A Primate's Memoir, page 7
Rhoda’s women are certain that it’s a swell idea to spend their money shipping the kids away to the empty schoolhouse with no books or paper or pencils before they are shipped back a few years later to tend the cows. “You old men have to stop drinking the school fees so that the children can go to school and wear school uniforms.” The old men say, in effect, Schooling, a waste of time, stupid stuff, we old men work hard, we should be able to get blind stupid falling-down drunk whenever we want to (an old man here is anyone over twenty-five, an ex-warrior, and thus an elder likely to have recently married a thirteen-year-old. Contrary to the claims of these particular old men, old men do the least work in the village, the order of labor generally being women, children, dogs, donkeys, and only then the men). Amid continued yelling, the old men are adamant—“Ah, school, stupid stuff. What good is school anyway?” they demand.
The women fall back, a bit confused. In truth, Rhoda is the only one to have a clear idea of what a school really is, having gone to one for a bit. They regroup, confer, and start yelling, “Well, you old men have to stop drinking up all the money because there is no money to spend for food for the children.” Aw, gowon, the old men say, we’re Masai, there’s plenty of food, there’s cows, aren’t there? There’s always cow blood for the kids to drink, there’s always milk, whataya dames complaining about anyway, Jeez Louise, etc. They’re chortling and making fun of Rhoda and her band, which is shrinking in number by the minute. Aw, the kids look fine, the old men conclude (actually, protein malnutrition, malaria, tuberculosis, and every parasite ever known runs rampant in these kids). Rhoda, alarmingly, suddenly demands my judgment. I hem and haw, and come up with an attempt at a compromise:
“Look, if the kids are well fed and go to school now, they will learn so much and afterward get such good jobs and bring home so much money that you old men will be able to get drunk all the time on the really good stuff, the stuff they sell to the white people in the tourist lodge.”
This is briefly acclaimed, but is lost in a sudden outburst of old men complaining about Rhoda—who is this Kikuyu woman anyway? She looks kind of short and round to me, not sure if we should trust her, blah blah.
Rhoda, in a fury, as her last supporters melt away, gives an impassioned tirade: “All of us women and Robert here agree that you old men must stop getting drunk and using money that should be for school and food for the children and all you dirty Masai should start washing the children’s eyes so that they stop getting eye disease, my kids don’t get eye disease, and all of you old men should start wearing pants and believe in our lord Jesus Christ.”
Oh ho. The Christianized Kikuyu half of Rhoda has come out with a vengeance, and she goes on about the twin themes of all agricultural Kenyans when they complain about the Masai—too much bare buttocks and not enough Jesus. And I’ve been dragged in as a supposed member of the Cover Your Buns for Christ Party.
The meeting breaks up in a general confused hubbub as the old men filter out, chortling and victorious, off for a drink in the shade of a tree. Serere rouses himself from the dust long enough to announce the killing of a goat in my honor; he is ignored. I quickly make my escape.
5
The Coca-Cola Devil
It was a fitting day for my Jeep’s engine, which had been sputtering ominously for a month, to give up the ghost, as that morning, I’d seen what had to have been one of the finales of old Isiah’s life. He was the oldest male in the troop, by far, ancient, wild-eyed, arthritic, wasted. His personality seemed to consist mostly of his being old. He hobbled around, kvetched and clucked and groaned when he would sit down, repositioning himself repeatedly, swatting at the kids. He was not grandfatherly, charming, or going quietly into the night. I saw what I believe to have been his last mating that morning. Esther, a young kid coming into estrus who couldn’t get any of the big guys interested, wound up being in a consortship with Isiah. He did a fairly credible job of keeping up with her, remembered the old moves about herding her away if any threatening males were around (in this case, young juveniles). Finally, he mounted her and, in the throes of the unaccustomed excitement, threw up on her head. Such was Isiah’s farewell to the amorous life (as well as poor Esther’s introduction). He disappeared forever shortly thereafter, probably picked off by a hyena or lion.
So with Isiah’s tryst recorded in the archives, I turned my attention to the Jeep, which had clearly taken a turn for the worse that day. It expired some fifty yards from the mechanic’s at the park headquarters, and his diagnosis was that some part or other had to be replaced. A few hours’ worth of arduous radio calls to Nairobi brought the news that said part was not to be had anywhere in the country for a few weeks until some foreign exchange crisis could be resolved and a shipment of auto parts sitting on the docks in Mombassa on the Indian Ocean could be unloaded.
Faced with my work completely shutting down for a while, I did the only sensible thing, which was to grab my backpack, catch a ride with some tourists to Nairobi, just go travel somewhere, anywhere in East Africa that hitchhiking would take me.
I start off in Nairobi by going to the industrial area to find the petrol tankers doing the long-haul transcontinental trips. I hang out in the truck yard all day, finally find a tanker heading my way, weasel my way on. It is a cranky old Leyland, with a narrow bed jammed in the cab, bottles and cans of food everywhere, thousands of gears and widgets and tools and rags and oil cans—a soapbox racer that was somehow supposed to make it to Uganda. The drivers are two coastal Islamics—Mahmoud and Ismaeli, both wasted, sullen, sitting chewing on some mildly amphetamine-like plant from the coast. The lorry proves to be capable of nothing more than 15 miles an hour, so we creep off west of Nairobi into the sunset.
Dawn comes, we are still creeping along up a 9,000-foot escarpment. What an odd thing, moving at a steady walking speed in a lorry for hours on end, just sitting back and watching the scenery. We finally reach the top of the escarpment and the sorely tested lorry collapses utterly. Pile out, pore over the engine, and pronounce it near death. Mahmoud catches a bus going in the opposite direction, back to Nairobi for a mechanic. Ismaeli and I settle in for what turns out to be two days of sitting next to the lorry. My comprehension of his Swahili becomes more adept as he becomes less sullen. I am initially frustrated with the delay, but decide that this is absurd to worry about. So we sit. Soon Ismaeli disappears into the cartons of the cab, emerges with his prayer mat. A bit of cogitating upon the sky, he decides where east is, and goes about his praying. He soon is lecturing me about the Arabic roots of Swahili, enthusiastically assigning Swahili the status of a simple dialect. I delight him with examples of how close Hebrew is to Arabic. He ventures to place Hebrew as an Arabic dialect also, and when I fail to complain about that, he says I should bother no more with my food, I will eat along with him. His meals turn out to be, of all things, spaghetti. Ismaeli is from what was originally Italian Somaliland, and has picked up a passion for the stuff from the ex-colonials. He makes a huge pot of it on a kerosene stove, throws in some questionable camel’s milk that he has brought along in a skin. We fall to eating, tremendous amounts, with our hands. He settles into praying and, bored, I pull out my alto recorder and begin to play a bit. This proves a revelation to him, and before long, Ismaeli has commandeered it away from me, tootling on it gingerly. He proves unable to get much out of it in the way of melody, but has a wicked Somali-Arabic sense of rhythm. He has soon incorporated the recorder into his praying. Sitting there, reedy and ascetic, noodling away with these sort of impatient rhythmic spasms, eyes closed, swaying back and forth. Suddenly, the moment is right, he drops the recorder and flings himself on the mat. So the time passes, I slowly become Arabic Italian, eating spaghetti and listening to Ismaeli chanting and ululating away.
The second morning another petrol lorry comes along, and it is decided that I will continue on that one. Ismaeli clearly covets the recorder, but settles for one of my sweaters, as he is dressed only in coastal casual and nearly freezes each night. The new petrol lorry seems equally senescent, but I jump in anyway. The driver is Jeremiah, a gigantic burly gruff older man. He has a stylishly shaved head, wears a rather natty embroidered fez, heavy square blackframed sunglasses, and has a marvelous upper incisor of gold. He has tremendous forearms, which impress me considerably. The assistant, in contrast, is Jonah, who is about thirty, with sunken eyes and scraggly beard, and reeking of undernourishment. His clothes are a shambles, covered with grease. He seems passably nice, in a thoroughly downtrodden way.
At a mountain village we stop for lunch. I reach for my food, but Jeremiah herds me along with him into a food kiosk. The normal procedure now would be to scan the menu painted on the wall and order something, but this seems to be other than Jeremiah’s style. With a belligerence that initially shocks me, he bullies and threatens everyone in sight, and within minutes has the kiosk staff galvanized into uncertain action. Some run next door to buy fresh tomatoes and onions. Others get hot peppers from somewhere. A boy is dispatched to the meat shop to have some goat cooked, posthaste. Like a king in his court, Jeremiah clears off a table and, wielding a knife, begins slicing, dicing, and anything else imaginable with the utensil. Tomatoes in one bowl, spices off to one side. Peppers sequestered somewhere, meat arrives and is chopped. I attempt to help with my lowly pocketknife and am reprimanded and returned to the crowd of spectators that has gathered. Jeremiah continues to shout orders and pronounce judgment on each new item brought to him. His wrath is Olympian at the insufficient number of onions. Finally all is prepared, each item chopped and resting in its bowl. With manic grace, Jeremiah dumps everything onto the tabletop, mixes it by hand, and we all fall upon the food, grabbing great hunks of meat, wrapping it around tomatoes and onion. Jeremiah leads the way, holding on to a hot pepper in his right hand, taking a bite of it, then jamming in as much other food as quickly as possible to absorb the heat.
Toward the end of the meal, Jeremiah requisitions a share of it for Jonah, who has stayed on the lorry. Staggering out after the feast, I ask why Jonah has remained there. “He likes lorries.” This proves to be a statement that does not begin to approach the magnitude of the truth. Jonah, indeed, does like lorries. His job is to sleep on the lorry at night as a watchman and to serve as the general handyman; whether his obsession brought him to this perfect occupation or whether it only bloomed and festered after he had begun his trade, Jonah has allowed his life to become inseparably intertwined with the lorry. In short, he will not leave it. For days afterward, watching carefully, I never see him set foot on the ground. Whenever we eat, he instead scurries around on the trailers, checking petrol barrels, adjusting an infinity of bolts and latches, polishing the hood and doors of the cab meticulously, all without touching the ground, swinging from cab to trailer to cab to bumper. I conclude that his malnourished appearance is due to former head drivers who, unlike Jeremiah, failed to bring food to him at meals. He projects an air of subdued fervor, of his destiny with lorries as nothing less than a case of divine sentence passed upon him. He proves skilled at swinging out of the cab while we’re moving, crawling to the second trailer, and urinating out the back of it.
We leave. Jeremiah is delighted with the meal, and soon falls into an odd song in his native Kikuyu. He has an undefined rumbly bass, which fills up the lower half of the cab. The song is generally lugubrious, but with occasional bouncy points at which he pats the top of his fez rhythmically.
Reaching the town of Eldoret in western Kenya one late afternoon, we also break down, seriously. I go off for a walk and return to discover that I’ve been traded to Pius, another driver heading for Rwanda. Thus began by far the worst nightmare of any of my travels in Africa. It started with a somewhat bizarre though innocuous evening. Pius, whose hometown is Eldoret, is the leader of a gang that is obviously the coolest collection of guys this side of the Rift Valley. He is young, quite tall, and thin. He wears skin-tight jeans, a sports shirt open to his pants, a flashy sports jacket, shades, a dangling cigarette, and, to top it off, an absolutely ludicrous pair of bright red six-inch platform shoes. I meet the guys, all similarly dressed. Everyone is chain-smoking and with the platform shoes all are at least 6 foot 14. Somehow I am introduced as “Peter,” which quickly catches on despite my protests. Pius and the Boys go strutting out, as I hurry along after them. They are well armed with American slang.
“Man, Peter, we’re gonna show you Eldoret tonight.”
“Fuckin right, Peter.”
We strut on. Hit the first bar, the crowd clears. I anticipate them getting into a fight with other patrons over an imagined insult.
“Gimme a fuckin beer.”
“Gimme a fuckin beer.”
“Gimme a fuckin beer.”
“Gimme a fuckin beer.”
“And one soda for me too, please.” There are limits to one’s transformations. Move to another bar. I seem to have captured their vague affections for no obvious reason.
“Yeah, man, Peter’s okay.”
“Yeah, Peter’s okay.”
“Yeah.”
While this wasn’t my textbook idea of fun, at least it seemed tolerable in the scheme of things. I would go along with Pius, we would hop in his vehicle tomorrow, bid the Boys good-bye, and go to Kampala. I had no premonition of the nightmarish quality that Pius would take on instead. In retrospect, I am not sure if he was truly malevolent, or just a rough bush Kenyan who didn’t quite know how to go about being hospitable, or if I had somehow become a subject in some brainwashing experiment.
At dawn, I am awakened by Pius, fresh in clean new sports jacket, the rest of the outfit intact. “Today, Kampala, man, Peter, just stick with me.” I rouse myself in hopes of actually going. “But first a drink.” In we go. I am feeling mealy and diseased from lack of sleep and initially decline the Coke that Pius has delivered to go with his beer. I eventually drink it out of politeness, and he gets me another one, which I drink. We move to another bar, “And soon we leave,” and soon to another. It is early afternoon. I am feeling hungry, because my every attempt at food is always jocularly shouted down by Pius and the Boys, with a Coke replacing the food. I protest about whether we are leaving, feeling a bit surly and unappreciative, as if I have somehow missed a subtle point in the conversation that would have explained why we were still here. Pius responds by looming over me menacingly and demanding I lend him 40 shillings. I numbly comply, he returns with another soda, which he makes me drink. My teeth take on a Coke fuzz. Pius is indefatigable, always moving on to new places. It has somehow evolved that I am being herded about by him and the Boys; midafternoon, I realize that they have not let me out of their sight since dawn. I am hungry and sick of Cokes and more arrive that I am expected to drink. He treats me with solicitous brotherly care that seems to barely mask the suggestion of wild violence. More moving around, more Cokes. I begin to look for ways out, but Jeremiah’s lorry is still out of it, hood up, mechanics at work, Jonah peering from the trailer. I sink into carbonated oblivion, begin to feel disconnected from myself as if my body has somehow become that of this Peter, and I am stuck inside him. Exhaustion. More sodas. Pius borrows more money, returns some of the previous, begins an incoherent talk about taking me with him to Zaire to smuggle diamonds.
“Yeah, Peter’s all right.”
“Yeah, Peter’s all right.”
“Yeah, Peter’s all right.”
We push on, moving into a night similar to the previous. No one seems to require sleep except me, or else they sleep in shifts so that there are always a few of them there to keep me awake, keep me moving, keep me drinking Cokes. Four in the morning, finally asleep in one of the bars.
Dawn, two hours of sleep. As if I’m utterly incapable of learning, Pius is able to rouse me again with promises. “Ah, today, Kampala, man.” Back to the bar, the guys there already, pushing me along when I get uncooperative. More sodas. Drinking into oblivion. I’ll never get out, I’ll die in Eldoret.
Around noon, like a savior, Jeremiah reappears. I rush to him for help, but he motions me away, as he is about to start preparations for another of his meals. He is dressed in a one-piece jumpsuit, which emphasizes his voluminous head in a way that would impress even the most jaded of observers. He has on a scarf and, of course, his fez, and has perhaps dressed up just for the meal. Pius and the Boys join in, herd me along, following Jeremiah. He obtains his tomatoes and onions without much difficulty, but the search for acceptable meat is Odyssean. Store after store, Jeremiah checking carcasses of cows, sniffing slabs of meat, rejecting here, chastising owners there, accepting a few choice offerings. He seems to be known everywhere and no money is ever visibly exchanged. A crowd has now gathered, following. Some get to carry the tomatoes or onions, but the meat is Jeremiah’s domain. The selected samples go into various pockets of the jumpsuit. At one place he actually searches through his pockets, finds the right piece, and trades it in for a different one. Finally we all congregate at a table where the preparation rituals are repeated. We fall upon the food. I repeatedly broach the subject with Jeremiah of his saving me from Pius. “We talk after lunch.” Lunch finished, Jeremiah disappears to wash his hands, Pius pulls me away and herds me to the other end of town for sodas. More money lent, endless Cokes, threats that I’m not even certain about.
Evening. We pass Jeremiah’s lorry, where Pius wakes Jonah seemingly out of spite. Jonah asks me if I could bring him a soda sometime the next day, as he has become thirsty.
Morning, more of the same, no sleep, sinking deeper into hell. I decline my first offered Coke, at 7:00 in the morning, but then remember Jonah and say yes. Pius is suspicious. “What do you want it for, for Jonah?” I admit to it. He grabs me and tells me I’d better not try to get a soda to Jonah or else I’m in trouble. “Now do you want a soda?” I admit to no longer being in need of one. Good, he gets me a soda, which I’m forced to drink. I begin to make plans for my escape, my confrontation with him, and assume that he will knife me. Early afternoon, we are on the way to a new bar, I am just about to explode into a tirade about the whole situation, to tell him I’m leaving, when Pius suddenly brightens. “Ah, look who is here, Peter,” as a car pulls up alongside us. Great, now what. Of all people, it is his mother. “Peter, this is my mama.” We drive to their house on the edge of town, she is impossibly sweet to me. “And what are you doing here in Kenya, Peter?” Pius has turned into a little boy, doting and giggly around his mama, shyly showing off family photos, drinking lemonade with me. To his credit, he even seems a bit embarrassed by his asinine shoes. Only this transformation keeps me from seeking help with his mother. “Madame, you’re son is a Beelzebub and has made a captive of me” seems inappropriate, as if I’ve imagined the former Pius as he now rushes to help his mother carry in things from the car. We go, I shaking hands with her, Pius kissing her good-bye as we leave the car in town. We turn the corner, Pius savagely pushes me into a bar; back to business.
