I suppose you have begun to live in a place when you need a haircut. I looked in at the ReEunice Fine Touch Salon in the neighborhood, but the only person there was a young guy whose eagerness to have a go at muzungu hair was matched only by the lack of confidence he inspired in me. He held up his electric clippers, but drew a blank when I made the scissors motion. I asante sana-ed my way out.

I was in Machakos day before yesterday, Tues. 13, waiting for Leah from the Child Life Trust. I purposely got there early to look around. The countryside is beautiful. Red, red Kenyan soil, big hills, sides terraced like China or Nepal. I roamed into a barber shop and they shook their heads when I did my Edward Scissorhands routine. Finally I asked a couple of women siting outside a store. Near Barclay’s Bank. OK. Now we’re getting somewhere. I climbed an outside stairway to get to the Executive Barber Shop and Mini Pub. The combination seemed at once civilized and a little scary. Did I want a barber with his combs disinfecting in a pint of Tusker?

I entered the shop, a man sitting in the barber chair, a couple of people waiting. One business man, suited, a nine or ten year old boy, chubby, spoiled seeming. It was now in for a penny in for a pound. I knew I wasn’t going down those stairs unshorn. I took off my Giants hat and sat down. No scissors in sight. Five minutes later a man walked in and motioned for me to take the empty barber chair. I indicated that the suited man was first. He politely said he was waiting for the other barber. Great.

I sat down and started the scissors routine all over again. He at least produced a pair from a drawer. They looked more suited for construction paper than hair. I asked if I could get a beer. He said,”No, after.” OK, I figured I’d need it more then anyway. I told him what I wanted, and it wasn’t anything like the twenty five numbered photos on the sample poster. He said,”No problem. ”After a quick mental inventory of worst case scenarios, I began to relax. It was, after all, a renewable resource.

He buzzed away and clipped with the dull scissors and did OK. When he was done he indicated that I should head over to the hair washing sink. I tried to decline, he insisted. It was a package deal. An attractive young Kenyan woman sat me down and tilted my head back into the notch in the maroon sink and started the first of three successive washes, rinses and scalp massages. This was more like it.

There were three framed prints high on the wall all angled down so that my view of them while being scrubbed and rubbed was perfect. On the left was a picture of a white dove landing in a martini glass filled with green liquid, a green olive and a magic wand. Something special was happening, because the glass had broken and the liquid and olive were every which way. It wasn’t evident to me what was being advertised.

The one to the right was Beyoncee, dressed in a few silver beads. That one didn’t suffer any language or cultural barrier. The middle was a chimpanzee in a hawaiian shirt sitting on a makeshift crapper with his little leopard print chimp pants down around his ankles, reading the paper in what looked like the set of Gilligan’s Island. The caption said,”Don’t just sit there do something.”

After the ablutions, the woman took me to the now empty barber chair and started anointing my hair with various things and tracing the outline of my scalp and rubbing hard enough that I began to believe she thought she might be able to rearrange things a little. Not that my cranium couldn’t stand some internal reconfiguration, I just wasn’t sure this was the time or place. I paid 300 schillings, about four dollars, and walked down the stairs of the Executive Barber Shop and Mini Pub feeling pretty darned good.

After a long delay, I met Leah and we went to Mr. Omolo’s office, the head man at the District Children’s Office in Machakos. He is a gem of an official, serious, dedicated, smart and effective. To my left was a side table stacked tall with folders and papers. The thick well-worn, legal sized manilla folder folder on top had “Abandoned Babies” written in blue ink across the front. We talked about the project for a long time, and he told me what I needed to do to get the foundation laid for our being able to care for children at our orphanage. To that effect I am in the process of creating an overview plan, complete with the specific elements we hope to incorporate, both in the physical setting, the academic setting and the psychological/spiritual aspects of our evolving vision of the orphanage to submit to him next week.

While the three of us were talking about the serious nature of the problems that exist and the work to deal with them, Leah happened to mention that the day before she had rescued three boys, ages 13, 10 and 8, who had been sold to coffee growers by their families for 70,000 Kenya schillings each. The money for one of the boys had already been delivered to the family when Leah intervened and threatened all involved with exposure and jail time, and probably a sound whupping personally delivered. She is a dynamo. Before leaving the office, Leah had Mr. Omolo give me his mobile phone number so I could contact him at any time. Wednesday, the day after we spent the afternoon together she was at the State House (Kenyan White House) with President Kibaki being honored with six others named to a National Advisory Board for Children’s Care.

After that meeting, I walked up the road to see Mary Musyoka who runs Springs Of Hope, a rescue center for very small children (ages 0 through 6) who have been seriously abused or neglected and referred to her by the authorities. You should meet Mary. Tall, big-boned, beautiful large hands. The entire time we talked, she was holding Peace, a baby in a bright yellow dress whose birthday is one day before mine. This year on my birthday, she was lying outside a factory in Athi River in the rain, her umbilicus and placenta still connected. A clot formed in the cord and kept her from bleeding to death, Mary said. A security guard noticed something the next morning in the heap of trash there and had a closer look.

Peace has been with Mary since then and Mary says she has been very peaceful. I’m sorry I don’t have a picture of them, but I will.

Neighborhood highlights.

Last Sunday, walking back from Mary Mount Chapel, someone greeted me from behind. The voice was Cyndi Lauper, but the person was Nadie, one of the girls from the Kilimanjaro Girls School who had seen me at church. We hadn’t met, but she took quick care of that and I was immediately answering questions about myself and California life. Nadie and her two friends, Janet and Sylvia, who had joined us, seemed certain that everything worth having and everything worth doing was there, in California, and that some day they would visit, in the U.S., America. When we parted, they called to me to send their greetings to two guys who work at the Getaway.

I stopped by on my walk to the property to sit with Purity for a while. She owns the clothing shop I showed your earlier. I asked her what she was reading. She showed me the cover. It was a book on preparing for marriage. I asked her if she was engaged. No. She was learning so that when God willed she would be ready. We talked for a long time.

Just before sunset, a couple of days ago, I was walking down the dirt road where I live with my Masai stick. I came across Esaiah and John, who were laboring down the road balancing a chicken coop upside down on a very rickety wheelbarrow. I joined up, taking the vacant position on the left side. It was heavy, well over two hundred pounds. We took turns at the wheelbarrow, and bumped the coop about a kilometer down the road.

On the way, Esaiah asked me these things:

“Theez reevah, Mee see see pee. Ees eet een Cah lee foh nee ah?”

“No,” I said,”It is in the middle of the U.S. Very far away.”

“Lowz Njellez, ees eet een U.S.?”

“Yes. It’s in California where I live, but still very far away.”

“Theez mahn, Hah neld Shots een aga, ees hee ded?”

“No,” I said, “He is alive. He is the Governor of California. Where I live.”

Disbelief and hilarity overcame him and we almost lost control of wheelbarrow and coop.

We got down and up the last ditch and deposited the coup at the right house. I didn’t have my camera then, but I came back this evening to get a picture of it.

Now that there is green grass, the Masai herders are making their way back home. A few days ago, I walked in the evening to the property to see David who is staying there and found a group of Masai herders overnighting there. They were coming from Thika, and were making their way back home about 100 kilometers away. A number of calves had been born the day before. Many to mothers who were still very weak, and at least one to a mother who hadn’t made it. The owner of the herd was Lante’. a dignified and friendly man who said he had been praying for rain.

Here are some pictures of them and the herd.

This is the path from the road to the property, looking quite different from a couple of weeks ago.

One of the two day old calves.

Part of the herd.

This cow is being urged to nurse the brown calf as well as her own blak one. This man was very patient with her, calling her back in cow language when she would move away from the brown calf. Finally he put his fingers in her nostrils and held her so the one day old whose mother had died could nurse.

This herder was very reluctant to have his picture taken. It took having everyone else’s taken and shown to him on the digital screen before he wanted his spirit captured in that little box.

This is the campfire for cooking. The pot on the fire is tea, which they take before dinner. The big one on the ground has braised cabbage with tomatoe and onion. They will cook the ugali, the corn flour staple after the tea is boiled. The litte dog is Bobi, but for some reason I think of him/her(?) as Mr. Underhill. He has been staying at the property.

This is Lante, the owner of the herd. He has a son named David. We talked for a long time about the drought, how he had to sell over a hundred of his cattle, a very last resort for the Masai. He was full of dignity and courtesy.

I was at the property Saturday and David, who has been staying there, and his friend had gathered the inner shoots from sisao plants there and were stripping the fibers from the pulp of the plant. Here is Daniel doing that. He took one shoot, scraped it between the stick he is holding and a small piece of wood underneath it, which is just barely visible. He scraped one half of it four time, and then turned it around and scraped the half he had been holding on to, again four times, and then he had a perfect strand of off-white fibers. He tied a slip knot in the end, tossed it on the pile, and grabbed another shoot.

In a short time, he had this very beautiful pile of ready to use sisao fibers. To begin, you grab a strand put the short end near the slip knot in your mouth and tug hard to untie it. When one of the three strands starts getting short, you pick up another strand, tug it open, and braid it right in with the existing three.

This is David braiding the fibers into a three strand rope, to use for tethering a sheep.

This is also David braiding the fibers into a three strand rope. Mine didn’t get long enough to tether a desmond. But it’s hanging on my closet door handle nonetheless.

I wrestled with the download/upload powers again tthis morning and got most of what I wanted in. One small step for…

I’m getting killed in my picks for the NCAA tournament. My brother Bob lured me in. You would think that Iowa could beat Northwestern State in the first round, wouldn’t you?

So long from the Lukenya hills.

David

Posted on March 18th, 2006 by david
Filed under: David's Journal