Outros

Sad, looming departure from many things African a few matatu rides away. Sad to leave hawkers selling indefinitely borrowed road signs to cars stopped in traffic on Uhuru Highway, Nairobi. Sad to leave happy faces everywhere. Sad to leave folks who say karibu (welcome to) Kenya two months after one arrives, their eyes aglow. Sad to not share a city bus with a dozen-strong work crew that hauls hundreds of kilos worth of metal, including a steel ladder the length of a poll vault that rests in the aisle. Sad to no longer hear Mama Kikuyu halt such a bus with brash complaints as she vows to report, and does report, the public transport violation. Sad to stop eating delicious food everywhere at all times. Sad to begin not noticing so clearly a remarkable trait of human resiliency: the bleaker the living conditions, the stronger, and more selfless, people behave. Sad to walk away from streets where I must ignore nearly everyone I pass, and not because they will rob or hurt me but because they will adoringly pursuade me, as a result of their starkly transparent nobility, ingenuity, and vulnerability, to give away all my possessions and earnings to as many as I can before taking them back to America. Sad to cease being a softie in a land where potent humanity intoxicates a most sober individualist who, in principle, frowns upon spontaneous handouts.

Takin' a 48hr Nairobi layover before heading back West. My African Mama and mzungu Mama discuss tea recipes. I tie a few loose ends concerning the more scholastic aspects of Kenya history research. Hopefully, leaving the land will invigorate as it will also likely sadden. Again, I stress a point, as a I retire posts written within sub-saharan Africa, that either God(s) love this traveling American, or I've been just damn fortunate to breathe the air at the right times and places.