Agora, religion and tribal dwellings

I have been struggling with religion for my children. I do not want a doctrine without question for them, like I was given with Christianity (thank the good Lord it was tempered with my mother’s probing Hindu mind). I just want a template for what my family considers right and wrong, good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable. Was watching on prime time TV, our President Uhuru Kenyatta being congratulated outside the Hague by no less than 100 supporters – that many adults going all the way to prop up the Dutch economy ( hotels, carbon footprints) for what? Unacceptable my moral compass suggests; very strongly. This then begs the statement: Religion cannot give you a total guideline as to right and wrong for my family – only I can do that through my example and my vociferous condemnation of something that seems to everyone acceptable, but to me, is unacceptable. This view was further cemented by a movie – AGORA – dramatizes the destruction of the library at Alexandria and the murder of Hypatia around AD 370. Why? Christians took the letter of St Paul to Timothy literally without thought … – “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over man, but to be in silence …… in full submission”. “Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.” Hypatia An example of taking scripture literally is from our little fish pond of class 4, Deusche Schule Nairobi - Ilana completed some running math-a-thon thingy last term – you run a round, you get asked a question, you answer and run the next round. 3 times. She got all her answers wrong. She struggles so and gets disheartened (don’t we all) but, as I had asked her to, she tried to see the good or the lesson to be learnt from the experience. Ilana - speaking to friend - ' I am so proud of myself - I managed to run 3 rounds of the field without getting winded' Friend 'Pride is a sin, you are prideful, therefore you have sinned'. Great. So Ilana is in tears - her friend, who can do no wrong says she is wrong, nay, she is sinful ... a delicate balance. I explain, your friend is right; to a degree - too much pride, wrongful pride is useless and a waste of energy but pride in an achievement is excellent. There endeth the strife in my poor head about religion. I am a good human being. I know I can give my children a good moral compass (checking myself - ‘to heel, boy, to heel’). On a really hilarious note – Arno’s weekly project is different types of dwellings in class. Eskimoes live in igloos, Maasai live in manyatta’s and Red Indians – Indianer as opposed to Indish/der Inder as I keep getting corrected. He really got into it – obviously, as it is not maths or writing! Decimated my miniature bamboo, (sliced pricked his finger with the Panga and that caused some drama) covered it with bedspread (later replaced with dog blanket – poor Bongo keeps circling the teepee, trying to fit in and under his blanky) ‘borrowed’ my goshawk feather, put on sunscreen war paint and named his tribe – Hintern. http://dict.leo.org/ende/index_de.html#/search=hintern&searchLoc=0&resultOrder=basic&multiwordShowSingle=on Papa – The great chief stinkenahintern Ilana – Kleinepoops which she did not like so she is Ganzefliegen aka (deep breath)Goose-that-flies-across-the-lake-on-a-full-moon-just-skimming-the-water Arno – Sottlekopf (no idea how this fits into the poops/hintern tribe) Mummy is married into this tribe so can retain her maiden tribe. Mummy - shrieking cow/crow

How to attain the prize of Delamere hot hot bhajias.

My children are turning out into helpful, good humans. Got last minute booking for self-catering cottage, Malu, Naivasha and took it in a heartbeat. • Packed car, in the pouring rain, both kids pitching in. • Start going down Escarpment and it (rain) stops ... dead. • Stop at Escarpment view point as I so love the Great Rift Valley view - Mt Suswa on the left, Mt Longonot ahead, the Aberdare mountain range to the right ... aaah. Arno and his sense of humour - sees a cloud and names it with great import in his voice ' I name that big spot (long pause) ahem ….. big spot. Ilana wants to be overly clever so does not come up with a name for the other spot, which I named, guess . go on ….yup; the other spot. Forgot to pack tapes – TEHPS as Russel Peters says - you know, those things that have a reel inside that lay music on a TAPE deck. Had only two tapes in car - Sting, ‘mercury falling’ and times tables. Guess which one Ilana insisted we play ... yup. We can all sing every song on ‘mercury falling’ now (Arno’s repetition of ‘Let your soul be your pilot ‘and ‘I hung my head’ are particularly grating after hearing the same line for a whole minute each time) We get to Mallu and cottage is being cleaned. (So glad is Ilana that it is raining. We cannot camp – what weird children, not wanting to camp indeed, and not wanting to camp, in the rain)Agreement arrived at that if they both walk for 2 hours without any complaints, they can have a fire lit in the grate and we can play kamili or scrabble that afternoon. So up towards the top of the ridge to get a view of Lake Naivasha. Two hours of walking to the ridge and back, with me taking a few side paths just to scare Ilana into walking more, with no effect, we were back with … no complaints. We had a good time, says Ilana in surprise. (I got surprised too - that those words came out of her mouth, voluntarily) She got almost scared to death by a grasshopper the size of a mini horse,(no exaggeration on our part at all) jumping at her (not away as in reality but at her as in the dream world she inhabits) and got irritated by Arno’s constant zig zagging like a mad wildebeest ( and his constant talking … no worries about us surprising any buffalo in any thickets with him along eh) but she saved him from a huge jumping spider intent on killing him ( the intent of these poor dudus is suspect). Nice to see them sharing, getting along, and helping their old ma along. It was really good. Got in just before rain and had a nice afternoon of playing scrabble and eating crisps and chocolate indoors while it pelted outside. Next morning was grey but no rain so went out to raft leaves and twigs and see which ones went over ‘waterfalls’ or got caught in ‘dams’. Arno’s leaves made it, through guiding assistance from a large pole that ‘forced’ the poor leaf through eddy’s without any 45 degree lines … just brute force and ignorance as is the way in Africa. Ilana’s ‘not fair’ finally got to me so we set off for a ‘kleine’ spatzieren, just an hour. Arno made us take a ‘short cut’ to the hippo pool where the hippos had, without informing us, moved some 3 weeks ago and are up the river somewhere. He entertained us with Arno rap – really atrocious and repetitive with lots of shuffle moves that look like a chicken-with-malaria and raise a lot of dust. He claims to be singing in Hindustani. The hand signals are most perplexing. He says you must wave the hand ludicrously with the middle fingers bent as if broken; no explanation given as to why. He got us a tad lost. Assume it was all that head bopping, rap meandering and foreignness. Ilana got really worked up, and why did we not just stick to the trodden path? He says, it would not have been adventury. ( a real word now for my family) Why is Ilana so very scared to get lost? We are 3 people, we have water .. and we will find a hill and re orient ourselves so?! Even driving – are you sure you know the way mummy is always her first question and should I stop – I hope you are not lost mummy. Hmmm. Anywho. Found a hill – backtracked, recognized least-adventury path and … yup, it started to rain, well, gently drizzle. The one thing Ilana feared; happened. She got rained on in Mallu in 2012 – badly rained on. She was 5 and she remembers it and said she would do anything BUT get wet on that ridge. So, we got wet, but not on that ridge, thankfully. Only Arno had his raincoat. You could see she was so mad at him. If we had not got lost, we would be home, dry now! But she said it in conversation, no accusation. So very proud of her. We saw a warthog tunnel in the ground. Told them how their dad had been chased by a warthog across the savannah while trying to find us a potholing cave in the Chyulu hills and who knew he could run so fast … all good. Arno even admitted he got us lost … just a bit lost but that he admitted that he could make a mistake … well well. Progress is being made. We HAD to stop at Delamere Farms to get hot bajias with some glow-in-the-dark-tomato-sauce-that-would-not-recognise-a-tomato-if-it-saw-one. Treat indeed. And to end on a funny note – thank you Norwin for introducing me to Wise Guys – they crack me up even if I only catch a quarter of what they say. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlQI0mfJbCc

camping

That vista never ceases to amaze me and to calm torn nerves.

Miles and miles of savannah, till as far as the eye can see.

A magical land this, the 'spotted land'and one of my favourite places in the world, no matter how many tourist kuoni overtake us in a cloud of dust, getting nowhere in a hurry.

Kids away with Grandparents, work can wait for 3 or 4 days and the migration is on and we have a working 4-wheel drive so lets go and away we went with out own firewood, tent, over 20 litres of water, coolbox and at my age,blow up therma rest AND my pillow. Laugh. I don't care. I like to be comfy in my tent. If there had been space in the car for my double duvet, ..... but there were already snide comments about water and why anyone needs to wash at all when they are on safari and something about packing the kitchen sink.

The ónly dry season'road via Lemek is truly and amazingly bad. By the time you reach the escarpment down towards the Mara river, it ceases to be a road and become a meandering of this rock or that. Who knows why people go to the rhino charge, they just need to drive to the mara. And Oloololo gate never looked so welcoming.

We have always camped outside the park and have always used the Sekenani gate so I was quite curious on what a campsite IN the park would be like. It is made very clear on all Mara Conservancy information that all campsites are NOT fenced but really, what does that matter ..... YOU ARE IN THE GLORIOUS MARA!! Its like going to the Coast and it rains, or you get stuck in traffic .... SO WHAT, YOU ARE AT THE COAST! Within 5 minutes we see our first lion and lioness and it is how it was meant to be. Now we came for the migration so forget setting up camp, like is my usual cautious way, lets go to the river. So we go to the river. Lots of hippo. crocks, massing wildebeest but not much happening and it is getting a bit late so we go towards camp 1, just next to Serena. Very nice, in a little copse of trees, not more than 500 metres from the Serena main gate. But, how does one put this delicately, the loo facilities are take your panga, do, bury and I prefer to do 'my business' without other people around and there were already 3 happy campers, one of which was a whole family there so we moved on.

Next campsite, hard to find, road hardly used but a breathtaking view of the savannah, on a slight 'mlima' and not a soul ... and not a tree in sight. Shade vs privacy and privacy won. Man made fire. Woman cooked, then looked out into the dark, after hearing the first lion, not roaring, making that funny aarf hrumf sound and ... there were many many glowing monster eyes out there. Woman in a high pitched voiced told man to look. He sees nothing. Don't patronise me, get a bloody torch man! And ..... they were a heard of impala. Phew. But now I am not feeling 'safe'at all. We are in a game park. There are wild animals here and we are a nuisance to them. This is their backyard and I have not re written my will yet. Needless to say, I did not sleep that night well, while Andreas, slept wonderfully. At about midnigt I hear something snoring and snorting and munching grass right outside my tent! I was sooo scared, and I don't admit this lightly, as I am a child of Africa, that I finally understood adrenalin and how it makes your senses sharper and makes your heart pump and how it is possible for, even I, to just get up and run ....After what seems like an hour, manage to move and breath less shallowly and get some blood back to the brain .... shake Andreas awake and he says, it must be bufallo and you are in the tent .....Now we all know how dangerous buffalo are and he is blithely telling me we are in a flimsy tent ....and TURNS HIS BACK ON ME and resumes sleeping! Woke him at 5 am (he thought I wanted to get an early start and pack up camp but really, I just had enough of not sleeping!) we had breakfast, I went 50 metres down the road to get the sunrise and .... yup ... buffalo. But they were 100 mts away so .... I calmly, if I say so myself, took my photos ... ready to run at any moment, which my dad told me does you no good, unless you can run zig zag and slow him down a bit. Get in car and drive but 200 metres and we see this big backside that looks like rhino .... NO, it is a hippo ... 3 kilometres away from the river! THAT was what was beside my tent, the most dangerous animal in Africa. I have seen one bit a kayak in half, grab the swimming woman through her stomach, shake her like a rag doll, and throw her on the bank. (She lived luckily!)We see game, yada yada blah blah. It rains. Black cotton soil and within minutes we are sliding along on our special mud tires and the stress increases.

At camp, amid drizzle, we eat in the light and I wash in my tent (yes, I still wash, if only to irritate Andreas) and forget about the rain has stopped and come see the stars and all that! Hear hyena laugh ... well snikker and Andreas kindly informs me that when he was reading for his Kenya Safari Guides exam, the laugh means they have found food. Well, at least it is not me. Sleep some as am tired. Wake him up at 4.30 and just as it starts to lighten, on the edge of the grass camp, I see a shape ... and another.... move closer to the frying pan that has my precious sausages on it .... hyena. One slinks past, not even 45 paces (I counted later!) from Andreas who has just finished his panga job. Did not bury that one I can tell you! And another .... in total 4. There goes further appetite. These things have jaws that can crush bones and the worse thing, they eat while their prey is alive and don't suffocate and kill their prey like the big cats do. Get into the car while Andreas, poor dear, packs up the rest of camp. I drive to the main road and there is the whole clan assembling. Mum and 5, strangely cute babies, and then from the left, right, across the road ... the rest of them and there are big spotted ones, 9 in total. My stomach does funny things. In 10 minutes, it is all forgotten as we spot a civet cat in the tall grass and only one more person passes to see it before it lies down, and you would never know there was anything there. And the lioness I found all on my own when I said, after 2 hours of seeing nothing at all but wonderful landscape, go through that lugger and as you come up the other side, on the left, under a bush will be a lioness. And it was so. Very very strange.

And as the day, night must follow. Been running on adrenalin for a while now eh. Get into camp and ... dik dik .... so cute and then, to the left of the car, no way, it is elephant ... a huge matriarch. And right after her a mother with a baby ..... shit, shit on toast. Had a friend who got attacked by elephant, in a mini van, tusk through the mini van and tossed it aside and luckily did not come back for me and the car was ok to drive, very fast, away. No warning, no ears flapping. We are well into the gloaming now and can just make her out ... lifts her trunk and sniffs the camp fire area, the tent ... grabs a plastic water bottle and jiggles it and then, carries on into the bush, just behind the tent! And then there are two others 'lurking'on the left but there is not light so I can't see ... so we are marooned on our island of car amid a sea of elephant. Not funny but they mosey along, in their own time and in about half an hour, we can get out and there is no sound at all! They are gone, alleluia ... not hungry, not even wanting to wash, just want to get into my tent ... and miraculously, fall asleep ... to be awakened by this quiet, cropping of grass ... to my left, behind, and next to me .... sit bolt upright and notice that for once, Andreas is awake and is swallowing a bit. Hold my breath but can't sustain it and the cropping and munching and the once in a while breath are very close, really, just above the tent ..... marooned in a tent, needing desperately to pee, amid a sea of elephant, much much bigger than I and I know I am in a tent but it is scant protection against something so mammoth like, that I suddenly remember, has very poor eyesight and could get spooked by the strangest things and could, technically, stamp on my head and squash it like a melon, all by mistake! If Arno had been with us, would he have suddenly woken as he does, cried and scared the elephant? Would Ilana have just wanted to get out of the tent to see better? Oh....my.....God. It feels like forever but the eating recedes, no one trips over the tent lanyard ... and I think I must have fainted in gratitude but got woken by my bladder as I STILL needed to pee! Next morning, at 4, I tell him we are leaving, I don't care about the migration, I need to sleep in a fence. We are bimbing through the park and getting out through Sekenani and you better pray we see a crossing .... and we did and it was spectacular, all those gnu leaping into the water, and the crocks coming out, and the wet ones climbing up the steep bank and again forming their snaking line as they head off in their centuries old search for greener pastures ... it was magical and awesome and humbling and I would probably have been on a higher high than I am normally on but I really needed to sleep... and NOW!

Missing

My housegirl talks to me with wringing hangs this morning of how she found out her son is missing. A month ago, he goes off to visit his dad in Kosovo, New Muthaiga, Nairobi and is playing outside and .... they reported him missing to the police, the chief and I ask you, what else is she to do and how? There is no proto to post in a newspaper. His name is Francis Nyakambi Omwomba, 9 years old and how does a 9 year old just go missing? I am informed that this is quite common in kijiji. Children get taken by barren women, people who would sell then and send them off to Ngambo, lock them up in a room ...

She is stumped as to what she can do to find him. I am stumped as to how this happens and why we are now helpless to do anything to help her.

And .... I ask what I would be like if this was to happen to me and then I am, maybe just human, in that I am thankful that this is not happening to me.

when is one more too many?

I went out on the town a couple of Friday's ago (thank you for Philo saying yes to looking after my two 'mkoras')to a swanky club (with such a standard name that it can only succeed as this could have been in any major city in the world) .... there must be money in this country, in a recession, with inflation rising because that bar was packed and the cost of a drink was amazingly incomprehensible.

I met some lovely people but one woman struck me ... we were having a lucid conversation, intelligent, interesting, funny ... and then she told me she had to leave to go home and feed her 4 month old baby. I was intrigued and impressed. Good for her. She needed her life and needed to get out but also knew that she had a window of about 2 hours (don't we all remember that breastfeeding window ....mine was one and a half hours ... exactly!)before she needed to be back for her child. I was in awe. Then I asked her how many children she had and she said this was child no.4.

How do we, supposedly intelligent beings, dare to have more than 2 children in this day and age when our resources are shrinking? When we are killing our planet? When we are poisoning our oceans, cutting out forests, depleting our food and water sources to such an extent that we are heading for an implosion or explosion, depending on which theories you would like to ascribe to?

I am really scared. She came from the same background as I, probably went to a similar school, works for the betterment of the poor and then .... this! And I am not over reacting and over thinking at all!!!

How do we help ourselves grow more responsible? I can only say that it starts with each one of us ... examine your own back yard, your own view of how you fit into your family, society, your world .... it cannot afford your freedom to procreate as you wish, weather you have the money to pay for those educations and food is not the question, it is can the world sustain those four extra mouths you have so easily added to our over populated world.

End of sermon.

women and loo's

A friend and I were pretending to power walk but were actually strolling and the topic of the power/stroll walk was .... I don't know how this happens and it does, so often .... the toilet.

Women's toilets and worse still, toilets at busy international airports have no place to put your hand bag. One would think that the centre of the door would be an ideal place for a hook or the left or the right side of the cubicle and what is with that space on the left and the right so you can see whose feet are peeing on either side of you? No, you have to strangle yourself with the strap of your hand bag while you perfect the not-quite-sitting-on-the-seat position which we, in a previous power/stroll walk, have called hovering. God forbid if you are an Indian woman and have to lift 6 yards/metres of saree or are wearing a catsuit .... you know, those things that abba used to wear or that your friend's mom bought from colpro or deacons in 3 different colours of beige, red and blue that you got as hand-me-downs and had to wear for most of the 70's .... what with you being the grunt of the pack ... and still being the same height as most 12 year olds in Europe or North America. Then you have to do a kung fu panda elbow 'chappa' to flush the loo as you naturally can't use your hand ... who knows how many other germy hands have been there before you and you do remind the 3 yr old. 'don't touch anything, i mean anything in this loo'. God help you if you were wearing a ball gown in Jeddah as you wait for a connection on Saudia ....one can't tell if the wet on the bottom of the gown is .... new picture, please .... hurry! Assam domestic airport ...... it gets worse, no?

I hear Zurich loos are fine ... the loo is, well, you sit and pee and then..... seriously, wait for this, a fine spray of disinfecting water sprays the seat and then dries it for the next bottom ..... and, here comes the piece de resistance, the flush is activated by your foot! BUT .... and there always is a but, even in Zurich, they do not have somewhere to hang your bag.

jacaranda's in bloom

The rains should be here and to herald that, the jacaranda trees have brought forth their abundance of lilac ... or is it purple? What a beautiful sight, jacaranda's in full bloom .... just makes me happy .... you get that silly smile on your face that speaks of joy.