2/9/10-2/14/10: A FEW TYPICAL(?) DAYS 'OFF'

Niaje! Sawa sawa? Sawa sawa.

Last time I managed to pull a post together, I told you about a typical school day here at Kimana Base Camp. Many of the days that have passed since that particular day have also passed in that particular way, give or take a few epic volleyball plays (I’m not sure how the volleyball itself is hanging in there, but it has somehow not yet suffered a thorny death. However, we have lost many players, may they rest in peace . . . just kidding, just kidding. only some limbs) and even more epic breakfast crews – Mambo and I were on pancake duty again the other day and surprised everybody by breaking out my secret stash of chocolate chips (thanks Mom!). As a result, we were elected temporary copresidents of KBC and earned ourselves several weeks’ supply of backrub IOUs (KBC’s economy is barter-based; staple goods include backrubs, half-hour chunks of internet time, AirTime calling cards, dishwashing-related favors, and sodas from the duka).

Fairly often, though, we do get days off, or we have special classes or exercises that take place outside the camp, and we get to drive through the gates to various places and have adventures and get terrifically sunburnt. So here are some examples of the things we’ve gotten to do on those days!

1. 2/9/10: WATERFALL HIKE, LOITOKITOK, AND CLUB KIMANA
On our first non-program day, which seems like forever ago by now, we drove in the land cruisers waaaay South to a town called Loitokitok, which is bigger and a little more stratified than Kimana (think Northampton vs. Amherst). I happened to be in a cruiser with a lot of people who were very excited about our first day off, and who tend to ‘express themselves vocally’, so we spent much of the car ride singing. Our driver, Suzzane, cranked down the windows and encouraged us whenever we drove through a populated area, her rationale, which we adopted, being “everybody is staring at you anyway because you are mzungus, so you might as well give them some reason to”. She cranked the windows back up when we started singing Mambo #5, though – apparently it was banned in Kenya, probably for excessive lasciviousness, or maybe excessive trumpet. We picked up some armed guards in Loitokitok, then kept driving until we got to the edge of a valley much nearer to Kilimanjaro than we’d been before. Down in the valley was a maize field, and through the maize field was a small trail, and at the end of the small trail was a river and a waterfall! And in the river there were lots of parasites so we couldn’t go swimming. But we spent the rest of the morning climbing on the boulders and the vines, taking risks, taking pictures of each other taking risks, and having a picnic. My friend Amanda, who’s from Western Massachusetts and goes to school at Williams, comisserated with me about how until you noticed the vines and the strange bugs and how hot it was, it was easy to imagine that we’d somehow stumbled back into New England.

After that, we headed back to Loitokitok for a few hours, mostly so that three of us – Christine, Kayt, and Caity – could follow through with an idea they’d had earlier in the week. It’s very hot here, and the showers are cold, and we’re all hoping to take risks and to learn more about ourselves while we’re here, and due to all of those things, and the practical and spiritual considerations that arise from them, the three of them decided to shave their heads. Although none of the rest of us were brave enough to actually do it, we all had to tag along, and so, like scavenging vultures wheeling above a kill site, we followed our three lion leaders into Man Mix Salon and watched them get de-maned. Notable parts of the procedure: a. if you get your head shaved, and they do it a few inches at a time, you get to see how you’d look with all kinds of different hairstyles. b. there is a (very well-advertised) hairstyle called “The Beyonce”. c. barbers in Kenya use a cow tail to brush the snips off of your shoulders. d. if you’ve had hair for a long time and you get it amputated, you get phantom hair syndrome.

(TO MAKE THINGS PERFECTLY CLEAR: i did not shave my head. not even one tiny bit. I am getting all of this information from my friends who did. I need my hair here, for purposes related to camouflage)

After hanging around Loitokitok for a while longer and playing hackeysack with some salesmen, we piled back into the cars, mostly too tired and shellshocked to sing at this point, and made our way to Club Kimana, Kimana District’s premier social hangout. The proprietor is a former chief of Kimana, and apparently he likes to regale students with stories of Kenyan political intrigue, so I’m looking forward to that for future visits. This time, though, he just greeted us all very warmly, sat us at a few tables (round, outdoors, and with Kilimanjaro watching, as always, to make sure we didn’t get too rowdy) and made himself scarce (until it looked like we needed something, at which point he was always right there, somehow). And the drinking age is 18 here, so we students took the opportunity to get to know things about each other that we might not necessarily have otherwise thought to mention.

Eventually we headed back and had our regular end-of-day routine and I figured my ‘weekend’ was pretty much over, which would have been fine, I’d enjoyed it. But of course it was not, because the African wilderness always has something more in store! This time it was a ghost-headlamp and a couple of bushbabies. What happened was this: Mambo and I were hanging out alone in the chumba (because I’m still always the last one awake) when we heard a terrible shriek coming from one of the bandas. We sprang into action, which in this case involved Mambo running halfway down the path towards the sound, realizing he didn’t have a flashlight, yelling at me to bring him a flashlight, and then me catching up with him with the flashlight and us both making it to the banda within a minute and still somehow being several months behind four askaris, who had already assessed the situation and were checking the banda and weren’t even breathing hard (I’ve felt pretty safe here since that night). We figured out that it was nothing (a particularly scary nothing involving doors and wind and coincidences, but still a nothing) but Christine and Lauren were still scared, so Mambo and I agreed to hang out on their banda steps and talk while they tried to go to sleep inside.

We were stargazing and shooting the (nonexistent) breeze and just starting to think that the people we were making feel better were probably starting to no longer need us when we heard ANOTHER shrieking, this one more animalish. So Mambo and I again went running toward the sound, again had to retrace our steps for the flashlight (but this time, when I made it back to the steps, Christine, who was NOT sleeping, jumped on my back because she wanted to tag along but wasn’t wearing shoes), and managed to find the source of the sound – a couple of bushbabies wrestling in the grass a couple bandas down from where we’d been sitting. They didn’t care that we were there at all, and we were able to watch them yelp and jump on each other and scramble around for a good four or five minutes (in the meantime, we scared Sam to death, because she heard the sound and looked out her window to see a horrible silhouetted two-headed hybrid creature, which was of course me piggybacking Christine, but she didn’t know that until after she’d already had a small heart attack). And after that of course we couldn’t go to sleep, so we stayed up talking for most of the night and then when I finally did return to my banda, someone had locked me out, so I went back to Christine and Lauren’s and slept on the empty bed in my clothes. A different kind of roughing it than what I’d expected, but it works for me. And I think that still ranks as among my best nights here so far.

2. 2/13/10 – KIMANA WATER PROJECT AND MAASAI CIRCUMCISION CEREMONY
After our day off, we had several pretty rigorous days of classes, so we were all excited for that Saturday, which had been slotted for community service in the afternoon. And we were even more excited when we learned on Thursday night that we were actually cancelling morning classes and moving community service forward a few hours. Why would your professors do that when we are paying good money for tuition, you ask? Because we got invited to a party! And if that doesn’t seem like a good enough excuse to you, you obviously don’t remember your college years very well at all.

In all seriousness, it was a great honor to be invited to this party – one of our neighbors sons was getting circumcised, which is a very important event in a Maasai’s life, because it marks his entrance into the warrior age class. It’s kind of the equivalent of a bar or bat mitzvah, or a cotillian. The boy, who’s usually in his early teens, gets circumcised in the morning after taking a cold shower to cleanse him of past misdeeds. He then has his hair washed with milk and shaves it off. When he’s actually circumcised, he isn’t allowed to cry. If he manages to make it through without showing fear, he’s passed the test. In that case, his family throws a big party, and news spreads about it through word of mouth, so everyone within gossip’s reach tends to show up. The last time an SFS group got to attend any kind of real Maasai celebration was 2003, so this was an amazing opportunity.

When we got to the boma, we shook the mamas’ hands and they danced for us/with us again. Then, just like at any American barbecue, it was time to chill out until the rest of the guests arrived. The Maasai patio was a large clearing with a tree in the middle of it, right outside the boma. We were led over there and given chai tea, and Daniel explained some of what was going on around us. In the meantime, most of the people were staring at us, which tends to happen here . . . Kimana’s not a big tourist hotspot, so any foreigners are a source of great interest. It’s not so bad, though, because it gives us an excuse to stare back, and the staring usually leads to some kind of conversation, and then everyone learns something.

Eventually we were brought into another clearing and given some roasted goat meat! Again, just like a barbecue (seriously, one thing that’s been so interesting about being here is how similar everything is all over the world if you let yourself think about it that way. A Maasai party itinerary would look a lot like an American one if you abstracted things enough). I’ve been breaking my vegetarianism here whenever not doing so would mean missing out on an experience such as, say, eating roasted goat meat at a Maasai circumcision ceremony. The taste took a little getting used to, and I had to chew my small piece for about 10 minutes, but it actually got better as the time went on (Molly was saying that she didn’t used to like it but now she does, to the extent that she really looks forward to when the askaris have goat roasts. . . . I’ll keep you posted).

After that, dancing! This part is very difficult to explain without pictures, but . . . well, I took pictures, so that’s good. Until I can get them to a viewable place, I’ll just do my best. Traditionally, a Maasai warrior’s job was to go on cattle raids in neighboring villages. Now, of course, that’s illegal, so most of the warriors spend all their time looking for parties like the one we were at. If they hear there’s a party, they’ll walk all day to get there, and stay there all night dancing and drinking and chasing local girls. They also grow their hair out long and are very attached to it, and when the warriors get too old to be warriors anymore and have to settle down and get married and start having kids and making a living (traditionally through pastoralism, these days more through agriculture or a combination of the two), they become senior warriors through a ritual that involves shaving their heads (apparently they usually cry . . . leave it to the Maasai to acknowledge the midlife crisis/get people over it all in one ceremonial blow). Daniel told us to look out for people who seemed sad and newly shorn, and there were definitely some men who were noticeably both of those things.

Anyway, what I was leading to with that explanation was this: Maasai warriors are basically rock stars, or wannabe rock stars. And when they started dancing and singing, it was very easy to pretend that we were at a Maasai rock concert. It was like a big mosh pit with walking sticks poking out among the heads, and they were trading off chanting and singing (Daniel translated a little and the songs were about how they belong to the most awesome age set, how they’ve killed many lions, and how they’re great singers and dancers . . . again, standard rock and roll) just like I read about for my improvised music paper this fall, so it was very cool to hear that in real life. Eventually, the song turned into a jumping showdown, and it was unbelievable. One of our askaris was by far the best and I felt a lot of hometown pride. Then everyone regrouped into a circle, including the women and the older men and little kids (who had been practicing their jumping on the outside of the circle), and us, and started into a chant with a tricky rhythm that we eventually managed to figure out. I got dragged into things by a mama who was a little tipsy and decided that she wanted to steal my walking stick . . . rather than give it up I held on and ended up in the mosh pit, and I was happy to be there – standing among the people, it was easier to hear what everyone was singing, and each person had a slightly different part but they all melded together so well and it was easily up there with any real rock concert I’ve been to. I would have stayed there all day if the mlevi mama hadn’t made another more concerted effort at my stick and I had to escape.

After the dancing, we thanked the family of the boy who the party was for (the boy himself was still inside, recovering – the mamas kept dancing around the house he was in so that he would know everyone was happy for him) and gave them a small gift. I was feeling pretty sick at this point (foreshadowing!) so I kept to the edges of the group and managed to attract the attentions of a boy who was probably about fourteen. He spoke very good English and told me that his grandfather wanted to meet me. His grandfather did not speak as good English, but he offered me more chai and we traded greetings. The boy could tell I was only pretending to drink the chai (it was scalding) and he called me out on it as I came back over, so I defended myself as best I could and we both laughed. Then my friend/fellow student Ryan came over. He assumed that if he talked in English I’d be the only one who could understand him (usually a fair assumption, but not always, especially with school-age kids) and the following conversation happened:

Ryan: “Man, I wish I had brought some bubbles with me. I’ve heard the kids really like bubbles.”
Boy whose name I never learned: “I don’t like bubbles.”
Ryan: “But I’m glad they like having their pictures taken so much, at least we can do that with them.”
Boy: “I don’t like pictures.”
Me: “What do you like?”
Boy: “I like you.”
at this point he blushed furiously and winked at me.

Sadly, I was rushed away with the group and never even got his name, let alone his number. And so ended my Maasai party, the same way most movie-perfect American parties end – with a missed connection.

Oh right! I forgot about the whole community service part of the day! Ok so in the morning, we worked for the Kimana Water Project, which is a community-run organization that is trying to bring water to the drier parts of Kimana so that people don’t have to walk miles every day for it (here’s where my instinct is to say “you can visit their website to learn more” but I’m thinking that would be a bit of a goose chase). My group dug a trench and mixed and poured cement in order to help build one of the main culverts . . . we worked for about three hours and by the end we’d only extended the culvert about ten meters. It’s amazing how much harder everything is when you only have a couple of shovels and wheelbarrows and your cement is made out of water and pulverized gravel. But every day the pipeline reaches a few more people, and there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of people who want to help with it. A lot of people had their livestock grazing nearby while they were working on the culvert, and some of the women just stopped by for half an hour or so while they happened to be getting water anyway. Nothing at all like construction sites back home.

So after that long day I actually got heat exhaustion! Apparently well chai-drated does not equal well hydrated (haaaa ha ha ha ha). But I am fine now, and glad to have gotten my obligatory “sick in a remote area of a foreign country” story out of the way (I hope).

3. 2/14/10 GIRAFFES! GIRAFFES!
The day after that was another non-program day, so I spent most of it recovering and finally getting some homework done. But in the middle of it I decided to buck up and go outside the camp gate with some classmates for a giraffe walk and I am really quite glad that I did. We don’t get to walk outside of the camp much, because there literally are elephants and lions everywhere, so by the time we’d gotten half a mile or so away, I was in completely unfamiliar territory. It’s mostly scrubland with little twisted trees, unusually green for this time of year, and littered with chunks of red volcanic rock and the occasional rocky outcropping (which, when spotted, always necessitates the spotter yelling “PRIDE ROCK!”). Perfect giraffe territory, luckily for us. Giraffes are browsers and eat leaves off those little trees, and they’re more comfortable in wooded areas than grassy ones, because lions and hyenas have fewer places to hide. Sure enough, after we’d ducked under the Kimana ‘electric’ fence (constructed by the government, without local input, several years ago to try to combat human-wildlife conflict in the area, and then given over to the locals to ‘take care of’ without any instructions as to how to do that, or funding to make it happen. So it’s been defunct for a while now . . . elephants knock over the pillars and waltz destructively right on in) and walked for a few more minutes, giraffes were suddenly everywhere, along with zebras and Thomson’s gazelles. The gazelles and zebras were a little skittish, but the giraffes seemed more curious than anything, particularly one very large male with a crooked horn. He let us get about 3 buslengths away from him before walking slowly and carefully away.

It’s hard to describe how strange it is to see a giraffe and be standing on the same ground as it. All the physical principals that allow you to move – muscle/bone leverage and ball-and-socket joints and gravity and friction and all those – are also powering this giraffe, but this giraffe is like a Caterpillar crane and you are like a bumper car. He has to squint to see you, and his head blocks out your sun. And you can stomp on the ground as hard as you want to and he won’t feel a thing, but if he starts running, little earthquakes happen all around you. He’s standing there and could kill you, but he doesn’t, and meanwhile, you’re helping kill him just by living the way you do. I’m possibly overthinking this, but that’s my job these days.
We reluctantly left the giraffes to their lunch and headed back to camp, where we did more homework until it was time for dinner. And then we had a campfire, and Alex (a fellow student who’s worked at Yosemite National Park for the past couple summers) and Daniel traded scary animal stories while we all listened. They both promised that they saved their best ones for Tsavo, when we’ll be camping out for a week in the middle of lion country in tents that Daniel described as being about the thickness of candy wrappers. Which just seems a little too convenient . . .

Thanks again for reading! I’ve managed to build up a surplus of cool things that have happened over the past week or so (that tends to happen here) so if you want to come back you’ll be hearing about Amboseli National Park, and about my yesterday, which I spent shadowing a family in a Maasai boma.

Salama!
Cara