From Riches to Rags: An African Odyssey, Part XVI / Dinner with the Dead: Card Declined at the Edge of Empire

“No, Marcel,” said David. Flat. Measured. The voice of a man informing you that your visa application has been rejected on the grounds of emotional instability and spiritual fraud. He paused—scanning the interior of the building like it had personally colonised his ancestors.

“I don’t believe we can come in there with you.”

There was a tragic clarity to it.
The kind reserved for lost tourists being told the embassy had closed in 1964 and the country it represented no longer exists.

Meanwhile, I was already halfway through the club’s mahogany gates—an architectural hallucination from a time when powdered wigs, maritime theft, and strategic gin abuse were viable career paths. A place where empathy had been permanently removed for restoration.

The air wasn’t cold in the modern sense.
It was colonial cold—the kind that preserves fossils, dries tears, and ices over justice for future examination.

“Why not?” I chirped, spinning around like a Disney side character who hadn’t read the room since birth. My pilot license—still laminated and vaguely tacky from Nairobi humidity—hung around my neck like a diploma from the University of Misplaced Confidence.

“We’re in! They’ve got recliners. Real ones. And a man in a bowtie whose only job is to refill your gin and your self-importance. It’s like aviation heaven—if heaven had a racial dress code.”

David gave me a look.
Not angry. Not even sad.
Just... tired.
The look of a man who knows exactly how this ends—and is just praying there’s alcohol at the crash site.

He glanced at his companion, the other David, as if confirming that yes—this was happening.
The Muzungu in front of them, with the cowboy hat, terminal optimism, and an accent that sounded like someone trying to colonise vowels, was absolutely serious.

David #2 didn’t speak.
Possibly couldn’t. I wasn’t sure if he was shy, suffering from catastrophic dental failure, or just a decoy built for emotional buffering.

Leading theory: genetically convenient cousin, deployed as social scenery. There was no obvious relation—just a shared name, a shared cloud of dread, and a joint responsibility to stop an overconfident, recently certified flying idiot from sparking an international incident before lunch.

“No,” David repeated.
Slower now.
With the weary patience of someone explaining to an armed and emotionally unstable Maasai goat herder that livestock is not acceptable collateral at a central bank.

I blinked.
Then grinned harder.
Because I had not—in any meaningful way—understood a single part of what was happening.

“I think we should go somewhere else,” David muttered, rubbing his temples,  trying to erase the last two minutes from memory.

His expression was that of a man watching a preschool fire safety demo gone rogue—flames, glitter, and one kid licking the extinguisher.

I, meanwhile, was still basking in the afterglow of mahogany-grade delusion, glowing with entitlement, freshly laminated self-worth, and the faint, chemical optimism of a man who thinks “postcolonial” is just a hipster décor style.

“But why?” I chirped, genuinely perplexed, like I’d just been told gravity was optional on weekends.
“What are you worried about? The check? Don’t be silly—I’ve got this!”
I puffed up with the misplaced generosity of someone offering to pick up the tab at a funeral he accidentally caused.

David blinked.
Then sighed.

Not the kind of sigh that ends a sentence.
The kind that ends hope.
The kind of sigh auditors make before they say “We’re going to need to speak to a supervisor.”

He looked around—not to gather his thoughts, but to check for exits.
Spiritual ones.

And then, gently, carefully, he delivered the sentence.

“We’re Black.”

An opening excerpt from this chapter remains available here.
The full manuscript is currently reserved for submission and publication.