Mutinda

I had a rather busy weekend, and I will attempt to encapsulate it in two posts. The first post (this one) will be shorter, as it concerns itself with Friday, and the second post concerns itself with Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

So I arrived at school on Friday morning to see the kids lined up and ready to go on a trip. They packed large volumes of water, as well as a large pot of rice and a large pot of green beans, which is what the boarders would be eating. We packed all of this onto a "City hoppa" bus, packing five or six kids onto a bench where only three adults could fit. I sat on a bench intended for two with one girl in class five, but I held the orphanage baby, Davey on my lap. [Since the trip, the teachers have started telling me that I'm Davey's adoptive mama, and he seems to get the idea.] He sat for a small part of the ride, but when we gave up the window seat to Naomi, Davey decided he still wanted to look out the window, and he began standing on my knees. It was my job to put my hands on the seat in front of us so that he wouldn't fall to the left or right. I had little control over him falling forward, but I managed to get my hand between his forehead and the metal bar in front of him most of the many times that he fell forward.

The first stop we made was on the side of the road that descended into the Rift Valley. I'd seen mountains before, but usually in ranges. Mount Longonot rose up out of the flat plateau of the valley entirely on its own. It was one of the most incredible sights I have seen in my eighteen short years. Anyway, the highlight besides the view was when a local shopkeep came over to me while I was holding Davey and asked me if Davey was mine. I laughed and said no, but it was bittersweet.

The second stop was another random side of the road, this with nothing to distinguish it except that this was where we were going to eat a snack, because lunch -- although I didn't know this -- was going to be at three o'clock, at yet another random spot on the side of the road.

The third stop, though, brought us to what seemed like another random side of the road, but was actually the intended destination. We loaded off the bus and took a path at the side of the road toward Lake Naivasha. The path was completely surrounded by cacti, as if to enforce just how dry and dusty the path was. Davey sat on my shoulders, because if he had had to walk, he wouldn't have been able to breath; I barely could. The students were instructed by Pastor Regina, the head teacher, to hold either their sweaters or a handkerchief over their mouth and nose. Most of them emerged with a light coating of white dust on their hair, faces, clothing, and cutest of all, their eyelashes. It was like reverse mascara. After the dusty cactus pathway, which resembled a tunnel at some parts, we entered a small grove of beautiful acacia trees that opened onto an open plain: the beach. The grass was short on the plain as it was being mowed by herds of cows, goats, and sheep. I had hoped that I saw zebras, but no dice.

The lake was beautiful, although the kids were too afraid to touch the water. If I could, I'd post the picture that I took of the whole school of kids standing on the edge of the water just looking at it. Pastor Regina paid eight hundred shillings so that the kids could all take a brief boat ride around the lake. Everyone laughed as the first returning boat wailed toward the shore, literally wailing, as Davey was sitting in the middle, sobbing and screaming. I went around the lake in a boat with the teachers, and was sure to get good pictures of the herd of hippopotamuses sitting in the shallows near an island. I was also sure to get video of the kids walking across the field with the newest teacher, Teacher Lawrence, singing praise songs in English and Kiswahili.

The highlight of my day came on the ride home. Davey stood on my knees until we stopped for "lunch" at three. When we boarded the bus again, the boy that I was friends with first at the school, Mark Mutinda from Pre-Unit (preschool) decided that he was going to sit with me. For the first half hour of the two hour ride home, we goofed around, him making faces and me giving him wet willies and the like. Every few minutes, he would pull himself up on the seat in front of us, lean back and shout, "Brrrrrriiiaaaannnn!" to his friend (Brian, clearly), rolling his r's in that adorable way that he has, before giving Brian a huge grin that said, "I'm up here, you're not." Occasionally, this would be followed by a short argument in Kiswahili. But after he got sick of all that, he put his arms around my neck and rested his head on my collarbone. I wrapped my arms around his back and his legs, and he slept like that for the next hour and a half of bumpy road, waking sometimes when he got too jostled, only to shift his position and fall asleep again. I fell asleep a few times, resting my head on the top of his. But when I wasn't sleeping, I was thinking about how I'd be back at a country here in Africa in ten or fifteen years, and the little boy sleeping in my lap wouldn't just be the little boy who took a shine to me in my first week there. I imagined riding on a local bus, on terrible roads, holding onto my adopted son (or daughter, whatever happens), going back to a makeshift home in a cheap apartment or hotel room. [However, that country will not be Kenya, as the Kenyan adoption laws are very strict. To adopt here, you have to have lived here for five years, and if you adopt after that, you can't just move out of the country; you have to live here to the child stays Kenyan.]

When we arrived back at the school, I shook Mark awake, but he continued holding onto me, hoping to keep sleeping. He was thoroughly disoriented, but I had to rush off to make sure that I could pack and make it downtown before the bus I had a ticket for left for Uganda. As I walked back to the flat, I drew looks from the locals, mostly due to the state of my clothing. My previously clean denim shorts had acquired a layer of light brown, but their filth paled in comparison to my green shirt. It was covered in dirt (from having kids climb all over me all day), sweat (because it's not cool riding on an overfull bus with a sweaty little boy sleeping on your lap), and drool (which just entertained me as opposed to disgusting me). Not to mention the coating of dirt and dust I had acquired on my legs and feet from the lake and pathway. I find that people in third-world countries like Kenya pride themselves on not leaving the house without their clothing in immaculate condition. They couldn't understand what would possess a person to be as filthy as me. But for me, it was the best feeling in the world.