This is the pot luck journal entry, a few casseroles, some jello, gooey desserts, the one really good thing gone before you get there.

I revisited Mary Musyaoka at Springs of Hope in Machakos. Met all the kids this time. We talked and took the cook’s tour of the house. The children here are the victims of extreme abuse and/or neglect and have been rescued by the authorities and brought to Mary. 0-6 years old. I’m not going to use specific names here.

Part of Mary’s crew, checking me out.

This little girl has an umbilical hernia, and may need heart surgery.

This little guy, right under the rabbit is two years old. He looks about four or five months. He was tethered by his right arm and right leg to a bed all day everyday, and left in the care of his three year old sister. His bones never quite formed right because of extreme inactivity. He can just now manage to sit upright, but that’s it. I had a better picture of him, but for some reason, a number of the pictures I took here were very blurry, and I couldn’t use them.

This is the picture I promised from last visit.

Here’s a pretty peaceful face.

Mary has had this guy for a few weeks. He was even smaller before.

On the way to Machakos, I passed through Katelembo. The people were enlarging, by manual excavation and carrying, the water reservoir there. This basin catches the water from these hills to the west. At a distance this was like looking at a human ant farm, everyone carying a sack or basket of dirt up and over the ridge, dumping it there and returning in the never ending conveyor line.

The elevation here in Lukenya is about 6000 feet, and so the sun has real burning power even with the temperature almost always in the mid-eighties, not to mention the gaping rip in the ozone layer just below the equator where we are. I had been a little lax about my sun screen application, and a couple of small dark spots bloomed on my tribe two face. Given my carcinomatic tendencies I was about as happy as you were when your third cousins from Missouri announced that they were headed to Disneyland and Universal Studios and would make time to swing a little north for a nice long visit.

I got the name of a plastic surgeon, a distinguished, elderly Italian gentleman as it turned out.It was he who informed me that I was in tribe two of seven. Seven is the negroid tribe and tribe one is your albinos. I figured I should have made tribe three, but no. He examined every mole, blemish, brown spot, red spot, and gave them each their appropriate medical designation, thumbed through my scalp looking for any forested bad guys, talked of Ostia, his home region in Italy, Tuscany and Umbria, where we have both spent some time, quoted Dante to me in Italian, bemoaned his newly game leg (broken in the shower at the gym), and encouraged the orphanage effort. And so we passed a very pleasant half hour. The only real difference between us was that he had his clothes on and every stitch of mine was hanging on the hook on the back of the door. I think the only similar doctor encounter I have had was when Dr. Pulas spanked me into my then new life at the midpoint of the last century. I got a large straw hat that day and an all-over clean bill of epidural health.

Fr. D’Agostino and Sister Mary of the Nyumbani Project and I went the University of Nairobi to see acouple of acquaintances of theirs and to look into a method of construction called “rammed earth.” Basically you mix soil with a little sand or quarry dust, a very small amount of cement, sprinkle it with water so it just gets damp, shovel about a 200 centimeter layer into a metal form, compress it with easy strokes from heavy mallets for a while, repeat the process a few times, release the forms, and you have a very strong section of wall. They are making their own buildings using this method. When plastered, it is indistinguishable from a plastered quarried rock wall. The Great Wall of China was made this way, so there is some expectation of permanence. That’s Father D’Agostino next to the wall

Here are a few random things I have noticed about Kenyans in general.

They don’t sneeze. Until yesterday I had never heard a Kenyan sneeze. There was one time at dinner here when I wheeled around just after the fact to see, but here was a muzungu at the table so it wasn’t a confirmed Kenyan sneeze. It’s no wonder that no one blesses me when I uncork one of my ground shakers. They just don’t get any practice.

They also don’t spit much. Only one verified sighting so far, and that was a woman carrying a swaddled baby.

I’ve been in a lot of crowded places where people were packed together for a good while, and not once encountered the olfactory evidence of beans for lunch. And Kenyans eat more than their fair share of beans.

People here do not talk to themselves–ever. Maybe it’s from spending so much time in San Francisco, where solo speech is a fine art, practiced everywhere, and not just by those folks Reagan liberated during his stint as govenator and their progeny. I realized the other day that I sort of missed the the energy, the buzz of it.

I have never seen an African woman smoke. And relatively speaking, not all that many men. For one thing, most folks here simply can’t financially support a tobacco habit.

I have come to envy African feet. Generally wider, flatter, leathery soled, so solid and functional. I feel like I have bird feet by comparison, fragile, tempermental, and requiring special treatment.

Kenyans are champion benders. All farming and gardening tools, spades, hoes, picks, etc., have very short handles. The kind that would send me hobbling to the chiropractorafter in fifteen minutes. And they use them all day, everyday, under no compulsion. They could use long handles, but choose not to. And as for squatting, forget it. There is no time limit. This spoon, fashioned with a machete (panga) was done in a single effortless squat.

I spent last Sunday morning and early afternoon at Nyumbani with Fr. D’Agostino and the kids. A beautiful mass in the school building with ninety seven kids belting out all the songs.

I was sitting alone outside afterwards and Moses came and sat next to me. We shot the breeze for a few minutes and then he took his leave. I had been in a bit of a funk for a while and got a good dose of de-funking being around the kids.

This is Moses who helped coax me out of my own personal wilderness.

This is Purity who had won a contest with her unicorn drawings. Her prize was a poster of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe movie. We had a discussion about unicorns and wings. I was pretty sure they always had them, but couldn’t swear to it. She thought maybe just when they got older.

Here’s Paul. He came and sat down next to me on the porch of one of the small houses.

We started taking photos of one another. You can see I had a lot more to work with than he did.

After that I asked Paul if he would draw a picture of me sitting there. I forget if I’m Beavis or Butthead, but I’m pretty sure it’s one of them. You can get some idea of my recent haircut from the portrait.

Things are coming along at the property while we are awaiting the deed transfer. Wilson lives now in the small shelter there. Here he is digging the first of a million holes we will dig for planting trees.

The family at the property now includes this little troublemaker. Mr. Underfoot/Tripper/Trip. Formal name by me. Real, usable name by Sarita. I’m pretty sure now it’s a girl, so the long name makes even less sense.

A rare non biting something moment.

For a couple of days we had this visitor. He declined to come out for the family photos. In fact he left the family moments after the shoot. He stayed around just long enough to pee all over me.

Wilson who has no fear of the hyenas that cruise around at night was very skittish near Grandpa Tortoise.

Here’s a few things the sky has been up to lately.

I email everyone on a list when I finally get around to posting a new journal entry. If you don’t have enough interruptions in your life and would like to add this one, you can.

Also, some folks have been wondering about emailing me, personally. You can.

To satisfy either or both of these inclinations you can find me at dwsaunders@gmail.com

Yours for bug free living,

David

PS I hear Uncle Junior shot Tony.

Posted on March 28th, 2006 by david
Filed under: David's Journal