Twende

It was at some point during Ray’s explanation of the mating behavior of lions that I lost it. Ray was our guide on the two day safari my sister and I recently went on in Tanzania. He was friendly, funny and knowledgeable. He also had an impressive sixth sense when it came to spotting animals, and at one point led us to a sleeping leopard that I swear was invisible to the naked eye. Ray was very animated and liked to talk a lot about animal behavior. Most of his stories revolved around feces and/or sex. I guess those are pretty basic elements of wild animal existence. He spoke very good English, but had a tendency to mispronounce things. Kate became Cat, birds became beds, shock absorbers became sosh absurbers. Kate caught on quickly, and acted as a sort of translator for me. This particular speech about lions was fast and long, and included many comical pronunciation errors. He lost me about half way through, and as he continued I found it harder and harder to repress my laughter. It was like a biology lesson from another dimension. Finally he earnestly uttered something along the lines of “while the female is going through evuolution the spearms from the male must move . . .” I could contain myself no longer. Kate and I both collapsed in laughter. Ray looked on in confusion, or as he would say, he was very surprising at our reaction.

Kate, Ray and I next to the trusty Land Cruiser. I look scrubalicious.

Despite the light communication problems, Ray led us on two gorgeous days of safari. We toured Lake Manyara National Park and the Ngorogoro Crater in his open-topped Land Cruiser. The scenery was stunning, especially in the crater. The rainy season had created a vast savannah of long blonde grass and tall wildflowers. We drove through yellow and purple meadows, under bright blue skies. Zebras and wildebeest came so close to the car we could have touched them. It was sunny and warm the entire time. Since it was just the two of us we could determine the pace of the day, announcing ‘twende’ (lets go) whenever we were ready to move along.

An elephant in the Ngorogoro Crater

We saw monkeys, giraffes, impala, zebra, hippos, rhinos, buffalo, wildebeest, elephants, a leopard, and a lion. Not too shabby, although the lion sighting was slightly disappointing. It was a lone lioness, lounging among the tall yellow flowers, a good distance back from the road. It was difficult to see her clearly. There were several other cars parked along the roadside watching her, and Kate and I joined, poking our heads out through the roof hatch. It was at this moment that my miniscule bladder once again decided to ruin the party. I had to pee. The nearest toilet was at least a half an hour drive away, so it was going to have to be a roadside job. Kate and Ray, god bless them, took this in their stride, and we began to problem-solve. The other vehicles were departing, so that solved the problem of a human seeing me pee. We were still left with the slightly more intimidating possibility that the lion might see me pee and decide to come closer and check me out. The day before Ray had told a comforting story about a woman who was mauled by a lion while she was sitting by the side of the road, waiting for her guide to change a tire. Kate said that we had to drive somewhere else, but I rationalized that I should just pee here because no matter where we went in the park there could be a lion lurking nearby. “Yes, but we know that there’s one here,” she replied. This, to my urine-crazed mind, was a positive point. At least we could keep a close eye on this one. We drove on for about ten seconds, and then I insisted I just get it over with. Kate took up a lookout position out the roof hatch and scanned for approaching lions. I hopped out, left the door open, and prayed. Everything went according to plan, and I was back in the car within thirty seconds. Ray said I had a strong heart. “But a weak bladder,” Kate added. I had to agree.

Incidents of high-risk peeing aside, the vacation was extremely relaxing. After two days of safari we said a sad goodbye to Ray and boarded a little six-seater plane headed for Zanzibar. Actually, that part wasn’t relaxing. The improbability of flight is never more apparent that when you’re sitting in a vehicle roughly the size of a mini-van, feeling every bump and shudder, and staring at the ant-sized people far, far below. Kate and I studiously watched how the pilot controlled the plane, in case we were forced to take over in some sort of emergency scenario. Of course we landed safely, and were efficiently transported to beach resort paradise. It was low season, so the resort was quiet and they upgraded us to a luxury suite. We had a whole house to ourselves, complete with an open-air roof patio with swinging sun beds. The good weather held, and for five days we did nothing except sunbathe, eat, and read. Kate can get through a book a day when she’s in the mood, and I think we read about eight between us over the five days. We gossiped about all the other guests at the resort, played games of scrabble (she’s a goddamn scrabble genius), and carefully monitored each other’s sunburn. It was pretty much perfect.

Sunrise, Zanzibar-style.

My flight back to Uganda was delayed for four hours, it rained torrentially in Kampala, my eight dollar hold-all completely disintegrated in-transit, and the journey back to the village took a total of eight hours in various crammed matatus, but I didn’t care. I feel like my batteries have been re-charged. I’m at the three and a half month mark, and I’m refreshed and ready, and still thrilled to be here.

*Insert cute comment about sisters here*

Displaced

I got to spend a few days in Kenya during the current school holidays.  I stayed with family friends, Myra and Clive.  They were my parents’ friends back in the good old days when we lived in Kenya, and they have settled there for the foreseeable future.  It was my first time being back in about twelve years, and it was all a bit surreal.  Myra and Clive live in a suburb of Nairobi called Karen, just down the road from our old house.  Karen is kind of muzungu central.  You could almost compare it to Northern Virginia.  It’s got a country club, strip malls, and lots of bored white people.  I fell gratefully into its comfortable arms.  I drank my chai latte at the Java House, took advantage of free wireless internet, browsed in the bookstore, took care of some much needed woman-grooming, and drank a lot of white wine.  Myra and Clive were generous and warm, and three days was enough to relax me completely.

 

Myra does a lot of fundraising work for a non-profit called the Girl Child Network which seeks to nurture the development of young women in Africa through educational initiatives, workshops, camps, etc.  During my stay in Kenya the Girl Child Network (GCN) had partnered with the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) to organize a visit to an Internally Displaced Person camp.  These are temporary camps that have been set up for all the people displaced from their homes during the violence surrounding the recent Kenyan presidential election.  AMREF and GCN donated money to assemble ‘dignity kits’ to distribute to young women at the camps.  These kits included a kikhoi wrap, sanitary towels, a toothbrush, soap, underwear, and other basic items.  Myra was going with representatives from both groups to visit one of the camps and help distribute the kits, and I was able to tag along with her.

 

The camp we visited was established in the showground of a town called Nakuru, about two hours outside of Nairobi.  We bounced along a dusty road to a chain-link fence which marked the boundary of the camp.  All along the roadside people had set-up small stalls selling tomatoes and greens and other vegetables.  We found out later that the Red Cross food distribution consists of beans and flour only, so people barter or buy everything else at these stalls.  Once through the fence we drove up a road alongside avenues of tents, stretching as far as the eye could see.  They came in various shades of grey, pitched in neat rows.  On the right there was a single row of tents designated for official use: registration tent, special needs tent, tent distribution tent.  We came to a stop at the crest of a small hill, and sweatily disembarked.  A small crowd had gathered around the bus door to shake our hands and welcome us.  There were some kids, and some shouts of “Muzungu!  How are you,” but overall the people spoke to us in muted tones, matching the colors of their tents and the pale brown dust.  For every person shaking hands with us there was another, keeping a distance, watching us carefully.  I wondered how many buses of well-wishers these people had seen roll through in the last four months. 

 

A Ministry of Health official assigned to the camp took us on a brief tour.  I soon had several children holding onto each arm, some quite insistently.  “He can’t believe you’re real,” a Kenyan lady with the delegation remarked, as one small boy repeatedly pinched the skin of my forearm.  Representatives from both AMREF and the GCN were snapping pictures.  I felt awkward as I tried to disentangle myself from the kids and keep moving.  We saw inside a tent.  I don’t know what I was expecting, I’ve been inside a tent before, but the barrenness of it still shocked me.  Four canvas walls, some blankets, a bucket or two, and five people.  All the residents of the camp have to build their own small fires and cook outside the tent.  We saw a woman preparing the fuel for her fire.  She took the leftover shards of already burnt charcoal, and mixed it with water and dust to make small balls.  She thought it would take about eight to cook a meal.  Myra asked a young woman where she was from, and if she wanted to find a way back there.  “No, I can’t go back there.  I can maybe start somewhere else, but I can’t go back there.”  She has three kids, and she used to run a successful farm.  Now she lives in a tent, her kids are far away with relatives, and she has only what the NGOs see fit to give her.  It was a common theme among the people we talked to—they were scared to go back to the homes they’d been chased from.

 

The NGOs and aid organizations had left their marks everywhere: UN, Red Cross, Rotary International, USAID.  We walked through the camp clinic which sees 250-300 people each day.  They have three nurses and four small exam rooms.  There were USAID stickers on every wall.  I asked the Doctor from the Ministry if USAID was providing funding for the medicine.  “They were for about two months, but there was some problem with mismanagement of funds and they pulled out.”  It was the same story with the clinic vehicle—it was initially funded, but then someone, somewhere, pulled the plug and now they don’t have one.  14,000 people live at this camp, and when one of them is sick enough to need a hospital they have no way of getting there. 

 

After the tour we all piled into a tent where a man was conducting a workshop for HIV-positive camp residents.  As we crowded in the men and women in the workshop began singing a welcome song, and we were shown to the guest of honor seats.  I steeled myself for the traditional ‘introduction and appreciation of visitors,’ which often takes over an hour in the Ugandan setting.  This was a little different though.  A young girl stood up and gave a performance in Swahili.  She seemed to be re-enacting a conversation between a parent and child, possibly warning about HIV.  She was animated and precocious and dressed in a pretty green dress.  Everyone smiled.  Several people who work at the camp spoke.  Each clearly articulated a list of pressing needs.  I’m not talking about requests for a more balanced diet, or furniture, or even a place to cook food that isn’t in the dirt.  They were asking for a single doctor to work at the camp, a single car that could transport emergency cases, basic medicine.  Issues, really, of life and death.  All the women in our delegation had a chance to speak.  Many of them are nurses, or retired nurses.  Most spoke in Swahili, but from those who spoke in English I could pick up common themes: hope, forgiveness, the future.  Monica, a middle-aged nurse in an elegant pink suit and neck-scarf, began to cry as she spoke.  I knew I was going to be asked to speak, but I felt bereft of words in the face of this scene.  What the hell could I say?  I was a glorified tourist, peeking in the tent flaps at people whose lives had been pillaged, whipped away in an afternoon.  I stood up and felt my own voice wavering in my throat, and managed to squeak out a few words of gratitude for being allowed visit the camp. 

As the speeches ended Mercy, the head of the GCN, gave us all about fifteen little metallic badges.  They were in the shape of a person and said “Protect the Children” in Swahili.  She instructed us to find some kids and hand them out.  My heart sank.  Handing out fifteen badges in a camp of 14,000 hungry people seemed like a gesture of magnificent inadequacy.  I pushed through the immediate crush and found a quiet spot outside where a little boy was lying on the ground, his sister sitting calmly beside him.  I knelt down next to her and she shied away, but I held out the badge and she let me gingerly pin it on her shirt.  I looked at the boy who was eerily still, and face down in the dirt.  “Is he ok?” I asked no one in particular.  A passer-by gave him a shake and he sat up, looking dazed, then lay back down.  “He’s sick,” the passer-by informed me.  I hesitated for a moment with my mouth open, but I couldn’t think of anything to do.  I was surrounded by people asking for the badges.  I tried to give them to the youngest kids.  I quickly ran out.  Teenage girls looked at me distastefully and moved on.  Adults wanted the badges, women older than me.  It struck me that this was the biggest loss of all; the loss of the ability to provide for yourself, the loss of independence.  In the camp it didn’t matter if you were intelligent and motivated and responsible because there were no jobs and no money and you couldn’t go home.  So instead you could follow the outsiders who rolled up in their buses and see if they were handing out something that you could use or trade or sell.          

 

We all got back in the bus and rumbled out through the dusty gate.  We drove a respectable distance before pulling over and tucking into our packed lunches, prepared by the Serena Hotel in Nairobi.  There was more food than we could eat. 

 

In the post-visit chatter on the bus I wasn’t sure how to sum it all up.  I’m glad I saw it?  It was very interesting?  I felt like a dumb-ass and an intruder the entire time?  I was hungry and hot and humbled.  I was inadequate.  There’s no tidy ending to the story, just a sense of unease, that I think should be shared by many.