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"Bububu."

Regina read aloud the sign.

"Bububu," she said again, as if the Swahili was a bit of butter smeared on her lips.

"Hmm?" said the Brit filmmaker, but he was not really interested.

The clouds, dark violets, pressed inward.

The other three dozed as the taxi bumped and rattled over the potholes left by a month of rains. A fine resin of sweat formed on her brow, made her back damp. Regina was the only one who wanted to swim. She'd insisted, a bit shrilly she'd admit, that they travel to the beach before they left Zanzibar. So there was no time to stop in Bububu, to see if it lived up to its name. Another corner of Africa seen through a moving window. She bit the bottom of her lip.

"Why?" the Brit had asked slightly irritated, "Is it so damn important to swim?"

"It just is," was all she could say. "It may be the only time I see the Indian Ocean."

She didn't tell him she needed to wash the last three weeks from her body, its heavy grit of disappointment. He'd insisted on coming anyway, the one free afternoon in Zanzibar they could have spent apart.

The Brit drummed his fingers on the edge of the backseat window.

He asked for the time. He sighed.

The detour to the ocean was taking longer than he expected, than she expected too. Perhaps he would say something, demand the taxi head back to the Stone Town, so he could salvage the few hours they had left on the island.

The darkening clouds were making things worse. What if the others woke up now and second-guessed the effort? she worried. It was rainy season in Zanzibar. A swim was hardly a sure thing.

The three weeks, four countries, 11 flights, were supposed to have been a career making adventure - this trip across the world to assist a fellow documentary maker whose work she admired, hoped to emulate. She had opted out of another project for it. She had stiffed people, pissed them off. But she would help bring the world's attention to a neglected issue and great suffering. She was going to make a difference. Making a few people at home angry was a small price to pay.

They'd met for the first time in a Schipol departure lounge.

"We really don't read much about Canada in our newspapers," the Brit remarked to her soon after shaking her hand. "Does anything go on there worth caring about?"

She'd let out an involuntary laugh.

I am trying to like you, you prick, she thought.

She'd stuffed her pockets with Droste pastilles for the trip. Now a mouthful of Dutch chocolate would remind her of the sting of burning wood in the Kampala night; the school children pressing their faces against the windows to beg for the rich strangers' empty water bottles; frangipani and bougainvillea splashing grass huts with cartoon colors along bumpy Ugandan roads.

The taste had bitter notes too.

"Gina-r!" he'd barked at her, truncating and mangling her name in a double insult.

"Get the bloody camera over here … we're missing the shot! Puhleese."

In Jinja, he'd simply grabbed the back-up Super 8 from her with a harrumph. She blushed in the hot African sun, while the official from the Ugandan Ministry of Communication shifted nervously and loosened his tie.

At other times, his contempt was more civil. But it was contempt nonetheless. She caught him rolling his eyes at her incessant borrowing of guidebooks, her constant naming of things, her gasp of delight when they drove by olive baboons near the border with Kenya. What kind of tree is that? Is that a marabou nest? Roll. Sigh.

Now that it was nearly over, she had only the Indian Ocean as succor. They bumped and jogged across the 90-square-kilometre island. They were tired and tired of each other. And she, who'd insisted on swimming, had taken them all further from the old Stone Town, with its white edifices filigreed with mildew and its aristocratic East Indian hoteliers, keepers of air conditioning, Internet and TVs that picked up the ever-present BBC.

She felt sheepish. She had been clear why she had come along that afternoon, why she'd anted up for the tourist permit and driver fee that allowed them to be squired across the island. The Brit wanted the spice farm tour in the north near Mangapwani. He'd got it. She'd lobbied hard for the ocean.

The van rattled forward on a muddy potholed road through a small village. They passed women swathed in bright kangas, printed with red, black and ochre, some with their bare feet hennaed for weddings. Others carried fruit in baskets woven from coconut palm leaves or sped by sitting side-saddle on the back of mopeds driven by nimble men wearing skullcaps. Spindly Australian pines, cut and stripped clean of bark, lay like stacks of giant toothpicks against low cement-block compounds, waiting to be used as building poles. I have to get back here, thought Regina. No more drive-by filmmaking.

The clouds huddled tighter in the distance, ready to pounce, and yet out by the road all was lively and indifferent.

"I'd like to live here," she'd said to the Brit. It felt harmless enough. They'd been drinking Tuskers on a patio in Zanzibar a few hours after they'd landed and unpacked. He'd showed her a wallet-photo of his young Russian wife, whose hard eyes were set in a girlishly pale face, and who waited for him in their London home. She'd let her guard drop. "But I wouldn't do it if it meant living in some gated expat community."

"You're white. So you're privileged. You'd want things too, like air conditioning. You wouldn't be safe. You couldn't live outside of a gate."

"It would be neat," she said, "to try."

It was a throw away comment, ill-considered.

His eyes lit up, a kind of ugly glee in them.

"Neeeet," he said so that his lips stretched into a mocking grin. "You thought it would be neeet."

From the taxi window, Regina watched the almond and mango trees part for an expanse of coral rag. The road beyond it was bumpier still. The sky, still dark, moved restlessly. Everybody else was dozing. She could not sleep in moving vehicles. But the Brit was an accomplished napper. She looked at his bespectacled face, and saw the little boy he had once been. A little prince with a flaccid chin. It would have been easy to pick on him, she thought stretching out her long legs under the seat ahead. I would have picked on him. Mercilessly.

She sensed water was near. Coconut palms made a row of exclamation points on the horizon and soon she could make out the modest guest houses of Jambiani. The rains had yet to break. When the van slowed down to wind through the palms, the rest of the crew - an Austrian sound man, British editor, the Swedish science broadcaster who was slated to be narrator - awoke, surprised to have made it to the other side of the island.

They emptied out of the van groggily and took the path to the beach through a cluster of grass-thatched huts. A man sat on a bench below a palm tree beside a little boy. The van driver spoke to him. He looked at the strangers coldly, and then waved them forward.

"Jambo," Regina said to him while walking past.

He gave a flat "Jambo" in reply.

"Habari?" she persisted.

"Nzuri."

"Ahsante sana."

Her cheerleader enthusiasm for guidebook Swahili phrases chafed the Brit too. She could tell. On the farms near the Jozani forest, the children had giggled with delight, and the shy women holding babies on their hips smiled when she greeted them with her few words. But now the man looked at her warily. The Brit snorted. She shrugged it off. Beyond her were a lip of white sand and the azure water of the Indian Ocean. The trip wouldn't be a total bust.

On the beach were a few lounge chairs, and some skinny dogs snoozing in the cool sand beneath them. The horizon line was dotted with wooden dhows. She had read they fished for octopus here. She resisted sharing this information with the others.

Sunlight slipped through a peephole of dark clouds. She moved quickly, dropping her jeans and t-shirt in a little trail behind her, before plunging into the water like a kid, falling helplessly into the silk of its little waves. It was shallow and warm, and its saltiness crept into her mouth like a trickle of fresh blood.

"So is there a push to get rid of your Queen?" he'd asked her earlier.

"What do you mean?" she'd said.

"Last time I checked you had a queen," he said.

"A queen?" she repeated and then realized with a giggle she'd forgotten that Canada was still a monarchy. Queen, Senate, Commons. Despite the repatriated constitution and a regent's utter irrelevance.

"We don't think much about the queen in Canada," she retorted but it was too late. He had caught her again. And later she would hear his vinegar-soaked voice repeat how this Canuck did not even know she lived in a monarchy.

She made little dolphin-dives in and under the water until something scraped her thigh. When she peered downward she saw row after row of stakes and waving fingers of plant life. It was a seaweed farm. She'd read about this too. She began to navigate between stakes to move beyond the beds with a gentle breaststroke. In the distance, she could see breakers where the shallows ended and the dhows bobbed. She wanted to reach the deeper water. She eased into a front crawl.

The sun had slipped like a hot dime through the opening in the clouds. She looked behind her. A few of the others had straggled into the water. And there was the Brit moving toward her fast in an awkward half-swim, half wading bob. He was shirtless, his slight shoulders like a young boy's, his belly white and soft. She stopped beyond the seaweed beds and let her feet drop to the bottom to test the depth. Her head was submerged. She waited for him, treading water, but he just pushed right past her.

"Beautiful isn't it?" she said.

"Hmm"

"I think those breakers are further away than they look."

He didn't answer. Perhaps he didn't hear. But she wondered. She swam forward a bit, parallel to him and flipped on to her back like an otter and looked up into the sky. More clouds were muscling in from the west.

Two weeks earlier in an Addis Ababa hotel room, hours after a meal of Nile perch washed down with fermented mango, she began to vomit. Her head pounded. In the morning, they found her too weak to get out of bed. They left her there. It was the Brit's call and he made it quickly. He ordered them to dump the heavy equipment in her hotel room, while she lay prone. For three days, she lay alone staring at BBC Africa. She moved the wastebasket from the bathroom, so she could throw up without leaving the bed. Her knees shook when she rose for a glass of water. Her head swam.

And she had time to picture the Brit and the others in white sports utility vehicles descending from the dry plains into the emerald glove of the Great Rift Valley. She dreamed they passed hornbills poking under acacias like small men in black suits with bad intentions. And they didn't know what they were looking at. She imagined they were relieved to have jettisoned the Canuck with the weak stomach and the penchant for naming species.

In Arba Minsch, they hired a Nigerian pilot with a Cessna to fly them to the capital and save them the drive back. She met them at the airport with all the equipment, shaky knees, a wan smile and her best version of a stiff upper lip. She had no energy to waste on resentment. On the flight to Kiliminjaro that afternoon, she was throwing up in the washroom as the plane landed. During the descent, the clouds had parted for a stunning view of the summit, the Austrian told her later.

Regina made a last surge toward the breakers, passing the Brit easily, and squinting her eyes at him. She could tell he was not a good swimmer, by the way he was moving. She could tell he was not reading the signs of the water.

But what could she say to him? He was not a man who took advice from over-enthusiastic women, especially Canadian women. She watched his choppy strokes. Regina had the urge to shout out to him her c.v. with water. Dove into northern lakes with dark bottoms. Body surfed cold Atlantic waves. Smacked hard by bully undertows. Survived a skin-purpling plunge through ice.

She decided he wouldn't be impressed.

Regina flipped over, looked for the Brit. What is he trying to prove? she thought. She called to him.

"Wind's picking up. Watch the clouds."

He did not look back. He was working toward the breakers. The water was deeper, the waves grew. He was tiring out.

She turned herself around and looked toward the beach. The others were waving them in.

"We need to go back."

She'd yelled it angrily. He turned around. She pointed to the clouds and then the beach. She waited for him. She noticed the current pushing him on a diagonal further away from her. She began to swim slowly toward the beach, staying parallel with the Brit. Watching him but trying not to make it too obvious. He would be irritated with her, indignant.

On the trip, the Brit had assumed the seats beside the politicians and academics. He spoke Russian to the Soviet-schooled Ethiopian researchers. He got his questions answered first and interrupted, ever so politely, when someone spoke to her, if he still needed a point clarified.

He'd showed a pleasant boredom with Africa and this more than anything made Regina seethe. He'd been before. "Five times, actually," he'd said even though neither she nor any others had asked. So why can't he speak a phrase of Swahili? she'd thought. Why can't he name a damn bird?

Regina peeked over again. His stroke was looking ragged. He was wasting energy keeping his head entirely out of the water. She let the current push her nearer him. When she got within a few yards, she thought she saw panic in his face. He had stopped swimming and was flailing a bit, pushing his face into the water, and then jerking forward.

The sky had become a black bruise. The dhows were back in shore. Regina drew in a breath, lunged forward and dove under the water, opening her eyes to find his pale skin's luminescence in the murk. She grabbed his leg, the one that wasn't moving, felt down it with her hands to where the seaweed clump, and rope had tangled him. She pulled up the stake and then ripped the rope from it. He kicked. The leg was free. He kicked again quickly and hit Regina in the jaw.

Regina pushed up for air. A wave rolled over them. She shut her mouth a second too late and swallowed a gulp of water.

The waves were rougher now but they were only a few yards from the shallows. Regina frog- kicked with a last, manic energy.

The Austrian and Swede had run into the waters to help. Regina's heart was pounding. She stopped swimming to find her footing on the sand underneath. She was just about to start wading when the men reached her. Each man hooked a hand under each of her underarms and pulled her to her feet.

"No," she protested. "I'm okay!"

She turned her head around. The Brit had made it to the shallows. He was wading back in, panting, and pale. He was standing on his own. He did not look at her.

The rain came in hard lashing lengths as they reached the sand. They ran for the shelter of a thatched hut that had been converted to a beach side bar.

Inside, she wrapped herself with a towel. The Austrian producer shook himself like a mad puppy.

"You shouldn't have gone that far if you couldn't handle it," he snapped.

Regina turned to the Brit. He was laughing with the Swede, the hue of relief coloring his face. He was turned away from her.

She found her things and a dark corner where she could change. Her jaw throbbed. She felt tears but willed them to hold. I saved him, she thought. I saved the bastard.

Outside the wind bent the palms into tall walking canes. The rain beat the hut, shook the walls.

The others were sitting around a table. They had ordered beers. They started talking about how the documentary - its editing, post-production, grants - would be completed once they got home. She sat with them. They did not stop talking. The Brit's eyes never wandered near hers.

A tattooed German girl came from behind the bar and asked her if she would like a drink, and Regina nodded. She drank two beers in quick succession. I will have to start all over when I get back, she thought. In her head she made an inventory of the calls she would make, the money in her savings account.

They ran for the taxi waiting for them in the shelter of the palms. The giddy rain pounded down as they left Jambiani. They passed men in white cotton shirts walking alongside the road who let the downpour soak through to their skin, splash their cheeks and eyes as if it was air, as if it was not tangible.

A contented snore underscored the silent humidity inside the van. Nobody spoke. Regina did not look to see who was sleeping. It rained all the way back to the Stone Town and stopped abruptly as twilight fell. There was nothing to say not even when the air filled with mist, and there appeared a rainbow of intense vermillion and shimmering gold, that made an ambitious arc over the water, the length of Zanzibar.