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.
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