Kenya Journal May 2006

I've decided to publish my journal from a trip to Africa. It's summer but travel seems out of the question, so I wanted to remember a special trip in May of 2006.

Day One. Elephants.

Kenya, Africa.

My terror of flying was exhausted after 18 hours in the air, so I was almost calm on the 45-minute puddle jumper from Nairobi to ol donyo wuas in southern Kenya even with the wind taking fierce stabs at the plane.

Twenty-five hours to get here and what a here to be. Green and noisy with life: birds, bugs, green plains stretch out dotted with trees and then the hills. The pilot, James, says the hills are covered with green Acacia trees and bushes because of a steady cloud cover. Where the clouds end on the Chyulu Hills, the tree line ends abruptly and the plains begin. It’s nothing like I expected Africa to look. It’s the end of the rainy season and the earth is full.

Africa. The cradle of civilization. The mother of us all. With one exception, the dominance of Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance is Africa’s son (it’s in Tanzania).

5 North to SF

Walk About

Years ago, my friend, Theresa, and I worked as word processors at a law firm in San Francisco. We always listened to the radio as we worked. One day we had our earphones in listening to Fresh Air. Terry was interviewing a woman who had gone to Australia and ended up in the outback with a group of Aboriginals telling her that they had a dream telling them that she would lead the entire group on a "walk about" to find water.

You can imagine the tut tutting and gasps as our fingers flew on the keyboard typing some boring legal brief as we listened in horror to this story. Days went by in the desert and the woman and the tribe were near death with ants crawling in their noses and thirst making them delirious. The woman's thinking, what on earth is going on? I'm going to kill these people and myself. She begged them to stop trusting her, but they insisted and were willing to die in their belief. She ended up dreaming of an ice cube and found water the next day. Since then, "walk about" has been Theresa and my code for "hell no, we won't go."