Forty in Bali

The humidity in Bali is clinging to my skin like a warm blanket that smells of incense and sea salt. I'm sitting at a small wooden table in a warung in Seminyak, the kind of place where the menu is handwritten on a chalkboard and the floor is just sand. A small fan is whirring overhead, doing nothing but moving hot air from one corner of the room to the other.

I'm 40.

I don't know how it's happening. I remember being 25 and thinking 40 was this ancient age, a time when you'd be sitting on a porch in the village, rocking in a chair, telling children stories about how things were in the old days when the internet was slow. But here I am, 40, and I'm not feeling like a village elder. I feel like a 25-year-old who has been wearing a heavy coat for fifteen years and is finally taking it off.

Wanjiku is sitting across from me, picking at a bowl of Nasi Goreng. She turned 38 last year and she's still trying to figure out what that means. She has this way of looking at the world with a mix of curiosity and suspicion, like she's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Si you should have just gone to Diani?” she's asking, her forehead glistening with sweat.

“Diani is home,” I'm telling her. “I wanted something that feels like the edge of the world.”

“This is the edge of the world,” she says, gesturing around the warung. “I can't even read the menu properly. What is this thing?”

“That's a spring roll.”

“It looks like a spring roll. But it tastes like something that's trying to be a spring roll.”

I'm laughing. Wueh, she can be so dramatic.

We're here because I'm having one of those mid-life things. I'm not calling it a crisis because that sounds so desperate, like I'm about to buy a red sports car and start dating a 22-year-old. It's more of a recalibration. A pause. I'm trying to see if I still have a pulse, if I can still feel something other than the weight of responsibility and the constant noise of Nairobi.

“What are you thinking about?” she's asking, her mouth full of rice.

“Nothing.”

“You have that look.”

“What look?”

“The look where you're thinking about something deep and you're going to say something deep and I'm going to have to pretend I'm listening while I think about my hair.”

I'm smiling.

“I'm thinking about how we're here and we're alive and we're 40 and 38 and we're not in the village rocking in chairs.”

“I'd rather be rocking in a chair,” she's saying. “At least there's no humidity there.”

Earlier we're riding a scooter through the rice paddies of Ubud. The air is cooler there, the greens more vivid. The roads are narrow and winding, like a ribbon of asphalt that has been dropped by a drunk giant. I'm riding the scooter, Wanjiku is clinging to my waist, her chin resting on my shoulder. She's not great at riding on the back of a bike. She's tensing up, holding her breath every time I lean into a curve. I can feel her heart beating against my back, a small, frantic bird trapped in a cage.

“Kamau, you're going too fast!” she's yelling over the wind.

“I'm going 40!” I'm yelling back.

“I'm 38! I don't want to die at 38!”

“You won't die at 38. You'll die at 80, hopefully.”

“Not if you keep driving like this!”

We're stopping at a small temple, a place of silence and stone and the smell of burning palm leaves. We're standing there, the two of us, our Kenyan-ness standing out against the backdrop of Balinese spirituality. We look like tourists, of course, but we also look like people who are trying to find something.

“Do you think we're doing the right thing?” she's asking, staring at a stone carving of a demon.

“The right thing?”

“You know. Being here. Taking a break. Not working.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I feel guilty,” she's saying. “I feel like I should be doing something productive. Like, I don't know, building a school.”

“You're on holiday, Wanjiku. The most productive thing you can do is relax.”

“I'm not good at relaxing.”

“Neither am I.”

“Exactly.”

Back at the warung, she's finishing her rice and wiping her mouth with a napkin.

“What's the plan for tonight?” she's asking.

“I don't know. Maybe go to the beach and watch the sunset. Or go to a bar and pretend we're 25 again.”

“I don't want to pretend I'm 25. My knees hurt.”

“Your knees are fine.”

“My knees are 38, Kamau. They're tired.”

“Sawa, maze. Let's go back to the villa and lie by the pool. We can order some drinks and talk about nothing.”

“Sawa,” she says. “But only if you order the prawns.”

“Sawa.”

We're paying the bill and walking out into the heat. The street is busier now, more scooters, more tourists with their long hair and their linen clothes and their cameras hanging from their necks. We're blending in and standing out at the same time. Two Kenyans in Bali, trying to find themselves in a place where everyone else is trying to find themselves too.

And maybe that's the point. Maybe being 40 isn't about having all the answers. Maybe it's about finally being comfortable enough to admit you don't have any, and going to look for them in a warung in Seminyak where the spring rolls taste like they're trying to be spring rolls.