Tuesday, April 2nd

It was Bubba’s fifth birthday on April 3rd, just a few days after my own third year anniversary of sorts. I got him a small Casio keyboard with a headset microphone. You can make the notes sound like almost anything–church organ, rock guitar, oboe…sort of… and set a tempo for he synth percussions–pop, classical, samba. Bubba took to it like a stylist to hair gel, and was very soon pouring his young heart out in an improvised, amplified croon “Baby, I wish I was here,” (the ultimate Zen love song?) to a perky bossa nova beat.

Bubba giving directions by walkie-talkie to the rest of the alien invasion force.

If the rechargeable batteries in my camera hadn’t taken a powder, you would find here pictures of the day I brought to Boo Boo’s class some African stuff and they sat on the floor of a darkened classroom, huddled around my lap top and the changing photos like it was the source of fire, Boo Boo leaning against me and whispering logistical directives to me. “We should show them the giraffe you brought me,” or lining up her classmates for their brief squat on the small, carved wooden stool, or cautioning Julie and Philip to be sooo careful with the Maasai spear. But since they did, you will have to take my word that it was the sweetest and best thing I did this time home, and that leaving grand kids is worse than a trip to the dentist after your dental insurance has expired and hearing that the best possible scenario is a root canal, and not getting that.

Thursday, April 4th

Yesterday found me, in the best of company, at the ball park, Giant’s opening day. Then Il Fornaio for dinner, and a late last minute foray to the Stonestown Galleria to try to find a pair of running shoes, and inspite of my mall phobia–mission accomplished. Today it’s row 21 seat A, to Chicago and then London and some reflective peripheral moving glint that had me turning quickly to look out the window and imagining that furry wing gremlin from Rod Serling’s world doing bad things at 33,000 feet. And tomorrow, Nairobi, with its cruelest roads and kindest people, and an eight acre parcel with ten thousand acacia trees in four perimeter- hugging rows, waiting for the now overdue long rains.

Chicago/O’Hare Airport

I’m padding around O’Hare, where I will spend exactly 1/6 of this day, in my new flip flops and an ancient cashmere sweater, among women in cardigans and the overpowering smell of baked goods. I’m writing with my new pen, a gift from the woman who sat next to me on the flight here, an Ohio State fan in mourning, and an employee of Hilman, the name engraved on the blonde wooden body of the pen, off to meet her husband and then to Singapore. The travel alert has ripened from yellow to orange today. A festive color. Tibetan prayer flags. Monks robes. Slight snow flurries on the other side of the floor to ceiling glass panes, like self-propelled super gnats, buzzing every which way.

Friday, April 6th

If there is an opening for the 2008 Olympic airplane sleeping team, I may have to put the project on hold and try out. I was up most all of Tuesday night packing, and Gabe woke me at 3:00am Wednesday morning to take me to SFO. I slept about two and a half hours of the SF to Chicago leg, exactly half of the eight hours from Chicago to London, and finished strong, logging a solid five of eight London To Nairobi.

I got a taxi at the airport, 2000ks, and was finally within reach. Just past Mlulongo, in a haze of midnight dust and diesel fumes, the traffic was stopped. Both ways. Dead. I got out. Two machine gunned soldiers, back lit in the headlight dust, walking towards us pointed to an overland route. A new crush of stopped cars, but some hope in the hilly dirt path. It’s hard to describe the scene. Pitch dark African night, dust everywhere, the headlights’ gleam dimmed as through murky water, huge trucks, all old and patched together, cars, matatus…stopped, no consensus direction, all trying to crawl over uneven hilly, soft ground. People out of vehicles walking every direction, diesel motors idling, absolutely no one in charge. We sought the narrow passage in the hourglass jam and were one car away from what seemed substantial progress when the small, old Mercedes in front of us got center pointed in the soft dirt hillock, the two left side tires completely free from earthly contact, the back one spinning like a gyroscope, the right rear burrowing like an aardvark, and soon safely buried. We got out and with a half dozen others jammed stuff under the aardvark wheel and rocked and pushed and tried to avoid the magnificent rooster tail arc of powder-fine dust. Our twenty year old Nissan with its inch and a half clearance was no match for this route. The summit attempt was a no go. We conferred with the half dozen cars on the Hillary Step behind us and we waddled and backed our way down in search of a passable route. I reached home sweet home just before midnight Nairobi time Thursday April 5th, having left the City at 6:15am Wednesday April 4th.

I spent the next day, Friday, in a dozen happy variations and repetitions of this conversation:

“Hello David!! How is it that side (In the US)?”

“Very well. All of your friends there greet you, and my family sends their greetings to you and your family”

“We have received them. Thank you very much.”
“We have missed you and can now be happy you have returned.”

“Thank you. I am happy to be here with you.”

“You are most welcome. Karibu.”

All this with generous hand shaking, sometimes hugging, and the European three-kiss howdy.

Saturday, April 7

I saw Joyce and Agnes yesterday, and, of course, the children there: Victoria, Christina, her sister, Kasavu, her brother, whom I had not met, Little Joyce, Annie, Josephine, and Kuvu, a new addition about Victoria’s age, and a charmer. I brought small gifts, laundry soap, protein powder for the youngster’s milk, a few clothes, and a pair of used shoes. I sat on a very low stool with a bad leg in the always darkened hut, most often in comfortable silence, broken by peek-a-boo induced laughter and the small news we could communicate. The unfiltered impulse I feel when Joyce looks right at me is to propose marriage, though she is seventy and much too pretty for the likes of me. So I resist.

The long rains have not yet come. They are now nearly a month late. The ten thousand acacia seedlings on the property are hanging in there, though if the rains don’t come this weekend we will begin to water them by hand, bucket by bucket on the eight acre perimeter. Gilbert, Wilson’s cousin and replacement in the project, has managed well in my long absence. Holding the fort. Julius, Peter and the other workers are well. Now with the dry weather, antelope are eating the leaves of the tiny trees nearest the fence at night. We will put the three acre plot under woven wire up to a one meter height in addition to the existing barbed wire to keep them safe. Julius trapped an antelope, and in the predawn hours our acacia thorn-in-the-side neighbor, David, trespassed and stole it from the snare. These are very small antelope, smaller than Thompson’s gazelles, but the meat is a prize. I found Julius and David arguing and settled the matter by telling David that he could keep the meat as an Easter present from me, and reminded him as I looked hard into his liar’s eyes and shook his antelope bloodied hand that Easter, on every calendar, comes only once a year.

Sunday, April 8

I awoke this Easter morning at 3:30am with thoughts of rebirth and love. It is exactly three years now since my diagnosis and the onslaught of treatments, and looking straight at odds that chase smart gamblers from the table; from the interminable vomiting and the months without eating or even swallowing, from the ICU and other things not fit to mention here. And for all of those nightmare layers piled on top of one another, the most vivid memory I have of that time is of being loved, by my family and friends, and those with me, and cared for in ways it is impossible to expect, but in your secret heart you might hope for.

And on top of that, I’ve been experiencing random moments of deep happiness for the first time after a very long dry spell. So I’ve got a big, fat, full Easter basket, and hope you do, too.

Why don’t we wind up this love fest with a little quiz on that subject. You can email your answers to me at:

dwsaunders@gmail.com

and the winner will get something very cool …like a Ferrari or a huge bag of Honey Mustard potato chips, and his or her name(s) published for all the world to see in the next journal entry, and probably a job offer from Harvard or Google for being such a smarty pants.

Here goes:

What do Ecalogue X (10), part of a series of poems by Virgil, a first century B.C. poet (and Dante’s guide), The Prioress’ Tale by Chaucer, one of the lesser known paintings by the 16th century Baroque painter, Carravagio, and a song from Deep Purple’s 1990 album, Masters and Slaves, all have in common?

Feel free to collaborate. There are plenty of cars and chips.

And inspite of this cup-overflowing goodness, the blog site where I post this questionable material is in the crapper, or at least our relationship is. I can’t upload the rest of the photos that make this fare palatable. I’ll try to have them up in a day or two, and will send a note to those of you on the notification list. If you want to get on that list, email me.

Pray for rain, or at least that a chunk of the polar ice cap, which seems to be heading south in installments, will come our way so we can cool the trees with it.

Yours in Kenya,

David

Posted on April 9th, 2007 by david
Filed under: David's Journal