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,…
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…
I not sure how to tell you this story. If I introspect, I’m uncertain of either side of an extreme—worried that the medium of writing won’t throw the curtain separating a happening and it’s recounting far enough for you to peer behind, and also fearful it will swing too far, leaving me exposed. I’ll do…
Why To Lend A Hand It wasn’t our original impetus for coming to Kenya, but after we read Calvin’s email, it became our raison d’être for being here. Calvin, had come across three AIDS orphans (Wilfred [17], Samuel [15] and Simon [13]) a half-kilometer from where he and his brothers had been orphaned by the…
On Monday, with Tyler finally here, we left the cray-cray-craziness of busy Nairobi to the countryside to discover the youthful stomping grounds of our brotha-brothers, Calvin and Joash. As if reminding us why we were leaving, Nairobi showed us one of her least attractive qualities and kept us fighting traffic for three hours before we…
Our rail car tumbled through lands now hidden by the set sun. To my right, a baby fondled his sleeping mother; two snack venders sat across from each other, pulling at their pant legs to examine their knees; a boy in a tie walked past selling soft drinks, eager to profit from our thirst. The…
Travel To Kenya and Cook Like A Caffinated Maniac Calvin diced tomatoes and peppers with the fervor of carrying out a tyrant’s justice. His cousin, Steve, stripped chicken from bones of the bird his mom had butchered a few hours before. The salt tin in my hands, apparently suicidal, leapt to the floor and became…
Yesterday I went with Steven, an American I met on the plane from Cairo to Nairobi, to Kibera, the second largest slum in Africa. At a given time up to 1.5 million people are living in the slum’s 2.5 square kilometers. Rick, a 26 year old man who has lived there for much of his…
