Some people have that fiber of curiosity that helps knit the world together for them. They’re the ones who finally break in through the neighbor’s back door and find her calmly decomposing on the sofa with the Price Is Right for company eight days after she was last seen. That heartland yearning for neighborly connection extends to the living, even those living far, far away, and has prompted some of you to want a peek behind the curtain into the day-to-day goings on in my little dot on google earth. So, always anxious to please, I’ll try, like Virgil, to lead you through a pretty typical couple of days, beginning Friday afternoon, last.

I walked to the reception area of the Getaway, where I live, and Eva gave me some mail, I think the second piece I have received. This was in a thin plastic Fed-Ex-like envelope, 8.5” by 11.5.” I sliced it open in that beautiful way that a very sharp knife glides through this stuff, and found two pages slathered with manufactured outrage, shock, litigious language and invective, and no homemade cookies.

An architect whom I had not hired and whose proposal I had not yet accepted or rejected, presented me with a 281,000 kenya shilling bill for his work, about $4000.00 US. I tossed it on the bed, grabbed my binoculars and stuck the camera in my pocket. I had a walk to take that I had been looking forward to for a couple of days. I fussed an fumed internally and if the hard truth is required, out loud for about the first mile of the of the walk. You know, rehearsing the imaginary encounter between us. Picking all the good players for my team: objective truth, common sense, ethical behavior, sanity, and leaving him to try guard my first string with fabricated indignation, bluster, peacock display and feigned disbelief.

I was a pretty good ways down the two track dirt road out back when I came to my senses and finally looked up. There were the zebras. Like many neighbors, they are nosy and mildly distempered. They show me their striped backsides in unison and then the stallions snort and fuss and I tell them I live here too so get over yourselves.

Before they could complain further the elands showed up. These magnificent cave paintings, calm and dove grey, tawny flanked, require good behavior wherever they are. These largest African antelopes, both sexes with spiraled horns, a stroke of jet behind their knees, are a tonic, a digestive for the unsettled.

I felt and kept the peace and moved on. A few wildebeests (“wild beasts” to Kenyans), some Thompson’s gazelles, a couple of antelopes and a distant gathering of hartebeests later, I rounded a turn and saw Ginger. She is one of the group of giraffes I have come to know, a little, from a distance, at their insistence. They are by my reckoning, eleven. Four adults, four teenagers and three preschoolers. Ginger is in the last group. She is almost as pretty as Boo Boo.

And since she isn’t allowed to go out on a Friday afternoon by herself, I smoothed down my cow lick, quietly renounced the zebra vibe, and made myself presentable. I think it worked. They were standoffish, but seemed to appreciate the effort I had made. (You can see one hiding in the trees on the far right).

The fewer words here the better, probably.

All the photos of the eleven were taken within a few minutes of each other, some back lit by the setting son, some away from it.

You know the “Foot Prints” poem/poster you see. Well if it was a sandy dirt road instead of a beach, and instead of Jesus’ foot prints next to yours you saw a giraffe’s, it would look just like this.

Here’s what the sky had to say on the way home about my fussing and fuming and acting like a zebra.

Saturday

I worked most of the day on the “white paper” for the project, and tried to nail down appointments and coordinate transportation and timing for the trip into Nairobi on Monday, and by the afternoon I somehow had forgotten much of the instruction of the elands and the sky, and so I was in a bit of a state, again. I decided after work to walk to Joyce’s. I had visited once since my return, but she was gone to Athi River at the time.

She and Agnes and Josephine and Victoria and Joyce Junior were all there. Joyce asked, through Agnes, if I had brought her the mobile phone back from America that “I had promised her.” I laughed so hard that she started laughing, and that was about all the answer any of us needed. We settled into our rhythm of sitting and talking and translating and laughing and catching up on the news. Yes, my daughter’s graduation was very grand. All my family greets you. Yes, I miss them so much already. The weather in California was very hot.

Miriam, little Joyce’s mother, got a job at Prima Rosa and she and little Joyce are living with Joyce and Victoria and Agnes and Kristina and Josephine. Joyce’s arm has been sick so she hasn’t made any baskets. Josephine has been well after a sick spell. Kristina is going to school in Athi River.

Joyce sang some songs and told me she wants me to come back when we can all sing and dance together. She has more than a little twinkle in her seventy years eyes.

Agnes and Josephine

Victoria, seeing herself on video camera, first time.

I walked from Joyce’s to the property where Wilson and David were busy clearing stumps, and the pugnacious scrub acacia. Wilson has been working hard for about five months on the land. He has slashed the whole five acres of thigh high grass after the spring rains with a machete-like tool, saved and bundled it to be used for mulch when we plant, removed dozens of stumps like this one with a pick, an axe and a hoe, wrestled the tough acacia from the land, planted about fifty trees, bottle brush and good acacia, protected the property from intruders and hyenas, looked after Trip, the best crazy dog in Lukenya, and done it with unfailing good cheer and equanimity. He earns more than than most laborers, about two hundred dollars a month and has sent three quarters of his earnings home every month to pay for his younger sister’s school fees. He has been accepted to Moi University in November to study nursing and possibly medicine, but the $1700 per semester fees are very far out of his reach, and ours, at this point.

This is Wilson’s house and cooking area.

I walked back home, had a late dinner and went to my room. I remembered that I had a bottle of Guinness in its third or fourth week of exile in my closet. I ferretted it out. Improvised an opener. Got my new paperback copy of The Brothers Karamazov and sprawled on the bed. A Guinness that has been bottled, traveled some thousands of miles, moldered in a warehouse, a store shelf and a closet, bares the same relationship to the original — say a pint drawn at Waxy O’Connor’s or the Black Lion in Lampeter — as a strawberry soda does to a strawberry. But I remember summer days in cutoffs in peach tree shade, when in my knowing, nothing was better than strawberry soda.

This has gone on longer than I planned, so I will give you all a reprieve here and will revisit with Sunday and Monday in a couple of days, but before I go, I want you to know that Gabriel, my godson, has joined me here, and will stay for three months to work on the project with me. So, the Mzungu scenery in the photos should improve dramatically.

Here’s Gabe and I riding out an unexpected downpour at Joyce’s.

and Gabe with some of Mary’s rescued kids in Machakos.

See you a little further down the road,

David and Gabe

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