dance of dawn

Two fish with long sharp snouts swordfight. Moments earlier they had been swimming side by side when—without warning— they about turn and face off. Mouths open and scissor close twice: on guard, touché. Other fish wrestle and frolic, fins almost touching, dancing like butterflies. A giant sea slug moves forward slowly, extending a handful of dark tubes from his mouth to feel his way along. Enormous porcupine fish with spots blend into coral. They are larger than the rocks but nervous, and stare up at me from directly below. A school of zebras zig zags. Shifts in sunlight fractulate their scales into rainbows. As I watch their seamless synchronicity, I am challenged to communicate without words.

The coral glows yellow and green; it actually seems to emit ultraviolet light. I hear something high pitched and constant, a crackle, like static electricity. I don’t know what is making this sound. Perhaps it’s the coral breathing.

Dolphins are near. I cannot see them, but I feel it and it makes me happy. Flying fish scatter beside the wooden boat, like skipping stones with hummingbird wings. Everything on the dhow is made by hand: the body, the sails, the hinges for ropes; the mast is several long pieces of wood strapped together—not one. Does that make it strong or weak? It would be incredible to depend so completely on something you made yourself. Something soft but hard. Something real. This is trust. Struggling for survival is the only and most complete way of being fully present.

My last African sun ripens on the clouds and reflects golden peaches onto surface ripples. Sand and leaves are caught in the cast off color. I rub the light into my emptied eyes and walk towards the ocean, to greet the day. A Masai man merges with my walk. He is missing his bottom front bottom teeth and he smiles often. He has scars on his cheeks, like the others, two overlapping circles.

The beach is empty; only a few fishermen in cut off pants and baseball caps untangle their nets. Some tie rocks to woven cages used to catch fish. The cages form a “V” with a tunnel in the center and look like the wicker of chairs, like the old one with the hole in the middle that still sits my garage back home. The men tie plastic bottles to the tops of the cages for buoys, to find them again. I’ve seen parents tie the same large bottles to the arms and legs of small children to use for floaties. We pass a ball made of rags and a large beehive-like fruit.

The boy touches my hair as it blows and tangles. He asks me why Germans and Swiss and people from England and Europe all have hair like this. I tell him we were born different. The higher up you go in Europe, the farther north, the lighter people’s hair and eyes are. He holds his forearm up to against mine and smiles. I like yours better, I say. I point at black—safi sana, very good—and white—apana, no. It is the best I can do. When I speak he inhales sharply and often, as if surprised by even the simplest things. He is my age but acts like a child, and also like a very old man.

He puts his hand on my shoulder, and I let it rest there for a moment before shifting my scarf. He tries to hold mine but I won’t let him and keep getting distracted by shells. He asks me to come with him to his village, to meet his family, “to see life.” I tell him I cannot. I have to go home.

He sings a Masai song for me, softly. Not words but sounds, noises, whispers and gurgles, like the grass, like the river. At the end he pounces, and his necklaces jingle. He spreads his arms and leans back with his eyes closed to feel the sky upon his chest.

A black bird clutches a white flag blustering in the wind, shuffling his feet, and dips his beak deep into the flag pole to drink fresh rain.

the beaten path

The good god smiles upon us; rain sheets across white sand, black lava rock. Warm water soaks thin cotton, sand climbs up calves. I run past rocks coves and strange abandoned Arabian bungalows rising like a mirage between outstretched palm fronds. A woman beats an octopus into the sand with a stick, over and over again. Another slams heavy cloth into coral. An old man with yellowed teeth hisses tst, tst, as he guts porcupine fish, slitting a steel blade from jaw to tail. He removes the meat with a twist and scrapes it aside into a pile. The spiny skin is spread flat on the rocks like a map of the world, eyes still bulging bright in sockets.

I come around a rock outcrop and the women washing shout Munzungu! and run towards me. They come close then stop and smile and so do I. Only one speaks English. She asks where I’m from, what I’m doing. Walking, I answer. She seems confused.

“Are you washing your body?” She gestures towards the aquamarine ocean. No need--the sky does it for me, I laugh.

The women are jabbering excitedly in Swahili, and Fatima, the largest boldest one in bright yellow, bellows and I know they laugh at me and I wonder what about. They stare at my bare feet and cringe when I walk. It’s okay, sawa sawa. It makes me strong. I flex. Their flat black feet with light underbellies float upon recycled rubber. Shreds of fabric wrap around ankles and arches.

One approaches me with a translucent white and blue squid hanging from hooked fingers. Its tentacles hang down, swaying slightly like dreadlocks. “Photo!” she demands. I have no camera. But I hold out my fingers and replace hers, hooked in the creatures brain. Guts and tubes ooze out, engine parts. It’s heavy and limp. I hold it until I feel awkward and then I rub my finger down its face and pretend to lick it, safi sana!

We all start walking back the way I had come. Moments later an older woman shouts at these young ones who are about my age. I ask if they are in trouble, but they don’t understand.

You give me money, one tells me. I have no shoes, no camera, you think I have money? I explain. But Muzungus mean gold, as the man in the market had warned me, even here when there is no path and all pockets are empty.

The full moon is cause for celebration: fire dancing and eating and breathing, and acrobats dressed in beaded fringe. I join a train of locals, moving with jerky spasmodic motions, like the swell and crash of waves. A boy with a crown of woven palm asks me to dance, and we spin faster and he puts the crown on my head and it slips again and again. I dance in the moonlight in at the water’s edge, my feet feeling the path of trenches left by rain finding its way home. A ghost crab scampers around me, and I let him lead, and I follow. He stops and we stare at each other and I curtsy away, and he burrows down to bed.

The fire burns long and late, even when there is only wet wood left that crackles and smokes. I sit on a long bench to watch it, next to a man I’d met on the shuttle, a Muslim man whose family has lived here always, and I wonder if that means they were slaves and can’t trace their origins beyond this island anymore or if they were born here, free. We speak of God. He tells me, “Everyone is same blood. Same people. Same everything. One God.” Only many ways of seeing, I say. He reminds me of the first man I’d met in this country, a taxi driver you insisted, “We respect each other here, because we don’t know who is right.” I stay on the beach in a hammock into early morning, watching the sky so carefully, trying to detect the movements of the stars and decipher time from bird calls.

A river of red ants winds through the rain forest, forming complex patterns, hypnotic paths and tunnels. I wonder where they’re going with such ambition, and where are we.

My ranger carries a loaded gun. The food chain here is strange and unnatural. Rangers protect the animals from the poachers and the tourists from the animals. I tell him that if it comes down to killing an animal or the animal killing me that he should not shoot. He thinks I’m joking, and I can’t convince him otherwise. I wonder if anyone has ever told him that. If he would listen when the time comes.

The solo safari is lonely at times, but only because the animals make me feel like a third wheel. I watch the dik dik, a small antelope, twitch anxiously. They travel only in pairs, and he fears for his mate. Baboons part each others’ hair and search for insects. I ask a stranger to check mine. Two giraffes eat lunch in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. Bird calls sound into the night— some never answered— echoing silent vibrations in distant hollow caves.

The bus carries me east along vast plantations, rows of yucca and maize that climb the green mountain slopes. The villages we pass in the heavy rain seem quiet; boys in torn western clothing perch on tables in empty, dripping, wooden stalls. Little ones lug milk crates of empty glass bottles on their backs. Women carry bundles of wood or sacks of meal on the crowns of their heads with steady gaits and deliberate gazes. I can see them at work far off in the fields, but their bright cloth makes them seem like jungle birds twittering in the bush. In the backdrop, layers of mist slide in and out of valleys and ridges; one man tells me, “the mountains are undressing.”

The skyline of Dar sprawls across the horizon and suddenly it’s upon us—blocks of glass and concrete and decrepit tug boats with peeling paint or dhows with translucent, skin-like sail and more, higher, piles of garbage everywhere. I sprint up the dock and onto the boat just as it sounds its horn and pulls back. The passengers are all black, and the cargo is all red: meat rotting in the sun and rice bags of belongings.

Zanzibar is and will forever be a trading town. Everyone is shouting, buying, selling, loading, carrying. Fish and trinkets and pyramids of produce splayed across the sidewalks. High stone buildings with intricately carved teak and brass doors-- the only visible signs of owner’s wealth-- form corridors, a maze of alleys to bewilder passerbys. Three young minstrels are making music with wooden blocks and plastic scraps, but they lose their muse and smile at me shyly. At night the park is overcome by a market, where stalls display fresh catches: crab claws, octopus tentacles, skewers of chicken and steak and king fish and red snapper. Liver and mussels. French fries and cabbage. Suddenly everyone is your friend and chants, Jambo! Karibu to my best restaurant. Special local price for you. Poa, cool, murmured as a mantra.

The trades of Zanzibar were once dark and solemn: processions of people in chains brought to Arabs by dealers who overpowered village leaders or seduced them with mirrors and food. My young guide sits upon the ancient basement stones and in a low voice tells me, It was very dark here. The condition was no water no food no light. Seventy-five women and many children with only this thin window forget air. About half of them die before auction. When they go to the market straight wear this chain. One neck here, one neck here. He puts it on, and I wonder how that makes him feel, if he still thinks about it every time. Like this they go. There were many children trapped here as well, taken away with their parents. They would be a gift for you. One person would be worth about 10 rupees; with inflation, the equivalent of 50 cents.

After abolition, the people don’t know where to go or where they’re from. A good man built a church and taught them how. It was erected on the site where the platform for auction once stood. In the center of the platform was a jojoba tree. It was a whipping post. If you cry you are not strong, and your price goes down. If you do not cry you are strong your price goes up. If you are lazy and not strong they will not buy you. If they do not buy you, you will be worthless, and they will slaughter you. So all the slaves, they try to be strong. The large porcelain tub once used by the Arabs to catch the blood of useless slaves is now for baptisms. This has become a place of cleansing, of healing where once there was only great pain.

USUSAFURUE NYOTA YA MWENZIO. DON’T SET SAIL USING SOMEONE ELSE’S STAR. These are the words on one woman’s kangha.

I find a mollusk in the street in the middle of Stonetown. His shell is cracked at the opening, but I can tell his is still alive, because of the bubbles that mean he is trying to move or to speak or to breathe. He is far away from his home, and I wonder how he got here. We should name him, my friend suggests. Starfish. I cradle him in my palm and carry him through the crowds, but no one seems to notice. We come back to the shore, and the ocean is up to the boardwalk because the tide is so high. Boys are doing flips off the side in torn t-shirts plastered to thin bodies, one after another like the flight shows grandpa used to love. I walk a little distance away from them and throw Starfish far as I can, saying, “Not today, my Rafiki.”

twende safari!

Monkeys are racist, apparently. They have no fear of white people. If you walk alone, they will attack and try to steal your things. Only black men can chase them away.

Baby elephants are awkward. One is about three months old and stubbles along beside his mother. He lifts his trunk to nurse and seems to rest his chin against her leg. Their ears flap back and forth to flick away the tsetse flies, and I can see thick veins cover the undersides. When they are sick or sad or in pain their ears bend over, like the dolphins’ fins do in captivity. They have long lashes and make intense eye contact and it’s intimidating. They seem judge us all.

Giraffes are polite, I’m told, like me. I have always traveled to learn different perspectives, new ways of seeing the world. I want to try to expand my understanding and education to include the animals also. Perhaps I behave like the giraffes, not they like me. The street children have much in common with the baboons I spot wrestling and spying on us from treetops.

Bright yellow butterflies—Jackos—leap from ruts in the road like fallen leaves in gentle wind. Vast plains spread out in all directions, covered with high grass and exotic trees. Legend says the baobab once angered god. It was thrown to the earth and planted upside down, made to stand on its head for hundreds, even thousands of years, while elephants slowly scratch away into its soft bark. The sun fades over endless sky, smearing pastel streaks into the horizon. A waxing moon glows silver white between nearby branches, soon so bright that it drowns out the stars. Insect and bird calls join the whispers and thrushes of trembling reeds. When it rains it smells of the earth’s sacred birth in deep caves and tall grass and old furniture.

Morning brings its freshness and soft light. Two Masai men guide us into the hillside. One speaks no English. He is wrapped in the traditional bright red blankets--four—which means he is a rich man and well respected. I have heard the color is the same as the sun at its strongest points just after it rises and before it sets, when it has the most energy, which the Masai draw upon. The man, Papa, has very dark skin and a bright beautiful smile. He is tall and shy and handsome. His feet are covered with sandals made of recycled tires, curved at the bottom like boats, that makes him glide rather than walk. He carries a sharp steel spear, which traded for goats. He has used for hunting lions and for snakes. Both the black mamba and the green mamba live in these grasslands.

His companion Emna is a modern Masai, “more than Masai,” he says. As we walk, he tells me stories of his people, his village.

The dress is different for every age. For the young boys who are not circumcised, they are called Lions. They wear white. The fabric is thin because the blood is warm. The older ones who are circumcised and have become men are called Moranis. They wear red. The fabric is thick because of the cold. The number of the blankets depends on the cattle. A man with few cattle wears only two. A man with many cattle may wear four, even in heat.

For us it doesn’t matter to choose the beautiful, you can choose any girl. Sometimes the parents can chose for you. If the girl is beautiful the men will pay many cattle. If a man has many cattle he can take many wives—perhaps three. For example, the grandfather of my papi had eight.

Emna does not know who to marry or how he will marry. He later tells me if I come back with a Muzungu woman he will bring me a Masai man.

The Masai does not like to go to school. They believe they are only for cattle and the cattle are only for them. When a girl is married she is taken from school to start the family.

Papa is engaged. The girl gave him a bracelet so that everyone knows, but he has left it home, in the village. They are waiting to wed until she finishes primary school. I ask Emna if he goes to school. He says he visits when he can, that he likes learning. I ask what he wants to do with his life, what he wants to be.

I want to be maybe a leader; to go to school and study a lot and then to change people. To live all right all the ladies and gentlemen, not the gentlemen first, like now. The ladies build the house, work hard.

They build the boma from grass and sticks, mud and animal dung. When a man dies he is left in the boma and the women will move away and build a new house. Each family lives separately. If a friend comes to visit, he will stay in one home and be given one or two of the wives.

We pass a marulla tree, which is loved by the birds. Nests cover its branches, little patches of sticks that don’t seem to have an opening at all. Its trunk is straight and used by the Masai people to make traditional chairs. The terminallia has purple seed pods and bitter fruit. Acacias, flat like umbrellas, seem the best for hiding from the sun. Sodum apples have bright yellow fruits shaped like tomatoes and hairy leaves. The fruits are cut in half and rubbed on gums to relieve tooth pain. The roots are ground up to relieve nausea. The leaves are used by Masai for toilet paper.

Masai people are peaceful warriors. They do not fight other tribes. They do not eat the wild animals, only cows, sheep, and goats. When the lions threaten or attack the cattle the men will hunt them. The man from the boma that throws the first spear, without pausing, is the warrior. He cuts off the tail so that the entire village knows his spear first hit the lion. Other bomas will give him cows, because he has protected the herds. Cows are sacred. They are everyone’s favorite African animal.

When women are pregnant they eat no fat. No milk. No meat. Only porridge. This way, the baby growing inside them will stay small, and when they deliver it will be easier. They all have home births. Older women come to help them. The men go away for a while. Masai people are slender and tall.

The young boys—lions— watch the goats all day. They do not eat from dawn until dusk. In the mornings they will have porridge before they leave the house. If their mami likes them, she will put food, a little porridge, in a jar for them to take to the field. The papi does not like this if he finds out. They want the boys to fast and be strong. If the children are very hungry they will suckle the goats.

Masai medicine is dark liquid made from the roots of some plants and the bark of others. Medicine from the hospital is poison. Everything is mixed together to cure anything. There is no need for diagnosis. The medicine is at once familiar and foreign; it tastes of liquorish and honey, stone stoves and warm water.

The witch doctor speaks to God. We believe he can see far. He can also see inside your body. What makes you sick.

We believe there are two gods. One with good face and one with bad face. The good one makes rain. Grass grows and feeds the cattle. The bad one brings calamity, disease. The gods are in the ground and also in the sky. The people dance and pray for the good god to send rain. They give sacrifice a sheep, high up on the mountain. Always with skin of one color only. May be black or white or red but only one color.

Papa thrusts his spear into the earth. He points at tracks. Impala, Emna tells us. Nearby, there are hyena droppings, white with the calcium of bones. Warthogs swish their tails back and forth as they trot through the tall grass. The people—not the Masai, the modern Africans—say they are like American flags. Their butts swag back and forth with purpose. Like the local women, whose rumps hold children up while they tie them on with printed khangas. Columbus monkeys, which look like flying skunks, make the strangest noises I’ve ever heard. Rubbery laughs echo through the forests. I think “Mr. Cook” just bellowed back to them, but I can’t tell man from animal or mud from blood anymore.

finding faith

When Lydia, the headmaster of a nursery school, first came to Kiandutu, “the children were naked, very naked, but I did not lose the hope.” She knew she must “just teach them, give them the knowledge.” She knew that “God is going to do something.”

Both she and her pastor agreed that God had not forgotten them; He had not abandoned Kiandutu. One the contrary, she believed they had only accomplished what they had because of Him, that “this far is God, otherwise we would have given up. God is near with us. He protects and I can see it.” When I asked if they would like to say anything to people in the US who might be able to help, I expected a heartfelt plea. But she assumes people understand what life is like here, and she does not believe she has suffered more than most. Instead, she responded with a promise: “We appreciate their partnership and we will be very faithful, and very transparent.” In a country with so much she wanted donors to understand their accountability and integrity. Still, she asked nothing of them, but believed God would deliver everything they needed. “If God can do anything to help our school, we would be very grateful.” As we walked away the children were sweeping a clear space in the red dirt with their hands—perhaps to draw, perhaps to sit, perhaps to play.

In our last meeting with the village elders, the chief voiced his appreciation for our methods. He thought that our ideas of having the women record the hours they worked each week and signing contracts for childcare would motivate them. They were happy with all we had done in the few days we were here, and all we hoped to do. Charity told us, “they will pray for you, that you succeed. Pray for a long life.”

They are happy that I am involved, “a young person who has many years, and she learn.” I feel a great responsibility upon my shoulders as the circle of elders look at me. Some smile. Others are pensive. But I am ready, revived. My commitment has been strengthened by all that I’ve seen.

“We will do our best,” Debbie tells them, and I have faith. We are doing this the right way. Charity translates, “when we are involving them we are partnering. They will help where they can.” We have found the path, we must only travel it, together.

Before we leave Amina pulls me aside and says, “You are Wamboi. It is a good Kokuyu name.” I am part of something now, and with the support of the elders, we cannot fail.

A wise man tells me, “In Africa, when you want to get a point across, you wrap it up in a story.” I am Waimboi. This is the beginning of my story.

home alone

You can see the soul of the world in the eyes of these children. When they look out through slits in the walls of empty homes their faces fade back into the shadows, but pools of sunshine gleam from their obsidian pupils. They are sick and scared, but still they wonder about the world. A little boy brushes my hair back from my face and giggles at its softness. A girl holds my hand as we walk along the muddy streets. I don’t know whether she steadies me or I her.

Single mothers support all the families we meet and struggle to keep their children alive. They cannot possibly care for them and look for work. As Debbie tells a focus group, “Women are expected to do so much, but there is only so much that any one woman can do.” Many times, they lock the little ones in dark rooms with no windows. One explains the precautions she takes, “You put out the fire. You hide the matchbooks.” The houses are padlocked from the outside. There are no locks on the inside.

Most of the mothers cannot afford the 35 to 45 cents a day for child care. These women are all alone. There is no one to help them. They don’t discuss their problems; they don’t support each other. “They just do what they’re going to do”-- what they have to do to survive, and hopefully it is enough.

There are several nursery schools , pre-primary programs and day care centers in women’s homes that are run by compassionate and educated people. Handmade signs cover cracks and rusty nails on the walls. These are the only educational tools: one lists numbers using rows of bottle caps, many show pictures stitched in red string, and another, hanging crooked, has letters carefully traced on cardboard scraps. There are no books, no toys, no art supplies—few colors at all in the dark, cobweb covered classrooms.

We find children playing with modeling clay at one school. Each has a piece no larger than a nickel and is forming it into shapes. I thought they were making letters, “E” perhaps. But no, one tells me, “a dog.” There simply isn’t enough clay for the head and tail.

There are no swings and no slides, only dirt, brush and a goat eating garbage nearby. The headmaster explains, “during break they go to the field. It is not very accident free. The children are confined only here.”

Many students go to school not to learn but to eat. The government sponsors a feeding program for primary schools, and the children will at least get a bit of porridge each day. Many get nothing else. But the ECD programs get nothing. Schools rely on parents to pay the 200ksh fees. The tuition-just under $3 per month is used to feed the children and pay the teachers. Many parents cannot afford this. After months without paying and many false promises, the school is forced to send their children home. No one escorts them. The schools have no records of where they live, and it is not safe for teachers to venture into the slum. The children are just sent away. If they return—when they return—having found no one at home to let them in, their older siblings are pulled from classes to join them in the streets.