Sunday, February 5

Today is my daughter Allison’s 26th birthday. She is in Virginia finishing her MBA and will graduate in May. She and her husband, Dave, will be coming to Africa after that. Allison for the second time. Happy Birthday, Bug.

I have a small ceramic ghost that she gave me (a part of our Halloween connection), which travels with me everywhere. He is on my bedside table. For company he has a Thomas the Train engine (D199) and an airplane from my grandson, Braden, a pink pretty pony and some rocks from my granddaughter, Baleigh, a picture of my older daughter, Amy, a small statue of St. Francis of Assisi that my aunt gave me, and some smooth, flat rocks that Sarita and I found at Rockaway Beach.

Monday, February 6

Today I was in Nairobi with Joseph and Tony all day, finalizing the banking situation, providing documents to Safari com, the cell phone company I am using and attempting to get PIN #s (Personal Identification Numbers) for Greg and I. I have been working very hard to get the deed, which has been stalled for months, transferred to us and now, after much progress, the next stage of the process was halted until I could secure the PIN# for Greg.

Joseph and I walked across much of City Center to get to Nairobi’s tallest building. A government building. In order to get Greg’s number we needed a copy of his passport. Greg has spent endless hours in the last several days trying to fax us a clear copy. More effort than you can imagine. It’s a good microcosmic example of how difficulties can get multiplied exponentially over distance and culture. Things that you could take care of before breakfast can take days here.

In any case, Joseph and I, were armed with a copy of Greg’s passport so faint that at first glance you could mistake it for for a blank piece of paper. The passport number even under the closest scrutiny was obscure, almost invisible. After going through a hand held metal detector which allowed me to pass with the substantial pocket knife that I always carry, Mr. Spyderco, to all his friends, we spoke with a woman at a desk who told us that the clear copy of Greg’s driver’s license, which I had brought with me, would work fine.

We filled out the two forms in a very crowded seating area in the grand foyer, improvising when necessary. The real fun began when we proceeded to the PIN# processing area. There were two counters: one with four stations for PIN#s and one with three for VAT- I’m not sure what that is. There were about fifty people crowded around the PIN counter and five or six at the VAT counter. A security guard kept trying to arrange people into several lines but as soon as he would go to another area the melting together would immediately begin. There was only one person behind the PIN# counter and the fifty or so of us crowded around were a line only in the same way that, say , people running for the exit in a theater fire are a line. It was very close quarters. So much so that the man behind me actually had his right foot ahead of my right foot.

I waited for half an hour without a single perceptible movement in the “line.” There were also about forty people to the left of us packed together in a seating area waiting for something. Another half hour and still nothing but the security guard and his reinforcement, who looked very much like a miniature David Robinson, arranging people every seven or eight minutes into lines. It was like trying to organize the small bergs in an ice flow.

Finally, Joseph managed to insinuate himself in front of the only person at the PIN# counter and ask her a question about the signature on Greg’s form. He came back to me and we sorted out the info. A man came to one of the other desks at the counter and there was a crush toward him, people waving their filled-out forms with stapled copies of their IDs at him like traders on the stock market floor, only much quieter. Kenyans are not loud, even in these circumstances.

He asked Joseph a question about Greg’s form, which he had inexplicably gotten out of the huge stack. I squeezed toward him. He said the driver’s license copy would not work. We needed the passport–not a copy, THE passport. I told him my partner was in the U.S. and that we were told that we could get a PIN# for him. He said we needed the passport. I felt the moment slipping away. He would surely turn his attention to someone more prepared and we would be swallowed again by the crowd and slowly digested. We showed him the “copy “ of Greg’s passport. He looked at me like I was crazy. The only mzungu in the whole crowd and this is what I had? Joseph was lobbying hard and suddenly the man pushed the copy toward me and told me to write the name and the passport number clearly on it. I did. Joseph and I had agreed on what we thought the numbers were. I gave it to him and we were dismissed.

Another half hour, now in the “waiting line.” Joseph heard my name called, and a few minutes later, Greg’s. And in our hands, two printed papers with two PIN numbers for two Americans. I find it impossible to accurately communicate the unlikelihood of this result coming out of the situation. But there it is, the first minor miracle of the project.

On the way back from Nairobi, two trees in the land between the opposing lanes of the road, their crowns filled with very large black and white Sacred Ibises, Perhaps seventy of them.

Tonight back at Lukenya I am lonely and seeing everything through the filter of sadness that attends it. The plain that stretches out to the Athi River and Nairobi and Kilimonbogo and has given me so much joy to look upon, tonight seems filled only with what I have lost. And the the limitless sky serves as surety that I will not regain it. Tomorrow, or at least some of its successors, will, no doubt, unfold differently, but tonight I am sitting here.

Posted on February 6th, 2006 by david
Filed under: David's Journal