A HECTIC SATURDAY I start early, at 7 AM, with a weighing in the gym. Now 124 kg, or 173 pounds. One pound off in the last week. Sigh. An hour in the pool, usually alone. Today, however, a Kenyan walks in, carrying a bag. The pool doctor? Yes. One of the pleasures of sharing a pool with 31 other households is having someone else do the pool maintenance. The guy’s name is Wilfred Karero. He’s from Nkisi, in western Kenya. Has a wife and three kids. Spends 100 shillings daily on busfares, lives in a tiny apartment in town. The busfare, the rent and the kids’ tuition eat up most of his 15,000 shillings salary. His brother in Nkisi does the farming on their tiny plot. ‘Would you like to have a plot like the president’s?’ I ask him. ‘That is a dream.’ President Kenyatta is said to be among the largest landholders in Kenya. He refuses to disclose the size of his landholdings. ‘So you married an Nkisi?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘So you are a kissing Nkisi from Nkisi?’ This gets a laugh out of him. I take the Pajero to Braeburn School for the weekly TEDx talks. I have the place to myself, though. Seems Mwandembo canceled today’s session; my Africaonline is down, so I didn’t get the cancellation message. I phone Alnwick. ‘David, do you have some time? I haven’t seen your new kid.’ Despite the short notice, Alnwick welcomes me. Caroline, his girl friend, welcomes me at the door. Their 7 week old, Keera, smiles from her crib, then asserts herself in her mother’s arms. ‘How much do you pay for nappies?’ ‘Nothing. Some friends sent us a year’s supply.’ I sit down with David and his artisanal cheese, made and matured in their house. Retirees can get up to all sorts of things. David and I exchange UN stories. He flew down to South Africa recently to work on a male circumcision conference. Hasn’t gotten paid yet because of foul-ups in the system. What else is new? Importantly, he has just become a father at age 63. This means he will be 85 when Keera graduates from college. This is nothing new. Keera is his fourth child by three different African mothers. He is struggling valiantly to get her an Irish passport. Hereon hangs an interesting article of Irish law. If the father is of Irish origin – never mind if he ever set foot on the auld sod – the kid is Irish. David and I leave Caroline and Keera in the house to pay a visit to Luwei and Roger Pearson’s house. Roger is supervising the rehab work; the workmen are redoing the stonework over the fireplace. Looks dynamic, if not yet organized. The Pearsons have just reoccupied the house after moving down from Addis Ababa. Rog has to go to ISK to pick up one of their kids from rugby practice. He drops me there. It is just past four PM. I while away the time playing Scrabble with my Ipad, waiting for Alice to join me. At six PM, we go into the school auditorium to watch an evening of one act plays, where Matthew plays the instructor in Unamunda, ‘lingua universal,’ the universal language. It is a rather comical boy meets girl play. The audience loves it. So do we. Flowers for the drama teacher, and for one South African student who is making his last Nairobi performance before going off to drama school, probably at NYU. It is 8 PM, and I am exhausted after a long day. Go straight to bed. Tomorrow morning, off to Cameroon for a polio investigation with W.H.O. and UNICEF. Sigh. Every time we proclaim victory over polio, it pops up in unexpected places.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 01:45:46 +0000