We spent our last night in Africa in Nairobi at the
same hotel where we started – the Fairmont Norfolk. It was nice to get back
into civilization again with a working wifi system, a TV, and a lovely place to
have dinner. We retrieved our luggage containing our city clothes that we had
stored there, and immediately sent a big load to be washed.
The highlight of our stay in Nairobi, and probably
one of the main highlights of our whole African trip, was meeting a young Nairobi man,
Pascal, for breakfast the next morning. I had heard about him through my friend
and writing instructor, Ellen Bass, and our tour director, Anastasia’s Africa,
helped arrange the meeting.
My husband Bob and I spent an hour with him talking
about the Kenyan
orphan situation – out of 30 million people in Kenya, 1.3 million are orphans
caused by HIV/AIDS and cancer deaths of the parents – the economy, the Chinese
poaching, and the corruption in the Kenyan government. After breakfast we
walked into Nairobi’s already crowded and hot business district near the hotel as the shops were just beginning to open.
Pascal
and I also exchanged information about our writing lives. He’s been writing
since boyhood, and he recently had some short stories and poems published. One won
a prize, which appears below. Because of his brother’s suicide death ten years
ago he has been writing to heal – a subject near and dear to my heart. It
always amazes me that no matter where I go or whom I speak with, I find they
have or know someone who has suffered a similar loss as mine. Now I’m happy to
say Pascal and I are sharing our writing and continuing our conversation
through email.
Pascal is
the CEO of G.R.A.C.E. Grassroots
Alliance for Community Education., a not-for-profit organization that
provides programs in early childhood development, orphans and vulnerable
children (OVC) education sponsorship, agricultural development at its ten-acre
farm in the Nanyuki district in the Mt. Kenya region, legal and social justice,
and technical and financial assistance to their grassroots partners. When I first
found out about this organization through Ellen about a year ago, I gave a
little donation. Please join me. Here are some its donor partners in the United
States.
Here is Pascal’s award winning poem:
The Flags are tattered
by Pascal Masila
Mailu
Winner of 2011 Hay
Festival poetry contest
The flags are tattered and
stained, brethren
From Cairo to Jo'burg, Tunis to
Addis.
Should we take a break from the
tweeted riots
To revisit the blurred transition
from OAU to AU...
From Gaddafi to the rebels......or
is it NATO?
The flags are in tatters, mother
For in SA, they openly discuss the
price
of old Madiba's casket
While the old icon sadly smiles
Weighed down by the impossible
food and fuel prices.
And the wind…O what happened to
the wind?
The powerful, revolutionary wind
of change
That blew across the then green
continent
in the rolling 60's and coup-infested
70s and 80s?
Have we finally replaced the
Kalashnikov
with facebook?
The AK 47 with twitter?
The flags are tattered, elders
For today's youth swim in alien
terminologies
coated with violence – pre and post election
tribal and clan-based
Sometimes hanging out or in
Eternally glued to giant screens,
Dying of state-induced idleness
and self pity.....
The flags are tattered, children
for I anxiously await my exit -
surrounded by sinking nations
Torn apart by negative ethnicity,
oil-coated imperialism,
hollow political pledges and dusty
manifestos
While slums mushroom in every open
space....
Brother – what happened to the
land we fought for?
Who stole our land and future
Leaving us cramped in Kibera,
Soweto, Kawempe and Kechene?
Let’s take time brethren
To slowly mend the flags in
between disputed elections
And re-inject authenticity to the
national anthems
Lest the continent implodes from
internal bleeding
In her mid fifties
.JPG) |
| Note we're toasting with water and tea |
Soon
after our meeting with Pascal, our tour company arrived with two vans to take
us to the airport. One to carry our luggage and the other to carry the four of
us. While our travel mates went directly to Paris, Bob and I stopped for about
twenty-four hours in Dubai before going on to Paris for the last four days of our trip.
What we all call the nadir of our trip was waiting for our flights out of
Nairobi in the so-called business class lounge – hot, uncomfortable tents with
porta-potties next door. It looked like the Nairobi airport still had a way to
go to recover from its recent fire.
But I
don’t want to end my tale of our African trip on a sour note. Again, I have to
say it was a trip of a lifetime. I recommend it to everyone whether
adventuresome or not. The people, animals, birds, and landscapes are breathtaking.
One of these days I’m going to put out a picture book that will show you what I
mean.
