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the colours of kenya
(and uganda!)
i've been living in the village for more than a month now and i'm filled to the brim with new sights, sounds, stories.. my brain is constantly at a loss to find the words to describe these adventures of mine. it's been working overtime, penning stories in my head, trying hard to put experience into words. given that i'm in a place where my most constant, often only (fluent English-speaking) companion is.. well, myself, this internal narrative is pretty much non-stop. think zach braff on scrubs with less of the crazy dance sequences/costumes.
there is so much to tell...
i guess i'll begin my story with colour. one of the things i love most about kenya is the palette that colours life here. the rich, red-rust-orange earth, the vivid green-green-green of maize, tea leaves, banana trees, and the light, baby-soft blue sky above. i also can't get enough of kenya's soft, rolling hills and valleys.. in every direction you look, it seems like these tree-topped hills go on forever, each one becoming a duller purple-green as it recedes in the distance.
suffice it to say, kenya is beautiful. not beautiful in the way that cape town is beautiful - the stunning, almost-too-perfect, i-know-i'm-beautiful beauty that is made up of this award-winning combo of mountain ranges, unbelievable beaches, deeply-saturated blue skies, colour-tastic flora and fauna.. i would say that kenya is girl-next-door beautiful, a gentle beauty that i think loses itself on the people who have lived here forever (i am always the only one stretching my neck, looking up at the sky, the only one stopping to stare at the fields of green, squinting to see how far i can see the rolling hills go.. searching always for the magic in what everyone else thinks is the ordinary)
because i have an inkling that my words don't have colours bright enough..
the red-orange-brown of african earth.. narrow strips of red-orange cutting through swaths of green // githeri (a mixture of maize and beans), what we eat at school for lunch // manuel, our resident 4 year old, walking home from school // the white flowers that line my little home here, i love them.. they are so joyful and so white! (not much stays white around here, what with the red-orange-brown dust leeching the life out of anything white)
un-believably-green.. green of the rehema school uniform, the twins rebecca and rachael being their silly selves // green of our garden // green of maize crops // glimpses of green caught through earthen windows // more flowers around our home // green green grass // and my favourite, the green of fields of tea leaves.. their tops look as if they've gotten intoxicated on sunshine and turned a sort of radiant-neon-green that completely lights up on a sunny day
when it's not cloudy and rainy (and i won't try to sugar-coat the weather here.. its rainy season in kenya and it rains quite a bit. thankfully, mostly at night - i get to fall asleep to the skies opening up and pouring down on my corrugated tin roof.. but when it doesn't rain, and the skies aren't teen-angsty cloudy..) the sky here steps to center stage and takes a chance to show off.. skies over the school // skies over our home // blue sky setting the perfect background for this tiny patch of sunflowers i pass on the way to school (they make my 40-min morning walk so much better) // wildly free banana leaves reaching for the sky, waving to us passerby
all sorts of colours come out to parade for sunset.. pink-yellow-orange gives way to purpley-pink-blue and then all the colours make way for the deep, ink-black night sky. i have no pictures of this, so my words will have to suffice. but let me tell you, the night sky takes my breath away. i have never seen so many stars before. and then there's the milky way, painting a graceful, purple-cloud, star-studded band across the darkness.. it is unbelievable.
and of course, when the red-green-blues and pink-yellow-oranges aren't enough, the cloudy skies open up and give way to rainbows. this was one of the most incredible rainbows i've seen. (it was actually a double at one point!) the entirety of it pretty much stretched right across our farmland.. i could see where both ends of it touched the earth! (sadly, no leprechauns or pots of gold) i, much to the amusement of the neighborhood kids, who never get tired of watching the mzungu (white person) (they often stand at our front gate watching me read/eat/comb my hair on the porch.. giggling the entire time..) i, completely unabashed by their look-at-the-funny-animal-in-the-cage staring, ran into the house to get my camera, then slip-n-slided across the recently-rained on muddy path (made even more slippery by a constant, dedicated re-application of cow-donkey-goat dung) to get this picture.
my most recent adventure was a trip to uganda to visit a good friend, nat "ting bu dong" ogborn, who has been living in kampala for the last 8 months or so. kampala was my first "big city" since cape town.. it's a booming metropolis compared to our little village. i feel like i drunk so deeply of life during my time in kampala. boda-boda (motorized bikes that act as a form of public transport) rides, weaving in and out of crazy, noisy, diesel-perfumed kampala traffic along the swiss-cheese, pot-holed roads at night were something else. i loved it. i ate my first ice cream in a long while. i witnessed this incredible crossing of lives and paths within the ex-pat community in kampala.. i got to meet so many incredible people and hear stories from all different places and walks of life. i BAKED. (ooohh boy, did i bake.) banana bread, yellow cake with chocolate frosting (or as emily lapointe calls it "poo from heaven"), chocolate chip smarties cookies and apple crisp pie! (cecil road, i promise, i was thinking of you all.) what other life-giving activities did i participate in? i worshipped in an open-air sanctuary, gazing the entire time at the green-blues of uganda. i (together with nat) stumbled upon a PHOTOBOOTH on an majorly-under-construction (or demolition, from the looks of it) sidewalk in drizzly kampala. i toasted my first pimms o'clock!
oh, i drunk deep from that sugar-brimmed cup that contains bubbly, life-giving goodness. it was delicious.
then i left the big city for jinja, a small town in eastern uganda, about 3 hrs from the kenyan border. this little town boasts the home of the (much-debated) source of the nile river, a big nile brewery, some crocodiles, monkeys, and so many, so many bird.. i got to go white water rafting on the nile river, i witnessed an incredible fire-red sun set over the nile river, lighting it aflame with deep orangey-pinks. it was a good time.
the town itself was more charming than most of the other african developing-country towns i've been in. it was somehow brighter, whereas most other towns (like our big town of kitale) are coated with a layer of dust and are polluted with so much honking and shouting and diesel that it's difficult to think/breathe. i loved the hand-painted signs of jinja, the old-styled storefronts that would appear between rows of tiny, one-room craft stores, the brightly-painted homes, i loved shopping the market for bright scarves and african dolls..
i am delighting in finding the magic in the seemingly-ordinary. i can't believe i only have a month left here. (so cliche, but seriously, the last six months have flown by) there continually grows in me an overwhelming feeling of how blessed i am. many days, walking home from school, i'll look at the children walking alongside of me, at the blue sky above, breathe deep of fresh farm air and think "this is a good day in the life of me" .. i have to say, this happens more often than at home (home in new york, that is .. i've grown attached to quite a couple of homes elsewhere in the world) maybe simplifying things makes you more acutely aware of how much life has to give? of the joys apart from consumerism/tv/internet/media..
the children of rehema greatly expedite this process of finding joy and magic. these kids.. where do i even begin? there's samson, with his funny little mannerisms, raphael's incredible always-ready-to-be-flashed-at-you smile, diana who can't stop singing, isaac who is a bit of a smarty pants, daniel who is the world's biggest teacher's pet.. there's also meshack-kogei, who's only meal of the day is lunch at school - so whenever there are leftovers or someone can't finish, the extra food goes to him. diana, the same girl who can't stop singing, she's an HIV+ orphan - her parents died of AIDS and she lives with her grandparents. caro's mother is HIV+ and when she's not feeling well, caro needs to miss school to stay at home and take care of her younger brother. these kids do their school work with inch-long, barely-there pencil stubs, they do their homework by lamp light. and, above all, their joy is incredible. and contagious.
i don't know if i'm really ready to leave. being here has made me more and more sure of the fact that i really could do this one day.. (and whats more, that i would really love doing it) ..live among a people, learn from them, work with them and teach them.. in a vastly different part of the world. it's going to be bittersweet, leaving kesogon and kenya. i'm not ready to leave, but i do (i really, really do) want to come home. the thought of homecoming is sweet indeed, lined with thoughts of green-tea ice cream (or anything.. frozen/cold/refrigerated for that matter), adequately paved roads, washing machines, a long, hot shower.. and of course, seeing all of your beautiful faces
until then, i have about two weeks left at rehema school (the school term goes until the end of july). my last couple of weeks will be spent with the piccici's. (visit them at: http://www.instepfoundation.com/news.php) jeff and carla moved to kesogon four years ago and have since taken in 14 children, raising them in their house-converted-childrens-home. the stories of where these children have been found is heart-wrenching. the poverty and despair of kenyan mothers will lead you to find abandoned babies outside hospital doors, in maize fields, on the streets of kitale.. but by grace, they now live in a house that is filled with love and laughter and much joy. i'll just be volunteering as an extra hand to hold/feed/change these little ones.
my brain will continue to search for adequate words. words that will paint vivid, colour-saturated pictures and transport you to this place. words that will begin to describe what life is like here.
wishing you all colour-filled, magical journeys, wherever in the world you are.
salama! (peace!)
| | | Posted 7/26/2007 5:53 AM - 130 Views - 20 eProps - 10 comments
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