Maybe this was because of English, the capacity to talk to ordinary people so intoxicating after the language isolation of Rwanda. I fell furiously in love with my own language, embracing the poetic constructions of Kenyan English.
(Apparently, according to a letter to the editor in the Daily Nation, the Kiswahili taught in schools is archaic, difficult, and full of convoluted proverbs. Although I can see the writer’s point that this is having a detrimental effect on language learning, perhaps it is the source of the charm of Kenyan English.)
Maybe I felt free because of the politically argumentative press, filled with scathing commentary on the government’s response to the International Criminal Courts naming of ‘the Ocampo Six’, the prime instigators of the post election violence at the end of 2007. Newspapers and magazines cover the sidewalks and people read them leaning up against walls, sitting on stools, squatting on the sidewalk. In Nairobi, a military man with a gun slung over his shoulder reads avidly. I buy the paper early in the morning, sit in the nearby coffee shop, one of many whose head is bent over the news.
Maybe my heart was singing because of connections with old friends, and the welcoming generosity of people I had just met, all of which is collaged in my mind still along with the beautiful diversity of the landscape, open savannahs full of elephants and buffalo and zebra, sugar cane fields, tea in the highlands, the dry flatness of Maasai country, unexpected wheat fields that remind me of the Canadian highlands, open land dotted with acacia trees.
Stories tangled together like a complex piece of weaving that has somehow veered out of control into a wild pattern, and all I can share right now are a few images from that colourful fabric. Each picture has a story that I want to write, but for now each offers just a tantalizing glimpse into a complicated reality and a doorway for imagination.
Visiting again the green tea fields of the Mogusii Farmers Group in Sotik, the land where my father once managed a colonial farm and where my parents got engaged.
Visiting Judy, former export zone worker and union organizer, at her mothers home in the slums of Mathare North, whom we first met at the World Social Forum in Nairobi at the beginning of 2007.
A rattling day trip to the Maasai Mara with a local guide/driver. Smiling and smiling all day.
Being welcomed to a remote Maasai village by singing women, learning about their microfiance projects, laughing and sharing food.
Walking with a group of Maasai women to fetch water from the river, taking photographs for Positively Africa, an NGO in Victoria that is supporting HIV positive people in communities around Narok.
Visiting a school in Narok that provides caring education to orphans.
1 comment:
Sounds like wonderful trip. Great to see the pictures, and connect them up to things you have written/told me about. I much look forward to the stories.
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