14:59, Saturday, 9 February, 2013

I cannot believe how I get to start my days.  Waking up in a world still sleeping, stars remain twinkling across the heavens given it’s clear, Rupell’s (sp) starlings and the other earliest-rising birds excited for the day and impatient to get it going.  Some fruit bats still chiming in the trees, perhaps a genet whispering past the solar tent, its day coming to a close.  Then we go out into the field, still trying to shake off sleep with the main cue to waking yet absent.  Go to the dens and say good morning to the hyenas, lit only by the beam of a magilght, or have them say good morning to you in the case of curious cubs scrambling out to the car to look up at you beneath the window before returning to their tumbling play.  Driving back out, and there it is – the cue the diurnal primate brain waits for.  It’s as though someone has liquefied the sun and dipped a paintbrush in it, spreading just a few strokes across the dark sky over the mountains in a contrast that makes me forget, or perhaps fully remember, my being.  I can hardly breathe some mornings; I know I have described sunsets as painfully beautiful, and perhaps sunrises already as well, but to see them is a realization of somewhere inside that only the most intense beauty makes you remember is there, and it’s impossible to keep my fingers from writing it again and again.  And each morning is a bit different; if there are some clouds, the liquefied sun might be tinted pink by some heavenly hand, and then brushed carefully so as to outline the lower hangings of the clouds, each cloud with different thins and thicks so that’s it’s faultless in its inconsistancies.  Light pink paintball streaks and fainter yellows are often featured, the colors generally gentler than the glory of the sunset, when the sun feels pressure to make a grand exit in its closing of the curtain.  The start of the day it likes to ease in tenderly, like a mother softly waking her sleeping child.  But the gorgeous beginning and grand exits are unimaginable in this the land of the big sun and sky; one sunset the other day looked like a child prodigy had been given finger paints of whose oranges, reds, and yellows cannot be found on the entire land masses or oceans of the earth, and then this prodigy spread them thickly across a sky I was sure would burst at any moment.

Midday the sun, if it’s not hidden behind clouds of some sort (also impossibly lovely in their variation), becomes distant now that it’s woken many creatures and sent others off to bed.  One afternoon I can remember looking at the sky, and there was not a cloud in sight, which rarely happens in these parts given its vastness.  And I wondered how anything could be so blue, so perfectly blue.  An unbroken mass of blue, and now that I try to describe it, it sounds just like any other day of blue sky that everyone enjoys and marvels at, but it wasn’t.  It cast a different brightness, perhaps given its enormity, and most blue skies you don’t feel like you could stare at all day.  This one I could have.

The sun does exquisite, less noticeable things in the evening before divinely lowering itself.  For instance, it might be cloudy, and then it glows quietly like an unearthly streetlamp turned on early during a hazy city afternoon.  Or it might cast brilliant pink or dusky purple over a sheet of rain in the distance, so that a thin slant of angel mist falls in a curtain nearer the horizon.  Or it might make the fattest rainbow you have ever seen, blocking a small portion of a large purple hill that might be called a mountain, each color thick as your hands held a foot apart even from such a distant viewing point, and not in an arc!  In perfectly vertical stripes banding down to touch the earth with no bend. 

I must mention the flowers as well.  The flowers that open and close, bloom and disappear in response to the activity of the sky.  One day I noticed lovely yellow flowers, morning-glory types growing on long stems in bush-like gatherings along the camp paths.  They are closed tight when I walk past them in the as-yet dark of the morning, then open wide with the sun, then if I pay attention when I walk from dinner to bed I find them closed again in my flashlight beam.  One evening after a previously rainy day we were stuck in camp when the sun went down. I got to watch these yellow flowers progressively close, and was convinced again that we are out on obs during the most wonderful times in camp.  There are also little purple flowers that hide in the grass, unnoticed by me until I walked with Wilson to church and there they were in tiny adornment here and there.  And after every heavy rain the shorter-grass parts of the savanna explode in little white flowers.  It’s lovely.  Naturally, the clowning baboons (as Joy Adamson terms them) walk along and delightfully mar the idyll by picking and eating them.  Finally, following consistent rains, the savanna becomes a sort of horse pasture full of every type of cloverine flowery grass you can imagine, a meadow of dotted blowing long and short yellows, purples, pinks, whites, and blues.  I never knew a savanna could bloom like so.

Even Nairobi has its typical show of flowers, any time of the year, but when I went in November there was a surprise show of magnificent trees in bloom.  These trees’ branches showered down in a waterfall of light purple flowers, sweeping the earth before kissing it with petals floated down.  I momentarily forgot all the unjust ills of the city looking at those trees, and everything seemed happy driving along the streets of Karen.

Overall, I think weather and plants unite places on the earth in an odd way, although they are cited as things that differentiate them.  Climates are so variable, and yet nothing takes me home like the wind or the smell of wet tall grass on a rainy morning.  Although the sun is like I’ve never seen it here, there are some things just so familiar in it, and in the clouds, rain, the wind that makes them old friends unchanged by place.  They have both produced and relieved the few instances of homesickness I have felt during my time here.  Most of all, they just make me smile.

12:23, Saturday, 2 February, 2013

I write so much about animals, and yet the people here could comprise a whole separate blog of their own.

There is a little girl I periodically see down by the river.  She is probably eight or nine years old, and not shy like most of the other children.  The first time I saw her I had just hopped across the river to go running.  She ran up to me with a huge smile from where she was watching her family’s goats, embraced me, and then stroked my white skin and blondish hair, pausing to look up at me, beam and laugh in one breath, swinging my arms to and fro.  She was particularly fascinated with my moles, touching them and looking up at me questioningly.  I spoke Swahili to her, but she didn’t respond, and so I thought, maybe she just doesn’t talk much.  About a month later she found me sitting by the river, talking to my mom on the phone.  She sat by me, eating sodom apples and tossing their pits into the water.  When I had finished, I attempted to ask her how she was; again no response.  We sat, tossing rocks and pits into the river and laughing.  Soon Jackson came by and asked her how she was – when she responded readily, it became clear to me that she only speaks Maa.  Jackson asked her why she was not in school, something that hadn’t occurred to me, and he translated that she doesn’t go to school, quietly cursing her parents under his breath.  I immediately felt horribly sorry.  We just never seem to remember how blessed we are, but then why me and not her?  It doesn’t make sense, never has.  But at least I will discover her name if I see her again.  I have been learning a bit of Maa from the guys (something they find VERY amusing, especially Wilson, who likes to teach me all the bad words).  “Enkijigae?” = “What is your name?”  Still, I find it amazing how well I could communicate with her sans words.  Jackson periodically asks me where “my friend” is, referring to this lovely little girl.  I look forward to seeing her again.

I am no longer dating Maina, our mechanic, and haven’t been for some time.  But we are still friends, which is nice, and I have gotten to show him camp due to the cruiser’s gearbox failing some time in October.  It was fun to have him here, and he even came out to see the hyenas with us one evening.  He especially loved Princess Peach, Koopa Troopa, and Blanket, who were still little black cubs at the time.  He asks after them almost every time I see him.  Funny how Kenyans supposedly despise hyenas, because I have found every one we have taken out exceptionally receptive to how interesting and wonderful they are.  Yet my sample size is very small, n of about 5, and none of those we’ve taken out are Maasai herders whose livelihood is their cattle or goats.  Cattle and goats are just another hamburger to the hyenas.  Very difficult explaining why hyenas should be respected, especially when these herders have had their land stolen without receiving any of the resulting tourist income benefits.  Sometimes I wonder if I have a right to be taking any sort of side after having been so remiss in my understanding of how complicated the problem is.  I think the only answer is for human beings to learn to love animals in their own right, and to find that they have ethical value far beyond what they can do for us, or even despite hindering our (sometimes warped) view of progress.  They make our world beautiful, and I pray our species not only learns to share it with them, but desires to.

Other people stories: there was one afternoon when Charlie and I were in Talek for nearly five hours (yet again having the car repaired).  I swear every kid in Talek came over and wanted to play.  We tossed around blueband caps as frisbees, played something akin to five hundred with little bottlecaps, learned new songs and corresponding hand motions from the older girls, swung the littler children up in the air until we had to say no due to backache, had our hair played with by 10+ children at once, and collapsed dirty and happy into the car on the way home.  There was one especially sweet tiny kid, wearing nothing but a dirty sweater, whose smile is forever embossed onto my brain.

Pretty sure playing with those kids was around the period we became so busy that I showered about once every five days.  Charlie made me feel better, as his record became a week and a half.  Really, though, we Westerners waste a lot of water in showers.  My hair ceased to get oily in the absence of having its essential oils stripped every other day.  I think every third day will become my norm upon returning home; time to question those blindly accepted societal expectations.

I went to church a couple of times with the guys at Mara Leisure Camp on Sundays.  It was an extremely peaceful experience, sheep grazing right outside the windows of the humble building that had been cleared of its usual furniture to align several rows of folding chairs, children wandering in and out to play in the yard as they pleased.  We stood in a circle and sang simple repetitive hymns, clapping our hands and swaying, for fifteen minutes or so before we sat to listen to the preacher.  He talked about taking care of the environment.  Praise the Lord, Hallelujah!  I cannot begin to express how frustrated I am with the Catholic Church for shunning one of its claimed social justice teachings, and one vitally necessary for every one of the others.  Speaking of which, I attended a Swahili Mass while in Nairobi.  I was the absolute only white person in the church, and only had jeans and a glorified T-shirt at my disposal in comparison to the magnificently colorful skirts of every other woman there (apart from the nuns), but dang that was the most invigorating Mass I have ever attended.  Children danced up the aisles, the priest was even clapping to the songs over the Eucharist, the choir was alive, was it ever alive.  A lady sang like a hornbill except ten times as loud (sounds like an insult, but not an unfair comparison as they sound like opera singers), and the whole place shook with alleluia praise be!  Maybe I will start clapping back in our conservative German town and see how it goes...

Always wondered why the Maasai have two names, one their original Maa name and one your average English name.  I have taken to calling the guys by their actual names: Jackson is Meitiaki, Joseph Olojukar, Benson Malit, and Wilson Nkoiboo.  Their other names, they told me, are actually given them by their teachers, who often find their real names too hard to pronounce.  But really, is that a good reason to call someone by a different name?  Maybe, but I like their Maa names best.

Nkoiboo is a character.  Since he has begun training as a research assistant, I have discovered what a load of BS he possesses, making each obs supremely entertaining.  Wilson used to be a tour guide, and has great stories of the tales he told his tourists.  One morning, he kept asking me if I have ever seen a pygmy rhino.  I repeatedly insisted that there is no such thing.  He told me that he always told his tourists, “I cannot guarantee that we will see a black rhino, but I can guarantee that we will see the famous pygmy rhino.”  I will show you Jenna, he said.  That night on obs he shouted, “Look, a pygmy rhino!”  I looked up to find him pointing at a warthog.  He said he would have his tourists taking pictures of these “pygmy rhinos,” allowing them to believe that’s what they really were (and somehow being believed) before he finally set them straight.  Come to find out he also told tall tales of how cape buffalo are actually cattle that have gone feral, and some of the vultures here fly over the Atlantic from America.  He claims he always set them straight in the end, but apparently one day his vulture nonsense caused an unbeknownst bird expert to get out the car in anger.  On quiet evenings when we aren’t seeing many hyenas, Wilson will pretend to be an annoying tourist in the back of the car, asking me ridiculous questions as we drive along.  One day I about had Benson falling out of the car laughing when Wilson asked me what one of the usual cut tracks is for, and I said, “It’s for you to get out and walk.”  Other days Wilson tries to convince me to go “give that big male lion a hug, he will just think you are a singing cisticola” or “those elephants won’t notice if you walk out amongst them, they will just think you are a sort of beetle or something.”  Still other days he becomes a prophet, claiming how much rain we will get and when.  When I pointed out that he is always, without fail, wrong, he paused, turned around with crinkled brow (this silly look he always gets on his face when you know he’s full it) and raised finger.  He pointed at me, and in the most perfect of Kenyan accents, shook it and said, “Jenna Parker, do not play with a prophet!”

Then there was the day Benson was away, and Charlie, Wilson and I stopped at the Mara-Talek Confluence at the end of a morning obs in Prozac.  This is the place where the Mara and Talek Rivers come together.  After viewing a sunning crocodile, storks and hippos from the bank above, we walked down to the water.  The hippos stared unconcernedly at us, and we Indiana-Jones-ed it a bit across the banks to go stand out on a sandbar near them.  Wilson started chatting with a guy from the camp across the river, while we kept a close eye on the hippos, one foot ready to dash back to the bank should it become necessary.  Eventually we found ourselves sitting on the bank playing bocci ball with dirt clumps, attempting to hit a rock sticking out of the river.  It was idyllic, playing bocci ball with an enormous pod of spouting hippos looking on.  There are some things I will just never forget.  If Benson was there it would have been perfect.

Charlie and I found the game “Memory” tucked away on the shelves holding mugs and board games, and I immediately made him play it with me.  Now Memory is a thing, a great competitive occasion.  To my utter chagrin, Charlie usually wins, although I’m starting to settle down enough to beat him.  Most times I would get so angry (and become “abrasive” as Mr. Sensitive Pants Charlie claims) that I couldn’t concentrate.  The cocky little attitude he would adopt because he knows it drives me crazy made me go insane with a desire to win, which would then act against me, and pretty soon the whole of the lab tent would be quiet with my inner simmerings and his flipping over one pair after another.  I would feel better if I got the elephants though – they are my favorites.  Charlie always wanted the little yellow planes with the face, soon termed “Plane with the Face,” a name excitedly yelled upon its flipping.  Soon Benson loved the game too, and we even persuaded Julia and Dave to join this ultimate competition a few times. We (supposedly) grown adults have great fun with this (supposedly) kids’ game, probably left here by the five-year-old son of one of the graduate students.

There are some Nairobi experiences I have been debating how to write about for some time.  Basically, I have discovered what it is like to be a minority, an experience I never dreamed could be so aggravating.  When I was in downtown Nairobi with Jack during our November trip for errands and supplies, we accidentally took a wrong turn down a side street, ending up in the so-termed slums.  People had little things laid out for sale on blankets in a huge yard surrounded by their decrepit homes, trash piles here and there.  Overall, the atmosphere was happier than I expected, and I would have loved to get out and experience it a bit (although please don’t worry Kay, I would never actually do such a thing and leave the car alone).  But it was far too dangerous, and the biggest reason was my skin color, followed closely by my gender.  For the first time in my life I felt hindered because of these things.  The thought crossed my mind that maybe it would be better if everyone looked the same, and although I might have hoped it would be a fleeting thought, a thought quickly overtaken by realizations of how boring that would be and how we would never learn anything that way, it lingered, and for a long while none of that seemed worth us being free from judging anybody based on ethnicity.  People pointed and laughed at the wazungu in their fancy hyena car.  White people never come to the “slums,” they are all too rich, and the jeers I got for being a white woman driving a car here became all at once too much and I just wanted out.  Racism has bred racism, and although it’s hard to blame these people thrown to the edge of society in their own country, I was fit to burst in anger at the people yelling, “Madame, madame!” at me while laughing.  I was also scared by the amount of men who came up and wanted to take me to get chai.  Thankfully we somehow got turned around,  but even then I continued to get jeers while stuck in traffic, until I rolled up my window and refused to look around.  It opened my eyes and gave me new respect for the peaceful protests against racism raised by those like Martin Luther King Jr.; it’s hard to stay calm in situations of prejudice, and my experience was ridiculously tame in comparison to some of the horror people have to put up with.  Another day on the same trip, a man on a corner street who obviously had nothing started yelling and pointing at us when we drove by.  It was clear he blamed the likes of us for his situation.  Again, although I could hardly blame him, I not only felt but knew there would be violence were I to exit the vehicle.  It might sound childish and naive, but I was very shaken by the experience.  It’s impossible to know the best way to remedy the situation, and  I am somewhat ashamed to admit that being removed from it will be a great relief of going home.  I am even getting impatient being asked for sweets and money from bold children I’ve never seen before.  I don’t want the first thing a child says when they see me to be, “Give me money,” or “Give me sweets.”.  Boy how they look at me when I ask them to explain why they would be so rude, which I know they can understand because, at the very least, to say anything without a greeting is considered very bad manners in East Africa.  I hate how everyone who is rich here is white, how white Kenyans don’t even take the time to learn Swahili so that every time I speak it people’s jaws drop at an mzungu speaking Swahili, how no businesses are owned by blacks (made worse by the fact that it’s their country!).  Only Middle Easterns and whites who might claim to feel on the same level as the black people they employ own anything, and seem ignorant that their employees are subdued when in their overbearing presence and relieved when they leave the room.  I don’t want to generalize and blame everyone in a group of people, that’s exactly what got me worked up that day in Nairobi, and there are awfully nice whites and Indian owners; yet something is just so wrong with how such overt racism and classism is accepted.  Quite frankly it’s disgusting.  I even feel awful entering lodges, with so much rich amidst the surrounding poverty, as though the locals aren’t worth what the tourists get, or even a fair share of the profits that come from them.  What once seemed charming, being different, is now causing me to grow weary.  I had a good talk with the guys about it, and they agreed with everything I said and feel the strain of the situation.  I told them sometimes I’m ashamed to be white here, to which they put their arms around me and told me that not all wazungu are the same, and that I shouldn’t feel that way.  But I do, and even going to play poker with the balloon pilots at the lodge is starting to bother me, because you can see in the faces of the people who ask to get us drinks that we are just the typical loud, bossy whites to them, and although I love our balloon pilot friends they do nothing to discourage the former part of this view.

Well, I debated how to say all of this without sounding awful, and then everything just ran out with no thought for organization or worry for how I sound or undermining how much I love and appreciate it here.  But perhaps that’s how it should be, because Lord knows it’s confusing trying to sort everything out in my mind, how I should act and be in response to the injustice I see.  I love the people here so much, and I only wish I could make them see that my white skin means nothing, yet most every experience they have had screams otherwise. 

On the bright side, there are those that realize these things, for instance the guys in camp.  And I got to visit Jackson and Joseph’s sister Maria in Nairobi, and although she lives in a poorer part of town with her two boys, I felt confident walking into her home because she was proud to have me there as her friend, and this seemed to make people accept my presence as somewhat normal.  She also actually listened to me when I said I love to speak Swahili without English, and spoke no English to me.  Maria makes beautiful clothes and jewelry, and conscience of the fact that I didn’t want to be in jeans and a t-shirt when I returned to the church on Christmas, I bought a red beaded skirt from her.  This skirt, in typical African-style, is tight around the hips and buttocks.  When Maria entered the room to see how it looked on me, she loudly exclaimed, “Oh my, an mzungu with hips!”, and proudly proceeded to show how well the skirt fit to her friend as I stood there embarrassed.  I have never thought of myself as overly hippy, but there you go.

I will end this enormous entry with one of my favorite things Maina said to me when we were going out, something pertinent to some of what I’ve said here and overall something I need to work on.   On a night we were getting funny looks in Talek, he said:  “Sometimes people say things, and you just have to let it go in one ear and come out the other.”