008 Zanzibar