February 23-24

For the last three weeks or so I have been taking virtually all of my meals with George, the fifteen year old son of the new assistant manager here at Lukenya. He’d hunt me up whereever I was and tell me it was time to eat. He left for a new boarding school yesterday at Gil Gil, a mining town. George is smart, very funny, loves basket (basketball) and has been very good company. Typically, I eat alone, only occasionally joining a group that’s here for a conference or a team building retreat or something. I don’t mind, but I got pretty used to hearing about George’s friends in Mombasa, where he grew up, how far out in the sticks this place is, how bad the food is at boarding school, all in the beautiful accent common to most Kenyans speaking English.

Bitter is “bee-tah”, dinner is “dee-nah.” Against becomes the three syllable “a-ge-nest.” It’s not possible is “eets-note-poe-see-bl.” And describing a particularly thunderous dunk he threw down on his NBA video game, “Dee-nah ees su-ved!” I miss him already.

My aunt’s funeral was Thursday the 23rd in Stockton. There seems to be a lot of parting and loss lately. The generations turn, the peeling away and the inexorable grinding toward the edge. It’s difficult to be apart from family now, and the feeling of isolation is always within easy reach here.

The work here has been beset with paralyzing delays in the search to establish clear title and exactly how the property we are buying is zoned, whether there is Land Control Board approval for the subdivision, etc.. Lawyer delays, clerk delays, filing delays, bureaucratic delays. You get the picture. It is at times maddening. At other times it’s just Africa. I have a meeting with the lawyer and clerk on Monday. I’ll keep you posted.

This morning just after my cell/only phone mysteriously quit working when I had seven or eight important calls that needed immediate attention, and I hadn’t heard from someone I was hoping to, I was walking back to my room looking for something to stick my head under, when a beautiful little yellow and brown bird flew onto the branch of a sapling not two feet from my eyes. He literally threw back his head and started singing his song. It didn’t seem like a particularly happy song, but he was letting loose. I stopped and we were eye to eye for a long while. He was a northern grosbeak canary as it turns out.

When you have one of those flying dreams and you wake up wishing you were a bird, before you make a blanket request and some up-to-no-good genie takes advantage of you, be sure to eliminate Marabou stork from your list.

Think of the ugliest person you know, your homliest relative. That tall, gangly great uncle, all joints and splotchy skin, a few long wisps of widely-spaced, nearly translucent white hair, a turkey neck, and a bad disposition to boot. Now imagine him at the moment of his expiration, having finally succumbed to consumption and the gout. Picture the death mask of that miserable soul, stick a few feathers on the body, and –boom– a Marabou stork.

These giants soar over Nairobi, their stick legs trailing straight out behind them, like they weren’t really invited. There are a couple of trees on the outskirts where fifty or more of these ugly pteradactyls perch, standing straight up in the top flat branches.

And just so you don’t think this is personal with me, I’ll quote from the Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa , Stevenson and Fawshane, pg. 30, “ Huge stork with grey wings and white underparts (not underpants) naked head and neck pink or reddish showing scabby black spots at close range…Legs dark grey but often appear white as spattered with excrement (!!)…gatherings of hundreds are common…at rubbish dumps and predator kills.” And brace yourself for the worst visual ever “…breeding birds give a wide range of bleating, grunting and squealing noises…” Hey, I’m just reporting this stuff. These garbage- gulping, self-soiling monstrosities are definitely not who you want delivering the swaddling bundle to the chimney top.

Believe me, these are the prom pictures. They’re less handsome in person.

I took my pants to get mended yesterday. Mary did it while I waited. Yes, I was wearing other pants at the time. Ten minutes and ten schillings ( about 15 cents) later I was gone. I tore the pants again in a different spot the next day taking this picture of a giraffe.

This guy was a lot closer than he looks here.

This group of zebras was down the road, just as the sun was setting. If you look carefully, there is a little head sticking out from the haunch of the third zebra from the right–it looks like a tail. I have seen this colt since he was about two days old, just like Ginger in Wales.

Look at the magnificent schnozz on this grey headed kingfisher. Another one of my neighbors. I have seen all of these critters, and a lot more I can’t get pictures of–eland, antelope,etc.–on my before dinner walks. I have the fantasy that the giraffes are getting to know me.

I would have published his entry a couple of days ago, but we had a rare lightning storm and it took a big byte out of the internet here for a while.

I just found out that if you click on the pictures they get big. No doubt you wizards already knew this, but no one told me. The zebra picture is worth enlarging.

Keep those cards and letters coming.

David

PS Have the Sopranos started yet?

Posted on February 24th, 2006 by david
Filed under: David's Journal