Kenya: Getting Around

     I used up the majority of my vomit tickets when I was a very young child in the backseat of a car. Every person, I believe, is given only a set number to use at their leisure. After that, better hope its digestible ‘cause that’s the only way it’s coming out.

Future movie star/skunk. Mom: is that Dennis behind us?

     Once, when I was three or four, I told my step dad I want to be an actress. I pointed at Sesame Street and I said I was going to be those kids: doing up my buttons, counting to ten in Spanish, over-under-around-the-tree-and-into-the-burrow. I had a calling on my playhouse phone. Oscar-the-Grouch was on line two.

     “Sesame Street is in New York,” my step-father grumbled.

     I’m three. I don’t know where New York is.                   

     “It’s about a three day drive.” He rolled over and buried his face under the pillow.

     Three days? In a car? Was there an eighth circle of hell?

     Dream deferred.

     The memory of long drives haunts me still. To this day, I can’t stomach the backseat. Real or remembered, the nausea returns. It’s a ghost of my past that I will do anything to escape. I drive when I can. When I can’t, I sit shotgun.

     This has its plusses and minuses.

     I get to see where I’m going. I get to take interesting (if bouncy) driving videos. I get to not get sick.

     But I have to see where I’m going. And sometimes it’s better not to know.

A bus skeleton.

     Here, the big rigs play a mean game of chicken. The forest eats the evidence: charred skeletons of busses, a suitcase thrown clear, a rock painted red. All gone within a month. What the starvingly poor citizens don’t pick clean, the powers of rust and sun and rain (never, but in excess) will.

     I sink into the front seat and watch as the truckers face down the busses. My imaginary steering wheel, the one I grip in bloodless fists, is powerless. Good thing, I guess, I’d probably steer us right over the cliff in my desire to chicken out.

     After a month, you stop wearing your seatbelt. I mean this figuratively. In the United States, I can’t sit in a car without belting myself in and pulling the strap tight. Doesn’t matter I’ve only climbed in to smoke a bowl; it’s going to be a safe journey. But there aren’t always seatbelts in the rest of the world.

     The first few days are the most painful: I reach for an absent safety restraint and feel the lack of it on me the entire drive. “I’m going through the windshield,” I whisper sweetly to myself in a mad mantra. Time turns down the volume of reason, though and soon enough I forget to reach for a belt even when it’s there.

Okay, here they're stopped but they drive this way too.

     But the sight of that truck aiming its fat-grill-face right at mine is enough to make me call up the distant memory of click-it or ticket and I latch myself in.

     Then I remember trying to use a seatbelt on a certain island I used to live on. My driver stopped, actually stopped, in the middle of the street and turned to me.

     “Take that off. No seatbelts in my car. Too unsafe.”

     “Seatbelts are too unsafe?”

     “We go over the edge and you gonna wanna be able to jump through that window.”

     “Oh, well I hadn’t thought of that.”

     So I stare down at the cliff side and then into the trucker’s headlamps and unclick.

     Click, unclick.

     Click.

     Unclick.

     Which feels worse?

     The next time I buy a long distance ticket I specify a window seat. In the back please.

Kenya: Getting There

“Get inside the bag,” my mother told me.

Lost, we drifted along in the sea of duffels. We’d pulled them off the shelves with reckless speed, emptying the shelves, and now they had us surrounded. The bag I’d bought myself was not good enough, my mother and aunt told me. I came to its defense, but they didn’t want to hear it. Even my best friend shook her head at me and sided with my family. The bag would have to be replaced. We’d been out shopping all day. My brain hurt. My stomach growled.

 “See which one feels bigger.” With that final order, my mother turned away to take a phone call.

I lowered myself onto the floor and got inside the bag.

Scrunching down to a size extra small, twisting this way and that, I did my best to get both my legs inside at once. My defiant limbs would not comply.

“It’s way too small,” I reported out. Mom was still on the phone. Val laughed and pulled the next bag alongside, hoisting me up out of the luggage by my wrists.

It's hard to take your own picture while in a suitcase.

“Ooo, much better,” I reported, enjoying the roomy sack. We took the blue one.

There is a certain irony to the tale of my mom asking me to pack myself in the suitcase, because it seems after a few days helping me prepare that she wanted most was to pack herself, to hide out in my luggage and come along.

She did. She packed herself in the tiny bottles she used to transfer all my liquids and in the unending stream of “Did you think of’s.” She packed herself in the long lists of supplies and in the way she refolded all my shirts. She packed herself and sent me off into the world to explore.

Kenya: Getting Sleepy

Most of the animals in the zoo are asleep. This isn't just because zoos are boring; animals in the wild are all asleep too. Even at home the animals are sleeping. They say you're never more than three feet from a spider at any given time. Well, that may be true but chances are the spider is sleeping.

Shhh. Do not disturb.

This is the lion I eventually woke up. I do not recommend trying such a thing at home, though, I guess if you have a lion at home to awaken you have bigger problems.

The lion snoozed on, oblivious to my attempts to bother him. Only five meters away, I sat on top of a land rover (yes, on top) being the biggest jerk in the history of the universe. I roared. I imitated prey animals. I insulted the lion's intelligence, talent and breeding. If he wanted to, he could have jumped over to me in one easy leap. He could have swiped me from the roof and eaten my head, which is why I almost called this story, "Kenya: Getting Stupid."

A bus full of German tourists pulled up alongside us, whispering in hushed awe of the majesty of nature. I used the telephoto lens to get an extreme close-up of the lion's balls and then made baboon sounds at him. Beneath me, safe in the car, my driver was cracking up. I asked him to join me on the roof but he valued his life.

"What exactly is it that you want to see happen?" one of the Germans asked, doing nothing to hide the disgust in his voice. His subtext clearly read, "Shut the hell up, you stupid American."

"I don't know," I replied, bored, bored, bored, "Wake up, fight another lion, eat a zebra. Anything really."

Then I learned that lions do not appreciate Indiana Jones references. I reached my hand out towards his heart. "Kalima," I told him, "KALIMA!"

But he didn't use the traditional response of om nom shabai, no, he turned his head, and opened his yellow eyes, piercing through skin and heart and soul with them. I slunk into the car, adrenaline gushing over me. It seems that our histories are intertwined somewhere deep inside my DNA. He has eaten me and I have run my spear through his heart countless times. I see our past in his eyes.

80% of our time on safari

The Germans drove away, laughing.

Shaking in the car, I knew I had seen the eyes of the hunter and lived to tell the tale. I felt a connection to my ancestry that I have not felt since; an awe at the power history holds over me.

But Africa is a sleepy place, and inspired or not, after our lunch on the banks of the crocodile infested waters, we had no choice but to do as the lions do.

Kenya: Getting Hungry?

Rats do not like pepper spray.

Growing up in the sterile shine of a stainless-steel suburban society, rats were never the odious underworld creatures of dark subconscious fear. No, rats were whiskery playmates with hilariously large balls. They entertained us for hours with their surprising intelligence and we would sneak them to school in our coat pockets, passing them back and forth under our desks with sticky hands.

Cockroaches once shared a similar dismissal from the realm of the repulsive. Though never cute or pet-like, roaches were not loathsome. We remained cordial.

"It's just a beetle," I told my new roommate as I trapped the first living roach I'd ever seen under a pint glass and tossed him out into the yard.

But he returned and invited his friends and they invited theirs and the compassion I once believed I felt for all creatures slipped away. I developed a pathological bloodlust for the insects and for the pop of a soft body squeezing out through an exoskeleton. Nights find me creeping like a ninja through my darkened kitchen, dual-wielding bug spray. I slam on the lights and open fire on the fleeing legions that flicker across my granite countertop. I watch them twitch upside-down. I witness each death with a grim unbreakable gaze. They're more afraid of me than I am of them, I've always heard.

They should be.

My first night on the African continent and my dreams had come unhinged. The malaria pills hauled a series of inane images before my closed eyes. I could not fight the lunacy. When I woke, which was frequent, the dreams refused to fade and in the darkness of the room the man with the elephant trunk still stood before me, reaching out for me with his proboscis like a sex offender.

I shifted between sleeping and waking dreams in a feverish state. Rex, a friend who had graciously offered to let me stay with him, slept on, blissfully unaware of the plethora of sideshow freaks that paraded through my vision. I placed my hand against his back and drifted back to sleep.

In my dream, I lay on a plate on the surface of a thick, red ocean, clicking my fingernails against the porcelain. There was no rhythm to my song: click click click-click scratch click-clack. A deep instinct stirred within me; this was no dream-scape sound. The clicking came from somewhere in the wild African-Out-There.

I shot up, fully awake and the hallucinations evaporated. The click-scratch-tick-clunk continued on from somewhere beyond the ring of mosquito netting.

"What's that?" The words erupted from my throat.

Rex turned over onto his face. He was not a light sleeper.

"Rex." I brought my hand down against his thigh. He swatted me back. "Rex!" This time louder; a more forceful smack.

"What?"

"What is that sound? "

He listened into the darkness. My fingers squeezed around his arm. I was glad to have this strong, savvy, valiant specimen lying only a few inches away. Through his extensive Peace Corps training, Rex would have learned how to fight off hungry leopards and what to do in case of attack by giant Sub-Saharan spiders. They would have taught him these things. He would know.

We listened. The noises did not subside and even though I was fully grown, the only creature I could imagine making all of those sounds was one with long clacking yellow claws and grinding, irregular teeth. It crept around the outside of the hut and sniffed and snarled at us through the banana-leaf roof. Unearthly.

Still we listened.

No, Rex had fallen back asleep.

"Rex," I hissed, "What is that sound?"

"What?"

I poked my finger into his eye. I was fast-tracking my expulsion from his bed.

Rex did his best to disentangle himself from the wild claws and gnashing teeth I had become. I was all fear. "Rats," he grumbled at last, throwing me to the far side of the bed and promptly falling back asleep.

Rats.

Beyond the soft ring of mosquito netting, my headlamp dangled off the edge of the nightstand. I reached one shaky hand past the netted safe-zone and pulled it over to me, illuminating at first only the world encapsulated by white cloth. Bravely, audaciously, without pants, I exited the bed and turned the corner into the kitchen.

Dozens of flat, black eyes turned for a moment to meet my gaze. The sticky, nauseous rush of adrenaline oozed out from my pores. The rats stared unblinking and then returned to their task of lifting the lid from the pot and scooping out handfuls of our leftovers. Rex had promised them to me for breakfast. The rats would dine first.

One large male strolled lazily across the room, dragging his testicles over the same floor I stood on with my bare feet. Two leaps returned me to the bed and shuddering, I tried to burrow under Rex. I preferred the imaginary monster that lurked around the edge of my mind.

In the morning, we discovered the large pot on its side, covered with greasy rat-prints. They hadn't left any breakfast for us, but we would have passed regardless. Scooping up the pot and portioning out only the tiniest droplet of soap, Rex rinsed the rat feet away. Were it my house and my kitchenware, the thing would have been declared infected and discarded in the dumpster. It had permanent rat cooties. Circle-circle, dot-dot wasn't cutting it.

Rex teased me and invented ways to make me jump. I wasn't displeased to see him off to work and I headed out into the village on my own. But everywhere I saw rat-shaped shadows. They followed me into the shops, their button-eyes staring pupiless out from behind wooden masks. They invited themselves along for lunch, dining just beyond the reach of my peripheral vision. At a liquor store I bought a fifth of vodka and a can of mace.

I was already drunk when Rex came home. He tried to regale me with stories of humanitarian projects but I heard only the squeaking of rodents. At dinner I stirred my food without bringing it to my lips. At bedtime I lay rigid on top of the sheet.

The malaria pills kicked in and conjured up beasts equipped with buckteeth and snaking worm-tails. I rolled onto my side, still wearing my headlamp, feverishly clutching my pepper spray. I wanted to leave: cross the border and on to my Kilimanjaro climb. Surely the rats would not find me there.

I must have dozed off for I awoke once again to tiny fingernails scraping against the dinner I lacked the courage or sense of propriety to choke down. Rex had his head under the pillow. I switched on my lamp and stole away, this time armored with socks against the rat-testicle-defiled floor.

There they were, two of them only: a young female, and Big-Balls himself. He looked at me, curling his black lips back into a snarl. She worked on the lid, this time held down by a large leather-bound atlas. I drew forth my pepper spray. The rat turned away and resumed his examination of this new puzzle.

"Go away," I warned. It was only fair.

He turned back to me once more but did not withdraw.

I maced the rat. I don't know what I expected to happen. Perhaps that he would slink away into the night, his floozy girlfriend following. Perhaps that he would flip over to his back like the roaches, legs twitching for a minute as his brain misfired in the last throes of death.

But the rat let out a pit-bull-sized snarl and shook his face at me, his teeth glinting in the beam from my torch, his eyes point singularities sucking me in. I maced him again, but still he came towards me, spitting, frothing, nearly breathing fire. I let him back me up in an arc until I was only inches away from the girl rat who seemed to shake her head sadly at me as if she knew. What had I done? I swept the book off the top of the pot and grabbed the lid but its handle, holding it out in front of me to shield my naked legs from the steady advance of the rat.

I sprayed him again; he lunged. I deflected his attack with a side swipe of my shield, sending him flying across the room, and used the opportunity to dive back into the bed.

Rex spoke to me from beneath the pillow. "Let's get you a hotel for tomorrow night, okay?"

"Okay."