An hour in the company of Kenyans
Part of the trip -
The Rift Valley
An alternative to uploading photos (I only took nine this week), I contemplate four very different Kenyans I have spent time with and reflect on their different lives / views
I have just returned from another week in Kenya. Normally I return with plenty of photos to trawl through. This time I have nine shots of work-related content. So, I thought of an alternative to upload and began contemplating the various characters I have interacted with over the last few days. Seeing the good Sergeant Pluck posting on Characters on the Forum prompted me.
One: Dr Besuited of a National Institution sits impassively, scrutinising me from behind designer glasses and clasped hands. He maintains an aura of coolness. I am struggling to stop the sweat from trickling off my brow while holding that brooding gaze, inwardly cursing having to meet after an overnight flight from Heathrow to Jomo Kenyatta.... barely concealing my discomfort in a suit in an airless, humid, Nairobi office. Electronic communications are now behind us.... the usual banal pleasantries exchanged, a brief resume of the state of our affairs, our current research direction; a face-to-face meeting for kudos. Forty five minutes of circling the thorny issue of where my research permit (aka $400) might be....
And just when I thought for the first time that I had made headway in a negotiation in Nairobbery, and made ready to leave by standing and proffering a hand.... we slowly descend into a circular series of statements, twisting and turning, but ultimately repeating and returning to the delivery that if I was ‘unwilling to meet the costs of collaborating then it might hinder the release’ of my permit. How very different our cultural perceptions of collaboration are.
Two: Upcountry, Anderson is hunkered down on his heels in that inimitable African style, elbows resting on knees that take the strain without straining or so it seems; whenever I have tried to emulate this stance, my circulation is so restricted that I am writhing in minutes! We are in the shade of a fig tree for my benefit, sharing a Stoney as caustic sand is hurled around by a restless equatorial afternoon wind, caking my skin. He tells me matter-of-factly of the lion pug mark he found that morning on the shore of the lake, deftly drawing with a bony finger in the dust, eyes widening to emphasise the size of the beast.
His brow furrows as we move on to discuss the plight of his shamba. Earlier, I had asked for his mobile number; he gave it to me.... but I shouldn’t ring him because he’d sold his phone to buy seed. He proudly showed me his SIM, something he will not use for six months until his crops have (hopefully) matured and he can sell back seed and buy another phone. In the meantime, Anderson provides for his wife and three watoto in school by breaking rocks to build walls, and leading the odd adventurous tourist on gruelling day hikes through 38C around the lake.... and when he’s not doing that, he finds time to plant and tend for trees for his community, and his children’s community.
Three: She has a distinct advantage over me.... being clothed that is. Ten minutes earlier I had been contemplating calling it a night. I’d been working from the coolness of pre-dawn until midnight for the last six days in, on, and around Lake Bogoria, and had decided to celebrate a successful start to a sampling campaign with a few Tusker baridi at the thermal pool. It was a bit of a shock to see a party of thirty or so Irish missionaries in the bar but they were engrossed in their own affairs and ignored me. That is until the white Kenyan nun had convinced the female contingent that it would be a ‘once-in-a-lifetime experience to skinny dip beneath an African starscape, surrounded by fireflies’. Very Happy Valley; I’d done it ten years earlier although there were no electric lights by the pool in those days. Negotiations ensued. The Lord works in mysterious ways I overheard. The barman gapped it as the lights went out, and I barely had time to consent and pick up my gear to change behind the bar. With perfect timing, she (the persuasive nun) pops her head around the corner to tell me my bar bill has been cleared..... and in the ensuing scramble to cover all eventualities, I manage to relocate my mobile into a puddle of thermal pool water. Then, she is gone into the gloom in a flurry of hastily cast garments and with a series of unearthly whoops. Shit happens when you party with naked nuns!
Four: Her life has spanned the dying days of the hedonistic Happy Valley set, through independence, and she is my font of Kenya connections. She has been as at home under canvas in the Northern Frontier around Ololokwe while catering for royalty on camel safaris as she has been sipping gins at the Muthaiga Club in the colonial suburbs of Nairobi. She can tell tall tales of Richard Leakey, of both Adamsons (although she only has affection for one), and of Joan Root.
Unfortunately, she can recount the murders of the latter three friends, and a handful of others. And, over a gin on the terrace, as the sun sets through the fever trees of Naivasha’s south shore and the grass mozzies start to make their presence felt, she has me spellbound for all the wrong reasons. While celebrating a birthday with friends in a remote camp in a well known Kenyan game reserve recently, she recalls how she lay in the path of safari ants..... desperately playing dead after suffering a humiliating beating at the hands marauding bandits. Still, better playing dead than being dead.... the plight of several of her close friends was to be revealed within hours. Life is so cheap in many parts of the world.
View all Experiences from this member
Previous Next