Africa Trip Part 6 – back in Nairobi

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

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.

Father's Day sadness

On this day I think a bit about my dad, but just a bit. He’s been dead since 1975 - over thirty-seven years. He’s vague in a lot of ways. Yet I still remember vividly his last year and half and his courageous battle against cancer. I think he waged the battle to please my mother. His own heart wasn’t in it. Finally, and I was so proud of him for this, he said he was through. He just wanted more and more morphine to aid him in dying. That was the most courageous part. Standing up to her and dying on his own terms.

Dad and Paul, 1973

What makes me more sad today is what Bob has been through. He was the father of three sons and now only one is living. His first son, Eric, was born with Down syndrome during his first marriage. He died in 2004 accidentally, choking on a peanut butter sandwich.

Bob and Eric

Our older son Paul was born perfectly healthy and was fine and brilliant until his first manic break at age twenty-one. He was then diagnosed with Bipolar 1 disorder. At age twenty-seven – five years before Eric died – he  took his own life in our home as a result. Bob found his body in our downstairs bathroom. You can read all about that in my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On.

Bob and Paul, 1973

Bob doesn’t talk much about either of these deaths. Yet, many times I see him with tears in his eyes while watching something on television or hearing a piece of music. Just the other day he cried while listening to John Lennon because John reminds us of our Paul. Lennon was Paul’s hero and musical muse.

I think that is what makes me the saddest. Bob holds all his feelings in – and he works to drown them out.

Yet his life as a father isn’t all bad news.

Bob and Ben, 2012

Tonight we’re having dinner with our surviving son Ben. Ben is the light of our lives. Even with what he’s gone through – the loss of his brother – he is the most loving and caring person I know. He is a great husband, friend, teacher, and mentor. Never a conversation goes by without an “I love you” at the close. I love to watch Bob and Ben in a hug. And thankfully Ben and his wife, Marissa live close by. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

 Paul and Ben, 1977

Ben and Paul, 1994

Bob and Ben, Maui

Patty "Next Door"

Beautiful Manhattan Beach Sunset

The sun is setting on my neighbor next door. Everytime I look toward her house - just on the other side of our wood slat fence, I feel sad. She's been battling pancreatic cancer for about two and a half years, and we were all optimistic at first because the chemotherapy seemed to be working. 


We've never been very close, but it's always nice to know she is there. And we're shared some good times - her daughter's wedding, a few special birthdays. We've also shared some tough times  - our Paul's death and the death of her daughter's infant. 


We'd have conversations from our deck or patio and a few dinners together. But that's over. We tried to visit last weekend, but her husband said it is too late. She stays in bed, sleeping most of the time because of doses of heavy painkillers, and has only days left.


Recently visitors arrived next door
with flowers and sad faces.

Made me wonder

if it’s Patty’s time.

She’s been struggling

with pancreatic cancer

for two and a half years,

with steady doses of chemo,

surgeries, anything to shrink

her tumor and ease her pain.

So Bob called and now I know.

She is in hospice care,

There is no more hope.

And we’ll take flowers to her

on Saturday.

Another survivor

What's been going on in my life all came into perspective when I opened the mail yesterday and found in the Cancer Support Community (formerly The Wellness Community) newsletter a survivor profile on the front page. I looked at the photo of this survivor and immediately recognized a man I’ve known at the gym for years. We’ve only exchanged Hi’s and smiles and once in a while a local restaurant recommendation – I don’t even remember how we got into that – and that’s the extent of what I knew about him. I noticed he always wore a cap, and lately he was looking thinner, but I had no idea that he has been battling cancer since 1997 – first for a melanoma that started on his skull and metastasized to his neck, spleen, liver, and colon and a later diagnosis of prostate cancer. After years of radiation and surgical treatments, as of Thanksgiving 2010 he was pronounced cancer free. And through it all I've seen this man at the gym always with a smile on his face – a guy who looks like he has the perfect attitude needed to survive cancer or any other of life’s challenges.

In his survivor story he told how reluctant he was at first to attend the program offered by the Cancer Support Community. But I am so glad he relented and finally experienced its benefits – especially the care and concern offered by its facilitators and other participants.

I worked at The Wellness Community in Redondo Beach, CA as its first Development Director in the late 1980s and served on its Board of Directors for a couple of years. It is truly a loving and caring place. I know many people who derived a huge value from attending its programs. For more information and a location near you, please go to: http://www.thewellnesscommunity.org/corporate/facilities.php

I looked for this courageous survivor at the gym today, but he wasn’t there. I hope he’s still doing well. He now has a new special place in my heart.