Considering David James Duncan's "The Brothers K"

I had a strange experience reading David James Duncan's The Brother K. I found myself having fun. How do I begin to describe the feeling, so foreign to me since the fourth Harry Potter at least? There's a certain lightness to the reading. You don't feel exhausted at the end but amazed that it's been three hours. I snicker out loud. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed Wolff, O'Connor, Borges and all the rest these past few months, but they are different. They're elegant and self-serious, and nothing puts an end to fun faster than that combination. You literally cannot read them for more than an hour at a time because you need a break from their explorations of good and evil, life and death, God and nothing, and all the rest. Not that Duncan avoids these topics. He explores them with as much passion as anyone else and as well as the best of them. He just lets us have more fun while doing so.

I put the blame for this fun most entirely on the language. Duncan cares about his themes but sees no reason to preserve them in amber like his predecessors. They are treated first with the voice of a middle-class kid growing up in small town Washington and obsessed with baseball and again in the voices of his family in their letters and journals. Irwin's freshman essay, The History of my Dad from his Birth up to Kincaid's, is replete with the character's silliness and humor. "My father Hugh Chance was born in 1929 in Chicago Illinnois on May 5 1929. He was no relation to Frank Chance the famous first baseman, Dean Chance the famous young pitcher, or Fat Chance the famous expression (ha ha)." And there has been no better description of heartbreak ever than "quack bisection of his heart."

Somehow though, with all of this energy directed toward the multitude of original voices and ambitious themes, characters are left behind. In the entire novel, there is only one character worth remembering: Hugh Chance, father of the titular brothers. His fall, his redemption and his fall again are powerful stuff. In his successes and failures, both large and small, he is real. The brothers themselves, excluding the narrator who disappears so effectively into the background that it's a challenge to remember his presence even while he relates the story, all fall so deeply into the types of the '60's, draft-dodging campus radical, nirvana-seeking Fulbright student, conscientious Vietnam grunt, that it becomes difficult to even care much about them despite the hundreds of pages devoted to them. There is incredible potential in many of the women, not least the fiercely Seventh-Day Adventist mother who retreats further and further into her faith as her life spirals farther out of control or equally fierce atheist mother-in-law, but the story is not about them. They are more symbols for the men to run toward or from than anything else.

This is rather unfortunate as I believe that more than any other element of story, character is the most important. Powerful characters are what turn genre fiction into literature. Without Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie would be just another mystery writer. Without Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett, Jane Austen is just some romance writer. Why are Timothy Zahn's books the best of the Star Wars Expanded Universe? Grand Admiral Thrawn, Mara Jade, Captain Gilad Pelleaon and Talon Karrde, in that order.

So what do you do with a novel with all the trappings of a great work in its eternal themes but without the characters to give it force? In this case, go with it. The voice is powerful enough to carry all 643 pages of Brothers and probably another hundred or two more.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: The Lonely Planet Guide

I can’t recall if I even flipped through a Kenyan, much less African, travel guide in anticipation of this year's adventure. I believe my attitude then was one of work first, play second. At least, I hope that's how it was. It's also very possible that I just planned poorly and figured that the locals would suggest the most interesting places. Yet Demetra and I now find ourselves in possession of the Lonely Planet Guide to Kenya. It’s borrowed from one of our fellow Kenyan directors. The Canadians who are renting his house while he works here are lending it to him. Not so sure why he wanted it in the first place. Maybe to see his country through the eyes of its visitors.

I can't deny the guide has been of some use to us. A history of Kenya beginning with those people dug up by the Leakeys. Street maps of Old Town. Directions to a cheap hotel in Mombasa. Facts about all of the diseases we can expect to catch. Some laughs at the warnings against riding in matatus.

Still, there is something about Lonely Planet that sets my teeth on edge. The tone, to be specific. It acts as though there is an opportunity for adventure in every part of Kenya, be it the Indian coast or Nairobi or the desert north or the western forests. Boxed texts give equal visual weight to the histories of dhows and the fact that Nairobi has surpassed Johannesburg as the most dangerous city in all of Africa. Even in these rare cases where the writers suggest there might be danger, they brush it off with simple warnings. Be sure to hire an armed ranger before driving down roads known to be hit by bandits around Lake Turkana. Bars described as hang-outs for prostitutes and pool sharks are presented more as little adventures than places no foreigner should get involved in. It's just so optimistic about it all.

Not that I can really fault the writers for this approach. After all, this is a travel guide. No one is going to spend $25 to be told “Do not go here.” A general warning and suggestion of similar environments is quite enough for that. These books are designed for people looking for a break from their daily lives. More than anything else, they want to be away from their mundane concerns and worries, not confronted with a host of new ones. If this book has made the reader confident that they can discover and survive Kenya, it has accomplished its goal, even if it sets them up for disappointment when it turns out the hotels that came so highly suggested have long since closed and been replaced by a clothing store.

It really doesn't bother me that I didn't look at a travel guide before arrival. The most useful part of Lonely Planet has been in identifying parks and other such interesting sites I hadn't heard about before, but really, all I need to find those is a good map and a local to tell me if they're worth visiting.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Further Mombasa adventures

Though attempts were made to visit Fort Jesus and Old Town on our first full day in Mombasa, it was only on Friday that we made our first successful visit to either of these historical landmarks, mostly because we finally brought along a map then. It's quite easy to get lost in Mombasa. It holds true to the Kenyan tradition of avoiding street signs as often as possible, and the streets in Old Town are exceptionally difficult. They're narrow enough to only allow a single car to pass through, and the buildings crowd along the sides so tight that finding any landmark is impossible. You only know you're getting closer to Fort Jesus when the curio shops with their window displays full of wooden animal sculptures and paintings of pastoral scenes start cropping up and the prices for everything kick up a few notches.

That said, both Fort Jesus and Old Town were nice places. Fort Jesus is a very well preserved Portuguese castle used to defend the coastline and trade routes. It didn't do this terribly well as the fort changed hands between Europeans, Arabs and Africans several times over its hundreds of years of service. Still, it's one of the oldest, if not the oldest, building in all of Kenya, and that is cool. Less cool is the choice of the curators to describe Fort Jesus as an exemplar of High Renaissance architectural thought and not give the least description of what that might possibly involve.

Surrounding Fort Jesus is Old Town. It's kind of an odd place and a mix of competing influences. The buildings were constructed by merchants and traders centuries ago and many bear plaques that describe the histories of those earliest owners. The doors and hanging balconies are all of the carved wood that are so famous along the Indian coast. These are the tourist draws, and there are plenty of overpriced cafés and curio shops along the streets to take advantage of these visitors. At the same time, though, Old Town is a highly residential neighborhood. When you walk those streets you walk under lines of laundry or past children making their way to and from school and people hanging out on their stoops or in the many alleys. Farther out from Fort Jesus are textile shops and other such useful places that are of little concern to tourists but very important to the locals. It kind of makes tours awkward as you constantly feel as though you're peeking into people's homes, which, of course, you are. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad if Old Town were more like Browne's Addition, and the locals know people are looking at their homes and make every effort to make them as beautiful as possible, but Old Town is poor. There are only a few public water spigots, and you are never out of sight of someone crippled by polio or whatever and carrying a metal bowl. It's a less than pleasant contrast when tourists with the latest digital cameras, myself among them, are walking past those who, at the best, couldn't afford such technological finery if they saved every shilling they earned for a year. I can solace myself with this whole “working at an orphanage for a year” thing, but I wonder how those who are only visiting for a week or two deal with it.

A short walk from the public beach, visited by Demetra and myself three times in three days to enjoy its warm waters, gentle waves and white sand beaches, is Haller Park, which we visited on Saturday, our last full day in Mombasa. It's the closest thing I've found to a zoo in Kenya. There were scheduled feeding times which guaranteed you could be within feet of giraffes and hippos, and there was a reptile park which kept snakes and monitor lizards and tortoises on islands. Kind of different since the country is otherwise content to throw up a fence around some lake or patch of the savanna and let people drive through with no guarantee of ever seeing an animal. It was nice though, if only because it allowed people to walk through at their own pace and offered some peace from the heat and sound of traffic.

And then we drove back to Nakuru in a single shot on Sunday. We left Mombasa at 7 in the morning and arrived at the center at 8 in the evening, not quite enough time to finish the last half of Anna Karenina but only because it got too dark to read in the last hours. This trip, our first major break since July, was very necessary, and now we're prepared to deal with the children for another month. We're already looking forward to planning a trip to Uganda to try and find some gorillas in December. Good times.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: The Weekly Kid: Kaparsip

Whenever Demetra and I get around to casting our Nakuru-edition of The Lord of the Rings, Kaparsip is going to be our Frodo.

Thanks to my mom, you can now enjoy a phonetic pronunciation of The Weekly Kid's name. Kaparsip. Ka-par-sip. The 'a' sounds the same as the 'a' in 'father.' Pretty simple.

Also, this is the sort of picture you can expect every month as part of any child sponsorship. Please consider it, if you have some money to spare.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: The beginning of Mombasa adventures

In less than a week I will have been in Kenya for four months. In that same time, I have spent four days in Pokot and eight days in Nairobi. Both these tallies include time spent traveling to and from. Every other day has been spent in Nakuru, working or hiding away from the kids in the room or a café in the city. Not that this is a bad thing. Nakuru isn’t a terrible city, and we’ve grown comfortable with it, but when I make it back to the States, I would like to be able to talk about a bit more of the country than just the capital and my little slice of the Rift Valley. Beside, a vacation, has been a long time in coming. We could have done much worse than Mombasa to start these travels off with. Much worse.

There are direct lines from Nakuru to Mombasa that would have saved us a night’s stay in Nairobi, but those had the disadvantage of not allowing us to stop in Makindu, a small town along the highway, almost directly halfway between Nairobi and Mombasa. I was a bit leery of this visit since it was to meet a Peace Corps volunteer we had only known through email and had been introduced to by a friend from Gonzaga, but by the time we left early Wednesday afternoon, Makindu had jumped near to the top of my favorite places in Kenya. Firstly, it is a small town, and it was very much a relief to be able to walk along the streets and not have to periodically glance over my shoulder to make sure there weren’t any tuk tuks or matatus bearing down and expecting me to jump out of the way. Secondly, we were able to meet other American volunteers and learn how they too were trying to make the world a better place. Last of all, and potentially most importantly, the Muslims and Sikhs in the town are apparently in a competition to impress the locals. Both have built hospitals and compounds which take up entire city blocks and have spared no expense in their construction and upkeep. As far as I’m concerned, the Sikhs have won this one cold. Mostly because we had lunch at their center. There was this wonderful fruit rice and spiced chickpeas and a cauliflower and green pea curry and apples and fresh vegetables and cool water and glazed sweet rings. And we were allowed to for seconds. And the toilets had seats and the sinks towels. And it was all available for a free-will donation. If we had wanted to, we could have even spent the night there, too. Every city deserves a Sikh temple.

Anyway, we made it to Mombasa late Wednesday evening. It was dark, so we went straight to the hotel and only ventured out to grab a small snack and fresh fruit juice. Thursday morning we spent wandering the streets, getting the lay of the city and generally being noticed a lot because these wanderings did not always involve the most tourist-oriented parts of the city. On the advice and with the directions of our Peace Corps friend, we made our way north to visit Pirate’s Beach and the coast of the Indian Ocean in the afternoon. There was no need to be concerned about raiding Somalis when we arrived, though. The shore extended out a good four hundred meters minimum from the kiosks selling forgotten suits to those who had left theirs behind, and even once we made it to the water, it wasn’t possible to do much more than wade. This was a disappointment. A rather drastic one. With the temperatures somewhere in the high 80’s, we were expecting swimming. Demetra already had her suit on under her shirt and skirt, and mine was stuffed in my backpack. We opted to sneak into one of the classy shoreside resorts instead of turn back to the city immediately. Not that the management cared so much when we ordered their mango juice and orange Fanta at prices five times anywhere else you could find them. Nursing our drinks for the better part of an hour, we from the inland United States realized we had forgotten something important. The tide can radically alter the coastline. By the time we were finished, we couldn’t have stood where we had once waded. We went straight in, and it was beautiful. The water was neither too hot nor too cold, the waves neither too rough nor too mild, and we were certainly not fighting with others for our patch of water. Absolutely wonderful. Beside the Sikh temple, every city deserves a piece of the Indian coast, too.

Further plans before leaving on Sunday include touring the Old Town, going through Fort Jesus, checking out Bumburi where there’s some manner of nature preserve and crocodile park, and spending two more afternoons in the Indian Ocean. Ought to be fun. I’ll let you know.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Third journey into Pokot

Two Sundays back I returned to East Pokot for the third time. It's beginning to feel a little familiar, and it absolutely blows my mind to write that. East Pokot and its people are about as far from my twenty-two years of experience on this world as possible. To feel fairly comfortable with them is some sort of achievement. Of course, this may simply be a symptom of only being with them for a few hours on a single day every month, but it's still progress of some sort.


Still, as familiar as these people and their fan necklaces and low wooden stools and knife rings may become to me, I hope I am never comfortable with seeing the stragglers pick up loose cabbage leaves from the dirt or scoop up maize flour mixed in equal proportion with dust from the floor because they were the last in line. It did rain a few drops in the afternoon, though. I do hope very much that El Niño brings some respite to this blasted region.


For what it's worth, I was recently assigned to the Foundation's Voices team, the goal of which is to preserve and share the cultures of the tribes we work with. I have yet to be trained, but to start, I began taking portraits of the people waiting their turn for a scoop of maize flour. You can find them sprinkled throughout this post. The deeper I get into the team and its work, the more I hope to share including dances and songs and stories and explanations behind the meaning of particular designs and colors and cuts of clothes, but I hope you like these as a first course. You can find more on my Picasa album.


If you would like to learn more or sponsor any of these projects, scroll to the bottom of this page. Your sponsorship could help us bring another bag or two of maize flour and vitally important medication to some of Kenya's poorest.

Considering "Libertango"

I don't remember the first time I heard Astor Piazzolla's “Libertango.” Most likely it was on AccuRadio's Tango station, but it just blended into the background. Once they started playing it at Simply Dance milongas in a set with “El Tango de Roxanne” and definitely after I saw its music video produced for The Tango Dancer, or some such thing, the song confidently strode to position itself among my favorites of all time. Before I go any further, I make full disclosure that music is not my thing. I like a lot of it a lot, but I really lack the training to wholly appreciate it. I mix up harmony and melody and can say nothing about the influence of any one artist or composer upon another. Just so you know what to expect from the rest of this interlude from squeeing over Piazzolla and “Libertango.”

The opening is just marvelous. The piano makes a frantic rush. It's headlong. You can hear it stumbling over its own feet. Violin and bandoneon appear briefly but never to bring order until the violin breaks in and takes control after a minute of barely contained chaos. For a time, this incredible passion and energy has found an outlet, but it collapses into that chaotic energy once again at the end. It's a rush. You feel out of breath merely listening to it. Piazzolla may not have written the most danceable tangos, but who could resist this one?

All of which, understandably, would make me rather eager to hear other takes on this little masterpiece. I count the Yo-Yo Ma cover from his Piazzolla: Soul of Tango and Rodrigo Y Gabriela's take in Live: Manchester and Dublin among my collection. Unfortunately, neither really measures up to the original. Ma falls the farthest from the original. His may be the most famous in America due to its appearance in the aforementioned The Tango Dancer, or some such film, and by virtue of the fact he is Yo-Yo Ma, one of the few cellist the average American could name off-hand, but his “Libertango” is inert. It's as though he thought Piazzolla's composition was too fun and needed to be more boring. The frantic energy is reined in, replaced with a bandoneon that may as well be a metronome. By the time he is finished taking out the good bits, “Libertango” may as well be played at one of the balls those Bennett girls were so fond of. This may be unfair since the other versions I have of “Libertango” are live and not studio recorded, but I paid good money for this.

Rodrigo Y Gabriela manage the not difficult task of besting Yo-Yo Ma in covering this song, but they still are not within striking distance of the original. Strange as it is to say, especially for this duo, “Libertango” is too nice at the beginning. Their guitars very nicely share the stage with the visiting violinist. That's just not right here. “Libertango” is a struggle between instruments. The fight to take control of the song. They are definitely not sharing. It's only at the end that the Mexicans remember this and begin to perform a worthy successor to Piazzolla's original.

It pains me to write these things. Ma's Bach:The Cello Suites is a staggering work of heartbreaking genius and artistry and it absolutely tears me up that I won't be able to hear 11:11 until next year, but somehow they all managed to miss what made “Libertango” so great without really introducing a wholly alternative vision of it. I guess the part-to-whole fallacy is real.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: The Weekly Kid: Kaplege

I have pictures of Kaplege that do a superior job of demonstrating her frantic insanity, but none of them involve her with arms full of corn and pieces of stalk sticking out of her mouth. Tough choice.

Kaplege is actually fully sponsored for Orphan, TEP and Medical, but if you would like to help out a kid a lot like her, click here.

Considering The Brothers Karamazov

Call me a philistine, but I have never “got” Dostoevsky or understood his exalted place in the canon. I did almost certainly read Crime and Punishment when I was too young (i.e. 17) and I did lack a patient teacher to guide me through, but the elephantine tome mostly irritated me. Excluding the very fine first part leading up to the titular crime and the inspector's interviews with Raskolnikov which were attempts to produce a punishment, Crime was, for me, nothing more than some annoying guy changing his mind about whether to confess or not. He does it a lot. Sometimes several times within a single page, and that gets old when the book pushes 700 pages. Still, when Demetra brought along Dostoevsky's final work, The Brothers Karamazov, to Nakuru, I figured I ought to give him another shot. It was either that or read David Foster Wallace again. A month later, I can pretty safely say that I won't be reading The Idiot until the memories of Brothers fade.

That I didn't like Brothers is not to say that I didn't respect it. I do. It's an incredibly ambitious work. Its themes of good and evil and love and family and God and all the rest are more than relevant, and Dostoevsky's intelligent, sensitive treatment of them is original and has lost no urgency in the century since the book's publication. His portrayal of the devil as a “poor relative” is brilliant. Some of the stories contained within, like that of Zossima's conversion, are wonderful. It's just that these parts are not the whole. In between them are a lot of extended, boring monologues. Brothers would have been so much better without those. In fact, if Dostoevsky just dropped the narrative entirely and turned those best parts into short stories and essays, he would rise so much in my estimation. Ivan and Zossima's chapters of speeches are basically those already. Instead, he just has to keep writing and writing. And writing. And then throwing a few more words on the paper for good measure, just in case.

In the back of this Barnes & Noble Classics edition are a selection of quotes regarding Brothers, and one is from Nietzsche. It goes something like “Dostoevsky [is] the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life.” I have a friend who agrees with this. I do not understand that at all. The allure of psychology, to me at least, has always been about has always been its mysteries and those parts which are beyond explanation. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, cannot help himself but to explain everything he mentions. Characters explain their motivations in depth and with complete honesty. Every character, no matter how minor, has a full background that does far more than drop hints as to the reasons for their present actions and feelings. Good grief, the writer can't even keep a secret for more than a chapter. I understand that he needs something to keep the readers engaged and eager for the next issue when the book is being published serially, but when the accused Dmitri reveals that one thing he promises to never reveal after just a chapter, it gets stupid immediately. In turn, the characters are boring. How could they be otherwise when everything about them is laid out, all neat and tidy, on the table? The whole psychology angle would also make a lot more sense to me if the characters actually acted like people and did things. Instead, they spend most of their time talking about themselves and their ideas. I guess this was before the concept of “Show, don't tell” was developed.

I want to like Brothers. I want to be cultured enough to honestly enjoy one of the medium's masters, but it is not happening on my ownsome. If you violently disagree and believe that I've lost the forest for the trees, please let me know. It's one of the less fun parts of being away from university. There aren't a terrible lot of people within walking distance to have this discussion with. Thank goodness then for the Internet.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Nairobi adventures

Nairobi is not a tourist town. Which is rather unfortunate because that is where Demetra and I escape to when we need to really be away from work and the center and the kids. You see, you can't just lock the bedroom door and ignore people when they come knocking because they don't stop. Either they refuse to believe that we really aren't there and keep knocking, or they look through the considerable crack between the door and frame to prove it. They can be tenacious in this regard. Coming back from Nairobi last time we found an eye-sized hole poked through our plywood wall to give the children a wider view of our room and pretty definitive proof that we were not just not answering.

But I was talking about Nairobi and how it is not a prime tourist destination. Kenya itself may attract a significant number of tourists to Africa and they may land at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, but they only stay in Nairobi long enough to board their safari buses. The city is too young, only founded in the mid-nineteenth century, to make walking through the different eras of development a joy like that of wandering through Paris or Istanbul. There isn't much for easily accessible culture either as museums and theaters and the like are in short supply. Really, the majority of cultural events are held by the Goethe Institut and Alliance Française, which are great for what they are and offer but when you are looking for something uniquely Kenyan, they leave you more than a little wanting. And I'm leaving the best for last. The capital's nickname is Nairobbery. Upon hearing that I walked the streets alone while Demetra spent the mornings working on her applications to med school, one of my fellow directors, the one who used to live there, sat straight up and asked, “Seriously? That's dangerous. You shouldn't do that.” This woman worked in one of the largest slums in world and was still scared of Nairobi's streets.

Not that she was entirely wrong in this belief. My mission on Saturday morning was to find City Stadium, home of Kenya's national team. Before leaving our hotel, I checked a city map and memorized the names of the major roads I would have to walk along. I know it's not the best plan, but it's worked for me in the past, and I'm too cheap to just buy my own. Anyway, it started well. I found Tom Mboya Street and the second no problem. Then my shoes come undone. It happens. I kick my foot up against a short fence and start tying. This man drops his ballpoint pen just a foot or two from me and goes to bend and reach out and pick it up so slowly that I finish the first foot and the second by the time he straightens back up. At this point, I kid you not, I think Are you kidding me? Couldn't you be just a little less obvious about this?

I start walking, and like I expected, he follows. I'm not worried about being mugged at this point. The streets are just too crowded. I'm not particularly concerned about pickpocketing either since I can still feel my wallet in my pocket. But I do not want this guy following me to a place I've never been to before. I push through thick crowds to put some distance between us. He walks faster. I walk near walls and cars to scrape him off when he pulls up to walk abreast of me. He walks right behind me. I make sudden stops when he's too close and goes past. He waits until I pass him again. I walk on the wrong side of the sidewalk so others knock into him. He pushes through. I run across a four-lane highway to scare him off. He follows even when I make eye contact to let him know I know what he's doing. I double back when I'm convinced that I missed my turn and lose him for a few moments, but when you stand three inches taller than the average Kenyan and have an explosion of red-blond hair, it doesn't take long for anyone to find you again. I may as well have a bounty of my head for how persistent he is.

I miss the the street to City Stadium again and decide to go take an alternative route that's approximately three times longer than the way I hope to go. It's not the best plan, but I don't want to keep walking the same three Nairobi city blocks looking for this street because it's going to look odd to anyone paying attention to me. It's a very stupid reason especially when it turns out this alternative route goes through Nairobi's industrial section and the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds slim to isolated groups. Still, this guy does nothing, says nothing and makes no move to pull a knife or try to pick my pocket. I occasionally glance over at him. Everytime I find him reading something different. Once it's a loose page of The Daily Nation. Another time it's a child's lost school notebook. The edge of immediate fear dissolves, and I'm near convinced the guy is harmless, just mentally ill and means me no ill. By this point I know I'm walking generally in the right direction toward City Stadium but the right road still eludes me. I find a cake shop and ask the woman sweeping outside for directions. My companion looks up from the torn sheet of cardboard he's inspecting to repeat the question. She gives him a look but points me in right direction, the same way I was walking on. I thank her and we continue on, asking directions one or two more times until we find it. Mission accomplished after ninety minutes. Now I'm thirsty. I go into the Ukwala Supermarket and he follows me right inside, past the drink cooler and through the check-out. I manage to find the road I was originally looking for and follow it back to my hotel, making the return in a much brisker thirty minutes. My companion stops to pee along the road and greet some friends but sticks with me the rest of the way. Once we make it back to the district my hotel is in, I make some half-hearted attempts to lose him in some stores but ultimately just walk back in. He's only stopped at the security checkpoint on the second floor. He tells the guard he's with me, and I disagree. The guard believes me and sends my companion of the past two hours and ten-odd kilometers to the police. An atypical start to the day. The rest is more pedestrian and mostly involves eating or visiting Parliament and the Judiciary.

This wandering and those that preceded it have begun to form the foundations for plans for future visits to Nairobi. The aforementioned City Stadium is on this least for Kenya's final World Cup Qualifying match against Nigeria or the CECAFA football tournament. Carnivore is on the list as well. The restaurant's name may not be the most persuasive to this vegetarian, but I'm willing to ignore that for a night for a place which has twice been voted among the world's fifty best restaurants. Then there's the village market and Nairobi National Museum with its cheaper rates once my application for a resident alien card is processed. And when I get to the point where I can't stand the city anymore either, there's still Nairobi National Park. That ought to be enough to keep me busy for the next nine months or so.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: The Weekly Kid: Kiptoo

Kiptoo's name is one of the first I learned. Mostly because he had a hernia that was really obvious when he was receiving his evening shower, but he had surgery this August to correct it and is totally recovered since then. Speaking of which, that's the sort of thing Medical sponsorships pay for. If you have the extra cash, please consider sponsoring one of our children and making sure they receive the care they need.

A Year (or Two) in Kenay: Further thoughts on bribes

It occurs to me that I forgot to mention something important in my earlier post on bribes. I would like to take this chance now to mention it because I find it unlikely anyone would realize this from the rather aggressive tone in took in that piece.

I don't think the people taking bribes are necessarily evil or bad in anyway. Yes, I am frustrated with and angry at them. When the request for the second bribe came in, politely described as fees necessary to cover the team's lunch and transportation and an allowance because they had to leave work for the afternoon to visit the center and make the recommendation, I had to take breaks by myself to avoid punching the contact straight in his lying mouth. But, if you put my back against the wall, I think the Children's Office and all of its members, both official and unofficial, with a finger in the pie want us to be a registered children's home, if for no other reason than that they would then have to figure out what to do with the hundred-odd children who suddenly found themselves without regular meals or beds if we were closed.

The problem is that they just see no problem in taking a little something for themselves while they're ensuring the children are cared for. After all, I am doing something good by protecting children whose parents abandoned or couldn't support them. Don't I deserve a little more for my good work? And it's not really taking anything away from the children when these wazungu run the center. They always have plenty of money. I assume those are the thoughts that allow the contact to keep a straight face when he says they need another 10,000 shillings. Because otherwise he and allow those he represents are just evil and are totally willing to take the food from children's mouths to buy themselves a new jacket.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: The Weekly Kid: Chepanga

Chepanga is not so cute as she once was. Yes, she still smiles a lot and has this incredible energy, but her two front teeth have grown back in. It makes a difference.

The Nakuru center received seven new sponsorships for both children and classes this month. Let's try and do better still this coming month.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: The first three months

I'm not quite sure on what day to celebrate this three-month anniversary. I left the States on one day, arrived in Kenya the next and drove into Nakuru the day after that. Fortunately, a busy work schedule has solved this very minor dilemma for me by pushing the date of this post back until the three-month anniversary of my first full day in Nakuru.

In any case, happy three-month anniversary to me. I think it is high time for an accounting of that time.

A lot has happened since I wandered into IHF's Nakuru center bleary eyed, sleep deprived and severely jet lagged. Some of it's been good, some of it less good and all of it different. I've visited a UNESCO World Heritage Site, contracted malaria, been followed for hours through the streets of Nairobi, had food poisoning, stood watch over a captured cattle rustler, paid bribes, taught computer classes to children who have trouble with the concept of the laptop's tracking pad, applied for my resident alien card, watched a Kenya Premier League football match, hired two new directors, said goodbye to the director who trained me, managed my first international volunteer, taken some of the best pictures of my life, and had two breakdowns, not necessarily in that order. It's been a busy time, and the time, accordingly, has flown by. I find it very hard to believe that I have already very nearly spent the equivalent of a school term here and take this as a good sign. Were I miserable, I would expect the time to just crawl on its hands and knees and take far-too-frequent rest stops.

I've learned a lot, too. My Kiswahili has improved from hakuna to kidogo, and I now know the names and faces of about three-quarters of the children here. That's not bad.

They say call no man happy until he is dead. I would say call no IHF director's term of service successful until all the children have grown and gone on to become productive members of society and good people. Still, I am tempted to make a positive judgment of my time here. In the first place, no kids have died under my watch. That's a good start. In the second place, I'm happy. The hours may get long and the Children's Office may be a corrupt, but being able to make the kids smile does a lot to balance those and all the other problems out. I know that I will miss Kenya and Nakuru and the kids. That must mean a lot.

I have high hopes for the coming nine months. We are well settled in now, and the wanderlust has begun to set in. We have plans for day trips in more of Kenya's many national parks and long breaks in Mombasa, Uganda and Tanzania. We're getting it started off right with the arrival of Carol Sasaki, founder and very active president of IHF, in Nakuru tomorrow. Whee.

Considering Tobias Wolff

I apologize in advance for the squee nature of this post. If I were given the ability to write like anyone, it would be Tobias Wolff. (Or C.S. Lewis, but seeing as how this post is about a particular contemporary American rather than a certain mid-twentieth-century Englishman, we'll ignore that for the present moment.) It's kind of hard not to jump up and down on my toes and extol the man's virtues at a rapid rate and in a high-pitched voice when he's attained that echelon of my respect.

I'm sure you would agree were you to read one of his short stories. The things are works of a true master. I have only had the pleasure of reading two of his short story collections, The Night in Question and In the Garden of North American Martyrs, and neither of his memoirs, but that is enough. Freak, “Bullet in the Brain” and “Powder,” two stories which are only 12 pages combined in my edition of The Night, would be enough alone to put him high on my list of all-time favorites alongside Oscar Wilde, Kurt Vonnegut and the aforementioned Lewis.

His stories are precise, but that word may be too weak. They enter you, and you don't even notice. Ever hear of the Subtle Knife? The blade so sharp it found the space between atoms? Wolff's prose is like that. It captures complex moods and characters in simple lines and a minimum of words.

“He would hit that note, and once he got her listening there was no telling what might happen, because all he really needed was words, and of words, Wiley knew, there was no end.”

That's from “The Life of the Body.” It's not my favorite, though it did pick up a Pushcart Prize in 1991, but what a beautiful line.

It only helps that there is such a developed moral dimension to Wolff's stories. I don't demand a nice, tidy lesson from my reading, but I do believe there is a difference between right and wrong and that this difference matters. Wolff does as well. His characters are forced to confront their fundamental self images, whether they are good or bad, brave or cowardly, loyal. They know that their choices reflect on them, and they care even if their decision is to abandon whatever is noble for lust or revenge. They know what they are losing, and their actions have consequences for themselves and those they never met. Consider the following from “Smorgasbord,” the first Wolff story I ever read.

“We're supposed to smile at the passions of the young and at what we recall of our own passions, as if they were no more than a series of sweet frauds we'd fooled ourselves with and then wised up to. Not only the passion of boys and girls for each other but the others, too—passion for justice, for doing right, for turning the world around. All these come in their time under our wintry smiles. Yet there was nothing foolish about what we felt. Nothing merely young. I just wasn't up to it. I let the light go out.”

Or this from “Two Boys and a Girl,” a story that demonstrates the false front of sarcasm better than anything else I have ever read.

There were reasons, and they were good reasons, but Gilbert could make no use of them. He knew that he would do what he was going to do... Reasons always came with a purpose, to give the appearance of a struggle between principle and desire. But there'd been no struggle. Principle had power only until you found what you had to have.”

Wolff may leave the narrative entirely to make these points, but it doesn't change the fact that he's right.

Were my back against a wall and some hater forced me at knifepoint to admit a weakness of Wolff, (and even that may not be enough. It would probably require a crowd of haters, or I would sooner make a desperate attempt to overpower them or scramble up the wall's bare face than answer that question.) it would be that his stories are too perfect. I know how stupid that sounds, but it's true. His stories are refined, burnished and polished to the nth degree. Not a single word is wasted. Not a single word is left out. Everything contributes to the whole, and nothing detracts from it. But his stories are about largely unexceptional people in situations that, while unique and unusual, are not terribly far-fetched. The choices they face are not so different from those we do, but our lives are rough and messy and incomplete and all the rest. To read a story that we could too easily picture ourselves in but is so smooth and clean and complete almost rings false. Almost. Like I said, the man is a master and does not allow us to dwell on this. There is just too much to be impressed by.

Wolff is old enough to have fought in Vietnam. I hope an awful lot that the man has a few more decades in him and gets a few more collections out before his death. I hope that you have the opportunity to this too.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Bribes

A couple of weeks ago my grandparents warned me against being too cavalier in my descriptions of the Kenyan government's corruption. They are going to be so disappointed in me for this post. Their hearts are in the right place, and normally I would agree with them. People don't need me to reinforce how corrupt the government is when they can read a new investigative report every week in The Daily Nation or in annual indexes of screwed-up African governments, but these people have demanded exorbitant sums from a children's home. That kind of annoys me. And the district children's officer slapped around an orphan who walked from the Mau to Nakuru because he heard there were good homes here. I wasn't present for that, but I was told the reason was to discourage other orphans from coming to and overwhelming the city. He then put the kid into a cell until enough orphans were collected to make a drive back to the Mau worth it. That kind of really annoys me. For now, the abstract.

Bribes suck.

These two words may seem self evident and entirely natural in their relation to one another, but I'm not so sure. I think bribes have more than a hint of romanticism in the Western world. In American movies, the bribe is always smooth and performed solely by men in tailored suits. Bribes are the tucking of a roll of bills into the concierge's breast pocket. They are the line, “Could Mr. Franklin persuade you otherwise?” They are Captain Jack Sparrow dropping coins and suggesting the official forget the name. Cool, non? I think it's the sense of doing something dangerous, just a little illegal, that gives bribes this flair. Kind of like underage drinking.

Then again, all of those bribes are for preferential treatment, a little bonus for someone not to do their job to the fullest degree, but this is East Africa. I would single Kenya out, but apparently half of all surveyed East Africans have been forced to pay for government work that is legally free. Here they demand bribes just to do their jobs.

Here's how it works, at least in our case. If the official is stressing how they are protecting you, how they are doing you a favor because you have enemies in other parts of the government that would eagerly screw you over, but is still hanging back from making any promises, you ask if they would like some tea. Then you discuss your fee and a payment schedule. This may also occur through an intermediary. The official may demand that you hire an outside contractor to help you complete the paperwork. If you refuse to hire them, the official refuses to speak with you because they can't be bothered by your every little question. The point here is plausible deniability. Then the bribe is just part of the contractor's fees because they legally can ask for money to do their job, unlike those in the government.

For what it's worth, it's a streamlined process. There is only the one contact who distributes the bribe to every pig with a wrench in the system. There is no worrying about every single person making their own request. Not that it stops them from coming back for more. When the official asks that you go on without him and talks about nothing of importance, it's a big hint the last payment wasn't enough. That's when things get really difficult, but you pay it anyway because it's the only way to get more important things done.

Now I understand why the line to report acts of corruption wrapped around the block in Nairobi.

Maybe I just screwed myself and will be facing a deportation order by this evening, but I like to think for the moment that the audience of Spice of Life is exactly as small as I think. Of course, it is very possible this won't make a difference. I was mad and far less than diplomatic when speaking for two hours with the contact yesterday. If he wanted to, he could probably get my visa revoked. My only hope in this case is that he doesn't know my whole name, though I can't imagine there are too many Heinrichs in Kenya at the moment.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: The Weekly Kid: William and Ben

The one on the left is William. He's been at the center an even shorter time than I. His parents abandoned him, and the Children's Office placed him here. They promised it would only be temporary until they found a permanent home, but the next time the officer visited, he told us to go ahead with the paperwork to legally place him here. I'm kind of glad, though. The other children have accepted William, and he's awfully sweet.

The one on the right is Ben. I could probably scrap The Weekly Kid feature altogether and replace it with The Weekly Ben. The kid is absolutely adorable and good humored. He runs every where and can't speak but to shout. On rare occasions, I have seen him quiet but never crying, much less in a bad mood.

As always, if you have some extra money, please considering using it to sponsor one of the children. It will make them smile just like this.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Eating at the center

Meals at the center are not terribly exciting, as the weekly menu is fixed and dishes are on a tight rotation, but they are honestly Kenyan. When restaurants proudly declare their foods “authentically African,” these are the dishes they serve.

Breakfast is either tea, porridge or mandazi. For all the money I have sunk into loose leaf teas imported from every continent, I like to think that I have some right to call myself a connoisseur and would thus like to make some critically appropriate remark on the quality and taste of our morning brew, but that is frankly impossible. The Kenyans like their tea sweet. Really sweet. So sweet that it wouldn't take much more to make the drink the base for rock candy. This, in turn, is balanced the next day by a cup of porridge. It's called uji and is sour. I hear it is made from a blend of maize flour and millet. Imagine the taste as possible. Mandazi is the height of breakfast meals. It is a triangle of dough deep fried until puffed. Even though we have since begun buying it from cafés and street sellers whenever we feel peckish, Demetra and I still eagerly anticipate mandazi days. We even begin reminding each other how long until the next Tuesday and Saturday afternoon because there is no mandazi like straight-from-the-fry-oil fresh mandazi. Bananas and sweet potatoes make the occasional assist for a little more substance in the early morning.


Lunch rotates between three dishes: rice and beans, chapati and beans, and githeri. The first is exactly what it sounds like. Rice is cooked. Kidney beans are cooked. They are then combined. This is wonderful. I don't know if some spice packet is added when I'm not looking, but Demetra and I make a point of not missing lunch at the center these days unless absolutely necessary. Chapati and beans is similarly self descriptive. Chapati is cooked. Kidney beans are cooked. They are then combined. Chapati may take a bit more description though. Imagine white wheat flour combined with water and salt. Now imagine rolling said dough into a circle about five inches in diameter. Finally, imagine frying said circle until hot but not crispy. Chapati is fry bread, and the only menu item I suspect to not be authentically Kenyan. My guess is Indian. It is excellent though. It's a true pity that we have it only Fridays, but the cooks may appreciate that as it is so time intensive to prepare. Despite having the most exotic name, githeri is actually our least favorite lunch. Not because it's bad but because it's entirely bland. It's a thick stew of kidney beans and maize kernels, like corn kernels but about three times the size, and entirely without taste. Githeri has started moving up in my estimation since I bought chili sauce at the supermarket. Peptang Chili Sauce with Garlic makes everything better. Except tea. And porridge. And mandazi. A lot of things actually. But the general thrust of the statement still stands. Peptang Chili Sauce with Garlic does improve the flavor of a number of dishes, githeri among them.


Dinner is either ugali and cabbage or ugali and kale. Ugali is something like mashed potatoes in color but more like sweet bread in consistency. Those things are solid. Unfortunately, the maize flour that comprises it is completely bland. The only flavor comes from the vegetables which are cut thin and fried and served on the side. My preference used to be for cabbage as the kale was a bit bitter, but that has turned around with the arrival of the Peptang. It complements the kale so well. Kenyans absolutely love the ugali though. One of my fellow directors claims it has addictive properties, and one of the older girls has said she starts shaking if she doesn't have any for longer than a day.


I don't know if I'll be bringing these recipes back with me to the States, except maybe for the mandazi and chapati, but they've been different. I'm glad I've had the opportunity.

Now, I do eat out with some frequency, and the menus at the restaurants are more complete than that of the center, but that is a topic for another post.

Roots

I found this article through the deserving-of-far-more-hits-and-accolades Arts & Letters Daily. I like it. It treats small town America, the backdrop of my entire childhood and teenage years, with a degree of honesty and compassion that is all too rare when, as the writers note, most are all to willing to dismiss it as Red America or something akin to Lake Woebegone.

While I lack the training or background to say much anything of substance about Carr and Kefala's analysis of rural decline and their attendant solutions, their discussion of how the children of small towns are either pushed to leave for four-year colleges or move into full-time jobs immediately following graduation, if until then even, is spot on in my experience. At Lake of the Woods School you knew exactly who would be leaving for their bachelor's degrees and who would be going to community colleges and who would be working at the resorts for the rest of their lives. The ones who took algebra in the eighth grade were going places. Those who took Consumer Math weren't.

In the words of the article, I was an “achiever” and in the most dramatic possible way. The only thing less interesting than attending a Minnesotan university, in my high school mind, was attending a North Dakotan university, most of which were closer to my hometown than the best Minnesotan schools. I applied only to Gonzaga, Marquette and Ithaca, respectively located in Washington State, Wisconsin and New York, and ultimately chose Gonzaga, the school two time zones and over two day's hard driving away. It would have been difficult to get much farther away, and except for the Christmas break, I stayed away. In the past four years, I've probably spent more time in Germany, Kenya and even Indonesia than I have cumulatively in Minnesota. The last time I was in Baudette for any considerable length was the summer after freshman year when I came back to work at the local state park.

It's not that I hated growing up in Baudette, town of 1,000 and seat of Lake of the Woods County, only county in Minnesota without a stop light and proud of it. In a lot of ways, it was a good place to live. I learned patience from the hours of driving to cross-country, track and Knowledge Bowl meets. I could walk twenty minutes and see the Milky Way and Northern Lights on a clear night. I made good friends. Granted, there were problems, like a paucity of outlets for those with more esoteric interests, but no place if perfect. Beside, I like to think that the tight community kept me grounded and prevented my nerdier interests (*cough* Star Wars RPG *cough*) from completely overwhelming me.

Does that mean then that I hope to return and raise my own family there? Now that's an interesting question. The short answer is no. While Amazon.com has made Baudette's lack of a bookstore moot and the Internet in general has made it far less remote and isolated, I've gone to operas in Munich, visited photography galleries in Spokane and seen professional football in Nakuru. I like these things a lot, and say what you will about the Pequana Playhouse, Baudette will never have them. That's kind of a downer.

In my experience, the critical turn is this: in the cities the culture and amusement are provided for you. There are bands and venues and maybe even orchestras. There are artists in every medium. There are restaurants that claim flavors from every hemisphere and cinema with subtitles. If you want it, if you have the slightest, most passing interest in it, you can have it. In small towns, though, it's all up to you. There are high school sports and community theater. You're never just a member of the audience. You're engaged if you're involved at all, but you pay for it in diversity. The people share a common ancestry, but worse still, the same people are behind everything. Parades and fairs and every other special event begin to resemble one another because they are chaired and organized by the self-selected few every time.

By no means is Baudette a terrible place, but it is a very small place, and the world is a freaking huge place. I've wanted to see what else there is, and I have not yet begun to be bored by it. Give me a few more years, maybe a decade or two, and I may discover that Baudette is indeed one of the better places in the world and return, but that is a long way in the future still.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: The Weekly Kid: Chelatan

I remember seeing an article in National Geographic some years ago about the black pharaohs. Chelatan reminds me of one of the artist's renditions. I think it's the shape of her head.

Like last time, if you have the money to spare, please give more than a thought to sponsoring one of the children in Nakuru. The children just wrote their sponsor letters last week, and the kids who had sponsors for the first time just glowed. It makes a real difference in their lives.

Considering “District 9”

If there was any buzz for the Peter Jackson-produced District 9 this summer, I missed it. Nary a poster in a lobby nor a TV spot did I see. I did, however, see the trailer before some other blockbuster earlier that year, Star Trek maybe, and that was enough. It was mind blowing. It opens up in documentary style, people responding rather negatively to the arrival of a new population in town. The language is clearly that of racists, and you expect the slum to just explode into a riot worthy of Rodney King. But then a black, rocking back and forth, says that he just doesn't trust them, and it begins to throw you for a loop. The loop then disintegrates into a kindergartner's frantic experiment with a new marker when the next scene is the interrogation of something not altogether unlike a Wookie-sized crayfish. Freaking wow. Did not see that coming. So, when I saw that District 9 was playing in Nairobi while visiting three weeks back, I did not hesitate in advocating for our attendance of it. It was our morning time kill between checking out of the hotel and taking the bus to the airport and picking up the center's latest international volunteer.

The very beginning of the movie keeps up all of the energy of this brilliant set up, from the introduction of our hapless hero Wickus as he struggles with his clip-on mic to the department's entrance into District 9 to deliver eviction notices. The documentary style, closely adhered for the first act, may seem like a cheap way to easily fill in background information, but it's appropriate. Until the plot takes a swift turn for the cinematic during the evictions, the point is that this is not unusual. The clear ignorance of those assigned to deal with the foreign population and the casual brutality of their police escorts alone are nothing worth making a movie about. They are more facts than stories and deserve a different sort of presentation.

Then there is a cut to some aliens searching for something and vague allusions to a plan. One of them dies to protect the plan, Wickus receives a face full of mysterious black fluid and we no longer have a documentary but a full-fledged horror film. Wickus' body begins to fall apart, and we don't know why. He pulls off fingernails, and teeth aren't far behind. When he finally is taken to a hospital, he is pulled out within hours by shock troops in black suits. Awake in a secret lab, he is subjected to a battery of medical tests and prepared for dissection, only barely escaping with his life, though that is not guaranteed with the government running alerts on his escape and the military actively searching for him. This is good stuff. The paranoia, the sense of hopelessness as Wickus is forced to pull the trigger one more, the terror of his accelerating condition, they are never more acute or powerful.

Then it all falls apart. I can locate the precise moment. At the beginning of a mission back into the lab to retrieve what remains of the black fluid, Wickus splatters one of the guards against the far wall. When his alien partner demands to know why when Wickus had earlier ordered that no one was to be harmed, his response? “He shot me!” From here on out, it's just another action movie. That's a little unfair. It still has some brilliant segments, especially the final confrontation in District 9 as the advantage constantly shifts between Wickus, the aliens, the government and an absolutely insane Nigerian gang, but it's certainly not what I was hoping for from such a brilliant premise of turning the arrival of aliens on Earth not into some fantastic war or opportunity for growth but into their transfer into slums. Rather than go for the exceptional, it opts for cannibalism and human bodies that explode into a fine red mist.

A lot of the critical response I have seen has focused on how District 9 is this great throwback to science fiction as political allegory and bringing a little thematic dignity back to the genre. Seeing as how the movie is set entirely within and around Johannesburg, I can see how apartheid is the obvious target, but did anyone else feel the allegory was more appropriate for homosexuality and coming out of the closet? An apparently all-male species that easily indulges in cross dressing? An entirely emasculated man becoming closer to the aliens only after a lot of self hatred? A wife so distant in the background that the machine-o'-death has more screen time than her? Just saying this deserves some greater thought by someone on Metaphilm.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: In the news

It's a real shame that print journalists rarely ever make the news instead of just cover it. When your name is Janet Cooke or Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair, it's pretty bad for the profession, but as unsavory as those stories are, they are still a far sight better than those about the likes of Daniel Pearl and Stephen Farrell.

It's a shame those are the only two cases because if reporters found their names on the page and outside the by-lines more often, they might approach their stories with a bit more tact. They would better realize just how foolish one can appear when their quotes are taken out of context and how embarrassing some personal details can be. Reporters might treat their sources more respectfully then and generally be more careful in their coverage. They might spend more time considering why they are writing their article.

So I find it rather important to be in that situation now. The article isn't exactly about me. It's more about a situation that I find myself in. It's kind of like claiming that I voted in the last presidential election and thus am an authority, but the article does reference Pokot and is about a national drought that I am seeing the effects of, even if Nakuru is safely inside that slice of western Kenya not afflicted by the worst of the drought according to The New York Times' graphic. In fact, heavy rain clouds have reliably drifted through the sky every afternoon for the past month and, more often than not, have let loose a short drizzle. Not that it helps much since the principal growing season is well past.

"Lush Land Dries Up, Withering Kenya's Hopes" is in that unfortunate class of famine-and-coup stories which are the only way the developing world ever receives any news coverage in the West and plays that angle for all that's worth. Through the personal stories of Turkana villagers waiting for the delivery of emergency food, Jeffrey Gettleman does not miss a chance to describe the most dramatic effects of the drought. “[T]he picturesque savanna is now littered with an unusually large number of sun-bleached bones.” A starving man begins choking on his porridge, “the color and texture of sand,” and only stops when his granddaughter offers him a “capful of water.” Children are starving to death, and government officials readily deny the most obvious reasons. And all of this is happening in one of the most developed nations in Africa. By the end of the article, the reader cannot help but feel further depressed about the chances that Africa, if one can ever refer to such an immense and diverse continent in the singular, will be separate from the euphemism “developing.”

To his credit, Mr. Gettleman, to use the very proper style of the Times, does point out the inability (or is it unwillingness?) of the government to deal with its own problems, but I think he misses their greatest failure. It's not just that the Parliament appears more interested now in minimizing the power of President Kibaki by denying his political appointments than in feeding the people but that the water supply should not be a problem in Kenya. The Mau Forest is an abundant source of water, but the Moi administration more than eagerly sold off huge tracts of it to settlers and shell companies owned by family and friends. The Kenyan government has been so ridiculously corrupt that it has put more effort into protecting and growing the fortunes of politicians than the lives of citizens.

And I would like to point out that the reports of ethnic conflict, as least as described by Mr. Gettleman, are exaggerated. When things go bad in Kenya, sides will form along tribal lines, but that the Turkana and Pokot are fighting is evidence of nothing. Even in the best of times, the Pokot will still steal the Turkana's goats and the Turkana will steal them plus some right back. It's what they do. Forty years after independence and no government has demonstrated or attempted an effective way to deal with it. You may as well say tensions are high in Europe because the Greeks and Turks don't particularly care for each other.

I wonder why this article was written and received placement on page A1. To make those Americans who read the Times feel better about their own situations and realize how much worse it could be? A part of me wants to say that there is a call to action contained within this article, a plea for food and water aid to keep the people alive, but Mr. Gettleman seems plenty ready to deny the possibility of that. When the United Nations and World Food Program are unable to raise the funds to protect some four million Kenyans from starvation because donor nations are no longer certain of the viability of the state, who can help?

I only hope that it wasn't written as witness to yet another catastrophe.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: The Weekly Kid: Manu

I would like to introduce a new feature to Spice of Life this week. I call it “The Weekly Kid.” You ever hear of The Daily Puppy? Same idea. An opportunity to celebrate cute things only with the kids who live at the center rather than with domesticated wolves.

I do it all for you, my faithful readers. Since coming to Kenya and making a sincere attempt to post regularly, I have been amazed by the responses I have received. People I haven't spoken with since high school are commenting and letting me know that they enjoy reading my brain droppings. It all means a lot to me, so I want to do a little something extra to fill the four days of the week I don't post. Hope you like it.

His name is Manu, short for Emmanuel. He's in preschool and still has all of his baby teeth. His generally bright disposition and eagerness to hold my hand when I'm walking him and the others to Grayla Junior Academy already put him in contention for cutest kid at the center. The teeth just kick that up to 11. When he tries to say his brother's name, it sounds more like “die Mutti” than “Timothy,” and when he wants to say “this,” it comes out “dix.” At that point, it's hard to resist the impulse to stuff him into my luggage and take him back to the States with me.

If you agree and have a little extra money in your bank account, please consider visiting IHF's website and sponsoring him or one of our other children. As IHF is run entirely by volunteers, from those designing the promotional materials to grant writers to center directors, all of the money goes directly toward supporting them. Your money pays only for their food, their clothes, their medicine, their tuition and everything else that they need. You can be sure that your money will have a direct impact on the child's life. As a student of the dismal science might say, it's a high benefit-to-cost ratio. In return, you'll receive a letter and picture of the child once a month.

I'm not a big fan of doing things like this, asking for money that is, but I believe in the Foundation's mission and accountability. Please give sponsorship more than a moment's thought.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Harvest

I have never pictured myself as a farmer. My mom did keep two vegetable gardens in our backyard when I was younger, but my involvement amounted to knocking over the old corn stalks with whatever stout stick might be readily available and shucking peas. Never much wanted to be one either. I know that the organic, local food movements have brought a new romance and dignity to the profession, but those have always smacked of a certain elitism to me.

Nevertheless, I can now say that I have spent an afternoon in the fields working on the maize harvest. Basically corn, but unlike any I've before seen in the States. The kernels are about three times the size those you find frozen in the grocery store and not as sweet. A paler sort of yellow, too. More sun-bleached khaki than sunflower. Thus, I prefer to write maize in this post, but you get the idea.


I could not exactly say that I was anticipating harvest day. I was prepared for disappointment. Our farmhand had begun to slash the shortest and least productive stalks weeks earlier for cow feed. Birds were scavenging what remained. Whenever I walked through, it seemed that I only found half- and full-eaten ears. Every time those in the know told us that we had to wait a little longer for the husks and stalks to dry completely, it meant we put off the day we had to organize all the children only to find that all the field had produced enough only for a meal or two.

But it came earlier this week. We gathered the children, passed out some nails to strip the husks and some sacks to gather the yield, and went in. The kids loved it. The first husks they stripped, they pulled out the silk to put on their heads. They sang songs in whatever language seemed most appropriate at the moment. When they felt tired, they sat down and stripped the hulls from the stalks to the white and sucked out the sugar water. Low fructose corn syrup, I guess.


I liked it, too. It was hard work, yes. I have the cuts on my hands to prove it. Those husks can surprise you. They have edges on them. Yet it was good to work with my hands for a few hours. When your work is the care, education and betterment of children, you may feel noble and all, but definite success is fleeting and only possible in the distant future. There are times when you could not be more proud of the children, and times when they do things so stupid you just want to lock them in their rooms and away from decent society forever. With your hands, though, you can say at the end of the day, “You see that maize? I picked it. It's there because of me.” Soon enough we'll eat the maize and all evidence of the day's work will be gone and children who become mature, responsible adults will last forever, but it's nice to have a little win every once and a while.

We were fortunate to harvest what we did. I may complain about the damage done by the birds who tore through the husks or the cows who would eat entire stalks when no one was paying attention, but at least we had something for them to feed on. Driving to Pokot and walking through the city, in the ditches and as bed-sized plots in yards, you could find plenty of maize fields, but even stalks half as tall as ours were rare. I can't recall seeing any other fields even produced ears. Those stalks were felled early to feed cows. The drought is real. Our field lies at the bottom of the hill most of the center is built along, and the waste water from both the kitchen and wash area runs into it. The water may be dirty, but it is some nourishment, and that is enough.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Lake Nakuru and Menengai Crater

There is only one reason anyone outside of East Africa has ever heard of Nakuru or bothers to visit. That would be Lake Nakuru National Park, home to massive flocks of greater and lesser flamingos, site of one of Kenya's largest black rhinoceros sanctuaries, and UNESCO World Heritage Site. Every local tour agency offers a package which includes a trip through the park, and if you see anyone white in town, you can be sure they're here to check out the park.

Finally, two months after arriving in Kenya, I managed my own safari there this past weekend. That extended delay was only encouraged by a completely disastrous attempt to visit in July when Demetra and I walked to the front gate only to learn that no foot traffic at all is allowed inside and that between the two of us, we could only pay for half the entrance fee with the money in our pockets. Kind of disappointing, but that's over and in the distant past now.


To put it up front, the wait was completely worth it. Driving through a park with a guide rather than going through at my own speed under my own power is not my first choice, but nothing could distract from how excellent the park is. We're riding past families of warthogs and herds of giraffes and zebras and impalas and gazelles and water buffalo and waterbuck and baboons, and I can't help but think that these don't belong in real life but movies. They should be cracking wise and singing not taking mouthfuls of grass.. But here I am, watching them watch us. A storybook come true. There was even a rhinoceros. Our driver was all over that one. When the van in front of us stopped for pictures and blocked our view, he threw ours into reverse to take a second road which the rhinoceros was heading toward. Thing was bleeding massive. Could have taken out the van no problem if it had been so inclined, and that was a distinct possibility as the driver adjusted the van so often for a better view.


Easily my favorite were the flamingos. I had always imagined them as such awkward birds, a feeling only encouraged by the Queen of Heart's determination to use them as croquet mallets, but they are actually quite dainty. Every step is precise and delicate, and unlike the pelicans they share the lake with, flamingos do not dive into the water with a splash. No, they flare their wings at the last possible moment and plant their feet. Second favorite would have to be the mongoose. When I first saw it running through the underbrush, I wasn't even sure it was a mammal it moved in such a lizard-like fashion.

While the fauna is the main attraction, the flora deserves its own due. It is amazing to me that such a diversity of land could be find within the same park. Driving alongside the lake, you find yourself in a lush wetland. Go a little farther out from it, and you're in a thick forest. Go to the other side of the mountain and you find yourself on the savanna. Incredible.


The part of me that likes to be clever likes to think of Lake Nakuru as the ideal American park on a number of levels. Two, to be precise. As I already mentioned, no foot traffic is allowed inside the park. The official reason is for the visitor's protection as there are lions inside. That doesn't convince me as seeing them is so rare. I think it's really just a deal to give more business to tour agencies. In either case, it means that walking is prohibited. The appeal to the many weight-challenged Americans should be obvious. There was also a distinctly democratic sense to the park in that all of the species of animals seemed so comfortable with each other. Yes, they may stick with their own herds and kinds, but they mingle while foraging and share the same water. No problems. An animal melting pot or salad bowl or whatever your favorite symbol for American diversity. In retrospect, it seems so conducive to American health and sensibilities, I'm surprised there aren't any like it in the States.

We finished our safari with a drive to Menengai Crater. There isn't much to it, just a vista of the surrounding land. There are trails, but our guide warned us they weren't safe, especially for wazungu. Because of bandits or because we don't have as sure of footing, I don't know. So we just sat. That was nice. It reminded me how much I miss parks. In Spokane I could bike for a half hour in either direction and be outside the city and in a park, and there was still Riverside at the city center. It's nice to have a place of quiet and beyond the rush.

Considering "Revolutionary Road"

I made a poor choice of surprise for my first Surprise-and-a-Treat Night. I have been bored by movies, and I have been hard pressed to remember anything about it as soon as I left the theater. I have felt manipulated by by movies, and I have been disappointed by movies (I'm looking at you Australia and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Don't try slinking into oblivion.). But it is the rare movie that I wish I had never seen. As you might have guessed by now from the title of this post, Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road is one of those movies.

It's hard to point to any single classic element of cinema as the source of my frustration. The score, as simple and as repetitive as it is, is perfect. It is employed to set the earliest scenes and at the moments of highest drama but is always appropriate. The kudos surrounding Kate Winslet's performance are well earned, and the rest of the cast play their roles well. The only off note is sounded by Leonardo DiCaprio who comes off as something of a brute, prepared only for violence, when something more subtle is called for. The direction and pacing are fine. No complaints with the scripting or costumes or set design either. Really, when you look at the individual parts, it's a fine film.

It's only when I pull back and consider the overall effect that it begins to leave me nauseous. It's the motive pervading Revolutionary Road that irritates me most. When a cast and crew that has already received so much attention from the Academy creates such a self serious film based on an acclaimed work of literature, it's rather impossible to consider it anything other than Oscar bait. In and of itself, this is not a problem. While I prefer to side with C.S. Lewis on this and attempt to create honest art rather than art which will be great, bait can still lead to some fine films like There Will Be Blood. Revolutionary Road took a turn for the disastrous when it decided that the theme which will bring in the statuettes is that the American suburbs are stultifying and encourage conformity thereby crushing the human spirit and zest for life. Whoa. My mind is blown. Brain is all over the wall it was so blown. Then it takes a twenty-pound sledge to the remains just in case the point didn't come across. Film set in the 1950's? Check. Insecure husband works in a cubicle? Check. An incredibly ironic name for their street which only serves to further draw out how not revolutionary their lives are? Check. An incredibly ironic advertisement composed by the husband which only serves to further draw out how he isn't actually doing what he really wants to do? Check.

It was awfully generous of Revolutionary Road to provide its own best analysis of itself. Trying to convince her husband that they need to abandon their pleasant home on Revolutionary Road for Paris, the only place where he ever really felt alive, Winslet argues that everyone in the community has told them they're special, meant for something better, but they aren't. Only in this case it's not everyone else telling this movie it's special. The movie's telling us its special in every aspect of its production and performance. But it isn't.

The suburbs may very well be the refuge of the middle class and enclaves of those who prefer the norm to change, but somehow people still prefer to live in them. Some even manage to thrive. Who could imagine that? We are not slaves to our environments. We choose and find our own happiness and fulfillment. Anyone who says differently is posing a poor excuse for their own misery and should spend a few months in a slum. See how long their existential crises lasts when they actually have to put effort into their survival.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Another favorite picture

I haven't had much time to write this past week as the senior director left and two new directors were hired to take her place, so please accept this brief photo post in the stead of the more traditional anecdote or essay.

There are a lot of things I like about this picture. The composition for one. The layer of sand rises to meet the bushes on the hill's crest of the hill which touch the clouds on the horizon, finally ending in the clear blue sky at the very top. The women, especially the one flaring her shawl, provide powerful focal points. The color is rich.

But this is where it gets interesting. Clearly, I like this picture, but it bothers me, too. Pokot simply does not look like this. The color is more muted, less intense. If this picture were left out in the sun for a few hours, then the color would begin to approach that of Pokot. Fortunately, that's unnecessary as the original captures it all quite well. That picture was processed through Picasa which tweaked more than a few settings. The result was this picture, one that I find ultimately more striking but less honest, and therein is the problem. More than most any other art medium, photography can claim to present the greatest truth of its subject, but even in something as minor as modifying the colors, it already is departing from that truth. This was never a problem when I stuck with black-and-white.

If you want to see other pictures, less good, from Pokot and the center in Nakuru, please check out my Picasa album.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Orphans with families

Working at an orphanage is demanding. Seeing to the children's health, safety, education, happiness engrosses you, sometimes to the point that you forget why you're doing it. During the past school holiday, we allowed many of the children to return to Pokot, a chance to get away from the city and return to their tribal culture. About a week and a half ago, we visited the villages to pick the children up, and a mother refused to return one of them, a pre-schooler, to us. My hackles went straight up. She hadn't been able to provide for him and given him up to us. He was our kid now. She had no right to him.

We informed the founder of the Foundation of this the next day. She was glad. It was a much needed cold splash to the face. The boy shouldn't be in an institution. He should be with his family.

I hate my job. Absolutely abhor it. It's not the long hours or the dulling government paperwork. It's not even the children who decide that the best possible time to break the rules is after midnight. It's that my job exists at all.

I'll let you in on a secret. Despite the title of orphanage, the vast majority of the children who live here have living parents. No more than ten have no parents whatsoever, and they still have other relations that would be willing to take care of them. The children should be with their families, immediate or distant, and not in an institution with a hundred others where they can't get the particular attention and all the care that they need. But they can't because their families are subsistence farmers in a drought-stricken land, because the nation lacks a strong economy with jobs for the educated, because the government is too corrupt to protect water sources, much less provide adequate social services.

We and the center are only here because things are wrong with the world. If everything were right, we wouldn't be necessary. We should dream for that world.

A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Buying bootleg DVD's

Work at an orphanage that is home to over 100 children is exhausting. Big surprise. And, as fun as living with the children, eating with the children, teaching the children, putting the children to sleep at night, waking the children up in the morning and playing with the children can be, we occasionally need time away from them.

That is why we instituted Surprise and a Treat Night. The treat is biscuits or crisps or some other goodie with a British name. The surprise is a bootleg DVD. One of us chooses the surprise, the other the treat. And then we switch the next week.

When my turn to find the surprise first came around, I was, I am ashamed to admit it, more than a little scared. The problem was certainly not finding one. This isn't the black market where you need to know the right people and use the right hand jive at the right time. To say that bootleg DVD's are abundant in Nakuru is a gross understatement. If you spend any time in the city whatsoever, you have to go out of your way to avoid the street vendors. They set up shop in front of every store whose owners do not ask them to move on, and there are at least three on every block, both sides of the street. The selection isn't bad either. Hollywood releases appear on the streets within two weeks of opening in American theaters, and so long as you like star-driven films, there is a rich catalog to choose from. They even have the taste to package all of the Godfather movies on a single disc, even if they use the cover of the video game to advertise it.

No, my concern was looking like at idiot tourist while flipping through the selection and being ripped off. Bargaining over two hundred shilling, rough equal to $3 American, may seem like the height of arrogant Western tourism. That's change. You can't even buy a full meal at a fast-food joint in the States with that much, but the Kenyan on the street could eat for a day on it. Still, knowing you're getting cheated is a more than disquieting feeling, and when you intend on spending a few more months in the city, you don't want to be setting a bad precedent for future exchanges. My original strategy to deal with this was to watch the vendors out of the corner of my eye while walking by at full speed. If I saw one I wanted, the plan was to stop, grab it, pay and get out. No time for haggling or being seen. That never worked. On the rare occasion I actually saw a DVD I wanted to pick up, I had already passed by. Turning around would only smack of desperation and kick the price up a few notes.

I realized this Friday afternoon. Then I humbled myself to stop in front of a vendor and flip through their selection. There was no hard sale. She pointed at a few options on display that I might like. Classic Schwarzenegger Films? Ultimate Horror Movie Collection Vol. 3? I settled on a collection that included Revolutionary Road. 200 shilling and a handful of my popcorn? Sold. I think the woman laughed to her friend and I definitely heard her say “two hundred” as I walked away, but that's still better than anything Demetra had paid.

One note, only buy your bootlegs from Dubai Digital Movie. They fill their DVD's to the far edges of the disc with at least 12 films on each. These things are high quality. No worrying about jerky cameras that inexplicably periodically go out of focus while filming a static screen. Dubai gets its rips from promotional copies as often as possible. My only complaint: who decides who selects the films for each set? I really want to meet the person who thought there was a demographic desperate to have Twilight, The Wrestler, The Alphabet Killer, Behind Enemy Lines: Colombia, and Slumdog Millionaire all on the same disc. Maybe it's a family collection, something for everyone?