The Things We Carry: mosquito cream, malaria pills, sunblock, journal, head lamp, iodine-treated water bottle, Kleenex,
The Food We Eat: beans, bread, eggs, tea, samosas, avocados, cabbage, rice, Pringles,
The Stuff We Hate: being asked for money, overland trucks full of mzungu, horrendous bus rides, developED country prices with developING country service,
The Stuff We Love: bicycle taxis, helpful people, homemade cooking, lush green landscapes, African tea, zebras, giraffes, monkeys, when they manage to undercook the eggs.
What Would Be Nice: sheets on the bed, washing machine, hot water, our cameras back,
Souvenirs Which Intrigue Us: jewelry made of paper, coins from before independence
Souvenirs Which Make us Crazy: Wooden giraffe salad bowls which are also sold at CostPlus in Cherry Creek
Most Dangerous Thing We’ve Done to Date: Both riding on the back of a boda boda (motorbike taxi) across town in a the traffic-intense Kampala traffic.
Current Bodily Inflictions: blue and yellow bruise from rafting, tire-burn from a bike while crossing the street, dozens of flea bites
What We’re Reading: The Economist, Lonely Planet East Africa, Half of a Yellow Sun (historic fiction about Nigeria’s civil war), We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families (journalists tale of the Rwandan genocides)
Cost of a Dorm Bed: $3-7
Worst Bathroom We’ve Seen: hotel staff bar where we watched Chelsea and Manchester United footie game during safari in Masai Mara National Park, Kenya
Monthly Archive for August, 2008
The water is angry and swirling from the splash of the sky, the shoebills are out for a bath, the monkeys are minding the forest and Africans are whooping and squawking along the ruddy, muddy shores while 50-50’s edge grows ever closer. I scoop the waves with futility. . paddle left, paddle right, hold on, hold on and get down, I can’t hear his orders above the thunder! What’s he saying now? Strands of hair sticking to my cheeks, the warm comfort of tears just about to break loose, glancing at Michael for reassurance and realizing I am on my own, fearing I wouldn’t hold on tight enough, considering the the distance of the drop. . how rock formations could create such rapids . .wondering just how long I’ll stay underwater this time. Silverback was at least half an hour ago now, but the waves had thrashed me in a spin cycle for what felt like at least two minutes, but was probablyl more like 15 seconds. I was so scared. Out. Of. Breath. I am still so scared. “Be loose” Michael always tells me. Let your body roll with the water, with the boat, against an oar. Alarmed by the word “loose”, I check to make sure my helmet is still there. . .that my life jacket is snapped. . .that the rescue kayaks are still with us. But I am out of time. The falls are here. I try desperately to keep the taste of drama in my mouth so the fear won’t fill it up. I whisper my trio of mantras. . .that people did this every day, that everything would be okay, that somewhere. . .I can see it, there, between the waving seaweed of my own shores, is the rush of fear which I actually enjoy but I just. .can’t. . .quite. . .reach it. Then the boat goes horizontal and all I can see are the handles and my hands and my eyelids.
White water rafting.
In a thunderstorm.
Atop a Class Five Rapid
At the source of the Nile
In Uganda.
As Lawrence would say: Fuckin’ A, man. Fuckin’ A.
Kisumu sounds smooth and balmy doesn’t it? Like the texture of a dream where Shamu, a Hawaiian women in a mumu and a squishy kiss are all involved. This is how it felt. Mostly.
The soft, square back cushions of the boda (bicycles) felt easy on my ass and much more forgiving than recent mattresses or matatu (overstuffed bus) rides. At 50 cents a pop, we took them all over town relishing a breeze beneath Africa’s orange, microwave-like blaze.
Holding tight to soft but unseasonable fleece, I rode between the Kenyan calm of our motorbike driver Martin and the ready-to-jump-off-agility of my carefree husband as we drew a path amid fields of food, by basket-balancing heads, around roped goats and through barely-braised ruddy paths to reach Kogelo, the home village of Barack H. Obama, the Democratic nominee’s father.
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Outside the YWCA, all three mornings, beautiful black women with the skin of pin cushions fed Michael, me and low-wage workers a breakfast of soft red beans, just-fried chapati and supersized plastic mugs of tea at twisted-wood picnic tables for 50 cents a person.
The medical students from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty College, here to diagnose and distribute malaria meds were green and kind, earning our admiration and comforting us with soft-cornered American English, strong handshakes, peanut M’n’Ms, sample Imodium and a complimentary bible. They insisted.
Katie, the brave NGO chic who left Georgia, persevered in Ghana, and had just landed here to battle the increasing middle-school-drop out rates among women softened the crusty corners of my developing world cynicism. Over dinner with her and a fellow PCV who’d stayed amidst post-election violence, she was the patient, curious, braided listener you might imagine her to be.
Watching so many men, a bottle of amber-colored glue hanging from their open mouths, huffing, walking and wandering their way through a hell on earth, begging for money, my heart slid up against a soft, strange and sticky place.
Back when the TV had a knob and there were only three channels, I have vague memories of a white mustache in khaki shorts and a jungle jeep. The kind of calm which wise old men always engender. A nature show without photo-shopped colors and fast-forwarded sunrises. The cornbread-brown-and-yellow softness and silence which is the African savannah. Of cheetah teeth, faded skies and a lions mane. The whole thing had something to do with an Indian in Nebraska, too. That’s what I remember, frame by frame.
Premiering in 1963, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom was a program ahead of it’s time. This Emmy-award winning show entertained millions of families by taking them across continents, exposing raw habitats and keeping the violence off-camera—all decades before the Discovery Channel. I was just 10 when Marlin Perkins passed the torch in 1985.
It turns out my pencil-shaded memories of the show were closest to the real thing. Our safari at Masai Mara National Park in Kenya was just as amazing as we imagined it to be. The roads were bumpy. The savannah so silent. The pop-top of our safari just a white boat in a fluid field of grass and lone acacias.
Giraffes are the calmest creatures I’d ever seen. So quiet, so unimpressed by our cameras and calamity. Their eyebrows and pip-cleaner tipped horns arched in a mock expression of surprise and innocence. A fuzzy, photogenic skin of scattered brown and beige puzzle pieces. Letting the tweetering birds land along their sloping back. Like models, a little too tall for their own good. I never thought something so awkward could be so beautiful.
The zebras, best known for their representation of the letter “Z” in first grade, were even more mythical—closer to the unicorn. Their very existence, the stripe-matched mane and wildly imperfect patterns left me in disbelief. It seemed so much more plausible that hiding behind the next bush was a gaggle of jokers with buckets of black and white paint. With fat underbellies and a skittish nature, zebra herds in the Masai Mara were as plentiful as cattle in the Western U.S.
Every summer as the grasses get thin, over two million herbivores, including 200,000 zebra, 500,000 gazelle and 1.5 million wildebeests–a coffee-colored, cow-horned animal which resembles a bearded mountain man–partake in the Great Migration, heading across the Mara-Serengetti ecosystem and crossing the Kenya-Tanzania border as they go. Not the best swimmers, and no match for crocodiles, hundreds of wildebeest perish every year, their skulls littering the Masai river banks.
Less impressive, more humorous, yet also black and white were the ostriches. These big old birds with a satiny black body, white tufted tailfeather and pink-skinned, widespread legs looked like faceless, tuxedo-donning prom-goers who’d lost their pants sometime during the night and were now searching a field in a walk of hungover shame. They made me laugh.
The vervet monkeys had lunch with us. They happen to love bananas—funny thing. They were master beggars, incredibly quick and certainly nothing like dogs, the animal I most easily associate with humans. They didn’t fall for my fake throw, knew how to drink out of a can and their little claws peeled a banana in an all too familiar way. I mean I do believe in evolution, but when you see your former self covered in fur sitting right there on a log, it’s just weird.
Eventually, we were fortunate to come upon fifteen lions who lazed in the small patch of shade about five feet from our truck. I must admit, Boudreaux and I were pretty giddy. I didn’t find them amazing, per se. I think I’d seen their mug too many times over the years. But our proximity and their apathy was a bigger deal. A whole pride of these soft, beige-carpeted cats, with flies covering their skin; these predators who spend their days murdering the zebras and giraffes could hardly be bothered to look at us. Until I sneezed. At that point, several lions wanted to know what the hell was going on and got up to investigate.
But the animals kept on coming. Elephants stashed hundreds of kilos of water into their cracked, explorer-map skin. Baboons gathered for a mid-day meeting. Hyenas looked the only way they know how—suspicious. Hippos, with their nose and eyes just above the water, surveyed for crocodiles. Crocs, just a few yards down the beach, ever so still, waited for them to forget. Buffalo stared at us with curled horns. A little lone tortoise was buried in the eye-high grass.
And the savannah, as blue, green and yellow as a sunsoaked sea waved between them all.
“Avaseet” says Catherine, with a big smile and a graze of a hand against her smudged purple apron. Her aura is heavy with sweat and dust but she smiles with teeth that have been brushed. Catherine is the wife of Frances, who is the brother of Mutinda, who we found on couchsurfing.
Catherine is always saying this the moment we get to the hotel, which in Kenya means only a small restaurant. All day, Catherine makes three things from leaf-and-flour scratch. Tea with milk and sugar which is poured from tall red, insulating thermoses for 10 cents, chapati (sort of like a crepe) for 20 cents and undazi (sort of like a doughnut-no sprinkles or frosting) for 10 cents. Sometimes I help her by pouring molasses-colored oil onto the dough and then rolling them into cinnamon bun shapes. Catherine fries them over a small coal fire, her back bending toward what will one day be a permanent curve. Yesterday, as I sat with Michael ignoring the stares of other patrons, she brought me a Parents Magazine article: Relationships: Dealing with Change for the Working Woman. The magazine date was 1995.
The hotel is very popular. Villagers, mainly men, Africa’s most idle individuals, in their third-hand sports coats, frayed trousers and shiny dress shoes come to fill the fifteen seats, eat, drink and play checkers with bottle-caps. Some, particularly those living on less than 100 shillings ($1.50) a day, can’t cook in their own homes. This village is without electricity—the power lines end in Kangundo, but soon, the people say, soon, we will have electricity, too. They say we’re one of the lucky ones—the house where we stay has a generator, which is used to watch local news, Everybody Loves Raymond and 70s-style Colgate commercials.
Along the red “market” road, a few feet from Catherine and Frances’s hotel, there are two small, dark general stores, one which sells avocados (10 cents) and tomatoes (15 cents), one selling only cow’s milk, a carpentry shop and a more general store with toilet paper. There is also a bar with bottles of Tusker, Pilsner and Kenya’s own version of Guinness behind a massive cage, but we don’t go there much. The kerosene light is blinding and buzzing and too many tipsy Kenyans ask us for money.
But this is a regular thing. And it’s the hardest thing. Arabs tend to overcharge tourists. Africans just come out and ask for money with a rude sense of entitlement all over their face, while our curiosity about their lives and their culture disappears into the dust. They will ask us for anything—breakfast, a bus ticket or a mobile phone. It’s maddening.
Of course, I have come to think about it this way: what if I was living on a planet with very little water. And a person from another planet arrived with her very own truckfull of water. And I thought, we’ll can’t she give me just a cup? Surely, she can spare just a cup.
It’s tough. But strategies develop over time. We’re still only calf-deep in Africa’s waters.
One day we go to a funeral. I am wearing my only real dress as we hike up and down dirt paths which divide plot after plot of maize and beans. Our entrance behind Catherine and Frances is not quiet, but we keep a straight face to ensure that mourners eyes do not linger long, that their shriveled faces and dish-towel-style wrapped heads swivel back to the coffin as they struggle to keep their balance on old logs and tree-branch chairs. Still, children form a small crowd to stare at our skin, which is closer to the color of their milky morning tea than any human they’ve ever seen. They whisper “howayoo” with all their might. We eventually look behind us, where rows of matching royal blue jumpers sit fascinated by our backsides.
The voices of the choir, like their arms which have been mashing corn, and their legs which have been carrying babies and buckets, are robust. Yet, I do not hear them. The generator-fueled blow-horn they use—technology for the sake of technology–is like a colander, sending each and every note through a hole much too small and then scattering it into the fields of cattle, snakes and acacias.
I watch as the spirit of this old woman fades back into the universe.
It would be easy and romantic to wish away the approaching electricity—power lines which pencil scratch the valley view, more speakers to dull the sweet sound of the church choir and the blare of a dozen new black and white television set to disrupt the evening cicadas.
But there are reasons for it. I understand that. One day soon, they’ll be proud to have a wire-strung sun.
When we arrived at couchsurfer Mutinda’s home after two hours in a matatu, a taxi ride which ended in a flat tire and a forty five minute walk. . .even after we shuffled along the red dirt road lined with cow-herders, vintage bikes and a valley view of coffee beans and bananas, I experienced a level of panic I wasn’t really used to . It wasn’t any one thing. Not the lack of electricity. Not the outhouse where the newspapers are not for reading. Not the bucket showers. Not the bottles of water we must iodize to drink. Not the milking cows. Not the lunch of maize, beans and rice. I mean at that point, I didn’t even realize that maize, beans and rice would be served at every lunch and dinner (tea and bread for breakfast). I guess it was just the combination of all those things. But I had to lie down. When I recovered and came to the table, I could take Mutinda’s lecture-like conversation for only a few minutes. And then I literally fled.
I didn’t know where to go. So I walked next door.
That’s when I frightened someone more than I ever thought possible. Three year old Junia was Mutinda’s nephew, who wandered between the neighboring farms. He was the little bald son of Ana and Bosco, who I would watch spend entirely too much time between his mother’s skirts in the cooking shack, a place which made me cough upon entrance. After eight years of “friendship” with Bosco, Ana had been purchased by Mutinda’s parents, Jospin and Barnabus. The negotiations were to be determined this Sunday (I would wait outside during this meeting), but the traditional trade included either 200,000 shillings or seven cows.
When this little boy saw me, he screamed with genuine fear and ran for his life. . Then, as if in some horror movie and on director’s cue, he stopped, look back again to confirm what the monster he’d seen was real, screamed twice more and ran into the house.
Mary and Joseph, the neighbors, couldn’t stop laughing and neither could I.
“Watcha,” I said, the traditional tribe greeting.
“Ah,” they replied.
Mary was shelling beans and Joseph was watching. They were pleased to meet me. And so, surrounded by flowers and cows, my panic attack now lost in the rows of coffee beans, I took a seat and accepted some tea for a chat.
What do you do when you’re the only white people on a hill full of hundreds of Kenyans and everyone starts getting up to clap and sing and raise their hands when identically dressed dancers emerge from a semi with the words “Jesus Big Miracle Crusade” written on it?
You join in.
We were nervous that first day in Nairobi. On the flight from Cairo, my small 3 pixel Canon and our mobile phone had been stolen. Very carefully, too. As if someone knew exactly what they were after. It was the first time we’d been victims of theft in seven months of traveling.
That, combined with the fact that Nairobi had the worst crime reputation in the universe had made us in a word, paranoid.
I kept my eyes glued to the baskets on people’s heads, the babies on their backs or the briefcase at their calfs. I clutched my bag to my chest, envisioning it being ripped from my body. No one was beyond suspicion. It was Sunday. And we walked out of our hotel—the one with iron bars on the reception, five security guards and double-padlocked rooms–we walked right by the Stanley Hotel, the bookstores and balconied restaurants, past the taxi park with buses that resembled Ken Kesey’s MerryPranksters, right by the kitchens frying their bread and spilling their gravy onto old-fashioned patterened china plates.
And we found something unexpected.
A park with ponies and ice cream carts, duck ponds and picnickers. A hill of three hundred plus souls who we eventually realized were waiting to worship. So we had a seat with a view of the Jesus Saves semi truck to see what would unfold. Scrubbed the ants off our legs. Watched the clouds gather round. Pretended not to notice the stares. Settled into the Kenyan grass, conspicuous black-eyed peas on a bed of greens.
I think we figured nobody would rob us there. There was even a sign which read: Littering of the park will lead to outright persecution by ordinance of the town clerk. If that were true, surely mugging was discouraged.
It turns out Christianity is pretty darn popular here. Between the British and the missionaries, a whole lot of crosses had passed through their hands. The crosses might be cracked, the sermon might sound full of static, but the Philips, Marys, Isaiahs and Stephens of the crowd were listening, dancing and loving it.
We ended that day with a Tusker beer and some wings on the terrace of a local bar, sucking their thumbs of comfort and learning what it’s like to be treated not as a movie star, but a minority.
Growing up, my Mom taught me that going the extra mile meant giving the extra gift. So I selected souvenirs on trips and kept emergency items in the guest bedroom drawers. You never knew when a silver duck-head wine opener or a pear-scented candle set might be right. A small gift, she said, was a perfect demonstration of gratitude, celebration or sympathy. She was right.
When we joined the Peace Corps, I was forced to downsize. I found some small stones engraved with inspiration and slipped those inside stylish cards with a carefully constructed message. This became enough. When we left on this trip, Michael put his foot down. On my gifts. There was no room for rocks or cards, no matter how poetic. So I set out empty handed on a journey which depended (almost daily) on the kindness of strangers. It made me nervous.
But through her own example, my Mother also taught me to give of my time. My moment. Despite a ridiculous daily schedule, her energy was infinite. To friends, kids, sewing ladies or bank clerks, and especially us, she listened. Oh, how she listened. With the deftness of a lifelong fisherman and the sincerity of a lifelong confidante, she slowly drew secrets, doubts and ambitions out of everyone’s sea of issues, then sent bottles of encouragement and stars of approval toward their horizon.
While I think I picked up my Mother’s talent for bargains and thoughtfulness and I do have an inherent interest in others, I’ve never possessed her patience.
But travel has rescued me again. For one, it’s softened my schedule, sanding away the gritty necessity of hourly accomplishment. It’s also kept me away from Target, so I could pack my trunk with time instead of stuff, at least for a little while.
We are now frequently in the home of a local. We accept recommendations, rice, tea, sheets, tahina and hot water on a regular basis. I have often twisted with (perhaps knee-jerk) discomfort when I know we have nothing tangible to leave behind. Yet that feeling is slowly dissipating. I think because upon our frequent departure, I sense that the hearts of those around me are already full. That to have been there, giving of my moments, has been enough. That by listening to an organic farmer explain her methods or by hugging her child or by helping her bring in the laundry, I am giving of myself, just as my mom has always done. Or at least, I’m trying.
Maybe that’s the best kind of gift, after all. Because unlike some American flag magnet, which gets kicked under the fridge, you’re giving something that lasts.
Thanks Mom. Happy Birthday
We’d planned on it. Swapped passports in Israel and avoided stamps in Jordan to be sure they’d let us in. Astonished fellow backpackers with our overland plans. Explained how we’d avoid Darfur and Juba. Researched the visa situation. Found the cost of a ferry along the river Nile from Aswan to Wadi Halfa. But in the end, we skipped the Sudan.
It wasn’t because of any potential violence or unrest. In fact, we’d decided to cover the northeastern quarter of this dividing nation, which would put us hundreds of miles from potential conflict. No, it wasn’t the danger. It was because we’d simply had enough Arabs. Enough desert. Because no one had raved about the Sudan. Because the distance to cover was almost as big as where we’d gone in the past six months. Because we weren’t excited about the freshwater-less, 55 hour train ride and it wasn’t worth it just to say: We went through the Sudan.
For the first fifteen minutes of the flight from Cairo to Nairobi, we sat next to African human rights activist extraordinaire John Prendergast. He seemed to have been born with gray hair and introductions rolled off this pseudo-famous guy’s tongue a lot like they do Bono’s—with scratchy, unrehearsed and modest rumble. After his last few projects, which happen to include, ahem, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, the Clinton Administration and Obama, (something called Not on Our Watch–ring a bell?) he was now on how way to save the Sudan. Unfortunately, for the first time, rebels had attacked the capital, Khartoum, our original destination. While the rebels know full well they could not overtake the government’s army, and its strictly a “symbolic” move, this detail may have seemed irrelevant (and unbearable) when we’d have found ourselves stuck in the desert for days due to transportation lockdowns and excessive checkpoints.
Crisis avoided.
Instead, we were about to enter Kenya. Goodbye birkas, hello baboons.
