Benta’s Message Benta is the black woman pictured on the right in this picture. We lost her this week. She was one of the good ones. I did not know her well, but her humble sincerity, the dedication she obviously put into her work, and the love she had for the orphans she cared for…
Last night Kenya had its second presidential debate. Not just of this election, but of its history. I spent most of today in Nairobi, talking to people and making a contact with the national newspaper The Standard. It’s looking like this Friday I’ll be shadowing the journalist who snagged the front page in today’s paper,…
If she was trying to get me to go away, she failed. If her intent was to entice, if she wanted my money, if this was a big elaborate scheme to draw me in with the need to know what secrets awaited the backroom, then she had me right where she wanted me. I was…
Sorry for te typos — writing and posting in a flurry You get it to, that feeling during the limbo hours in between leaving and having left–that nostalgic question part anticipation part reluctance part kangaroo. You muse: should I have ordered the pilsner instead if the Nile beer? Did I even give the pilsner a…
Originally Published in GoMadNomad July 2012 My little brother and I met Leroy in New Orleans on a corner just off Bourbon Street. By that time our busking duo had swelled to include Cass, A Brit touring the USA to “prove that not all Americans were stupid,” three local street musicians, and a bearded man in…
Why did the coffee taste bolder today, the prickly burrs less tetchy and the -ituses of life feel less inflammatory? How come the sun shone with postwar respite? Why did it seem like all the trees cast knowing winks? Today the unmistakable crisp of societal rebirth was in the air. Had a UN body gathered…
Lettuce, Go To War Stop wilting beneath the unjust rage of the tomatoes. Don’t act like you can’t hear the murmuring of the tubers Or feel the gawking of the squash. It’s not the Onions who are crying, Lettuce. And the Carrots are laughing at you. How much longer will you let the Peppers…
Home Home is tomato sauce from mom’s pepperoni rolls that no one registers enough to tell me I’ve something on my face, stuck in my beard the smell of her baking wafts like an opiate cloud that lingers in labored expressions on the pugs who will always know their needs without the muddling of articulation…
My days in rural Kenya have fallen in a a routine, a necessary state of affairs if I’m to do what I’m setting out to here. The passage of time is marked by dinosaurs. Each morning as Anita prepares tea and breakfast, I ask her to pick a color. She picks red, yellow, green or…
Today we danced the mud dance. With the energy of puppies locked in a meat locker, we covered ourselves in mud cakes dug from the ground. Mud flew everywhere, it lodged in our fingernails—red soil of the earth, the mythical kind wreaking of life—and probably containing some stuff we’re glad we didn’t know was in…
