All posts by rbowen

Mukiwa

I’m listening (books on tape) to Mikiwa, by Peter Godwin. It’s an account of growing up in Rhodesia, during the transition from being a british colony, to being an independent, but still british, nation, to being an independent nation ruled by the africans.

This book is making me miss Africa like nothing has done for a long time. This seems strange to me, because not only is Rhodesia/Zimbabwe a radically different place from Kenya, but he’s writing about a period that was at least 15 years before my memories of Kenya – a time when Africa was very different. But, in many ways, his experience was very similar.

I remember the day that President Jomo Kenyatta died. August 22, 1978. So I would have been almost 7. We were having a cookout in the back yard of our house in Kericho. I guess folks knew that he was sick, but I don’t know if he was expected to die right away. He was at his home in Mombasa, and died in his sleep. The VoK (Voice of Kenya) broke into whatever stellar program was going on, and announced that Mzee was dead, and that Daniel arap Moi had assumed the presidency as was his constitutional duty.

The choice of Daniel Moi was always considered – at that time – to be a brilliant political move. Kenyatta was a Kikuyu, the largest tribe in Kenya, and so was wide open to claims of tribal favortism if he had put Kikuyus in key positions. Moi, on the other hand, was Kalenjin – one of the smaller tribes. And he was from the smallest tribe within the Kalenjin. Clearly, this act said, Kenyatta was no respecter of tribe, and was being unbiased in his selections.

I also remember, in those early years of Moi’s rule, how the christian community in Kenya supported him. This was largely because the Africa Gospel Church was based in Moi’s home district, and so got a lot of preferential treatment in land deals, regulations, taxes, etc. Moi was always spoken of as being a good christian man, God-fearing, reliable,trustworthy. However, it seems that after the coup attempt, he realized that he was not universally loved, and decided that he might need to switch to more of an iron-fisted ruling technique in order to keep things in line.

I remember also that when Amnesty International issued statements against the way that Kenya treated political prisoners, and prisoners in general, I was outraged. How dare they make claims like that against my country? Kenya was the model of an African nation, and did everything right, and these claims were absurd. It was not until years later that I realized that not only were their claims true, but they were wildly understated. This was a real blow to my credulity.

Anyways, back to Mukiwa – the thing that rings the truest in this book, so far, is his discription of boarding school. It’s hard to put these sort of things into words, for me. I remember boarding school as a series of brilliant images, but much of it is foggy. He spoke, however, of the Italian POWs, that did so much of the wonderful construction in british colonies in the WWII years. The Italian POWs that were building his school were, at the same time, building, and, more importantly, painting, my school. They drew and painted pictures on the walls of the dormitories. Halfway through one mural in the Little Girls’ dorm, the war ended, and they went home. It has remained in this state of incompletion ever since as a tribute to them.

When Peter leaves the house that he has lived in his whole life, to move to a safer part of the country during the war, he goes on one last trip into the hills. I was reminded so vividly of my last hike up in the Ngnong hills. I remember hiking up to the summit, and that the wind across the crest of the hill was so strong that I leaned out over the edge of the sheer drop and the wind supported me. Suddenly, the wind dropped, and I had to throw myself back to avoid falling. On one side of the hills is the new world – Nairobi and numerous farms – and on the other is the old world – the plains, the Maasai bomas, and savannah to the mountains on the horizon. The hills create a rain shadow that has contributed to this division.

I know that Kenya is very different now, and I don’t know when I will ever get back, but I have these memories, and they are a huge part of who I am,and how I see the world. Books like Mukiwa show mejust how important these memories and attitudes are to me, and how integral they are to my entire self. It is hard, at times, having nobody that really understands these things to talk to, and I’m really looking forward to my brother and sister being here this summer. I’m on a mailing list of alumni from my school in Kenya, but most of them are the next generation, and Kenya was already so different by then that I might as well be on the wrong mailing list.

This book is *highly* recommended for anyone that wants to get a glimpse of the “third culture kid” experience, and how it shapes one’s world view. It is heavily shaded by the british colonial superiority complex, in which the africans are viewed as an inferior people, and, to be honest, this was a large part of my experience too. Like Peter, I both did not understand the attitutde towards these people who were clearly very intelligent, but also accepted the attitude as one of some truth. It is a weird sort of inherited racism that many people are suffused with, and don’t even realize it.

I’m sure I’ll write about this some more, but this is getting rather long, and I need to finish the laundry …

More railroad thoughts

Long ago, I read a book in which the main character’s father worked on the railroad, and had developed a pace where every step was the exact distance between two ties. This mental image always irritates me because that distance is *not* constant, and as soon as you pick up a rythm, you hit a tie that is off by just enough to make you have to reset your pace. And yet, EVERY time I walk on a railroad, that image comes to mind. Even though I have long since forgotten what book it was, which is a large part of the annoyance, come to think of it.

Benchmarks, trains, other stuff

An important skill, when looking for benchmarks, as opposed to geocaches, is knowing when it is silly, or dangerous, or even lethal, to continue looking. I just came back from looking for this one, and I did not find it. I know exactly where it is, but I’m not dressed for it. For dying, that is. Perhaps I’ll go back some day and look again. It’s at the top of a cutting that the tracks run through, and so I had to go quite a ways down the track to find a way to get up onto the side. But then I could not find it without risking my life on the edge of the cutting, which was crumbling with every step I took.

Yes, I know, I should not be on the tracks. It’s probably trespassing, or something, and a good way to get squished. But I’ve been walking tracks as long as I can remember, and have not been squished yet. Although my grandfather really liked to tell about his friend who went walking on the tracks, and all they found was his nose. There’s something slightly apocryphal about that story.

I’m also perpetually amazed at how far out of their way people will go to throw away their trash. There I am, up on this cutting, sure I’m going to die any minute, and there’s beer bottles, a dinner plate, a hub cap, and a car battery. I mean, come on, surely it would be easier to throw those away at home? I seriously don’t know how someone could have gotten out there with all that trash. On one side is the train track, and on the other is a cow pasture. The area between is heavy brush, barbed wire fence, and a 20-foot shale cliff. Yet someone has taken the trouble to lug their coors bottle out here to dispose of it.

Later today, I’ll upload photos of where I didn’t find the benchmark, and of where I didn’t fall to my death from a crumbling cliff.

Cleaning the press pot

I have a french press pot, in which I make chai.

Note, it is a FRENCH press pot, not a freedom press pot, however amusing and open to satire that phrase might be. Get over it.

Note 2: Chai is Kenya tea. Actually, Chai is the swahili word for tea. And when I make chai, it means kenya tea with milk and sugar. The fact that Starbucks has hijacked this word to mean something else is not my problem, and I mostly choose to ignore it, but I just wanted to clarify.

Anyways, after a while using a french press pot, the screen tends to get grungy, and, since it is a fine wire mesh, it is very hard to clean it effectively.

Finally, I’ve figured out what to do. Burn it. Seems obvious in retrospect. Hold the mesh in a flame – preferably a hot blue flame, like that from a bunsen burner, a gas stove, or a lighter – and burn all the grunge off. Once the mesh gets red hot, that’s probably all the damage you can do. And, because of the composition of the mesh, you can usually hold the thing in your fingers while you’re doing this, as the mesh, for some reason, does not seem to conduct the head around much. Kinda cool, that.

The final match

Last night, I used the final match in a box to light a candle. This may seem insignificant to all but a tiny number of my readers.

Several years ago (I expect it was in 1990, but I’m not sure) a few of us went camping in the Smoky mountains, and then, later, in the forests in north Georgia. I’m actually not even certain if this was the same camping trip, or two trips. I think they were the same trip. Anyways, we bought a package of matchboxes. Rosebud brand. When we came back from that trip, we each had a box of these matches which was largely unused. Being the packrat that I am, I kept that box, and didn’t use any of the matches for many years. I found the box several months ago, and started using it. So this was the last match from that 13-year-old box of matches.

I suppose that this should be profoundly significant in some earth-shaking way. But, somehow, it’s just not. Which is a shame, really. I was almost hoping it would be. It’s sad how some things are just … meaningless. I’m open to deep philosophical interpretations.

Anyone?

Rocinante

I think it may have gotten all the way down to 55° last night., and I had the top down on Rocinante on the way to work this morning.

I began referring to my Jeep as Rocinante a while back. It is, I suppose, symbolic on a number of levels. I was, however, very pleased to learn that John Steinbeck also called his truck Rocinante.

It has been many years since I read Don Quixote, and I don’t think I ever made it through the second book. I’ve added it back to my list of books to read, and I believe I should also add Travels with Charlie to that list as well. I think that I can stick to my current reading list for another year, not buy any new books, and not add anything to the list, and still not quite get done. We’ll see.

It took me a while to find this, but here are some posters of the Picasso Don Quixote painting I like so much.

My first cache hide

Yesterday, I hid my first cache. It was too beautiful to stay indoors, so I went out to Wilmore to hide my prepared caches. However, the place where I wanted to put it has shiny new “no trespassing” signs, which was less than welcoming. I need to speak with the guy responsible for that land, and persuade him of the value of permitting this.

Anyways, after that, I decided to go ahead and hide one anyway, which you can see here.

Nobody has found it yet, so I don’t know if I did a good job or not.

The day’s caching

We found one of the three that we looked for. The others were taking too long, and Sarah did not want to wait any more.

And I found 2 of the three benchmarks I looked for. One was partially destroyed, and the one that I did not find, I’m fairly sure that it was destroyed, but I don’t have any direct evidence of it.