South Africa: "The Blahk Stahff Have Lost My Keys!"

Okay, so we made it past the children and mildly curious adults as it got darker and darker. From the direction of the sun, I knew we were angled toward the coast. But when was this road going to end?

Several bone jarring, crater-like potholes later, we reached the top of a hill with a magnificent view of the Indian Ocean gleaming in the sunset and saw a sign for "Hole in the Wall." A small village sat at the bottom near the beach. As we got to the bottom of the hill, we saw a huge white wall and a huge gate with barbed wire on top -- our vacation village destination. The car in front of us pulled in, and a small man approached us, barely concealing his surprise when he saw who was in the car. He asked us for our names, Naomi signed his clipboard, and we were in.

A half moon of dingy attached bungalows surrounded a central area of worn grass. A few weary looking white women and men shooed children into the cabins and cooked their dinners on the brai (bbq) while chatting in Afrikaans.

I volunteered to go get the keys and make the payment, which was just fine by Naomi. At this point we just wanted the night to be over so we could get out of this place. I entered the lobby, passed the dry and dusty fountain in the center and went up to the receptionist, a blond haired woman whose raised eyebrows and smile accented her sky blue eyeshadow and blurry red lipstick. As she completed the paperwork, I looked over the extensive list of rules. My eyes stopped on a confounding sentence: Due to questions of thefts, there are NO GILLIES ALLOWED. We regret any inconvenience this may cause.

As my mind struggled with this new lexical item, the receptionist let out a mew of frustration. I looked up to see her smeary red mouth downturned into a pout. "OH!" Smeary whined. "I am ever so sorry. But it looks as if the BLAHK STAHFF have lost my keys!" Just then another woman came in.

"You lost the keys, Deidre?" she said harshly. "Well, you better find them!" With that she turned her prodigious ass around and left. Smeary's face fell. She whined and huffed. I waited.

A group of women in maid's aprons walked in laughing and talking in Xhosa. "Bertha!" called Smeary, "Bertha!" The women stopped talking, looked at Smeary, said something else in Xhosa and laughed. "Bertha" went behind the receptionist desk and calmly handed Smeary a set of keys hidden in plain sight on a nail behind the desk, and then took off for parts unknown with her colleagues.

As Smeary sheepishly let an increasingly grumpy Naomi and me into our bungalow, I barely registered her and Naomi's discussion about the inspection and the fact that there still was no key she could give us to our room. All that kept echoing in my mind the rest of the night, as the hours dragged on ("You mean we've had dinner, showered, had sex and it's STILL only eight o'clock?"), as we snuggled under the zebra print sheets and our leopard print fuzzy comforter, as the paintings of lions stared at us staring at each other, was BLAHK STAHF BLAHK STAHF BLAHK STAHF... When Naomi asked later why I had taken so long with Smeary, and what exactly was the deal with the keys, I just said, "Smeary's slow." I'd tell her the story another day.

We woke up the next morning at like six, loaded the car, and Naomi was kind enough to let me see Smeary one more time to check out. She was chatty, seemed awed that I was from New York, and informed me delightedly, "I found the keys!" She encouraged me to go to the beach. I had already been to the "beach" -- a couple Indian kids vacationing showed me it was just beyond reception. I'd peeked through the bars that separated the vacation village from the thatched roof houses on the shore and saw more small children waiting there to ask the tourists for "spare change." When I'd approached, they'd gotten up and pressed their faces against the bars, asking the security guard posted there something in Xhosa while pointing at me. The beach? As she prattled on, Smeary neglected to mention I'd have to walk through several villagers' back yards to get there. "Uh, no, we don't have time," I lied.

When I passed the beach gate on the way out of reception, it was lined with little kids, boys and girls, jostling each other to get a glimpse of ME. When I passed, they chattered excitedly. For the first time, I was glad I didn't know what they were saying. I smiled, and beelined it to the car. Inside, Naomi was semi-fuming. "What took so long THIS time?"

"Well, baby," I began...

(Oh, and by now I am sure you can guess what a gillie is.)