All the endings are not happy ...

Jonas and Livingstone
... a story of what happens when children are uneducated ...

It is Saturday evening and I've finally had supper. The day was anything but blissful. Blissful implies harps and angels and somnolent postures on a lazy river or under a scarcely moving cloud filled sky.

Today began with three sets of visitors: a man selling bougainvillea; a woman wondering what had happened to her LIFA interview and two boys in their late teens. Marie and Sarah dealt with the bougainvilleas. I explained to the woman that she had been an excellent candidate but out of our league in salary expectations. Then Sarah and I spent the next several hours dealing with the boys.

They had never known their father and lived with their mother, at first alone, and then with a stepfather. When the mother died in 2000, the stepfather told them they were not his children and they had to leave. Out on the street they sought help and were rewarded by the attentions of a man who agreed to take them in. He kept them with him for two months and then locked them up and told them that he was a devil worshipper and they were to be sold as sacrifices to devils in Nairobi. He left for Nairobi. They screamed loudly enough to attract attention and were released by a neighbour woman who suggested they come to seek help from us.

Now anyone from our background finds herself thinking, "Yeah, sure, devil worshippers and human sacrifices. Right."

But when we asked Elliot the replacement askari about devil worship he was quite clear that this exists here; that they go into churches in the dead of night, and make terrible sacrifices and drink the blood … and that they are incredibly lucky people financially. They drive big cars with smoked glass windows. Anyone who gets linked up with them has to stay or die. Elliot doesn't believe. He's a Christian. But he knows it exists here … and he's not at all sure that the sacrifices don't work.

I asked Livingstone, the older of the boys and the one who spoke quite passable English, to take a note and go see Sister Augustina who runs the children's home. Elliot gave them directions (with the help of the husband of the lady who'd come to ask about the interview results) to Sister Augustina's. I gave them 40 shillings to take a boda boda.

An hour or so later, I was at the computer working on a proposal for SAIPE, when Sarah informed me that the boys were back. They had my note with a note to Father Lubanga on the back. Sister said she couldn't help but perhaps he could. They had no idea where Father Lubanga could be found. Elliot called to a woman on the road and asked if she was Catholic. She was. She suggested a most difficult way to find the good father. I decided to call first.

A telephone call is never a simple thing in Kenya. We tried the number we were given and got a high pitched scream announcing it was long distance. We hunted all through the phone book for area codes and could not find this one. I phoned the post office for information. They directed me (after a five minute wait) to a 900 number that was busy. At that point Wycliffe Kibisu arrived.

"Are you Catholic?" I asked. No ‘Hello.' No ‘How are you?' Just a demand for his religion.

He looked a little taken aback but responded. "No. But Catherine is."

"Can you phone her to find out where we can find Father Lubanga?"

Wycliffe has been around enough Canadians to know that we are not as polite a people as we should be; that we often forget the formalities of handshakes and queries about health before getting down to business, so he picked up the phone and called his girlfriend. A few minutes later we knew how to find the good father and Wycliffe drove us to the Catholic Mission.

The parish office is an oasis of quiet set back in from the market stalls and frenetic activity of the main road. We sat in the shade awaiting our turn to enter the office to tell our story to the young priest looking after things in Father Lubanga's absence. He questioned the boys closely about their parentage and about the possibility of finding relatives who might help. "We can't take them here," he said. "We only take high school boys." Livingstone has grade 4 and his brother, Jonas, grade 3. They are 17 and 18 years old.

"What are we going to do?"

"I think they should return to Mbale and stay with the neighbour who helped them escape. Then all three can come back in here to try to sort this out on Monday," the priest said quietly.

"Will they be too frightened to return to Mbale?" I asked.

He spoke to them a moment in Kiswahili. "It's okay."

"What do you think?" I asked Sarah.

She nodded. "It's the only way."

We each dug 50 shillings from our pockets to pay their fare back to Mbale and to bring them in again on Monday.

"God bless you," Livingstone said at the gate.

"If things don't work out," Sarah said, "You come back to us. Don't end up on the street." They nodded.

Our conversation on the way home was subdued. Even if you solve one of the problems for these kids, another one pops up. If they find someone to look after them in return for board what future do they have? If we could find them a home in Imbale they could attend a LIFA centre to get their primary education. Then they'd have to get the four years of high school including just staying alive during all those years.

We stopped in the market for fruit and vegetables on the way home.

CURSES

I know that people who read my last account of lost boys and devil worshippers have probably dismissed me as either a complete flake or as incurably naïve, but yesterday the saga continued, and so too, do I.

Livingstone and Jonas arrived just as we were getting ready to leave for Isulu where we were opening a new LIFA centre. I looked at them with dismay and said, "But you were supposed to go to the Catholic church today with your neighbour."

Livingstone nodded and said, "We went, but he sent us here." He handed me a note that read like any cop-out.

"I have listened to the two boys but I get no solution. Their age is beyond the children's home. They want a course of which this parish doesn't have. I hereby request you to see what to be done if possible. Thank you. God bless. Yours in Christ, Father Lubanga"

Christ is right. I'm leaving in five minutes. What in Christ's name am I supposed to do now? I told Everlyne, our office manager, whose heart is much bigger than the rest of her, a condensed version of Saturday's tale. When I climbed into the overloaded taxi she was deep in conversation with the boys.

Later ...

We think we have managed to do the impossible, thanks to Everlyne.

None of the children's homes we approached seemed to be the answer. What we needed was some way to feed and house these children long enough to get them some kind of skill, but, because they have no education, most training routes were closed to them.

Everlyne scouted around until she found a jua kali welder who is training boys to weld. These roadside fundis or tradesmen make a living for themselves with the smallest possible expenditure. He was willing to train Livingstone and Jonas for KSh 2000 per month. Since the training will lead to a job, they fit into the CIDA part of our scholarship programme so ACCES is able to pay for them to get this training.

Everlyne then went looking for appropriate lodging. Titus, one of our students, lives in a very small place, probably a room measuring about 8x10, but when Everlyne asked if he would take the boys in for a year, he said, "Of course. You have been so generous to me, I must be generous too." His face became grave, and then he continued, "There is a problem though. My mattress is very small." Everlyne assured him that we would purchase mattresses and sheets for the boys.

We will give the boys enough to cover their food and they will pool their food money with Titus' so that all can survive less expensively.

Everlyne had thought of everything including the need to sit down together, all of us, so that Titus and the boys could work out a harmonious living arrangement. The meeting is to be held on Wednesday afternoon.

I hope that these boys are mature enough to make this arrangement work. The younger of the two tends to sound like a teenager anywhere. "What I really want to do is drive. I want to take a driving course." No thought of what car he would drive. No idea of how few cars exist in Kenya. No concept of how limiting their grade three and four educational levels are. Most of the time you can listen to kids being stubborn and say to yourself, "Oh well they'll grow up one day." With these kids they can't afford to make any mistakes. They have to grow up now.

AFTERWORD

Eventually we were forced to admit that our trust had been misplaced; that too many years of neglect had done irreparable damage; that the boys could not adjust to the discipline of an apprenticeship. Despite the good will of people like Titus and the welder who wanted to train them, despite the real efforts everyone made to convince these boys of their role in making this last chance work, despite the best of intentions, these two fell through the cracks. They goofed off. They lied when they were asked to account for irresponsible behaviour. They hid letters they were asked to deliver to people. We could not help them. It was too late for Livingstone and Jonas. I was forced to write the following letter to the first woman who had attempted to help the boys when she made another attempt to get help.

18 March 2003
Anne Nawire
P.O. Box 20
Maragoli

RE: Agiza Mizilet, Livingstone, and Jonas


Dear Mrs. Nawire:

As our office manager, Mrs. Everlynne Musalia, has explained, ACCES sponsors students in post- secondary or trades training. It does not sponsor secondary students. Please do not send us any more requests for help for children or young people we are unable to sponsor.

We have just washed our hands of Livingstone and Jonas. We went far beyond our normal scope of activities in our attempts to help these boys, but they have proven to be dishonest, lazy and ungrateful.

Initially, we were touched by their plight and exerted considerable effort in an attempt to find them an organisation which would provide shelter, food and possibly training. All four of the organisations we approached on their behalf refused them or were unable to give them any chance at a better future.

At that point we looked at our own resources within ACCES. Despite their low level of education, we felt that we could get them some kind of apprenticeship training under a jua kali fundi if we were also able to provide accommodation. Mrs. Musalia approached one of our sponsored students and asked him if he would share his accommodation. Titus very generously agreed to take in the two boys. Mrs. Musalia arranged with a welder, who was training other young boys, to have Livingstone and Jonas taken into his programme. ACCES paid their fees for six months, gave them a living allowance, and bought them shoes, clothing, mattresses, and sheets. This was, of course, in addition to all the smaller sums for transport already given to them. In all we spent almost 17,000 shillings, enough for a full year's fees and accommodation at a university for a promising student.

Imagine our concern when the trainer arrived to tell us that the boys were not attending classes. We sent a letter to Titus with the boys asking him to explain clearly that they must attend class or be discontinued as sponsored students. Titus never received the letter. The boys had lost it. Jonas complained of illness. When he was examined by the nurse at ACCES, he was found to be perfectly healthy. He complained about his eyes and was sent with a note to the eye clinic. They agreed to provide sun glasses for KSh450, but Jonas came home to tell Titus that the doctor had told him that further work as a welder would cause him to go blind. When I interviewed the doctor I was told that was a complete lie; that he had told him the cost of sunglasses but had not even examined his eyes nor made such a statement.

All of us who have dealt with these boys in good faith have been disappointed and we have told them to leave Titus' home, taking with them the clothing we have provided. The welding trainer has been paid for six months' training, and should they find a way to survive, they will be able to continue their welding training until that money runs out. I doubt very much if they will do that, because they seem to want a free ride rather than an honest chance to improve their lot.

I have gone into such great detail so you will have a clear picture of what has happened here. Should they return to Mbale and to you, you will be aware of exactly what has transpired.


Yours faithfully,

When I wrote off the boys, I felt as if I had failed ... failed to judge accurately, but also failed to do enough. My best wasn't good enough for these boys.

George, Bainito and Geoffrey

One Boy Leads to Another

Bainito Omusebe

I was introduced to Bainito's situation by Gerald Bulinda, the headmaster of Butere Boys High School. He recounted the story of Bainito's struggle to get an education, and explained that his own staff had done everything they could to help Bainito. Could we help in any way? Our office staff members immediately offered cash to help Bainito go to school, and we Canadians followed their example.I was the lucky one who found herself accompanying Bainito on his school shopping excursion. I came away from the experience enriched.

One Boy's Struggle

Bainito's entire life has been a struggle. No one knows who fathered him or his brothers, not even his mother. She is mentally unsound, and has been most of her life. She is known throughout the district as an unbalanced woman given to wandering the roads, tearing off her clothing, and generally behaving in bizarre ways.

When Bainito and his brother were toddlers, neighbours would find them eating dirt and drinking from puddles. They would rescue the babies and take them into their own homes, only to have their kindness rewarded by abuse when the mother came back from one of her rambles and decided to reclaim the children.

Throughout primary school, Bainito worked for different people doing odd jobs in return for food, shelter and school fees. Despite the problems he faced continually, Bainito did not give up. He knew the importance of an education, and told me later that school was "a place where he'd always found solace and happiness ... where teachers and some pupils showed him friendliness and warm company". Mr. Bulinda shook his head and said to me, "I wonder how he managed to study. There was not even paraffin for the lamp. He would have struggled to read by the light of the wick alone."

Bainito did graduate from primary school at age sixteen. He attained 73% and stood first in his class. Butere Boys High School called him, gave him some bursary money, scrambled to get him a used uniform and some exercise books, and then called me.

At the ACCES office, Bainito wrote an autobiography in which he described his family situation as "unpalatable to imagine and talk about", but he showed considerable generosity of spirit as he explained that his mother was deserving of his sympathy because "her mental capability is poor" and she "is not able to comprehend anything". Bainito is, like many of the Kenyan young people I met, wise beyond his years.

Our Shopping Trip

We began with shoes, secondhand, spread out on tarpaulins. The third pair he tried fit and were packed into a bag. The next stop was the stationery store to buy dictionaries, textbooks and a Bible. I picked up the first Bible I saw, the cheapest, and asked if it would do. Bainito stroked the soft leather cover of a zippered Bible. It cost eighty cents more, and I said, "We'll take that one." The look on his face was one I'll not forget. The uniform shop was next. Here Bainito informed me that he needed only one pair of pants and one shirt; that he had the ex- student's uniform. Nor did he need athletic shorts, just the t-shirt. By now it was noon and I asked if he was hungry. He said nothing. I made some comment about boys always being hungry, and suggested we go to get a meal.

Across the road at the restaurant, known as a hotel in Kenya, Bainito had to be coaxed to order anything. "You decide," he said. When I pointed out that he knew the different menu items better than I did, and he should choose whatever he wanted, he said in a low voice, "A chapati." I asked if it came with anything. The waiter shook his head and I ordered stew for us. Bainito's eyes flickered around, looking for clues. Then he reached across the table to get the glass of the woman sitting opposite us. He was on his way to the water tap where people wash their hands, to fill it when the woman and I stopped him. "It's dirty," I began. "They will bring you water," the woman explained. Bainito hung his head and said softly, "I've never been to a hotel before."

When the food arrived, I asked how often they ate meat at school. "Only on Tuesdays," he said. "A good thing you came on Thursday to do your shopping," I quipped. "You get to have meat twice this week." He laughed and began to open up.

As we ate and afterwards as we finished the shopping, stopping to buy shoe polish, towels and bedding, I learned that he was a runner, already running at the national level; that the M.P. whose financial help the headmaster had hoped to enlist, was not proving very helpful; that a local businessman who had promised Bainito a trunk if he graduated, was now avoiding him. "Africans are not generous," he said.

I thought of all the Kenyans I knew who were helping family members, neighbours, and virtual strangers every day, and pointed out that the money we were spending on his school shopping had come from the meagre salaries of people in the ACCES and LIFA offices. I reminded him that his headmaster had contributed money and had also gone out of his way to find help for him; and that his teachers had been concerned and caring. He agreed, and amended his comment. "Some Kenyans are generous," he said with a smile.

Bainito had likely discovered early that Kenyans, like everyone else in the world, cannot be easily categorized, and he had probably, in his sixteen years, encountered more hardship than I had in my sixty-two years.

Bainito Today

I returned to Canada May 1, 2003. When I left, Bainito and several other children I had met, were safely ensconced at high school. At the end of April, Bainito had come to the office to show me his first term report and to give me a sack of fresh peanuts and eight eggs.

On May 6, he wrote me a letter thanking me for the spending money I had left for him, expressing concern for my health, which had not been good just before I left Kenya, and telling me how he was doing in athletics.

Two days ago, I received an e-mail from Everlyne, the ACCES office manager, telling me that Bainito was having trouble because of money. Had I received her e-mail? I hadn't so she sent it again. It consisted of a message from Bainito and a short note from Everlyne herself.

Bainito's Letter

Dear Madame,

It is another good time that I take to write to you this letter. I hope you are fine. Thank you very much for the 500/= ($10) you left for me at Kakamega office. It helped me acquire the basics. Second, I am writing this letter from Kakamega office. I have been sent away from school. I was given a bursary of 7230/= ($144.60). I have been chased away becasue of 12,770/= ($255.40). It is because of this I am writing to kindly request you for assistance. I pray God will help you to be able to find someone to help me. Yours faithfully, Bainito Omusebe Clifford

Everlyne's note was simply a reminder that she still had about $90 of my money.



Needless to say, I sent the necessary funds. Two hundred dollars is impossible for a Kenyan orphan to raise, but not for a Canadian.

Bainito will need some help with his third term fees and will need about $350 for each of the next three years if he is to complete high school. If he doesn't complete high school, his future is bleak. There are no relatives in Nairobi to help out; no one to give a primary school leaver a job. Of all the children I know, Bainito is the one who is most alone.

Update on Bainito

Bainito was taken on by CAAA ... the alumni asssociation of young people who had been helped by CHES or ACCES ... and he moved to Shikunga Secondary School where he completed high school. I saw him there with other students for whom I had found help when I was in Kenya in 2006. He was in his final year of high school. I will post a photo later.

Nelson Omondi at Butere Boys Secondary School

The Boy Who Touched My Heart First

Nelson Omondi

Nelson arrived at ACCES one day in December with his two half brothers, Edwin and Japheth. Edwin did all the talking. He had just completed high school, and spoke on behalf of the two brothers for whom he was now responsible. Nelson's mother had died. The father of all three had died. Edwin and Japheth's mother (Nelson's step-mother) was dying. No one said it. No one had to. Anyone who has lived in Africa recognizes the trail left by AIDS deaths, a trail that almost always ends in orphaned children who now face a life filled with often insurmountable barriers.

Edwin brought out an envelope filled with neatly organised papers. The boys' primary school reports were all there. Throughout the eight years, Nelson had been a superior student, and had placed third on the national exams with 420 marks out of a possible 500. Japheth's primary school performance was average, but he too had managed above average marks on the KCPE exams: 376/500. I looked at the three of them and felt the tears welling up, my throat choking my words.

I felt sympathy for Nelson and Japheth whose schooling must now end. Without further education these bright boys would find themselves doing manual labour for a subsistence living. I thought of the hundreds of boda boda drivers who were desperately trying to get enough passengers to make their 50 shillings ($1) each day. I thought of the men pushing huge wooden barrows through the streets. I thought of the ragged street boys warming their hands over charcoal fires when I arose early at dawn. They too had been boys whose chances to get education had been snatched from them.

But the prickle I felt behind my eyelids was only partly caused by my sympathy for the hardships the boys now faced. It had much more to do with my very clear understanding of the life Edwin, their older brother, would have. He was eighteen years old and responsible for a family. And, like so many Kenyans I knew, he was taking on the responsibility without a murmur. There was no resentment, no sense of injustice, no desire to break and run. If you are Kenyan you look after your family. You look after blood relations and you look after the others you inherit, the extended family members that sometimes seem to me more like clusters of incomprehensible undergrowth than family trees with discernible branches and connections.

I couldn't continue the conversation much longer, so I took the envelope of papers from Edwin and said, "I will do my best to find someone to help. ACCES does not fund high school students, but I will try to find someone who will."

That is how I began my file of primary school graduates who need and deserve help. Most are boys, and most of the boys are bright, keen students like Nelson.

Nelson Goes to School

Nelson was one of the lucky ones. He still needed help, but he had been given a chance to get his first year of high school.

I approached Nora, part of the group starting up BEEF (Boys' Educational Endowment Fund). She looked at the files of the small group of boys then in my folder and said, "This one is the best bet for funding. He has stood first and has attained excellent grades from a poor school." She was not pointing to Nelson's file. Nelson's primary school had a better record than Daniel's, and Daniel's marks were as high as Nelson's. We discussed how to help Daniel and then I was left, once again, with the conundrum of how to help Nelson.

I sat in my office the following day, the file folder open in front of me, and let the tears roll down my cheeks. Francis came in to use the computer, and asked what was wrong. I shoved the Nelson's file toward him. "I can't do anything to help him. Look at his marks. And he won't even get to high school."

Francis looked carefully at the reports, at the KCPE results, at my notes. "He could have been me," he said finally. "I was lucky, but without CHES, I would never have gone to high school." We talked a bit more, and he suggested trying the Aga Khan people. I tried but I kept running into blank walls.

"Any more suggestions?" I asked Francis the next day.

"What about trying CAAA (CHES ACCES Alumni Association)? We support a student every year. I'm not sure whether we have one right now."

This time I was able to make some headway. CAAA met each Sunday in our office, and Florence, our accountant, was its most active member. CAAA sent someone out to check on the boy's home. When she returned she reported that the boys were living in abysmal conditions, far worse than I had envisaged. Their house was only partly roofed. Their mother was in the last stages of the disease and would likely not last more than a couple of months. This family certainly needed any help they could get. CAAA agreed to fund Nelson's first year. I was to try to find alternative funding for his last three years.

Nelson began his studies at Butere Boys' High School in January, 2003.

Nelson's Education

Less than a month went by before we received a sad letter from Nelson. He hated school. Couldn't we send him to another school where the students were more concerned with their education? Florence wrote a letter and assured him that things would get better, and it would be impossible to make a change now anyway. I pointed out that Bainito was also there; that he should make friends with him. Nelson settled in, and we didn't hear anything more until the school break in April when he brought his first report.

His average was in the high seventies, he had stood third out of 101 students, he was involved in volleyball, and the comments were complimentary. In typical Kenyan fashion, the headmaster's comment was understated praise. "Good, but aim for A in all your subjects." Nelson told me that Bainito was his good friend, and it was clear that he was most impressed by Bainito's sports ability. Later Bainito praised Nelson's academic success. An interesting friendship, one in which competition played no role.

The next time I heard from Nelson was when I returned to Canada. One envelope: two letters; one from Bainito, one from Nelson ... both thanking me for the spending money I had left for them. Nelson's made me chuckle. He is at the stage where he writes with thesaurus and dictionary close by.



Dear Barbara Scott:

I am writing to thank you fully for your sponsorship. I am compelled to say your strategical attitude towards me can barely be underestimated. I was entangled in turmoil after being rendered helpless, but you managed to pick me up. Thanks for your marvellous work.

I am at school desperately fighting to achieve the best academically irrespective of my step-mother's deteriorating health. I also thank you for the pocket money you left behind to be handed over to me. May you continue with that spirit. At home my brothers and sisters have been greatly captivated by your kindness and they wish you an eternal life in God's kingdom. May God grant you his blessings so that you can continue to help the needy further. Thank you very much and may God bless you. Amen.

Yours sincerely,

Omondi Nelson

What Next?

First I had to find someone to fund Nelson's last three years at Butere Boys'. Then it would be nice to find someone to help Japheth too ... but there are others in the files who also need help, so Japheth may have to wait.

The Last Note at This Time

I found the necessary funding and Nelson finished school. Nelson graduated with an average of B+ and was invited to a university. He approached ACCES for help to attend university and received a scholarship. He is now attending university. I saw him the last time I was in Kenya and will post his photo as soon as I find it.

Market Day in Kakamega

The air just rests against my skin ... neither hot nor cold ... just there. The only time I am aware of temperature here is at noon if the sun is shining and I am walking quickly or carrying a load, and once, yesterday in fact, when rain teemed down from a grey sky, the wind blowing it in sheets past the rondavel in which we sat to eat lunch.

Someone in some book wrote of the flavours of Africa rather than smells. Whoever it was captured it well. It is like a symphony of odours, some subtle, some rising in great crashing crescendos. Or a fabric woven from many different strands of thread, some thick and deeply shaded, others fine and light. And it isn't just the smells that weave themselves together into a fabric that immediately conjures up Africa. It is also the sights, and the sounds that are unmistakeably African.

Weaving its way through the whole fabric is the warm sweet smell of the wood and charcoal fires, and the meat cooking over them. There is one alley way I pass each day where someone roasts chicken over an open fire and my mouth waters.

The most penetrating smell is that of the pigs rooting about in the rotting produce. They feast at night and are joined in the morning by an old man whose stick turns over patches of garbage, seeking something of value they haven't yet devoured. A strong wind blowing in the wrong direction makes me hold my breath till I pass the mound. Later you see the same pigs lolling about in the sunshine sleeping off their gluttony.

After the rains the air is clean but the ground turns into slippery red sludge and I make my hesitant way hopping from one rock to another, avoiding the freshly wet green cow dung whose odour rise from the steaming mud.

My waking hours are filled with sound that begins with the birds that wake me at 5:30 and ends with laughter and music from the surrounding neighbourhoods to which I fall asleep at night. Everywhere I walk music accompanies me, lifting my feet and my spirits in a way I cannot describe and which doesn't happen anywhere else in the world that I know of. And always the background murmur of Luhya and Kiswahili. In town every mode of transport adds its own raucous noise to the cacophony of the streets. Matatu horns blare. Bicycle bells jangle. A truck roars as it struggles up a hill belching out black smoke and leaving in its wake the stench of petrol fumes that slowly dissipate to be replaced by perfume wafting from nearby flowering trees.

Someone sells tiny vials of perfume on the main road and a man dabs some behind his ears. Mostly people just smell like clean bodies in open air, but occasionally the sharp acrid smell of stale sweat overpowers me in an enclosed space.

The streets are alive on Saturday morning as people come to buy and sell at the markets. Women sit sideways on boda bodas, their legs sedately crossed, perfectly balanced. A troop of nursing sisters parades past, their black faces framed by white head pieces. Another woman walked past balancing an enormous clay cooking pot on her head. So many bicycles, matatus and pickups bursting with people on the move. Goods are carried on heads, on the backs of bicycles, in wooden wheel barrows, on the tops of sagging matatus. It is an entrepreneurial society ... thousands of small business people selling everything from batteries to second hand clothing and linens to fresh produce to plastic bags. I wonder how they all survive when so many sell the same thing. There is some sense of order in the market ... specialties like dresses or shirts or pants or linens ... but still so many vying for the few shillingi available.

First Impressions

My First Week in Kakamega

Just as you can never be a virgin again, you can never recapture exactly those first impressions of a country. My very first trip to Africa was as a volunteer teacher working with teachers in Swaziland in 1992. I was fifty-two years old and had traveled very little before that trip.

That was the trip that caused me to wake up in the middle of the night worrying about flies laying eggs under my skin, scorpions nesting in my shoes and snakes ready to attack everywhere. Every sense was heightened by discomfort and fear.

I kept a journal for myself and a doll my art student daughter sent with me. I had difficulty choosing a voice and I eventually called it Wish's journal. "I" , "we" and "she" simply blended into Wish, and, since everything was viewed through my lens, I wrote in the first person singular.

Wish's impressions encompassed the freshest view I will ever have of Africa or of travel in the developing world. Unfortunately that journal disappeared, and all my later impressions have been tinged by memories of other places and dulled by familiarity and comfort. Each new experience becomes part of an on-going and ever-growing understanding of the world.

The following is an excerpt from the journal I kept my first week in Western Kenya in 2002. I was to be the new agent for a Canadian NGO. By then I had traveled and worked in Malawi, Namibia, Jordan, and Mongolia. Africa exerted the strongest tug on me and I was looking forward to working and living in Kakamega for the next six months.

***********************

November 1, 2002

The drive from the airport to Kakamega was a trip down memory lane.

How quickly and easily I return to Africa with its red earth, brilliant green foliage, surreal purple jacarandas and vibrant red bougainvilleas. We even had our obligatory flat tire which Joseph fixed with alacrity. Lots and lots of bicycles and boda bodas ... and matatus and the vans I've forgotten the name they give them here. Women carrying everything from wood to bananas on their heads. The landscape here is spectacular ... hills and valleys ... people working tiny patches of garden along the roadside. A beautiful wall of flowers that hides a depot for large machines. Lots of schools ... and a hospital ... and a mortuary with the sign "cold rooms available". Lots of drumming, singing and yelling as convoys cheer for their political parties. Karen, the outgoing agent, tells me that two people were shot dead by over zealous police during a demonstration near Kakamega a couple of weeks ago.

The buildings range from grass and mud huts to corrugated iron dwellings to solid brick houses.

Huge ads decorate many buildings and AIDS Awareness is well advertised through billboards.

Goats everywhere, and Brahmin cattle with their great humped necks. A cow lives close by and grazes near the fence within sight of the wall embedded with glass.Tonight the dogs howl and bark to one another and the guard sits outside my livingroom window protecting me.

I am really beat ... Karen asked me to go out for a drink with her to meet the CHES people at 5:30 and out dancing at 9:30 ... but I am just too too wiped out to consider partying today. I was awfully glad to eat the grilled cheese sandwiches she prepared for lunch and the chicken she made for dinner.

I want to get my own stove and oven working properly and start getting myself organized tomorrow ... banking and shopping ... it is market day. All I have done all day is unpack and sort out the kitchen.

The apartment is certainly habitable now ... under furnished but spacious and clean ... and I will do things to make it homier. I think I shall just take it one room at a time ... and start with the essentials like kitchen and bath necessities.

The living room is a hodge podge of mismatched chairs and couches that are neither comfortable nor attractive. Brown striped drapes almost cover the front window and a telephone that I cannot access sits on a small table, a world radio that doesn't work is on a stool, and a book shelf sits in another corner. The whole thing is a challenge and one I am not up to just now.

There is a master bath ensuite and one of those split bathrooms as well ... a shower room and a toilet and wash basin room. Doesn't this sound grand? In reality neither is very attractive.

(... and I was to find out later, prone to malfunction... )

The kitchen is large but has its own set of anomalies. Cupboards are designed for 8 foot tall giants, but there is plenty of drawer and counter space and lots of lower cupboards. The stove is not yet hooked up to gas and is not completely put together.

I am too tired to give this the kind of attention it deserves. More tomorrow.

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The next day: Boda Bodas and Banking:

We arranged to have the signatory changed at Barclay's Bank this morning ... my first boda boda ride. Lots of speed bumps and nothing to cling to ... and young men shouting and laughing about the msungu's hands on the boda boda driver's bum!

At the bank we waited in a sealed off little room and dealt with Ruth through a glass grill. It was a laborious process and since their photocopy machine had broken down we had to leave to get copies of relevant pages in my passport. We stopped to pay the phone bill (a sign in the outer office reads: "No hawking in the office or corridors" and Karen said there are signs around town admonishing drivers not to "hoot".

Then we went to the post office. I think one of the most unnerving things about Kakamega so far is the crush of humanity. Everywhere you must ease your way through a crowd. We got our photocopying done there and returned to the bank where we left everything in Ruth's hands, hoping that all would be done before Karen left in a few days.

On the way home I stopped at the second Foto store to buy chicken sausage and javex and at the second Mama Watoto's to buy yogurt, toilet paper and a capon. My butcher had forgotten my fillet so I have to go back tomorrow. I was laughed at in the butchery ... and felt a little ill from the smell ... reminded me of the smell when the goat was butchered in the ger in Mongolia.

The children answer, "Fine, thank you" no matter what you say.

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Day 4

I am always amazed by what crippled Africans manage to accomplish. I watched a man crawl on hands and knees down the road the other day, and at the choir competition I saw a few people with severe disabilites managing very well. One was a tiny woman on two aluminum crutches. Another was a badly crippled man who sang the solo parts for his choir as he played the litungu, a green painted handmade banjo. Throughout the performance, he stood like a heron on one leg, the other one stuck straight out the side at a sharp angle from his body.

I am seeing interesting instruments I have either never seen before or only in Eleuthera at Junkanoo when the hardware and plumbing stores are the source of most instruments. A metal pipe set on the floor is hit with a second iron stick makes a metallic drumming sound. Another metallic instrument I saw for the first time was a tinkling ring and stick. There were several kinds of drums. Many of the larger ones are made from old steel drums. A deep throated drum of leather and steel sounded like my drum when both skins were beaten with his hands. I can only get that sound with a stick padded with soft chamois. One woman had one that looked like mine, but much bigger, slung around her neck by a sisal rope. I saw one shaped like a vase with skin on the wide mouthed end and the narrow end of the funnel left open. Another set was painted green red and white to match the choir gowns with wide frilly collars that made the men look a little like grannies in nightgowns. Each drum has a different sound. I am going to have to learn and listen a great deal before I choose my drum.

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Mumias Sugar Factory .... November 7, 2002

My first visit to a company town of any kind ... and a real insight into Kenyan reality. Not because it was representative of the area ... but because it was so unrepresentative in some respects and alike in others.

This was an oasis of unreality ... management had homes set on three acre lots ... Kenyan houses ... cinderblock and concrete construction ... but set in an idyllic fairyland of tall trees and flowering plants, reached by following a serene red dirt road through checkpoints of saluting askari. We visted two schools attended by the children of management ... beautiful locations ... wonderfully appointed. We ate dinner at the club ... excellent meal ... swimming pool, tennis courts, beautifully kept grounds ... and then we learned that this was just one of many clubs. Each level of workers from apprentices to management had its own club.

I asked whether there was a sense of neighbourliness here and was told about the segregation that makes that impossible. We learned that there is an Asian section, a clerical workers' section, a factory workers' section, etc. etc. ... and then the row of shanties where the houseworkers lived ... still better than the homes of such workers outside the company town ... but decidedly different from the other homes around them.

At the plant I learned how sugar cane is weighed, ground up, washed with hot water once the sugar is exposed to release the sucrose. Then it goes through different sections of the process until as much sucrose has been extracted as possible and the squeezed out baggase is dried and used for fueling the steam furnaces that create power for the entire town ... and then some. The sugar water is spun centifugally (I think) and then evaporated until the sugar, molasses, then brown sugar are extracted. We even saw the packing plant.

Everywhere were safety notices ... when I asked about safety I was told that the company was very aware ... it cost them money to look after hurt employees ... but there were still accidents. I am surprised more don't succumb to the heat and fall ... often three stories. My own vertigo kicked in when I began walking along iron grill catwalks and ascending and descending iron grill stairs that over the years had been worn to a concave shape. By the time I emerged at the end my palms were black from holding tight to the thin pipe railings.

The workers work seven 8 hour days and then get a day or two off ... no more than two or three a month, and they have a union!

I have some notes on the history of the plant ... and on the decor of the man giving us the information ... a stern faced Moi ... the official photograph one sees in every office and public place ... and a large poster of a sexy broad wearing a silver jump suit by a motorcycle ... courtesy of some car company. On a bulletin board was a newspaper clipping headlined "The Idi Amins of this World."

Afterwards we had a very good chicken meal at the club and then toured the schools. Still later we went to Wycliffe's home with Catherine, his fiancee. Wycliffe's art consisted mainly of calendars hung at ceiling height. She served us cafe au lait and bananas and when we left gave us wonderful onions and sukumo wiki from the garden.

I cooked it last night but need more practice, I am afraid!

I think my most lasting visceral memories of the sugar plant will be the smells ... first of corn silk drying or of corn cooking ... and then later, as the sucrose is extracted, a stronger smell ... like molasses ... like what I imagine bootleg rum smells like as they make it. A close second will be my vertigo.

My memory that is a composite of everything sorted and analysed by my brain ... is of the class distinctions and of the company town mentality.

Back of Beyond

Boda Boda Rides in Kisumu

In Kisumu, George and I walked up to the market area and caught boda bodas. After a bit of a quibble about price we settled on the boda boda seats and rode out into the countryside on well paved roads past large estates, and then on a red road past smaller houses, scattering goats, chickens, and children. We sailed past a game park of sorts where they kept ostriches.

Finally we turned onto an even smaller red road with larger ruts and ridges and came to the lake. A main building housed the bar, dining room, toilets and a pool table, and the spacious grounds were dotted with round cement bandas with straw roofs. We sat down in one and ordered drinks … a soda for George; a beer for me.

George told me about Luhya traditional music and about some of the strange customs of different parts of the country, still practised by strong traditionalists. One of them involved the death of a wife … the husband was/is expected to spend the night with the corpse paying it his last respects … sexually. That is a custom still practised in the rural areas around Kisumu by members of the Luo tribe. In another province men and women strip naked after dark and run … they are called night runners … and they often defecate at the doorways of villagers … ones they dislike, I guess.

George and I took our time eating and talking and then headed out to the red road to find boda bodas. The trip back to Kisumu cost ten shillings less but was rather more eventful than the trip to the lake. At one point we were chased by a pig and were nearly overturned. I've been chased by dogs but never by a pig … and a pig can give quite a large shove to a bicycle!

One of the many threats to boda boda drivers

Matatu Troubles, Big and Small

I chose the title for this blog and possibly a book based on two matatu rides I took with George Amateshe.

We agreed to meet at the post office for our Saturday trip to Kisumu. I was a bit early so I sat on a bench in the shade of a giant tree, the spot where some of the vendors usually set up during the week. Three old ladies walked around peering down at the packed earth and occasionally leaning over from the waist and digging at something, then freeing and pocketing it. They were collecting bottle caps. I asked what they did with them. We saved ours for the LIFA centres to be used as math counters. One old lady spoke very loudly and very slowly, hoping I would understand if she were careful enough but of course I didn't speak enough Kiswahili. Then, as if by magic, I caught the words watoto and shule … children and school … they were taking them to the local school.

We caught the matatu across the road and travelled without incident to Kisumu, chatting about this and that as we rode along at a reasonable pace. Just before we arrived in Kisumu there was a small eruption which occasioned much talk in the matatu. Afterwards George explained that a man at the back, in trying to leave, stood on a woman's foot. The woman called out and another woman gave her hell for creating a fuss. She asked what she was expected to do, sit there quietly while a large man rested on her foot. The man got off and the matatu passengers smiled at one another. "Matatu matata," smiled a woman. I raised an eyebrow. "Matatu troubles," George said quietly.

The Crazy Matatu Trip Home
(more serious matatu matata)

In Kisumu we climbed aboard a matatu with a broken windshield. Not out … just crazed. It had obviously been in an accident.

And then we sat in the sweltering heat. Kisumu is much closer to sea level than Kakamega and so it is hotter and more humid there. While we sat there, we were approached by every possible type of vendor. They sold audiotapes, radios, batteries, cookies, home made snacks, peanuts, bananas, cold sodas and water … even mothballs … I had to explain to George what mothballs were. Who in Kisumu would ever need to protect their woollens?

A street boy stood quietly by the window expecting money. He said, "Please, I'm hungry," and just stood there patiently. I dug through my purse and found all the one-shilling pieces and gave them to him. "God bless you," he said. Down by the fish shacks where we had bought our whole fish and had it cooked, they feed the street boys the leftovers. Street children pose a bigger problem in Kisumu than it is in Kakamega. Bigger place – bigger problem, I guess.

Finally the matatu began to inch its way out of the car park … then stopped while a fight erupted. One vendor selling leather belts with metal buckles had been robbed by another vendor in rags selling metal hangers. The wronged man whipped the belts from around his neck and slashed at the thief's face. He put his hangers up as a defence and made threatening motions towards the other. Several men separated the two and talked the situation out. We moved out onto the road.

As soon as we hit the road … still in town … the ride from hell began. The driver drove at 100 km/hr through town, roaring past other vehicles and slamming to a stop to gather more passengers for the already overcrowded van. Then when we got onto the highway (a potholed, speed bumped, winding, narrow, hilly road with steep shoulders), he upped his speed to 120. He continued the speeding up and braking suddenly pattern, but now we had to contend with his passing of vehicles travelling over the speed limit themselves. Several times I was certain we would hit either a pedestrian or another vehicle because his brakes were not responding as quickly as they should have.

At one place, the people were lined up on both sides of the road and he drove straight through them to stop on the shoulder to disgorge passengers and take on others.

"Why are all these people here?" I asked George.

"The lorry up ahead killed someone walking along the road," he replied.

The body was in a truck. Police were everywhere. The truck driver was sitting in the police car.

"The guy who was killed was drunk," George continued. "The truck just lifted him and he flew, his brains spilling out."

I shuddered, and then thought perhaps our own driver might drive more carefully after seeing how easily life can be snuffed out. No chance. As soon as we lumbered out through the people onto the road, the wild ride continued.

The only time I have come as close to demanding that a vehicle stop so that I could get out was when I was hitching in the back of a speeding truck in Eleuthera. The driver had forgotten we were in the back bouncing around. Then, as now, I decided to leave my destiny to Fate.

We arrived without serious incident in Kakamega where insult was added to injury. The fare from Kisumu to Kakamega is 80 shillings, but the tout refused to give me my change insisting that the fare was 100.

I argued and George said quietly, "This tout nearly punched another passenger when he argued, Barbara. Leave it." I left the intimidating tout and accosted the driver who backed the tout.

I vowed never again to board the matatu with the cracked and crazed windshield.

A Kakamega red road in the rain

Walking in Western Kenya

Two Nairobi taxis meet in the rain

Travel by Taxi

Taxis are the rich man's alternative to matatus and boda bodas. In Western Kenya I used taxis only when going to or from the airport with luggage.

In any developing country, taxis are unlikely to be in good shape. They are usually well past their best before date, and the condition of the roads is very hard on all vehicles. In addition, the parts used to repair damage are often hand made. Jeremiah's taxi was the one we used, but it was only marginally better than the others.

The trip to pick up George and Beth Scott provides one of the more memorable stories but few trips were not delayed by a flat tire or some other roadside problem.

Jeremiah's transmission gave out shortly after we left Kisumu. He had to get the car turned around so that we could travel in reverse. The road between Kakamega and Kisumu is winding, rutted and dangerous. The matatus and trucks move at unsafe speeds, and take all kinds of reckless chances. Traveling in reverse on any road would have been remarkable but on that road the idea was ludicrous.

George sat in the passenger seat beside Jeremiah. Beth and I sat in the back seat facing the direction in which we were going. When we passed a large truck, everyone in the truck began to laugh and point at our car passing traffic on the main highway while travelling backwards.

Beth and I giggled and looked at George for the first time. He was white faced and rigid ... and furious. I pointed out as gently as I could, that travelling with Jeremiah, even going backwards, was safer than many matatu rides.

We all breathed a little easier when we got turned around and a truck pulled us slowly home. It would have been quicker but we went through several ropes enroute, and at one point, a matatu cut between us and the truck, and we found ourselves face to face with a startled matatu driver. The expression on that driver's face was priceless when he discovered we were attached to the truck.

I didn't dare look at George's face.

The Kenyan bicycle seldom carries just a rider

Cows are tethered, not grazed, in Kenya, and the neepya grass is transported by boda boda.

The First of the Boda Boda Stories

Town and country boda bodas may look alike, but the experiences are very different. This photo was taken in Kakamega Town where the children and the boda boda drivers are considerably more sophisticated than those I met when I spent a day teaching at Ikoli, an isolated secondary school.

About a week after giving a workshop for English teachers, I agreed, with some trepidation, to teach the classes of one of the workshop participants.

On the appointed day, Timothy appeared out of the darkness shortly after six, shouldered my yellow pack filled with teaching materials, plans and aids, and herded us along the quietly bustling darkened road to the matatus. It was refreshingly cool, and the darkness muffled sound. Even the blaring matatu horns were subdued. The touts were as aggressive as always and I noted that they grabbed Timothy by the arm as roughly as they had grabbed Sarah and me another day. I had wondered at the time if their insistence had been caused by our white skin or the fact that we were women.

We rode twenty kilometres past the stadium where the man had been killed in pre-election violence, by the Lurambi market where vendors were unpacking things in the pre-dawn light, toward the Kakamega rainforest. We alighted at the junction just beyond the entrance to the forest. It was seven o'clock and still cool.

Waiting for the boda bodas, we watched as the primary school children began to arrive in groups and ones and twos. They looked like small uniformed turtles with their backpacks, laden with books. Several stared at us, their heads still turned towards us as they walked toward the main road. Out here, despite the proximity of the forest, the only tourist attraction in the area, white people are still a rarity. Timothy told us that most children in his school had never before seen a msungu.

We remarked on the clean smells of the countryside and Timothy began to speak of the hill country where Ikoli is located. He had been a town boy when he accepted this post at a poor isolated day school, and had a great deal to learn about rural people and their ways. There was pride in his recounting of his transition from being a teacher who arrived, taught and escaped back to town at the end of each week to becoming a member of the community.

Would he stay long? No, he had ambitions and he didn't want to spend his entire career teaching at Ikoli, but for now he was happy. He cared about his students and he wanted to give them exposure to experiences they would otherwise never have. That is why he entered them in competitions in which they had little chance of winning; why he had made the effort to bring us out for the day.

He had warned his students that they must not "stare at us with their teeth", so few gaped open- mouthed, but as the day progressed I realised that my strangeness was a definite hindrance to communication. I expected the children in Forms 1 and 2 to have a poor command of English so I worked more slowly and carefully, but as they day wore on, I became tired -- and more comfortable. I made the mistake of assuming that the older students were far more competent and comfortable with spoken English than they actually were.

But I have jumped ahead of myself.

The boda bodas arrived and we climbed aboard. Timothy had talked about the seven kilometre climb, but he hadn't mentioned the state of the road or the steep descents into the river valleys or the stream fordings.

If you've never ridden on a boda boda, it may be difficult to imagine the difference between riding your own bike and riding on the back of one of these. The drivers are in excellent physical shape: strong and lean. They are riding single speed bikes over very rough terrain carrying large loads of produce, luggage and passengers on padded seats immediately behind the driver. The bikes have been adapted to carry passengers. Usually they have welded handles just below their seats and small footrests in the appropriate location.

Usually.

I have ridden on bikes without any handles or with stubby sharp edged handles that do not encourage holding on, and more than once have been forced to let my legs hang because the footrests caused my legs to cramp. Today, both handles and footrests were fine … and thank God for that. This was the longest, roughest, most thrilling series of rides I've ever had on boda bodas.

On your own bike you may traverse tough territory, but you can always see where you are going. On a boda boda what you see is the driver's back and, with your peripheral vision, the countryside that flashes by.

On this ride we passed cane fields, forest, peaceful shambas with thatched roofed mud buildings, and rumbled over bridges that crossed rushing brooks. Pedestrians, boda bodas carrying cargo and heavily laden donkeys shared the road, but very few motorized vehicles appeared.

Neepya grass being transported along asphalt road near Mumias

We hurtled down hills at breakneck speeds, the driver following the topography of the rutted red road by swerving around the largest bumps and navigating between the ridges. Because I could not see what was coming up, these zigs and zags almost invariably caught me by surprise and I worried that I would unbalance us. I shuddered to think what kind of landing I would endure if that happened. I considered closing my eyes but decided against it, so I endured the kaleidoscope of bouncing images and terrifyingly sudden changes of direction, my knuckles turning white on the handles and my knees clinging as best they could to the diagonal metal strip against which they rested. I felt great relief when we stopped at the bottom of steep grades to walk uphill.

The higher we climbed, the more beautiful became the countryside. Mist rose in swirls and the vistas grew in scope, fields and woods stretching out green and fertile.

We stopped at a market crossing bustling with activity and Timothy deposited us with his neighbour who runs an orphanage while he went home to pick up his bicycle and a load of books he had borrowed earlier from the Teachers' Resource Centre. He bought batteries for the tape player I would be using, and we picked up two more boda bodas for the final leg of the journey. From here on the road was restricted to non-motorised traffic. Great rocks studded the roadbed, and if I had thought the first part of the road was bad, I had a real experience in store from here on up to the top.

More rivers, donkeys, cane fields. Fewer rides downhill. More climbing on foot. It became even more peaceful as we went through shaded areas. Then we passed a noisy mill where they were grinding cane to create pebbly sugar used in candy-making. Another corner or two and there was a primary school with children staring and shouting mzungu. We waved and called out our greetings of habari and mzuri sana , and then there was a roadside restaurant on the left, a magnificent view of the surrounding hills and valleys before us, and the Ikoli Secondary School with its flag on the right.

I couldn't have imagined a more beautiful place to teach.

The main building was composed of a line of four classrooms with the staff room and headmaster's office in the middle. There were two small outbuildings and a latrine. Basketball hoop rings and a flag pole were placed seemingly randomly on the grounds.

We put everything in one of the outbuildings and went to meet the headmaster and the staff members who were working in the staff room. Then we entered the first class.

I won't go into detail about the teaching. Suffice it to say that I had generally overestimated ability, and learned a great deal more than I taught. That doesn't mean that it was a total flop. It wasn't … but I would do better the next time I embarked on such a day.

One small anecdote illustrates the the enormous gulf between my experience and that of a young Kenyan high school girl I worked with in the Form III (grade 10) class. I had asked the students to make up funny fictional excuses for not doing homework or for being late to class. They shared their stories with partners and then with the class. One girl had no partner so she and I told each other our stories. Her first was a long involved account of having to walk a few kilometres for water, which then evolved into a long list of chores that she had to perform before she could do homework, and by the time she had finished it was dark and she had no light to work. I laughed and said, "It's not true, is it?" She looked surprised and assured me it was entirely true. I said the story was supposed to be made up. She tried again.

This time she told me about going for water. A man attempted to seduce her. She refused. He insisted. She argued as best she could. Kenyan girls are uncomfortable arguing with adults, especially with men. He offered her money for school fees. She refused again. He grabbed at her and she ran away. He chased her until she reached a place where there were people. "Where is the water?" her mother asked her when she returned home empty handed. When she explained, her mother sent her back to get the water, and so she was late for school.

"Now that story wasn't true, was it?" I asked.

"Oh yes," she replied. "It really happened."

Lunch was the daily staple of stiff corn porridge called ugali, the wild greens called sukuma wiki and the toughest chicken with the best juice I've ever eaten. It cost one hundred fifty shilllings for all three of us … ($3).

Timothy asked if I would say something about HIV/AIDS. I was working with the Form 2 class. Using the personals ads from the local paper I was able to draw their attention to the number that noted the need for HIV testing. But I asked Sarah if she wanted to do that part with the last two classes. She told a simple story Erma uses in her workshops and it was very successful.

The story was about a man who insisted that he didn't need to be careful because he was praying to God to keep him safe. Three different people tried to warn him. The first suggested abstinence, the second that he be faithful to one partner, the third that he use a condom. The man kept insisting that his prayers would keep him safe. Eventually he became HIV positive and later became sick and died. When he got to heaven he expressed his annoyance with God. "You let me down. I prayed and you let me get the virus anyway."

"I let you down," roared God. "You let me down. I sent three people to try to get you to change your behaviour and you didn't pay any attention to any one of them. You let me down!"

The story ended with the ABC's of prevention: abstinence, being faithful, using a condom.

In the last class, many of the students were Sarah's age, and Timothy really put her on the spot after her story by asking if she had a boyfriend. Yes. Was she abstaining? Sarah blushed and said no, but then said that when she got home she would definitely insist on condoms.

When four o'clock came we gathered our things together and went over to the staffroom to have sodas and the favourite sweet, a kind of doughnut called mandazi. The wash basin was passed, the prayer was said, and we started to eat and drink. The headmaster made a pretty speech, as did Timothy and the deputy head.

And then we climbed back on the boda bodas for the ride back. Sarah rode Timothy's bike with the bright green wheels this time. Our descent down the rock strewn road was even more precarious and terrifying than the first trip had been, and this time it was accompanied by Sarah's squeals as she hurtled down. She insisted that was how she stayed on. At the end of the first bad hill, Timothy mentioned that he had been very surprised that the drivers had not asked us to walk. As I swallowed my stomach, I managed to squeak, "I rather wish they had."

Further on we got to a very long hill with fewer rock outcroppings where my driver was really able to pick up steam. Someone ascending the hill called out laughing, "Pole, pole," and my driver laughed and said, "He means slowly, slowly."

"I know," I said, "And please remember that you should go pole pole. Don't forget I'm a mzee." Either he didn't believe I was really an old woman or the wind rushing past his ears prevented his hearing, but he certainly didn't slow down. If anything, his speed increased as we descended.

We reached the market place in one piece and he tested his brakes. "Please don't tell me you don't have brakes," I said.

"The brakes are very good," he laughed.

Now that I didn't have to mount the boda boda again. I could afford to laugh with him.

Timothy put us into a vehicle travelling to the junction and I sat wedged between the door and a tiny Kikuya man who insisted he was very rich and wanted to welcome us to Kenya by paying for out fares. His pores exuded alcohol fumes but he seemed nice enough. At the junction he asked for my phone number in Canada and no amount of reasoning about costs would do but that I give him my card.

He flagged down the matatu for us and I finished our journey squashed between a sugar sack of fish and a breastfeeding woman holding a chicken which squeaked like some demented squeeze toy. The baby was absolutely wide-eyed when she saw me and stuck her fingers in my mouth and pulled at my cheek. Better than screaming in terror, I guess. I felt as if I had inoculated her against a fear of wazungu. When the woman disembarked she carried the still nursing baby, the shrieking chicken and the huge sack of dried fish.

It was a good day.

Matatu Matata Story #2: A Tight Squeeze

The red road matatus are like cattle cars hauled on a truck bed. The driver sits up front with two or three passengers. The touts and their friends hang out the open back door. Luggage, sacks of corn and sugar, and other people ride on top. Inside, two benches face each other and everyone rides sideways. The benches are made to carry four normal sized people on each side. A small pull down seat sits between the two benches up behind the cab. You would expect to see nine passengers, or in a squeeze, one more on each side.

Not in Kenya.

Our matatu carried six people on one side, six plus a baby on the other, and then six more hunched, hanging and leaning bodies down the centre aisle. Those of us lucky enough to be seated carried their luggage on our laps.

When they squeezed in the sixth middle aisle rider, the old man directly in front of me groaned, "Wonderful."

The mother of the tiny baby kept fanning her and doing her best to protect her little head from bumps and nudges.

It was so crowded inside we couldn't see out and I almost missed my stop.

The old man who had been in every possible proximity to me from directly in front, to face to face, to leaning in the other direction with his upturned bottom inches from my face, to sitting beside me, said with typical Kenyan formality, "It is fortunate that you observed the sign."

I walked the last two kilometres up the dusty red road to Shikunga. It was Parents' Day and I was visiting "my" kids.

Afterwards, walking back along the rutted road, I felt a little choked up. You find the money and get these kids on their way to school and then it all kind of takes on the nature of a job completed. You dust off your hands and look at the next kid, the next challenge, the next problem. When you think about the ones who are now enrolled, their fees paid, and their uniforms bought, you do so in a less personal, less affected way.

Until you see them, that is. Experiencing their happiness is quite different. They felt like my kids, and I was as happy for them and as proud of their accomplishments and their diligence as if they were indeed mine. I felt a little choked up as we said our final good byes.

The euphoria lasted about to the next road where the traffic raised so much dust I had to wind my way out to the main road making side winder moves up the embankment whenever a vehicle passed in order to breathe. The sun was high in the sky now and I wished a boda boda would materialize. I walked through a shaded place where the road was lined with small dukas selling food stuffs and soft drinks, and saw a Nissan, the other kind of matatu, up ahead.

I squeezed my way in and I thought, "Good. There is no way they can try to fit in one more passenger. This trip will be quick."

How could someone who has been in Kenya for over four months be so naïve? They managed to wedge four more bodies in … well at least partway in.

I ended up with a man in a very attractive burnt orange print shirt riding my left breast for at least twenty minutes. At first his left buttock rested on my left breast and left wrist. Then when my wrist began to feel as if it might break, I wriggled it free. He attempted to support his weight in mid air but finally gave up. When he resumed his position, my left breast sagged further and further under the bouncing load.

The woman on his left noticed my grimace of pain and pinched the man's buttocks so that he suspended himself for a while by his arm which rested on the iron bar of the seat ahead.

I was surprised that she noticed my discomfort. Her own forearms and upper body were inside the matatu and her bottom was being held suspended outside by the weight of the tout. Finally a couple of people got out and the man eased himself into the seat beside me. At the next stop he ended up with a child on his knee and the child's mother draped over him.

In thirty degree temperatures such intimacy is not always pleasant. Fortunately all of us in this group embrace bathed regularly and I was able to breathe in clean clothing and bodies. I can't remember when I have been as intimately involved with anyone, let alone strangers.

Matatu manners are generally assumed to be terrible … but my experience has been that the passengers do their best to endure the discomfort quietly, and to make the ride as comfortable for their fellow passengers as they possibly can. Not an easy thing to do.

We had just about reached Sigalagala when the tout began to peer anxiously at the rear of the vehicle and to mutter, "Casa capisa," I looked at the man on my right. "Casa capisa?" I asked. You guessed it. Flat tire.

We pulled over and they attempted to jack up the overloaded vehicle. Finally they gave up and followed the advice of the passengers and disgorged us onto the roadside. After one failed attempt during which the matatu fell off the jack, the wheel was changed and we were once again on our way.

Well sort of. We had to be pushed backwards for a little while before the engine caught. Then we turned onto the tarmac and drove quickly to Kakamega. As we passed Papa's rubber stamp kiosk on the side of the road near the post office, Papa waved and smiled. Home again.

Well nearly. We pulled into the Shell Station and the driver wove his way between the pumps and vehicles at about three times the speed I would have driven. Just before he got to the road he caught the back wheel of a heavily loaded bicycle and knocked its driver to the ground. An argument broke out and the tout jumped off to settle it while the rest of us were driven to the Kenol station where we disembarked.

I was exhausted and filthy … covered in red dust … hungry and thirsty. It was one o'clock. I had spent four hours travelling for a half hour visit with the kids at Shikunga.

... white haunches ...

thong bikini
white haunches
turning pink in Eleutheran sun

escape from winter's cold
bake here
for a week

remove clothes
inhibitions
manners

run free
grab as much
as you can

before you
don clothes
board the plane

go home
retreat into your office
for warmth

your sunburnt haunches
turning white
under your clothes

Matatu Matata

Matatu Matata
(Matatu Troubles)

Outside Nairobi, the Kenyan matatus are the main form of public transport. Despite attempts to regulate them, they continue to be overcrowded, unsafe and plagued by corruption. It seems to be the only way to keep their use affordable by the general population. The Matatu Matata stories give an idea of the discomfort of matatu travel ... but also reveal the camaraderie one experiences on one of these tiny buses meant to carry sixteen passengers.

A TRIP ON MATATUS FROM UGANDA TO KENYA

On January 1, 2003, both Sarah and I were suffering from diarrhea, caused, we suspect, by the copious quantities of White Nile water we had consumed while attempting to roll our kayaks. The previous night we had gone to bed dosed with Cipro and Immodium while others celebrated New Year's Eve with more conventional poisons. It stormed all night and in the morning the area was hit with a second storm that continued to pour water onto the red roads, flooding tents, roiling up the water, uprooting trees, and flattening bandas. When I opened my eyes around 8 a.m., Timothy said quietly from his bunk down by the door, "I don't think you will be able to get out of here on boda bodas (bicycle taxis) at ten, Barbara. The roads will all be washed out and the boda bodas will be unable to navigate them." Great.

I took another Cipro and walked through the rain to the toilet area. Water streamed down my face as I brushed my teeth with bottled water, and I suffered through a cold shower hoping it would make me feel better. It didn't.

At the bar the word was that everyone was still recovering from the night before and we would never get out today. Couldn't I hire the truck to get us to Jinja, I asked. No. It would not be available. Our only hope was to make our way up to the high road with our packs in the pouring rain and hope that we could flag down a vehicle of some kind.

I ordered dry toast and bottled water and told Sarah the news. She wondered if we should stay. Then Nick arrived, saying he too wanted to go to Kenya today. Sarah looked very white as she went back to the banda she had slept in when the storm destroyed her tent, and Nick went off to salvage his drenched tent and sleeping bag for the journey. I sat on one of the few dry chairs crunching dry toast between chattering teeth. Timothy came in and made some enquiries. A few minutes later he announced that LesGo would drop us in Jinja on his way to Kampala. I collected Sarah and Nick and we headed out with LesGo.

In Jinja we clambered onto the only matatu going to Malaba, and then we sat ... and sat ... and sat ... for three hours. Sarah and I endured ... and drank water ... a little nervously since we had no idea how long we would be on the road and although we had plugged up the diarrhea with Immodium, our kidneys were still functioning and our bladders had limits.

At 1 p.m. the matatu had twelve people on board and finally pulled out of the car park onto the street and then sat awhile longer waiting for two Muslim girls who had disembarked earlier. At last we were ready to go and we set off for the border. Along the route there were a few stops ... to buy roasted corn ... and bananas ... and soft drinks ... and once to take photos of a baboon who begged for roasted corn remnants. Meanwhile the rain that had begun the night before continued to fall.

At Malaba my first stop was the ladies' loo ... where I discovered a naked young man showering ... I told my bladder to hang on and went to get my passport stamped. A little boy with sad eyes tried to con us into buying bananas from him for triple the going rate. Several people asked me to play the bowl lyre I was carrying and several Kenyans exulted over the election results. The Kenyan policeman at the gate was suffering from too much New Year's cheer and couldn't even see the passports. He tried to give me Nick's British passport and argued when I said it was Nick's. All this with a show of authority that became ludicrous in his sodden state. His friends laughed at his drunkenness.

And then we got onto the next matatu. Nick's first experience with a Kenyan matatu. This one carried about twenty passengers and had some sort of engine trouble which forced the driver to re-start at every pause along the way before we were able to lurch forward once more in first gear.

At one stop a drunk leaned in to breathe New Year's wishes and to expound on the election results. Nick looked nonplussed. I felt okay. It felt like I was home in Western Province where political discussion is the norm.

At Bungoma we were accosted by a gang of shouting touts trying to get us to take this matatu or that. Finally I shouted that I wasn't going anywhere as long as they kept yelling at me. We got onto a matatu whose driver promised that he was going immediately. Half an hour later I teased him about his idea of immediately and we bantered a bit. Once we had twenty-five people on board with three touts and other guys hanging out the doorway we got underway with a great deal of fanfare. The door hangers were not quite sober.

We stopped to let out one person and three more got on. A little boy with a chicken, a babe in arms and their mother. She was the largest woman I have ever seen and she squashed herself and the baby in beside me. As the matatu careened around a corner the baby began to cry and she pulled a basketball-sized breast out into the open to feed him. She hauled him into a sitting position and stuck the plumlike nipple into his mouth. He sucked lustily and watched my every move with shiny black eyes.

Suddenly we were off the road and in a yard. The police had demanded we come in for a check. Perhaps because we were carrying almost double the number of passengers the vehicle could hold? I never did find out. Half an hour later we were again on the road but the numbers had decreased and the touts were not hanging out the open doorway. I began to fear for the safety of the woman and her baby and I put my arm around her shoulders to hold her on. I have absolutely no idea whether I could have been of any use if she had actually started to fall out. Would I have been about to hold a weight of three or four hundred pounds if it had begun to slip out? Before I could worry too much about the felicity of helping her, the matatu stopped and we were told to board a second matatu.

This time I moved to the back where I would not be squashed between the mother and Sarah. Instead five of us squeezed ourselves into a seat that would comfortably hold three and I spent the next hour or so with an iron support bar denting my upper arm.

As it began to grow dark I realized that we would have to put Nick up for the night and I thought of how we would get ourselves from the gas station home in the dark ... taxi? ... walking? We decided to walk along the main road to Kefinco despite the dark and the possibly hazardous condition of the road or the other pedestrians about. We were fine, and when the door swung open to reveal an anxious Julius, I felt awfully glad to be home. Marie burst out as soon as she heard the clatter and enveloped us in great motherly hugs making us feel doubly welcome.

What have I learned? Do not travel on public holidays. Never leave for home the day before you must arrive. Despite the matatus, Kenya ... and especially Kakamega ... feels like home.

Red Road Matatu in Western Kenya

Eleutheran Adventure

Poetry Inspired By Eleuthera ... Eleuthera means freedom.

I spent several winters on the island of Eleuthera, 100 miles long and 1-3 miles wide. One side faces the Atlantic; the other the Caribbean. I rode my bike and hitched rides, made friends in James Cistern, Hatchet Bay, Governor's Harbour and Rainbow Bay, and played on the beaches. I enjoyed a holiday from life, but wrote every day. Eleuthera is one of the places I have learned that money is less important than freedom; that kindness and friendliness outweigh most things.

Hydro Guys in Eleuthera

They seemed, with their muscled arms and grins,
their silver crosses and their baseball caps ...
(not a hard hat to be seen)
to be playing a game
that somehow married
pick-up sticks and cat's cradle
with a baseball game
played between earth and sky.

Shouting, their shirts darkened with their sweat,
they dug out a cable
and eased, tugged and shoved it
under and over itself.

Then they winched it up to the player on the pole,
the only one wearing equipment:
boots fitted with spikes,
a belt that kept him hanging there
and freed his hands
to catch the heavy connectors
tossed by the big man on the ground.

The pitcher yelled "Hey"
and then tossed it up the thirty feet
where the catcher on the pole
plucked it from the air ...
magically.

Eleutheran Palette

The Eleutheran palette is blue.
Not the grey blue of Northern Norway,
underlit in winter by pinks and mauves,
hints of the sun.

Eleutheran blue is electric,
vibrant
alive with the sun's energy.

Pure Atlantic blues.
Deep, dark, almost navy, blues,
royal blues
azure
indigo
sapphire

Near shore and over coral beds,
rich blues mingle with a touch of green
creating aquamarines and deep turquoises.

The Caribbean is a deep turquoise
greener but still of the palette.

Shifting Wind

Yesterday,
waves of horses,
white manes streaking out behind them,
reared up,
galloped toward shore,
fighting the wind,
a moving mass of blue and creamy foam.

Today the wind moves with the waves,
creating a grey-green violence
of spume and breakers.

The far shore is a ragged edge of white tatters
broken rhythmically by explosive puffs of spray
that dash against the rock and fall back into a dark sea.

Overhead the clouds mass,
grey and creamy pink against a blue dawn.
The wind is an incessant whistling in the eaves,
shrieking around doors and windows.
One white plastic chair splays itself against the west railing.
Another is upturned at the other end of the deck.

They say,
when the wind shifts,
weather's coming.

Dawn

I never see dawn at home.
I suppose the same sequences occur
whether I see them or not.

Here dawn is a developing photograph.
First shapes ...
grey, indistinct, acquiring edges,
shades of grey and black.

The squared white cement posts joined by white piping,
define the deck.

The palm below sways in the wind.
Casuarina trees wave feathery evergreen leaves against the skyline,
A white house looms on the hill.
Grey roads emerge and converge.

Dark waves break against the shore
scattering foam.

It takes awhile for the black and white landscape
to find its colours,
and become ordinary.

At dusk, the process reverses
and night sucks out first the colours ...
then the distinctive lines and shapes ...
till land and sea disappear.

Vanishing Act

Dusk licks away the rays,
Swallowing colour,
Then line,
Finally
Shape.


Dawn
shapes, defines,
Outlines, shades,
Warms with colour.
Baptizes the world with light.

Eleutheran Stand-off
a prose poem

Near Hidden Beach, in front of the broken road by the round house built on the inhospitable pocked moon surface, a twenty foot deep culvert has been drilled into the grey- black coral, to provide a return path to the sea for the waves that batter that cliff..

Eleutheran stand-off waves create within themselves ten foot turquoise caves. They roll in one after another crashing into the sea wall, spilling masses of foam into the trough to surge down to the cove beach.

The water not captured by the channel sweeps back out to sea sucking with it sand and foam to its inevitable collision with the next incoming wave.

These stand-offs take place a few feet from shore. Heroic forces meet and leap high and higher until the superior force of the incoming wave overpowers the back surge. Sandy soapscum foam spreads over the blue water surface before crashing against the sea wall. Each wave expends enough energy to ensure it will be the loser in the next clash of the Titans.

We watch, Roy and I,
sitting on a fragment of the road the ditch was built to protect,
like children, mesmerized by the exuberant skirmishes.

Warmed by the sun,
sprayed by a mist that fogs our glasses
we breathe in brine, taste salt when we lick our lips
or kiss one another.

We exclaim over the thunderous boom of the surf
the white spray that leaps high in the air as the giants collide,
the rainbows in the vapour released when they crash down into the sea.

Yesterday it occurred to me that
when we go home.
we could likely be happily entertained at a laundromat
watching front loading washing machines.

Eleutheran Blues

Eleuthera is an island
populated mainly by poor black Bahamians.

You'd expect Eleutheran blues
to be like the blues of poor blacks elsewhere.

But Eleutheran blues are happy blues.

Eleutheran blues are electric.
sky and water vibrant
against the warmth of sun drenched sand.

The sermons and the singing in Wesley Methodist
reverberate against the concrete walls ...
setting up echoes in a congregation
that is not so much depressed by poverty as relaxed by it.

Clarisse exhorts them to "stop bein' so relax',"
not so they can wail the blues,
but so they can praise God with a full heart and energy.

Warren's Fish Fry Story

Mitzi's sixteenth birthday fell on Sunday.
Warren had been up half the night before,
Catering his step-sister's birthday party.
A big celebration with loads of food and kids.

Mitzi's mom went off to church with Warren's dad,
Leaving the kids at home.
Warren, heading off to church a little later, was horrified
By what was happening across the road.

Why, it looked like a fish fry ...
There was a bumpin' and a grindin' goin' on.
Music was blarin' forth.
And on the Lord's day!

Well, he stomped right over there,
A towering mass of anger.
Told those kids to have some respect.
Made sure the music was turned off before goin' off to church himself.

All the way to church he fumed.
He'd never been allowed to skip services at sixteen.
He hadn't been allowed to play anything but sacred music on Sunday.
And dancin'? Like that? On the Lord's Day?

Well, by the time he slid into the pew beside his father and Jenny,
He'd worked up quite a head of steam.
Told his father in vehement whispers what had been goin' on.
His father shrugged. "No big deal. She's sixteen for goodness sakes."

Warren subsided into a huddle of mute anger.
Resented the unfairness of his father's stand.
He'd have been walloped by this man for such behaviour
When he was sixteen.

By the time the church service was over,
Equanimity restored,
He was able to tell this story
And laugh at himself.

It took Mitzi a little longer
To warm up to him again.
But then Mitzi just turned sixteen.
Warren's thirty something.

And to think,
I always thought a fish fry was just a barbecue.
I never knew it was an opportunity for debauchery ...
A regular Sodom and Gomorrah ...

Hidden Worlds

I used to look at clouds,
Imagine a world peopled by spirits,
Believed if I could just slip in through this opening or that,
I'd be rewarded by a glimpse of a pastel heaven.

I still like skies
But adulthood and air travel
Have demystified the heavens.
Pity.

Today I sometimes catch a glimmer
Of that long ago child
Who imagined whole worlds of possibility
In a hint of an opening.

These arcane worlds
Are quite unlike the heaven of my childish imagination.
Now I open doors into hidden human life,
And gasp with pleasure.

First a inkling of something more,
Then as the details are revealed,
Little orgasmic explosions of pure ecstasy ...
One after another.

In Damascus, in the walled city, I passed through a portal into a courtyard.
Doorways opened in every direction.
Stairways led up to still more entries.
A whole extended family
Lived around the fountain in which a watermelon cooled.

In France once, walking down a narrow dark cobbled alley,
I peeked into an open doorway,
And discovered a world of sunshine, potted plants and laundry,
Of children and chattering women.

In Eleuthera the streets seem to be straight,
Their intersections, perpendicular.
Shops and houses with yards line the routes.
Everything looks very ordinary.

But beside Pammy's dark blue restaurant in Governor's Harbour
In between Pammy's and the house next door,
The one with the faded, flaking aqua paint,
A narrow entrance to an alley beckons.

I'm always seduced by the music,
Pulled into a world of dogs and kids,
And women shelling pigeon peas in doorways,
Leading their hidden lives behind Pammy's restaurant.

Just the other day, in James Cistern,
I discovered, quite by accident,
That whole neighbourhoods exist behind the houses
Facing the Queen's Highway, looking out toward the sea.

A sign advertised a new restaurant, Alphemia's.
I walked my bike up to the big green empty-looking house.
A delivery van stopped.
Told me the restaurant was behind the green house.

I continued further in.
Found a house with a gate across the verandah opening.
Opened the gate.
The house looked deserted, cool and dim.

An old woman leaning on a crutch hobbled to the fence.
"Knock on the door," she cried.
I knocked timidly.

Blanche, the fruit seller on the Queen's Highway,
Joined the old lady.
"Knock harder!" she yelled in her hoarse voice.
I knocked again, louder this time.

A solemn little boy wearing a school uniform arrived.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Darius Pinder, ma'am," he replied.
I shook his hand and asked, "Is your mama cooking?"
"Yes ma'am," he replied. "Come on through."


He led me through the tidy house with antimacassars on the chairs
Out through the back door where half a dozen school children sat eating pizza.
They giggled when he pointed me toward the tiny restaurant.

Afterwards, back out on the Queen's Highway,
My back to the Caribbean,
I took one last look
At the world I'd discovered.

It was as if the door had been closed tight.
Only the green house faced me.
Not a single sign that behind it, living their lives, were
A lame old lady, Blanche, Alphemia, and giggling children.

The Neighbourhood Garden

In Africa, and in Eleuthera, too, communities are like the gardens.
Not planted in neat straight rows of single species,
But in patches, a few potato plants crowded in beside some okra,
A patch of tomatoes beside a clump of green beans.

They've found that the soil retains its nutrients better this way.
Not through any kind of scientific data,
Just by doing it the way it's always worked.
Seems to me that neighbourhoods work well that way too.

Have you ever gone to a banquet and been seated
At a long table set with white linen and silver?
You can only talk to three people ... stiffly and one at a time.
Not like a round table with family all around.

These mixed up neighbourhoods
With their homes crowded together, property lines blurred,
Create interlaced lives.
Where communication thrives.

That's why Blanche and the crippled lady,
The delivery man, and little Darius Pinder
All cared whether I found Miz Johnson's new restaurant.
She's family.

Party in Progress

Here on the island, Sunday church services,
Special holiday festivities like Junkanoo,
Funerals, weddings, christenings, and fund raisers
Draw people together.

At Hatchet Bay, the party was a fun fair
To raise funds for St. Catherine's Church.

A clown painted small faces
Turning the children into puppies, kittens, monkeys
In a fantasy universe.
Brilliant yellow eyelids, turquoise whiskers, bright freckles,.
An enormous beige circle around one shining brown eye,

Released, they bounded up onto the centre stage
Pirouetting to live music
Riding a silver scooter.
Tumbling off the stage onto the grass and over one another.

Later on the same cement stage,
A troupe of supple young girls
Able to isolate each muscle
Danced with the sinewy sensuality of snakes.

At the beer tent
A jolly man in a big apron dispensed beer and wine in return for tokens.
On the other side of the field,
Bright red barbecues made from halved oil drums
Produced ribs and chicken,
And ladies in stalls passed out conch fritters and peas ‘n' rice.

Everywhere games lured people with promises of prizes.
At the bingo table, an eight inch pink and silver china flamingo
Sat between two garish still life prints
Still packaged in their Dollar store cellophane.
At the lottery ticket table
Prizes ranged from a trip to Nassau to a hand mixer.

The police maintained a visible presence
But even they looked relaxed at this family gathering.

Ingredients

Chickens' feet look like tiny ghost-white human hands
With long translucent fingernails.
But Warren says they make wonderfully rich broth for souse.

I haven't even explored the other souse options:
Sheep's tongues, tripe,
Pigs' feet, knuckles and ears.

It's not easy to disregard a grouper eye staring up
From the soup broth in which it now swims.
But the fisherman on the dock scolded me for wasting the head.

A conch has to be evicted from its mother of pearl home,
Stripped of its grey covering,
Trimmed of its tough red bits,

Washed in a mixture of lime juice, salt and water,
And then battered with a tenderizing mallet..
And, after all that abuse, it looks like scraps of ragged lace.

Whelks attach themselves to rocks. Easy enough to disengage,
But then what do you do with them?
I couldn't even get them to give up their homes by boiling them.

Lobster tails are succulent broiled with garlic butter.
The divers pull the crawfish up
From condominiums they've built specially for them.

You need a machete
(And a Haitian to wield it)
To gain access to white coconut meat.

The pineapples here are tiny
And sweet
And so tender that the core melts in your mouth.

Sometimes We Make Our Own Adventures

On Sunday we packed a picnic lunch,
Headed off for JC Beach ,
(The cove beach on the Atlantic side.)

We didn't say much
After walking our bikes up the steep hill,
Just bounced along over the ruts.

Up ahead we saw a white jeep
Turn into a clearing beside the road
And head back toward the beach.

Several hundred yards later
Where the road becomes really rough
We saw the jeep again.

This time it was attached by a rope to a black truck.
Two unsmiling Bahamians stood beside the stalled truck.
A girl sat behind the wheel of the jeep.

How did she get past the truck,
Turned around, and stuck
At exactly the moment when the truck died?

We said our good mornings,
Continued on our way to the beach,
All our attention focused on keeping the bikes upright.

"She didn't look like she was from around here," I said.
"Neither did they," Roy responded.
"They sure weren't friendly, were they?"

"How did she get there?"
"What do you think was going on?
"Maybe a drug deal going down?"

We parked the bikes
Walked out to the point on the left
And opened the styrofoam cooler.


Eventually the white jeep arrived and parked in the sand.
The guy went into the water,
Threw up onto the land a large dark object.

"That's the package," I said,
And continued to eat my egg sandwich.
The couple looked out to sea .

A sailboat hung around
Well out beyond the reef.
"That's the boat," I said.

They hoisted surf boards off the jeep
and began to walk along the beach.
"They'll use the surf boards to signal the boat," I said.

I'd forgotten they'd already retrieved the package.
We finished our sandwiches
and ate the cheese-stuffed celery sticks.

We wandered around the coral outcropping
Laughing at scuttling crabs, leaping out of the way
When the waves crashed in, flooding the depressions.

We reminisced about the tidal pool in St. Quay-Portrieux
Roy remembered the woman
With the enormous breasts.

Later we walked over to the beach.
The couple had now disappeared round the other point.
We examined the package he'd tossed up on shore.

It was a large sponge.
Quite unwrapped. Perfectly natural.
I felt a twinge of disappointment.

We headed off along the beach in pursuit.
I remarked on the amount of debris from the reefs ...
Brain coral ... sea fans ... sponges.

We followed their tracks.
His feet.
Her sandals.

Clambering over the coral outcropping, we rounded the point.
Their footprints were no longer visible.
"This is where they stopped for awhile," Roy said.

"He was trying to decide whether to keep going,
Without shoes.
She likely said, ‘I told you to keep your sandals on.'"

Just past the headland, Roy pointed wordlessly to her surf board ...
The smaller white one ...
And her sandals.

We came upon the next beach
And responded to her friendly wave ...
He was out beyond the breaking surf.

We continued on our way.
I picked up a green bottle for Warren's herb-infused olive oil ...
A Benedictine bottle with a dimple in the bottom.

Classy.
French.
Warren would love it.

We reached the point of my exhaustion
And I sprawled on the sand,
My head on my hat.

We looked out at the sailboat.
"He's just beyond the reef.
Makes sense," I said

"The tide's nearly out.
The boat will come in as close as it can and throw him the package,
Wrapped in oilskin, attached to a rope.

"He'll swim out and get it, untie the rope.
They'll take off out to sea.
He'll ferry the package back on his board."

A few minutes later he caught a lift
on several successive waves
Back to shore.
The sailboat had disappeared over the horizon.
Unless I missed something,
The transfer never took place.

When we headed back, we passed them.
They were eating oranges
And throwing the peelings on the beach.

Back over the coral rock, through the deep moist sand
Until we finally reached our bikes
Leaning up against a board jammed into the dune..

We pushed them through the sand until we reached the road,
Clambered aboard, and jounced our way along
Until we arrived at the upper paved road through JC.

What an adventure!
Wait till we get home and tell them
How we almost saw a drug deal going down.

Hidden Beach Reveals Its Treasure

Roy came home today with news.
Maureen and Cathy had seen a real drug deal going down.
Right out in the open.
At Hidden Beach.

No wonder everyone laughs at the helicopters,
Black and menacing.
Noisy.
Annoyances, they deter no one.

Nobody here really cares
Unless someone is beaten to death or a baby dies.
Drug money's as good as anyone else's.
Hell, better ... there's more of it.

We often go to Hidden Beach
Seeking treasure.
Doubloons are scarce, but there are shells.
Once I found a t shirt.

Today we took our snorkels
Dove in and found a whole new world
In the deeper water
Where the fish grow bigger.

Out over the reef, colour glides.
Deep golds and violets.
A purple angel fish
Was curious enough to stare back at us.

We saw a small puffer
Hidden against the coral rock
Invisible till he unfolded wing-like fins
And fluttered away.

Then we went in at the little cove ...
Our bellies almost touched the rocky reef as we swam out.
Saw two flat bottom crawling fish.
In very impressive camouflage.

Roy put his hand on one
Not realizing it was there until it moved ...
The other was much wider ...
Kite-shaped with bulging eyes.

They looked just like the coral rock
Until they moved
and their shapes
Were defined by motion.

Here the coral is alive.
Tiny flowers wave and ripple on the rock.
I think they are flora ...
But I wonder.

This time Hidden Beach yielded real treasure.
No doubloons, shells or t shirts
No suitcase filled with drug money.
But I discovered a sense of wonder I thought I'd lost.

Marryin' Trouble

He married trouble, I tell you.
The woman shook a long black laquered fingernail at her companion
To emphasize her point.
The sun glinted off the gold designs and the rings.

Soon's she found out he liked kids
Right away she know how to git him.
Had that baby girl; then jus' a year after, the boy.
Whooie, she got him now.

That woman no helpmate at all.
And she had a good job, you know. Worked at Batelco,
Brought home a good pay cheque every two weeks
But she expec' him to pay all the bills.

The primary school not good enough for her kids, no way.
She got to have them in a private school
And he have to pay those bills too.
Some days he drive them all the way to Palmetto Point before he go to work.

Valentine's he ask me what he should get for her.
I tole him a nice bottle of perfume.
But no that not good enough.
No, she want a tennis bracelet.
.
I tole him, "Those things expensive, man. Cheapest one cost you $600.
You don't need to buy somethin' that expensive
You got all those flickin' bills to pay.
Those flickin' bills gonna kill you, man."

Did he listen? No way.
He got all those bills
But still he worried ‘cause he can't buy her
The tennis bracelet she wanted

That woman be no helpmate at all.
When he open up that store she ain't got no interest at all.
He had her working at the store
Gave her Monday's receipts for her salary.


But boy, that woman really fricked him this time.
He been off island three weeks
And she gone and close his business.
What he gonna do when he get back?

You can tell when a man help his wife,
When a woman be a help mate.
She say, "That my husband's business, and I gonna help him."
Even if all she can do is clean the place for him, she do that.

He don't have to get somebody to clean for him.
She save him that money.
He gain.
She gain.

Not this woman ... she no help to him at all.
This woman's trouble.
He married trouble, I tell you.
Boy she should have married a husband like mine!