the travel buddy

I often find travel buddies with similar temperaments and backgrounds to mine. But one day, I found myself traveling with a Chinese lady for a day - in Accra.

I don't take so many pictures these days. I don't know if that's me or just having traveled a lot. But she took many. We kept stopping so that she could. Even in places where photography was prohibited.

I think what surprised me the most was the kinds of questions she asked. At the Kwame Nkrumah memorial museum, she was surprised to learn that he was married to an Egyptian. Really? They allowed that? Yes, he was very Pan-African. In China, you can't work for government if you are married to a foreigner. You would have to resign.

We went to a crafts market where there were several nativity scene sets. What is this? she'd asked. It's the nativity scene. What nativity? Baby Jesus in the manger with his parents and the three kings. Ohh....

Africans are very tactile compared to Asians. At the market, they would keep reaching for her, which kept flustering her, stop touching me, she'd say...

I was otherwise unaware of all these things until I met her...

getting married

marriage and weddings but weddings mostly are a reckoning. a reckoning of relationships with his family, with your family, with him... maybe even with yourself...

in a social gathering many couples agreed that they wouldn't have a wedding again. why? it's childish! they mused. is it?

the wedding is theirs, the marriage is yours, i kept hearing as the wedding planning began. and it was true. or at least partly. the marriage could be theirs as well. we'll have to see...

how much do you assert yourself with a new family? how much does it portend for the future?

would i do it again? have a big wedding? not likely. could i have done it any differently? i don't think i could've.

like the end of bad relationships, i feel like i went through a war. where everything comes to a head. a meeting of cultures and personalities and traditions but mostly personalities. and by the end of it i was exhausted and broke and disappointed and a little less innocent or childlike or dreamy.

another induction into adulthood.

winter in warsaw

i have never fathomed traveling to poland and yet here i am in poland. in one of those intensive workshops that give you no opportunity to see anything about the place other than the hotel room.

so i'm not so disappointed.

i did try to be a little bit of a tourist though and attempted to book an evening city tour. they had many options: the jewish tour, the communist tour... in lovely classic Nysa 522s but they were only available on weekends and i was traveling back then.

and so i compensated by over-eating everything that was particularly polish and by "engaging" with local poles by messaging with my tinder swipes... or not. of course i didn't understand i thing they were saying in polish!

i thought of my one pole friend - who hasn't lived in poland for awhile - so i didn't try to call her.

it felt like russia to be honest.

it's the first time i ever really thought about eastern europe, about what life might have been like during communism. about the fickleness of nationalities. one of the conference girls i ended up spending a lot of time with, hates the question "where are you from?" she tells me her grandmother's nationality changed three or four times in her lifetime and yet she never moved.

when her grandmother was a little girl, it was called the austro-hungarian empire, and then czechoslovakia after world war 1 and then slovakia in '93. it was called the slovak republic under nazi germany and czechoslovakia under soviet rule and each time they were forbidden from speaking certain languages.

and so she doesn't feel much for nationality in much the same way her grandmother doesn't.

and i found this amusing, being a nomad who never grew roots too deep to find that even when you do, your surroundings can change so much and so frequently they render you the nomad.

being in san francisco

so america keeps trying to convince me that its food is real. real beef! the ads say, real milk!... which makes me wonder, what this food otherwise is?!

"grass fed beef" says one menu. "farm-grown potatoes" boasts a crisps packet. do cows not otherwise eat grass? are potatoes not otherwise grown on farms?

but i like san francisco so far. i like the visual treat of both the new and old. it IS beautiful and people are friendly. and i like the paper toilet seat covers and use them every time.

i know that i could be doing a lot of touristy things. but instead i've been enjoying spending time with migrant locals. living through their years of immigrant experiences vicariously through summarised reflections of what moving to america has meant for them, watching san francisco evolve and gentrify.

the american dream both is and isn't. it IS amazing that you can be whatever it is that you want to be, especially in a place as culturally diverse as san francisco. but if you don't achieve your dream, then it really isn't worth it living in the states - i don't think. you end up in a vicious cycle of making ends meet, staying stuck. too stuck to leave. and too stuck to enjoy staying. but for those who make it, i can understand why they would never want to leave.

coming to san francisco

the last time (and first time) i was in san francisco, i was 15, it was the end of a millennium and there were grand speculations about how the world was going to end.

i went with family and stayed with family and don't remember much besides eating and shopping.

the woman next to me on the plane told me that it was beautiful but i don't think i had much of a concept of the beauty of cities then and so i just took her word for it.

16 years later, i'm here again, this time for work and i appreciate it much more both as someone who has traveled and as someone who has grown roots. i care about the history and character of a city and it's exciting to be in a place that has changed exponentially.

in the late 90s, my cousin had gotten into the gaming industry straight out of high school. little did anyone know that that was to define the city and that the city was to define the world of technology.

everyone here works in tech, my friend says, at dinner as she explains who around the table works where. and true enough, everyone either has a start up or is innovating, or is working for a tech firm in some way or form... except laura from new york who makes a living suing people for some magnetic device she "invented".

we go out to a club after dinner and everyone is super friendly and quite polite and i wonder if this is typically san franciscan. everyone here goes to burning man, my friend explains, which is a week long party in the desert.

during the day we had gone window shopping and site seeing and she had told me all about the kinds of things san franciscans like, which is just about everything. there are themed parties for themed parties' sake. there is innovation for innovation's sake. but there are more non san franciscans in san francisco than san franciscans because people leave. the streets are becoming gentrified. and there is so much money people don't know what to do with, they get high and don't commit.

i do notice that people in the club range from 30 - 50.

it's never-ever land. we don't grow up.

it is fun in the club and the light shows are mesmerising and the people around me seem to be in good spirits not necessary because they're high (although i did learn later that there was a lot of coke going round) but simply because they want to have fun and fun seems to be a necessary part of living in san francisco.

but amidst all this fun which i'm happy to have for the time that i'm here, i think that i wouldn't want to stay in never-ever land. and that there is something sad about not evolving.

Baringo

We're going to the former president's home, a place touched by his priority for education, evidenced by the schools on every bend but equally silenced by his intolerance for dissent. So much so that the only civil society that existed there for awhile was environmental. So much so that it was only when he left power that his people finally admitted that they were hungry.

I don't know how much of it is my own feeling or whether there really is a sense of loss in Kabarnet for the days when their man was in power. Every election cycle is fraught with the question of alliances and front-runners and in a country divided by ethno-political power and memory, the question I feel on their lips or anyone's lips who has not yet tasted power is whether and when it will be their time (again).

-------------

We arrive in Kabarnet, five hours after leaving Nairobi and in the evening when we take dinner I notice the homogeneity of colour and laugh at the irony of what is black in Nairobi being brown in the Rift Valley.

Trips to UG

The last time I landed in Entebbe, they herded us like goats into lines to submit forms declaring that we did not have ebola. 

"This is very serious!" they cautioned us, as if to justify how much more inefficient their immigration services had become as a result of the crisis.

And then they sprayed us with hand sanitiser and let us go. 

-----------------

Uganda always reminds me of Rwanda: the hills upon which the cities are built, the militarised state...

"What do you think about when you think of Uganda?" my colleague asked me. 

"Idi Amin."

He laughed, "but that was so long ago!"

"And greenness and bananas." I compensated. 

"We are a democracy now."

"What is the ratio between the ruling party and the opposition?"

"About 70:30?"

"Wow, that's a big difference."

"Yeah but the Vice-President is running this time. I think he has a good chance of winning."

"Is he really independent?"

"Well, come to think of it, he hasn't officially denounced the party."

"Do you think maybe he could just be alternating like Putin and Medvedev?"

"Maybe. I wouldn't put it past them."

Second hand things

I collect furniture, no thanks to the addictive nature of OLX. And so my house is a collection of once owned pieces by people in some form of transition.

But I also collect the stories behind them and with each item, I am always surprised by the experience.

This is how my house came together:

1. The sofa and dining table

A woman seemed to be selling her whole house on OLX. Almost everything a house would consist of was for sale. But I liked her sofa most and the matching dining table. Both, dark brown wood and dark brown suede or something similar to suede (you never know these days). We agreed on a price for both and I came with a truck. Are you leaving the country? No, I'm getting married. Wow! That's great! Congratulations!

"He wasn't going to marry me, you know. After a year of living together, he said he didn't feel the need to get married. Why? I asked him, because you get all the wifey benefits? And so I moved out! I bought all this furniture and restarted my life. A little while later, he proposed. And now I'm moving back in and selling all of this."

And so she sold me both for half the price she bought them for. "I want to pass on some of my good luck," she said. 

2. The coffee table

I liked the table. 

As it looked small enough to fit in my car, I organised a time to go and pick it up.

She showed me the things she was selling, the things that were already sold and the things she was leaving behind. "I've pretty much sold everything I wanted to," she started. "We're going back with just two suitcases each... aren't we?" She looked at her daughter. A five year old with big hair and big eyes, swinging her legs from the stool that she sat on as she watched us transact. 

"We're excited to go, aren't we?"

"Yes!" She exclaimed with all the ignorance of what it would mean. 

"My marriage is not working. I couldn't find work here. It just got too much. So now we're going back. I'll go back to my old job. If I didn't have her, maybe I'd be travelling elsewhere. But she has to go to school you know!" she joked and I laughed. They looked like a cute pair.

"I'm afraid, you know. I didn't think I would be doing this."

And so I assured her, as much as a stranger can, standing halfway between the door and the living room until we had run out of as much of the casual conversation you can have at eight in the morning before someone goes to work. 

And then we picked up the coffee table - a piece of wrought iron and wood that was the entry point for her to seek confidence in a stranger and we carried it down the stairs and set it down in my backseat. And then we hugged like we knew each other and parted ways. 

3. The carpet

It was an explosion of blue - my favourite colour and even if I thought it might not go with my brown-coloured living and dining room, I just had to see it.

"I lost my job," she says. "If you know of anyone looking for someone in communications, please let me know?"

"Sure." I said and gave her my card. 

"I'm just volunteering here until I find something," she continued.

I wished her all the best in finding work again.

The carpet she just sold me would last her at least a week or two in unemployment, I think. 

4. The bed

It was a wedding present. They were moving to a smaller place closer to work and needed a smaller bed. 

"Are you married?" His wife asks me.

"No. Not yet. No I'm not."

"When you get married call me. I'll give you more books," she said as she handed me two books about beauty and marriage. 

They talked about the fleeting nature of beauty, counselled women about getting married before the expiry date of their beauty and about keeping beautiful for their husbands. 

Beauty also depends on money, the book reads, so prosper so that you can invest in making your wife beautiful!

She still calls me to ask me whether I am any closer to getting married and my answer is always the same, "No, not yet. But I will when I do."

5. The curtains

He had found a job elsewhere and so they were packing up and going. "I have gotten so many calls," his wife tells me, referring to the responses to her ads, "it's so hard to keep track."

"Yeah, I can imagine. You have good stuff."

"Thanks. I realised that people aren't so interested in high fashion. Just, well built things." She fingers the curtains. "They're so thick we didn't see the need to line them." 

"Yeah, I can see."

"Only the pair in the baby's room is lined so he can sleep some more."

"Yeah! That's very good."

"So which ones do you want?"

"I think all the beige ones."

"Ok I'll take them down for you. You'll need to wash them though."

"Sure, no problem."

"So, are you new here?"

"No I'm just moving out."

"Ahh, I see."

And then it came out of me, "I didn't think I would be doing this alone. I thought maybe I'd have a roommate or move in with someone, I...."

And there it was, in the slip of the tongue, I had made her awkward. I had imposed my fears on a stranger. She stood looking at me compassionately, unsure of what to say. 

After a moment, I gathered myself together and organised for a time to come again to pay and pick up the curtains and said goodbye. She watched me go, unaware that I had panicked when I had first hired a truck and felt my heart drop as it pulled into the compound. 

Because it was only then that I realised that my transition of moving out was a reflection of the status of my career and my economic situation: of what I was able to afford to move into and of what I was able to buy - a summary of my worth, in a way. 

So perhaps this is was why these sellers felt the need to impart the history behind their furniture pieces - because they were testimonies of the circumstances under which they were letting go of bigger things and because in those moments, we were each others' only witnesses.

the 3am man - her side of the story

i read a post about the 3am man ealier this year and thought to write her side of the story (which i also posted as a comment on the same blog post). It goes as follows:


It's going midnight and you have that dread in the pit of your stomach again that he's going to come home at 3am or later. And you know that when he does come home, he'll be the only thing that he can be at that hour which is an idiot. 

And for your male friends who settled because they needed someone to temper their idiocies, they like to joke about you not succeeding in tempering his. 

It's not even a matter of limiting freedoms for control's sake, though, it's just that nothing good ever comes out of staying out that late. And you hate that to ask him to come home makes you that proverbial nagging wife. And so you keep quiet and he calls it you being judgmentally silent.

To be honest, you don't mind the 1am man. The 1am man is high in the mellow kind of way, he's relaxed, talks more than he normally does, maybe says sweeter things than he normally would... But the 3am or later man? Is simply a fool. He loses his phone(s), wallet, keys, cigs, lighter, car, argues for argument's sake and finds himself arrested for loitering or being drunk and disorderly or whatever other charge a cop can think of to maximise extortion. And instead of calling you, because you also happen to be a lawyer, yes, another goddamn lawyer, he calls his boy Joni, who hangs up on him laughing while he says, "that was a good one manze."

There's nothing he's losing, you think, from leaving the same boys he sees three times a week a few hours earlier than 3am. But you let him be, because he says you met him that way so you should love him that way. And you do. You let him get into trouble, because inevitably it's him who has to deal with it... well:

- Except when he wakes the tois up as he finds his way through the house bumping into every noisy thing on the way from the door to your room and if Ciku doesn’t go back to sleep well, she will be cranky (which equals crying and tantrums) all day the next day which you have to deal with and have been dealing with since she was born;

- Except when he wakes you to try to feed you Kenchic chicken and chips because in his 3am mind, if he is hungry, you are hungry too, “I’m not just giving you the last piece o’ chicken babe, I’m giving you all of it!” He tries to charm you as he greases your face with food offerings and leaves chicken pieces all over the bed;

- Except when you have to call Joni to ask him whether he’s seen or heard from him ‘cos he hasn’t been home in the last two days and you’re worried and Joni reacts with, “kumbe he wasn’t joking that Friday when he said he’d been put in cell!” And so you spend your Sunday or Monday looking for him in the cell you think he might be in;

- Except when he barges into the bedroom, with 3am booze-induced self-aggrandisement of becoming a lion – nay, a mandingo and declares that it’s time to have sex with all the enthusiasm of a caveman whose killed and dragged meat home and announces this achievement, only in this sad reality he will probably pass out in the throes of trying to do so;

- Except when he’s constantly suffering from stomach pain and diarrhoea and never gets to eat the food that you cook for him and then wonders why you have no motivation to cook;

- Except when he cancels or indefinitely postpones plans you have made because he’s broke again and needlessly tries to question how it is that he lost/loses so much money;

- Except when, every other time someone he knows or was with gets into an accident and you pray that every next time it isn’t going to be him.

He says he loves you for accepting who he is and you don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing. So you take every 3am night as it comes and listen to his justifications of witchcraft or owing his boys. And you want to both laugh and cry because as much as it's annoying and cyclically senseless and deprives you of sleep and many other things, there is no malice and you can only be so upset with actions that are not intended to hurt. It’s like the times you buy him PS games and he runs out the house almost immediately to floss to his neighbor friends and colleague friends and drinking friends and then plays them all day and forgets you have just come back from being away and were looking forward to catching up. And then he comes sheepishly back home and you want to both laugh at his childlike fervor and the stories that come out of these idiocies but cry also out of both relief that he’s home and the recurring sadness that you lose/lost him momentarily to booze.

Garissa Road

Perhaps there’s a deranged infatuation with things unforgiving like with bad relationships or flirting with death. For me, it’s deserts – the simplicity of being in the wild and a wild that cares little about you.

So I am always excited when I am sent somewhere remote and when I am to meet with people who consider themselves forgotten.

Last week, I went to Garissa.

The last time I was on that road was about ten years ago but only to go as far as Mwingi, to spend time with the mother of my father’s friend. He liked to do that, my father, to send me to remote places to remind me of the privileged life I lived. And then, there was only a long dirt road that stretched beyond the eye could see which only 4x4 cars could survive. And the one that I was in had two fuel tanks to boot. It was the type of place, where if you stopped for lunch and ordered chicken, and asked after it an hour later, they would tell you, nonchalantly that they have just caught the chicken.

But the road is good now, thanks to Mzee Kibaki, all the way to Garissa and beyond.

The landscape changes from buildings to villages and from villages to barrenness, from semi-arid to arid, from cows to camels and from Kamba to Somali country.

Reaching Garissa town is like finding an oasis, a town that blooms and is given life from the River Tana. And the people I meet are friendly and accommodating. And we go about our meetings without problem.

Before I know it, we are on my way back to Nairobi.

It’s 11:30am and we are expecting to reach Nairobi in five hours.

We stop at one check point. And then we stop at another. At the third, I wish I had notified someone that I was on my way back and was being stopped. Because a bad-boy looking KDF officer – yes, he had wrapped a scarf around his head like a durag, sported sunglasses, and swaggered his way toward me and ordered me to get out of the car. Where is your ID? He barks. I hand it over to him. Where is your passport? I didn’t bring it. Why not? I didn’t know I should be carrying it. You should! He chastises.

Ok, sorry. I didn’t know. Next time, I will bring.

You think this is enough? This is not enough. How do I know how you entered the country?

Yeye ni Mkenya, (she is Kenyan) my colleague offers.

Hata Al Shabaab ni Wakenya (even Al Shabaab are Kenyan).

Alikuwa hapa kitambo, (she has been here a long time) my colleague continues.

Hata Al Shabaab walikuwa hapa kitambo! (even Al Shabaab has been here a long time)

He returns to me, You have laptops?

Yes.

Bring them.

We bring them.

Enter the passwords.

We enter our passwords.

They snoop.

At this point I am trying to remember my legal rights. With police, they come quite easily, I even think of methods of redress lest I am more than harassed. But with KDF? My mind draws a blank. This is what we had wanted right? For our authorities to have all the powers they require to do all that is necessary to curb terrorism. And for the moment, Bad Boy has decided that I am worthy of suspicion and is exercising his powers to “investigate” my terrorist-ness.

What are you doing in Garissa?

I was meeting with water actors.

You are a water expert?

No, I am a citizen engagement expert. We try to promote citizen engagement in water issues.

Mhmm. Do you know this ID is not enough?

No, I didn’t know. But I now I know. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.

You know we can keep you for questioning?! He threatens.

Ah! My colleague, sighs, msemehe, (forgive her) he pleads.

Yah! He balloons with power, we can keep her! The rest of you can go. But this one, we shall keep.

It is hot. The sun burns us like it has burnt everything around us. There is nothing on this road but us and power-wielding KDF soldiers. I imagine myself on this road for hours, watching them stop car after car, bus after bus, returning every so often to harass me. I imagine my colleague just helplessly waiting for them to be done with me. But I also imagine the worst – disappearing and how much more likely that would be were I evidently Muslim.  

We stand – eye to eye – the full force of his uniform plus rifle versus civilian me. I try to convey as much cooperation as you possibly can in a stare.

And then he says, ok, this time I’ll let you go. But next time? Aaah... this ID won’t be enough.

Ok thank you, I humble myself, next time, I will always carry it, thank you again.

We return to the car as fast as possible before he changes his mind but not hastily enough that it looks like we are running away.

We climb into the car, hold our breaths until we have at least set off before we can properly exhale. We text people back home to tell them that we are on our way and that we have been stopped severally by KDF and that if we do not make it home this evening, that they can look for us on the Nairobi-Garissa road.

There is little company on the road beyond the odd bus-full of passengers from Eastleigh and the random Probox with uncomfortable chickens banded to the roof of the car.

My colleague might have exhaled as soon as we got into the car. But I only really did when we reached the Ukasi police station and it felt like we were back in “Kenya” again and under police instead of KDF “protection”. He joked about preferring to meet with thugs than police or in this case, Al Shabaab than KDF and I mused at the irony.

song for the traveller

for those with itchy feet, i heard this song in the morning and thought of packing up again and going...

Turkana again

I'd only been to Turkana once before and then it was by road - which is what I recommend - because it eases you into the idea that you are going to desert land - even if it does take you two days to drive :)



Flying over Lodwar


So this time, I get off the plane and I am surprised to find sand at my feet. They say this is is the worst drought ever to hit the Horn of Africa.... they say that the cycles are getting shorter and shorter... so that one day, perhaps there will be a continuous state of drought.

It's maddening to think that it could be prevented or at least mitigated... and I'm wondering what it would take to actually see some real results... because it's not that there isn't rain. It's that no sooner does it rain then we are flooded and then we are at a loss again. It's like oases - appearing and disappearing - only over here, it's tragic.


seasonal rivers or lagas (I have no idea how that's spelt)

I'm actually sad to learn that the droughts are causing more and more pastoralists to abandon their lifestyles. Interventions range from destocking to finding alternative livelihoods for them. I'd prefer that we found some way to keep that way of life alive... or is that quixotic?

And so we traced the migration corridors of these Turkana - the children especially who filter into towns, travelling under the belly of buses. They find themselves most commonly in the Rift Valley, in green towns like Eldoret and Kitale... the boys become farm hands if trusted enough to toil, but are most commonly stereotyped into roles most akin to what their pastoralist lifestyle would've entailed such as caring for cattle or becoming guards. And the girls become prostitutes, selling themselves for 20 shillings or one ndazi at a time. How old are they, I ask a resident of Kitale, twelve, thirteen...

They tell me that early marriages coincide with the drought. A girl is given away for dowry just before the drought hits so that the family is better cushioned to undergo it. In the green towns, they say that incidences of rape and defilement are rampant just before harvest. That's when the maize is high - that's when you can cover all manner of sins...

maize fields in Kitale

saturdays

I used to dance at the Vera Zerkovitz School of Ballet - on Saturday mornings, from 10am - 12pm in a studio just above the conservatoire. It's the only time I ever saw dancers dress fully like ballerinas. Not in any of the modern dance wear but simple, classical, tights, leotards, hair in buns and blocks even at the bar.

Vera rarely spoke beyond reiterating instructions - instructions that weren't really necessary because for two hours, she had a programme for us: from the bar to the floor and from the floor to the corners. She commanded a quiet respect from all of us... Neither of us spoke to each other either. We just diligently followed the programme - to the tap of her heels and to the notes of her partner on the piano.

That was what I loved about it. It was so disciplined. It made me wonder whether this was what ballet was like in Russia. No recorded music, no choreography. Just every move in ballet in sequence and to the simple honesty of the piano.

I returned to the school recently. It's a studio now. For aerobics or something. The sign reads something else. They have put glass around what once was an open verandah. Where we used to bask in the sun.

India

I fell in love with India. Because before I met Rohan, she didn't have a face. She lived in the stereotypes of the diaspora, who try to be more Indian than the Indians themselves. She lived in the prejudices of a former colony that has never really known how to feel about the wahindi who stayed after the railway, speak kiswahili and invest in the country without marrying their daughters off or assuming seats of public office.

Enter Rohan. The first Indian from India I've ever really known. A proud Brahmin who lived on the thrill of what he liked to call 'calculated risk'. I met him at a time I wanted someone to accept me, fight for me, love life with me - and he did all three.

And it's because he was so proud and comfortable with his country and history that I learned to love her too. And all the prejudices slipped away as I reacquainted myself with India's social fabric, religion, history. And it is her age and her civilisation and her vastness that impress me. But it's also her hurts and dreams that now assume a human face instead of what had been a reason to continue to be prejudiced. 

He has since taken motorbike trips from Rajasthan to Madhay Pradesh (a-la-Che Guevara style in 'Motorcycle Diaries') and though I am no longer with him, I feel myself riding there too.

It's funny how you can live vicariously through looking at photographs. But when I see those temples and them looking out from those cliffs. I am there too. I have driven for 10 hours and I am perched on a rock, wind-whipped and satisfied. And I am happy that he gave her to me. That he allowed me to accept a place and a people and a culture without ever even going there.

And maybe one day I won't equate India with him. But for the moment, everything that I am open to knowing about her, is because of him.

it's that uncertainty that makes you feel alive - afraid - hopeful - dreamy. negotiating who you become when you make that decision, agreement, committment, losing a little bit of yourself in that process and decision. worrying about which way you'll go and how it'll change your life.

Kilimanjaro

I climbed Kilimanjaro two weeks ago and the memory of it is already slipping away. As if, every time I tell its story, it is cheapened somehow, diminished to an anecdote.

I wrote a story about it that'll be published in January. My first draft was probably my truest version. Every subsequent draft and the version that you will find in print will be much less of me and much more of an identity this new magazine is trying to build. Or whatever the editor's taste is.

So let me tell you the truth of it here; that it made me feel invincible, that it made me feel the proudest I've ever felt in a long time. But that it's like happiness, in the way that happiness is not an end-goal but a continuous journey. It is through the moments of pain and fatigue that I felt the most proud. It is the ability to continue when the body says no but the mind convinces it of just one step more, at the end of every last step.

I think it a blessing that we made the summit ascent in the dark. I think the ignorance of the climb ahead allowed us to trudge along like blinkered horses. Though even this blinkered horse needed chocolates, extra water (I realised I could function on a litre a day, whilst hiking for 6 or 7 hours), dance music and the self-conjured mantra of being a bad-ass.

Then of course there was the ex-military man who gave me the best tip I'd give to anyone who wants to climb a steep mountain; pace. Match the length of your strides and just keep on going. Keep a measured and steady pace and you will get a lot less tired a lot less soon and feel a lot more persevering. He was also very stingy with the amount of time he let me rest for. Which at first was difficult but after I learned how to pace myself, I didn't need to stop so much anyway. And I thanked him in the end for it.

The goal is to reach the crater rim if not the summit by sunrise. I made it to the rim. And though the summit was less than 300m away, I felt the fatigue of the climb and the thinness of the air tax my body as I leaned on my guide before speeding up to the wooden post that attests to Uhuru peak as being the highest peak in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain in the world :)

I cried there. Even as they dragged me back down because they said the altitude would tire me, I felt I needed to witness this achievement with more than a photograph. And so I cried! Tears of pure and honest joy not only because of surmounting the physical challenge but also because of the beauty of it, because I was able to see the ice-caps they say will be gone in a few years. Because of the desert crater within and the gentle slopes that you realise are so vast, you wonder how you even climbed them through the night.

This is what makes you happy; this little knowledge that you have done one thing more incredible than the next man. This is what makes you feel that you can do even more, high on the possibility of the possible.

Kilimanjaro - conquered.

mundan for my nephew

we shaved his head the other day, the poor thing squealing under hands that clamped him down and held him still until all his hair was gone. and then all of a sudden he was less of a baby. like the anguish and the loss of his locks made him that little bit older. or that little bit free from traits of his past lives, as one might have interpreted.

and this is what i wanted to hear about whilst they chanted their mantras and threw herbs into the fire. what were their reasons beyond what they professed them to be (ie. being good for hair growth)?

i like the idea - of shedding worldly attachment, renouncing vanity for spirituality, hair for... growth/freedom/truth?

Josephat

I collected a lot of things. Stamps, money, stones, bones, different coloured toilet paper... One day my askari caught for me a bird. And I named him Josephat, just like the askari. And I was so fond of him I wouldn't let him alone. I kept him under the bread basket which I kept lifting so I could continue to hold him, feel his heart pump and pump in panicked frenzy until it pumped no more.

And so I collected him too. I wrapped him tight in cling film and preserved him for posterity. Or at least until medical science advanced enough to bring him back to life.

And then my mother came home and screamed when she found him in the freezer. At once yelling and throwing him out as I entreated her to have more faith in science.

Leaving Loita

We stay a day extra in Loita because the rains threaten the viability of the roads. We are only too happy however to keep Dr. Maria company.

We meet the Chief and the DC in the hope that their influence will promote the rights of women. But both seem rather removed or indifferent about it. Some staff at the hospital however are even bigger hypocrites. They participate in the women's rights campaigns and yet circumcise their girls at home.

One of the men in the workshop, trained in health care and a key personnel in our work will (a few months later) get a fifteen year old pregnant and run away both from the girl and from work...

I guess that's the benefit of writing in hindsight. Things can be put in greater perspective.

The women are sad to see us go. They shower us with hugs and beaded jewellery. And I am emotional myself; emotional about their situation, emotional that we allowed them to talk, if even just to each other. About what women mean in their societies...

Mannfred had left two days earlier so Dr. Maria drives us to Narok and from Narok we take a mat back.

[one of the women whose necklaces I now wear and Sylvester, one of our health care workers/translators]