Between Two Worlds

When I returned to my blue hovel in January, after traveling alone for five weeks, I found myself being pulled between two worlds. At Kenegut Secondary School, I had managed to get my teaching schedule squeezed between Tuesdays and Thursdays, so each Friday morning, I dressed, stuffed belongings into my backpack, pressed my Filson hat onto my head, and exited my blue hovel to hike six miles to the Busia-Kisumu Highway.

At the juncture, I waved down a passing matatu heading for Kericho, where I exchanged my ride for a Stagecoach bus to Nakuru. In Nakuru, I usually lunched on nyama choma or chicken curry at one of the tourist hotels. If I were in a hurry, I might risk giardia or amoebic dysentery and wolf down a couple of meat pastries from a street vendor. Sated, belly full, I boarded another Stagecoach bus for the slow climb up the eastern face of the Rift Valley, with expansive views of the landscape I had just traversed. 

Eventually, the road leveled off, and the bus driver shifted gears until we were hurtling downhill toward Nairobi. By the time I stepped off the bus at University Way, I had already traveled five hours. Only one more matatu to board: Number 29 to Langata. I usually arrived at Kifaru Lane by late afternoon. I had only a half-mile walk to Christy’s house. When I turned onto Ndovu Lane, my pace was nearly a jog. I rushed headlong down her drive, pushed open her front door, and flung myself into her open arms.

Home. I was home.

****

           

Mondays were painful. After breakfast, Christy and I would trundle down Ngong Road in her red Renault wagon and idle away a few hours at Yaya Centre. Sometimes, she drove me all the way into Nairobi, where we would have an early lunch at the Norfolk Hotel or the Trattoria. Our favorite lunch spot, however, was a deli run by an American woman who served thick, moist slices of chocolate cake.

           

Inevitably, the time would come. We lingered in our goodbyes, holding hands, holding each other. Sighing already with longing for one another. And always I waited until the last minute, passing up matatus or hired cars to stay with her a few minutes longer.

           

One time, I lingered too long, and the car I had hired dropped me in Kericho at sunset, in the middle of a downpour. Everyone was scrambling for matatus home. I was forced to stand on the back bumper, gripping the luggage rack, as the packed matatu lurched down the Busia-Kisumu Highway toward the juncture to Kenegut. By the time I was dropped off, the sun had set, but I still had six miles to walk in the pitch dark of an African night. I was soaked through, shivering with cold. But somehow I made it back to my blue hovel.

****

           

By now, Kenegut and my blue hovel had lost its charm. No electricity. No running water. No restaurants. No cinemas. No Christy.

           

I chafed at the confines of the school grounds and the surrounding village. The days seemed interminable, and I kept myself preoccupied with running, writing, and reading. I sometimes read for hours on end, and I soon exhausted the school library’s meager assortment of books. Whenever my mind was idle, my thoughts returned to Christy.

           

On one of my return trips to Kenegut, I stopped to buy a chess set with pieces carved from soapstone. I taught my colleagues how to play, and Mr. Tembur, a math and science teacher, was a quick study. He was tall and gangly, with a toothy smile, and he often spoke out of the side of his mouth. Soon, he was beating me at chess almost every day, and I could tell by the wry smile on his face that he would checkmate me in a few moves. Always, he was apologetic.

            

“I am sorry, Meestah Ree-chahd, but I must take your queen,” he might say. Or, as he took my bishop, “I am sorry, Meestah Ree-chahd, but your holiness the bishop must die.”

           

I found other ways to pass the time, but inevitably I was faced with hollow, empty hours alone.

****

           

In Nairobi, Christy and I filled our hours--every minute of them--and everything we did, even the smallest actions, seemed magical, rapturous. A bottle of wine purchased at the Karen dukas meant we would be sitting before the fire, on her sofa, later that evening. Buying a loaf of seed bread at the local bakery meant we would be eating toast together for the next morning’s breakfast. Stacking firewood outside her house ensured we would stay warm for the next few evenings. We were securing a future, purchasing items that committed us to an evening, a morning, an entire weekend together.

                      

One afternoon, we came home to find two songbirds singing sweetly outside our bedroom window. The birds bobbed and weaved their heads, as if trying to kiss. When we turned away from the open window, we saw that the birds had knocked over a floral arrangement, scattering flower petals across the bed.

           

That evening, at Christy’s suggestion, we stepped outside to look up at the stars. They fluttered and pulsed in a night sky unpolluted by lights.

           

“Beautiful,” I said. And when I turned to her, she was looking straight into my eyes.

           

“This is your chance to get it right,” she said.

           

I knew she was referring to the night in Nairobi National Park, but her words cut right through me, and suddenly all my life felt like preparation for this moment. I would get it right. So I leaned in and kissed her tenderly.

           

That night, as we sat before the fire drinking wine, Christy fell asleep with her head in my lap. As I gently stroked her hair, I was at turns amazed and grateful at how quickly my life had changed.

****

Night had fallen, and feeling lonely and claustrophobic in my blue hovel, I made my way to the Kenegut marketplace to have a Tusker or two at the local bar. Most of the male teachers lived in tin shacks huddled around the outskirts of the marketplace. These shacks were the size of storage pods you might find in people’s driveways in the U.S., sparsely furnished with a single bed, a small homemade desk and chair, and a bureau for clothes, if they could afford it. Otherwise, shelving might do. During the day, the heat inside was stifling, and the tin walls and ceilings popped and cracked as they expanded with the heat or contracted in the cool of the evenings. 

The market itself was a clearing the size of a football field, with small shops lining its edges. These shops were mostly clapboard-like affairs. There was a butcher, a kinyozi (barber), a handmade furniture shop, several small dukas that sold essentials, such as rice, sugar, bread, and salt. But most of the business was conducted in the market’s open central area, where locals, mostly women, displayed their fruits and vegetables on cloths spread out on the ground, secured at each corner by large stones.

In the evenings, most of the teachers hovered around the marketplace, so it had become habit for me to saunter the half mile there in the evenings and “accidentally” find Mr. Tembur and the others to ask if they would join me for a drink. For their part, they always acted surprised to find me there. On their meager salaries, I knew most of them were penniless by the end of the month, so I would stand them for Tuskers, Pilsners, or White Caps—whatever was their poison.

This evening, I found Mr. Tembur alone, leaning against a tree.

Mr. Tembur, looking hangdog, held out his hand. “Meestah Ree-chahd, will you kindly sponsor me for a drink?”

“Gladly,” I said.

The bar was a tin shack the size of a school bus. Inside, it was musty and gloomy. A lamp hung limply from the ceiling, its weak bulb powered by a generator that thrummed outside. The bartendress, a stern, hard-faced woman, brought two Tuskers she had pulled from a stack of crates behind the bar. In most rural areas, beer was served at room temperature, because electricity was inconsistent. In Kenegut, it was non-existent.

For the next two hours, Mr. Tembur made me laugh. A tonic to my loneliness. As is the custom in Kenya, empty beer bottles were left to pile up on the table, a sign, I suppose, of wealth. The more bottles, the wealthier the person. So it should have been no surprise that some locals approached our table beseeching Mr. Tembur to have me stand them for a round. Each time, Mr. Tembur responded with sharp words until the man clucked his tongue and walked off disgusted. But one man, dressed raggedly in moth-eaten clothes, would not relent.

“Enda!” Mr. Tembur said.

But the man persisted, swaying on his feet as if the room were spinning.

Mr. Tembur called to the owner of the bar, who was sitting with a group of locals, drinking a White Cap. He glanced at us, then unfolded himself from the bench seat, and sauntered over to our table. He pulled the drunk man away by the elbow, but still the man would not relent. Standing unsteadily on his feet, he protested and pointed at me.

Suddenly, the owner slapped him across the face, a smack so loud it silenced the room. The owner barked a few harsh words, and then the drunk man, humiliated, shuffled out of the bar.

Mr. Tembur could see I was upset.

“He is a drunk,” he said. “His children, they go without.”

In this way, with these small reveals, Kenegut lost its charm for me, and my blue hovel no longer felt like home.

****

The next morning, I was up before sunrise. I choked down a thick slice of bread with strawberry jam, drank a cup of Nescafe freeze dried coffee, packed a few belongings in my backpack, screwed the Filson hat on my head, and stepped out of my blue hovel to a glorious sunrise. Mr. Tembur greeted me on the dirt road that led to the Busia-Kisumu Highway.

“You are in a hurry this morning,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “I want to get an early start.”

“There must be something important in Nairobi,” he said, with a knowing smile. “Every Friday you leave earlier, and every Monday you come back later.”

I smiled nervously.

“You are like the man chasing the honey bird,” he said. “You are after something sweet, I think.

I laughed. “Is that a Kikuyu proverb?”

“No, it is a Tembur proverb.”

We clapped hands, shook.

“I will see you Monday night, Meestah Ree-chahd,” he said, smiling. “Perhaps you could sponsor me for a Tusker.”

“Indeed.”

****

The gears ground downward and we came to a complete stop. We all craned our necks to look out the front windshield. A long line of vehicles snaked away into the distance, disappearing around a curve in the road. People began chattering, and then the bus driver was peppered with questions. He replied in Swahili and gestured helplessly at the long line of vehicles before him.

Soon, impatient motorists were filling up the passing lane. Matatu drivers, because they work on commission, are usually the first to go off-roading and blaze trails through the bush. Eventually, both shoulders of the highway filled with vehicles, but they too came to a standstill. Word eventually reached us that a tractor trailer had overturned on a bridge. There was no going around. We would be stuck until the truck could be moved.

We were halfway to Nakuru, in the middle of nowhere, or so it seemed to me, but soon vendors crawled out of the bush selling fruits, vegetables, hard candies, cigarettes, magazines, newspapers, wristwatches, batteries, air fresherners, steering wheel cushions. You name it, it was for sale. After a couple of hours of sitting idle, I bought an ear of roasted maize and a bunch of miniature bananas for my lunch, which the vendor pushed through my open window.  

Another hour passed, and the heat inside the bus became soporific. I pulled my Filson hat down over my eyes, rested my head against the window, and fell asleep. I woke to the sound of the engine coughing to life. According to my wristwatch, I had been asleep nearly an hour. It was almost mid-afternoon. If we moved quickly, we would make Nakuru in time for me to catch a bus to Nairobi. But untangling the traffic was a nightmare. We crawled forward a few feet, only to halt for several minutes, and we moved at this glacial pace for more than an hour. By the time we were funneled through the bridge and were spilled out on to the open highway, the sun was tauntingly low in the sky.

Our bus lurched into Nakuru an hour later and a mad scramble for matatus ensued. Everyone was trying to get home. No one more desperately than me. It was soon clear I would not find a ride anytime soon. Nairobi was three hours away, which meant I would get there well after sunset, and Nairobi is no place to be after the sun sets. I was stuck in Nakuru for the night.

Christy would be expecting me soon, but I had no way of reaching her. Cell phones did not exist then in Kenya, but in just a few years the entire country would be wired, and you could travel to the remotest place and find a Maasai elder herding his cattle in the Amboseli bush, or a young Samburu warrior washing his spear in the Ewaso Ngiro River, with a cell phone attached to his belt.

For now, I had to wait out the night. I checked into the Midland Hotel, just off the highway, and ate a steak dinner in the hotel restaurant. Afterward, I went up to my room and took a hot bath in the large, clawfoot bathtub. I then laid out clean clothes for the next day and packed my backpack, so I could bolt out the door first thing in the morning.

I was up before sunrise and well on my way to Nairobi before the sun finally pierced the horizon. By mid-morning, I was sprinting down Ndovu Lane, worrying irrationally that Christy had given up on me and gotten on with her Saturday. Perhaps with friends. Or another man.

When I reached her doorstep, the front door was locked. My heart sank. But then I saw her fleeting figure dart past the window.

The door opened. She stood there looking at me in disbelief. I pushed my way inside, let my backpack and hat fall to the floor, and embraced her mightily.

“I was so worried,” she whispered in my ear.

I cupped her face gently in my hands and told her I was sorry.

“Last night was difficult,” she said. “I barely slept at all.”

I pulled her closer. We had been cheated of an entire evening together, so we clung to each other for a while longer, trying to reclaim it.

(To be continued)