A Few Loose Ends

A few loose ends.

An African Moment

While in Kenya, I attended an actuarial conference in Nairobi. The afternoon before, I had to get to the conference hotel. My driver was driving me the hour-plus drive. We had just left the house, when his phone rings and he has a couple conversations in rapid succession.

He informs me that a good friend was also driving into Nairobi and was on the road ahead of us. The friend knew my driver was also heading in. He had gotten in a wreck on the highway and couldn’t raise a cop to come to the scene. So we went on cop-spotting duty.

After a few miles, we get to a very busy roundabout. There are two very busy cops working the traffic control. The driver flags down one of them. The traffic is now stopped going our direction due to the cop talking to us. Horn hooting is rampant. The officer motions us to pull over to a spot that looked like it was right in the middle of the traffic. This doesn’t help the traffic flow, which was already chaotic.

The officer has a phone conversation. She then climbs into the van with us. Introductions are made. The traffic in the roundabout is now down to one officer controlling, and he is apparently unaware that his partner is leaving. The traffic chaos doubles.

We take off back down the road. In a few miles, we come to the traffic backup for the wreck. We weave our way through and stop. The officer jumps out of the van to work the accident scene.

Thanks and waves all around. We proceed to Nairobi.

Sunday

Claudia and I spent one Sunday in Ngong, without an agenda. Many of the Kenyan people are very religious, so it is common to hear loud, boisterous church services for hours on end. Many well-dressed people are commuting to church as well.

Mama B is very faithful and prefers to go to church every Sunday, with kids in tow. She had repeatedly asked Claudia to attend church with her.

Claudia and I discussed. If the pesky guests weren’t in the house, Mama B could go to church. In a whirlwind of “what the hell just happened,” we find ourselves off to church early Sunday morning.

To get there, we have to walk about half a mile on a steep, rocky road. Then we catch a Matatu. This is a medium-sized bus, with a large bus’s seating allotment. My seatmate is about my size, leaving about half of me blocking the aisle. This was pretty much the whole aisle.

The Matatus are one of the major hazards in the world. They completely ignore traffic laws. They live by the rule that any vehicle smaller than them will give way, regardless of what ridiculous maneuver they attempt. They regularly drive on the wrong side of the road and on shoulders. They regularly cut from the wrong side of the road to the shoulder.

All this is done with blaring, sometimes intelligible music, air horns, garish airbrush paint jobs, and lit up at night like your worst neighborhood christmas display.

After a short ride, we jump off and walk the last few blocks to the church.

It is unclear what was the prior use of the church compound. I suspect it hasn’t always been a church. It was one room that we saw. The service was already in progress, as announced by the loud singing that met us in the road as we approached.

There are probably 15 people in the church. Claudia and I walk in with Mama B, two of her 5 kids, and another girl who is staying at the house on school break. There was little doubt that Claudia and I weren’t regulars.

We joined Mama B’s three other children and stood while the singing progressed, at Aerosmith volume. There was one drum for accompaniment. Most of the singing was in English. We stood for all the singing. My leg quickly started going numb.

After what felt like a month of standing, the singing ceased. We were seated on hard, straightbacked, wood chairs. The pastor greeted the two guests, and proceeded to the sermon. Mostly in Kiswahili.

Immediately a toddler makes eye contact with me. We wave. She promptly squeezes through the people and ensconces herself on my lap.

There is one very thoroughly bundled infant in the group, as well. In fairly short order, the baby is deposited in Claudia’s arms. Given that holding babies is a large part of Claudia’s job, she was fine with that.

The problem was finding the actual baby buried in two thick, fluffy blankets, a heavy sweater, pants, at least two other shirts, and his mother only knows what other secret layers. This kid was dressed so warmly you could have lit charcoal with him.

Claudia held the ball of molten lava. I tried valiantly to keep the little girl on my lap from annoying the hell out of the baby, who may or may not have been her little brother.

The sermon continued. Claudia had negotiated that we would stay two hours. When we hit that limit, she and I decided we would walk back to the house, for some exercise and fresh air. We weren’t excited about another Mutatu. But we had to get the key to the house gate from Mama B. She would not hear of us walking at all, let alone by ourselves.

So the plan became nearly the entire family, plus two mzungus would leave. We gave Mama B money for the collection basket, which was behind the pastor. So this disrupted things. The standard practice was to ask permission of the pastor to leave. Denied. She said she was just wrapping up and we could wait. Half an hour later, she hit the wall and amens were said. She walked out the door.

We quickly made an escape. Mama B’s family came with us to chat in the courtyard. However, the pastor was laying in wait to chat with us. After another 20 minutes, we escaped, and had some photo ops.

For some of the photos, Moses, Mama B’s youngest, snatched Claudia’s camera. What he lacked in photography skills, he made up for with zeal. I believe the final count was several hundred identical pictures in about a three-minute span.

Below is the pastor waiting for us. Ruth is in the background.

Below that, Claudia, the pastor, Teacher Stella, and Mama B.

Below, back. Avid, Selena, me, Juliet, Claudia, Ruth. Front: Moses, three grandsons, Mama.

We then started walking. Being led in the wrong direction from where we were staying. We went to a large Maasai market in downtown Ngong. Being Sunday, much of it was closed and it wasn’t anywhere near as crowded as on weekdays. The two lower floors are food items. As you move up, they have clothes (mostly used), household items, etc. We stayed on the food floors.

Below is the display of a man selling beans and rice. Many different choices.

Below is a fruit stand. Note all the different bananas. There are many different kinds here. And since they can be tree-ripened before going to market, they taste wonderful. This is true of all the local fruits, some of which are actually recognizable.

I also liked the little girl in pink in the photo. Most locals were dressed for a Cleveland winter. I was usually in shorts and a t-shirt (an outfit some may recognize as typical Clevelander winter wear). But for us, it wasn’t cold there. It was in the 70s in the day and probably low 60s at night. Break out the parkas!

After shopping, Claudia and I still wanted to walk back to the house. We had to stick up for our rights as card-carrying adults (or at least rumored adults) to do this. We insisted and started the probably 2 and a quarter mile walk to the house. We quickly spotted a couple of the kids following us. We really preferred a solitary walk to get away from everyone, so we chased them back to Mama B.

We kept walking. Another of the Mama B’s kids, a high school young man, Avid, with what looked like 50 lbs of vegetables, then joined us. He told us everyone was walking. We gave up on solitude and walked nearly all the way back.

When we got almost to the top of the steep rocky hill where we started, a phone rang. Virginia, the social worker and a good friend. She had been following up on research Claudia had done finding a rental house for us to use on the next trip.

Virginia had arranged for us to see the house, but we had to do it then. Claudia and I bid our fairly disgruntled hiking mates adieu, turn around and walk back down and up the steep, rocky hill to the main road. Virginia picks us up. The skies open and it pours immediately.

We eventually find the well-hidden house. It is beautiful. 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths, kitchen, dining, large living room, beautiful garden, for $90 a night.

On the way back to town, Virginia’s car starts making an awful noise. She immediately calls a mechanic. He can see her right then. He has a spot in a parking lot right next to the Maasai market where he works on cars. Without the annoyance of actually paying for premises to have a business, or traveling to his customers.

This could take a while.

Claudia and I get out and start the exact same walk all over again. This time without our entourage.

Thanks for coming along on this trip. I think it is important for us to realize the huge discrepancies in the lives people around this world experience. Even with all the very significant problems we face in the US and internationally, we are much better off than many in the world. Speaking for Ginger, Claudia, and me, we find it important to give back, in whatever ways we each can. I’m pretty sure you all feel the same way, or you wouldn’t have read this far.

Thank you.

If you are interested in child sponsoring opportunities with Tuko Pamoja, you can reach out to us through TukoPamoja.org.