It feels like an eternity.
Here is a snapshot of the last 2 days spent there.
The trip to the elephant rescue. Seeing baby elephants, scarred and battered, but on the mend and playful. I had never noticed that elephants smile.
Wild warthogs, grazing on the side of the road. This made me sing songs from The Lion King.
Baboons walking down the streets of Nairobi, or sitting on the side of the road, eating bananas.
Michael says they are so smart that they come out of the woods and walk right up to the fruit stand, extending their hands until the shop keeper gives them a banana. We ask if people are afraid. He says, "No, we just give them what they want and they leave us alone." Hmmmm...
Nakumat. Kenya's version of Walmart, only, the thriftiness of Walmart was lost in translation. Nakumat is quite expensive.
Conversations about genital mutation and circumcision of both boys and girls.
They circumcise everybody in Kenya. You are ostracized if you are circumcised in the hospital or by a doctor. You are completely shunned if you are not circumcised at all.
For boys, it is a right of passage.
The Maasai take their boys, usually between the ages of 10 and 12, out into the bush.
Hunting knives are used.
No anesthetic.
No sterilization of the knife.
The boys are not allowed to show pain or fear.
Girls are circumcised for control. They are not allowed to show pleasure.... to have pleasure.
Rachel tells us they cannot even respond to their husbands while making love. If they do, they are bitten and beaten publicly, for being a whore. Girls too, are circumcised as pre-teens. Also, without doctors or anesthetic. The complications are endless... the scars...
We were supposed to go to Kibera on our last day in Nairobi.
It is Kenya's largest slum. The second largest in Africa.
Over 1 million people live in 1 square mile.
It is estimated that 1/5 of the HIV/AIDS population of Kenya, lives in Kibera.
Having no space to build toilets, they use a system called the flying toilet.
Defecate in a plastic bag... toss it elsewhere.
We didn't go.
To witness it firsthand, then hours later, board a plane home...
We couldn't go.
Exchanging addresses and phone numbers.
Hugs.
Tears.
Photographs.
Being stopped for a bribe going into the airport. The corruption here is great. They can detain us for not paying them... we can miss our flight. Michael gets out and says something to the police. They shine their lights on each of us and wave us through.
The chaos of Nairobi's airport.
Scanning my eyeballs to get on the plane.
I wonder what they are checking me for?
Can those scans see through my eyes... can the see what I saw?
I try to peak at their screen to see what pops up.
They block my view and tell me to go.
Getting on the plane with a bunch of kids that are all wearing various assortments of Maasai adornment. It is all from the market. I can tell. It's glossy and new, not smeared with smoke residue. I feel in my bag for my beads and wonder if I should put them on. I decide against it. I don't want to show off that I am a lion killer.
Sitting in the same row as Amy Grant on the plane from Amsterdam.
She is beautiful and seemingly incapable of aging. Also polite, friendly and reading from those new computer books. I feel sad for her. There is nothing better than the smell and feel of a good book. Computers are cold and don't smell like ink.
Disembarking in Detroit.
The woman telling me I am Kenyan.
"Only in my heart.", I say.
But, I feel what she is saying.
Putting on my beads....
Needing to feel fierce.
Coming down the escalator and seeing my children's faces first, then my husband's and my parent's.
Being home and feeling like someone had ripped off a piece of me and deposited it in Kenya.
Sleeping for days, not caring about the rules on jet-lag.
Getting an email from Joseph saying...
"They are predicting us to have elnino... The rain is coming."
Getting on Google to check if Joseph translated properly... surely he meant something else.
But he didn't interpret wrong.
Last month, the weather forecasters predicted that there will be El Nino rains sweeping across Kenya between September and December.
No comments:
Post a Comment