Selected Scenes
I’m packed into the backseat of a car like this: old mama, woman, me, man. The old mama is holding onto the front passenger seat, and I can’t stop staring at her hand. It’s extraordinary: gigantic, wise, and strong. I reach for her hand to compare its size with mine, and upon seeing my hand approach hers, she takes it and shakes it in greeting.
---
On my way to the post office, I inadvertently catch up to a little boy about as tall as my knee. I bend just enough to tap my groceries on his little behind and say, "Wey," an approximation of "Hey you!" He continues marching forward as he turns his head up and back to look at me. When he registers my face, he cries and starts to run, but falls over. Then he gets up again and tries to run, only to launch himself forward for a spectacular crash. By now he’s screaming and kicking, flat on his tummy. Some adult spectators and I exchange giggles - mine guilty, theirs consoling.
---
We were sitting in the covered outdoor eating area of a lakeside dive that serves tilapia caught fresh from the lake. K and I sat on the side of the table facing the lake. C ordered a 200-shilling fish for all of us to share, then sat down with her back facing the lake. A man she’d once hired to ferry her to Hippo Point recognized her. They chatted a while. We were tired and warm and generally able to ignore the glue-sniffing street kids buzzing around us. Hawkers made their rounds among the diners (all Kenyan except for us), and we just answered them with tired shakes of our heads.
We were soon brought our fish along with a giant chunk of ugali, and within minutes we were sucking the last bits of flesh off the bones, ugali coating all the fingers of our right hands, marveling at what a long way we’d come since the days of table etiquette. With our appetites renewed, we agreed to order another one.
When that was done, a street kid reached over the thigh-high wall and took our entire platter of bones. The whole gang converged on the first kid and within seconds the empty platter was back on our table, the waitress telling them off, then giving them our leftover ugali.
---
Suddenly the rain started pouring. It came down so loudly I could hear nothing else. The courtyard emptied of people, leaving the compound seemingly deserted. The water gushed down the gutter so forcefully that it actually drained out backwards at a joint right above my door. I couldn’t let all that water go to waste, so I put a basin under it. In the rainy season, all my water collects from the rain in a tank by my house, but it’s out of my sight. Here it was happening right before my eyes, my muscles were straining to pull the full basin in, my hands and feet were wet and cold from the splashing, and I was putting another basin under there, then another. For a moment, I "got" it, that Earth and only Earth sustains life. My life. For the next two days I washed and cooked with this water that had been delivered straight from Heaven.
---
I’m squished up against the car window, watching the serenely lush mountainsides that are now a daily luxury in my life. A small boy stands erect by the side of the road, dressed in his school uniform, hands at his sides. He is a miniature pillar of seriousness, brows furrowed, mouth tight. We lock gazes as my car passes by, and his head turns slowly to follow. I put my palm up to the window. As he passes out of sight I see his face break slowly into a grin.
---
By this time the sky was darkening, and we were starting to crack from the dozens of grotesquely nasal "ching chongs" we’d received over the past few hours, the taunts and snickers still coming at us. C cracked first. She yelled at someone, then another. I’d long ago stopped wondering why it was always men and adolescent boys who did it, but as I stared at the vegetable salesman’s wide grin as he received C’s scolding, my last straw combusted. On the way to the matatu, I got another ching chong. Without slowing my pace or turning my head, I gave him my middle finger.
On the matatu, after several minutes of glue boys pounding on our windows, sliding them open, grabbing at us, yelling at us, us shutting the windows, sighing, hawkers (again, always men) enjoying the show, K holding her latch-less window shut, C seated between us, ready to throw down, me futilely trying to talk about this great book I’d just read, me finding out my window was also missing a latch when a beaming hawker opens it and says, "Talk to me sista," me and K both holding our latch-less windows shut, Kenyans in the bus glancing back at us over and over…
"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?!"
"Shhhh."
"It’s okay."
"IT IS NOT OKAY! WHY ISN’T ANYONE DOING ANYTHING?"
"No one’s going to do anything," I said, "You have to let it go."
… me starting but then giving up on the idea of talking about the great book I’d just read...
"TUENDE!"
…and the matatu! finally! moving!
"Maybe it’s because it’s Friday," I said.
"Maybe it’s because they’re retards," said C.
---
It had been raining all day. I found myself trudging up the muddy slope towards my house. With each squishy step forward I slid back halfway and gained another pound on my shoes and another inch to my height. I was wet and cold and just grateful not to fall flat on my face. At this realization of my powerlessness against the mud, I laughed out loud. A laugh echoed back. I looked to my left, where an old mama stood. I laughed in response to her laughing at me, and she laughed again. We both guffawed, and then I was alone again, but five feet closer to the top of the hill, with a smile on my face.
---
Emily and I sit together in her dimly lit mud house. The Kipsigis lesson for today is about fruits and vegetables. "Isagek," she says, giving me the name of one of the local leafy greens. I incorrectly identify it as the one I once ate at her house. "Eh eh," she says, "That one is another one."
"Oh!" I realize, "You mean the one with five leaves?"
At the health lesson at Kiplokyi Secondary School, another teacher is giving a lesson on drug abuse. I turn to the teacher next to me to ask what "bhang" is, since it is supposedly the main drug abused in rural Kenya, and I’ve never heard of it. The teacher explains that it’s grown locally and smoked.
"Oooh," I say, holding my hand spread in front of me, "Is it the one with five leaves?"
---
Lunch in The Oven is always thirty shillings or less. Lunch in The Oven is always delicious. Lunch in The Oven usually includes listening to some combination of static and high-pitched whistling coming out of a radio in the corner. That day, though, we were listening to an actual station. First they went over some exchange rates. Then they played a song by that band that sounds like that other band ________ who sounds like ______. Then Evanescence came on, and it was just too overwhelming for the moment I was sharing with my rice. I briefly pondered the influence of American culture on this other side of the planet, then paid, then made my way to the vegetable stands to pick out some tomatoes and isagek. Ace of Base started blasting out of a kiosk somewhere behind the mama. This was too much. I had to run away.
---
After swinging the kids around in circles ("ndege! ndege!") until I’m sweating in the cool evening air and almost falling down in dizzies, my neighbor Janet suggests we visit her shamba. We take the short walk over, I take in the gorgeous view of a neighboring farming hillside, and then we make our way back. The four kids go ahead of us, running-jumping-falling into hilarious somersaults over the lush grassy field.
________________________________
* Isagek and marijuana are not the same.
---
On my way to the post office, I inadvertently catch up to a little boy about as tall as my knee. I bend just enough to tap my groceries on his little behind and say, "Wey," an approximation of "Hey you!" He continues marching forward as he turns his head up and back to look at me. When he registers my face, he cries and starts to run, but falls over. Then he gets up again and tries to run, only to launch himself forward for a spectacular crash. By now he’s screaming and kicking, flat on his tummy. Some adult spectators and I exchange giggles - mine guilty, theirs consoling.
---
We were sitting in the covered outdoor eating area of a lakeside dive that serves tilapia caught fresh from the lake. K and I sat on the side of the table facing the lake. C ordered a 200-shilling fish for all of us to share, then sat down with her back facing the lake. A man she’d once hired to ferry her to Hippo Point recognized her. They chatted a while. We were tired and warm and generally able to ignore the glue-sniffing street kids buzzing around us. Hawkers made their rounds among the diners (all Kenyan except for us), and we just answered them with tired shakes of our heads.
We were soon brought our fish along with a giant chunk of ugali, and within minutes we were sucking the last bits of flesh off the bones, ugali coating all the fingers of our right hands, marveling at what a long way we’d come since the days of table etiquette. With our appetites renewed, we agreed to order another one.
When that was done, a street kid reached over the thigh-high wall and took our entire platter of bones. The whole gang converged on the first kid and within seconds the empty platter was back on our table, the waitress telling them off, then giving them our leftover ugali.
---
Suddenly the rain started pouring. It came down so loudly I could hear nothing else. The courtyard emptied of people, leaving the compound seemingly deserted. The water gushed down the gutter so forcefully that it actually drained out backwards at a joint right above my door. I couldn’t let all that water go to waste, so I put a basin under it. In the rainy season, all my water collects from the rain in a tank by my house, but it’s out of my sight. Here it was happening right before my eyes, my muscles were straining to pull the full basin in, my hands and feet were wet and cold from the splashing, and I was putting another basin under there, then another. For a moment, I "got" it, that Earth and only Earth sustains life. My life. For the next two days I washed and cooked with this water that had been delivered straight from Heaven.
---
I’m squished up against the car window, watching the serenely lush mountainsides that are now a daily luxury in my life. A small boy stands erect by the side of the road, dressed in his school uniform, hands at his sides. He is a miniature pillar of seriousness, brows furrowed, mouth tight. We lock gazes as my car passes by, and his head turns slowly to follow. I put my palm up to the window. As he passes out of sight I see his face break slowly into a grin.
---
By this time the sky was darkening, and we were starting to crack from the dozens of grotesquely nasal "ching chongs" we’d received over the past few hours, the taunts and snickers still coming at us. C cracked first. She yelled at someone, then another. I’d long ago stopped wondering why it was always men and adolescent boys who did it, but as I stared at the vegetable salesman’s wide grin as he received C’s scolding, my last straw combusted. On the way to the matatu, I got another ching chong. Without slowing my pace or turning my head, I gave him my middle finger.
On the matatu, after several minutes of glue boys pounding on our windows, sliding them open, grabbing at us, yelling at us, us shutting the windows, sighing, hawkers (again, always men) enjoying the show, K holding her latch-less window shut, C seated between us, ready to throw down, me futilely trying to talk about this great book I’d just read, me finding out my window was also missing a latch when a beaming hawker opens it and says, "Talk to me sista," me and K both holding our latch-less windows shut, Kenyans in the bus glancing back at us over and over…
"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?!"
"Shhhh."
"It’s okay."
"IT IS NOT OKAY! WHY ISN’T ANYONE DOING ANYTHING?"
"No one’s going to do anything," I said, "You have to let it go."
… me starting but then giving up on the idea of talking about the great book I’d just read...
"TUENDE!"
…and the matatu! finally! moving!
"Maybe it’s because it’s Friday," I said.
"Maybe it’s because they’re retards," said C.
---
It had been raining all day. I found myself trudging up the muddy slope towards my house. With each squishy step forward I slid back halfway and gained another pound on my shoes and another inch to my height. I was wet and cold and just grateful not to fall flat on my face. At this realization of my powerlessness against the mud, I laughed out loud. A laugh echoed back. I looked to my left, where an old mama stood. I laughed in response to her laughing at me, and she laughed again. We both guffawed, and then I was alone again, but five feet closer to the top of the hill, with a smile on my face.
---
Emily and I sit together in her dimly lit mud house. The Kipsigis lesson for today is about fruits and vegetables. "Isagek," she says, giving me the name of one of the local leafy greens. I incorrectly identify it as the one I once ate at her house. "Eh eh," she says, "That one is another one."
"Oh!" I realize, "You mean the one with five leaves?"
At the health lesson at Kiplokyi Secondary School, another teacher is giving a lesson on drug abuse. I turn to the teacher next to me to ask what "bhang" is, since it is supposedly the main drug abused in rural Kenya, and I’ve never heard of it. The teacher explains that it’s grown locally and smoked.
"Oooh," I say, holding my hand spread in front of me, "Is it the one with five leaves?"
---
Lunch in The Oven is always thirty shillings or less. Lunch in The Oven is always delicious. Lunch in The Oven usually includes listening to some combination of static and high-pitched whistling coming out of a radio in the corner. That day, though, we were listening to an actual station. First they went over some exchange rates. Then they played a song by that band that sounds like that other band ________ who sounds like ______. Then Evanescence came on, and it was just too overwhelming for the moment I was sharing with my rice. I briefly pondered the influence of American culture on this other side of the planet, then paid, then made my way to the vegetable stands to pick out some tomatoes and isagek. Ace of Base started blasting out of a kiosk somewhere behind the mama. This was too much. I had to run away.
---
After swinging the kids around in circles ("ndege! ndege!") until I’m sweating in the cool evening air and almost falling down in dizzies, my neighbor Janet suggests we visit her shamba. We take the short walk over, I take in the gorgeous view of a neighboring farming hillside, and then we make our way back. The four kids go ahead of us, running-jumping-falling into hilarious somersaults over the lush grassy field.
________________________________
* Isagek and marijuana are not the same.
posted by Anonymous at
10:57 AM
|
3 comments
