Waning Youth

I plunged headlong into Kenya. I have never felt so alive, so present in the moment, so incredibly responsive to new experience and stimuli, as I was from August 1996 to July 1997. I have returned to Kenya three times since then, once for another year-long excursion, but I have failed to recapture that first experience.

Kenya was different then. No internet. No cell phones. Land lines existed, but they were government-run, so telephones were unreliable and expensive. I was truly cut off from the outside world, my only form of communication through letter writing, and I spent hours every night scribbling by candlelight.

I used empty bottles of Rocamar wine as candleholders and listened to Vaughn Williams, Bach, Beethoven. I had only a few CDs, so I became very familiar with them. In fact, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis became the soundtrack for my journeys. Many years later, the song came on the radio while I was making dinner in Madison, Wisconsin, and I was overcome with emotion as memories flooded back. Not extraordinary moments, though there were some, such as seeing a lion take down a zebra about fifty yards from my tent in Nairobi National Park, or being charged by an elephant while driving through Tsavo West. No, most of the memories were mundane ones: weaving through the throng, the bustle and noise, even the stench, of the streets of Nairobi; clinging desperately to the back of a matatu as it hurtled down the Busia-Kisumu Highway in a downpour; stepping out the back door of my blue hovel in Kenegut to see a polished, shimmering section of earth miles in the distance, only to discover from a passing student that I was seeing Lake Victoria forty miles away; even one of looking out a bathroom window on the fourth floor of Sarit Centre to an alleyway below that struck me, somehow, as charming.

Those moments! I feel sometimes as if I could reach out and touch them.

My eyes were restless, everywhere, as is evidenced in this photograph with one of my students, Goeffrey. It wasn’t long before I became claustrophobic in my little blue hovel and began making excursions. First to nearby schools, where some of my colleagues were stationed. Then to far-flung destinations, such as Maralal, Nanyuki, Nyahururu, and Wasini Island. Stepping onto a bus or matatu was exhilarating. I felt carefree, untethered.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “Youth is wasted on the young.” Almost, with me. In the waning years of my youth, I had lived. And if there is one regret, it’s that I waited so long, but I doubt I would have truly appreciated such an experience in my twenties. I arrived in Kenya at the right moment. The fact that I would meet the woman who would be my wife is testament to this, because that story is incredible in itself.

(To be continued)