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.