Dennis really did like chipped beef on toast. It was one of the few things he could cook at his home on Zanzibar that would actually taste like it does here in the States. He said that no matter where he traveled or lived in East Africa – when he made chipped beef — it tasted like it’s supposed to. And when he told me that — I looked into those movie star — blue eyes of his and said that I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. But we both agreed that it was rare – because when you’ve got a craving for comfort food in Africa and you can buy the exact same ingredients – whatever you end up cooking — whether it’s grilled cheese or chicken potpie – it never tastes like it does here. And when Dennis came to visit me on his last trip to the States he also let me know that he couldn’t always find dried beef in Zanzibar – so I loaded him up with a few packages to take back to his island in the Indian Ocean. After he left – I made it from scratch — in his honor. And to see if it really was as nasty as I remembered it.
The recipe isn’t even printed on the back label of anymore – I had to dig one up off the internet because I wanted to get it right – I mean — imagine chipped beef gone wrong… Just the smell of that gaudy red, processed, pressed and sliced contents – woke up my arthritic old black lab and he even managed to do his best beggar’s jig for a bite. I considered ditching the meal (I lacked the appropriate enthusiasm) and giving Max the Dog the treat of a lifetime. But the sodium alone would’ve killed him — and all I’d do was retain more water. So I toasted a slice of Wonder bread, spooned on a white sticky glop, and sat down with a cold beer. I raised the bottle to my dear friend Dennis who’d come to see me — and to say his goodbye’s.
Dennis moved to Kenya in 1985 – that’s where we met. He used to say that he left the States with a broken heart. He wasn’t coy or belligerent about the fact that he’d buried too many friends and lovers, and given too many eulogies for those who died of ‘the plague’ – AIDS. He was just done with grief and done with this country.
Dennis and I may have seemed like an improbable pair back then and there. Me — a 23-year old straight girl searching for something more and beyond — and Dennis – in his 40’s – a gay man who escaped America with his dignity in tact. Under African skies we lived a life cloaked in the impunity of youth and the betrayal that is HIV. And we did it with style and laughter — smoking our share of cigarettes, drinking beer, driving across the equator in search of hippos — and camping under the stars of Southern hemisphere with our binoculars, field guides and anti-malarials in tow. We talked the townie’s Swahili and moved with ease between the disparate worlds of Nairobi’s ex-pats, tourists, Rastas, students and locals. We ate at the best Indian restaurants (when someone else paid) and we dined like queens on cheap street food when it was just us.
I would start missing him even before he’d go. I always wanted more but you can’t chase the wind. And so it was with every choking so-salty bite of that god-awful chipped beef on toast — sitting alone at my kitchen table — that I said a final goodbye to my dear friend — because at the age of 62, Dennis ‘Kilonzo’ Doughty died suddenly on his way back home to Zanzibar on August 23, 2005.
