out of africa

Happy Fourth of July to everyone! I think this might be my first 4th outside of the country where the holiday isn't even mentioned. Missed the fireworks but our sunset on Lake Victoria was pretty spectacular last night.

I have officially been in Africa for over a month now and have finally gotten my hands on Karen Blixen's famous Out of Africa... I must admit, it's my third time in East Africa and I have never read the book. I have just started her fantastically descriptive story and I feel deeply connected to her words.

After my time in the Kaputiei village, at the foot of the Ngong hills set in the Great Rift Valley, on the valley opposite Blixen's home, I feel strong nostalgia for my stay in the Sho Sho's home...

"The geographical position and height of the land combined to create a landscape that had not its like in the world. There was no fat on it and no luxuriance anywhere; it was Africa distilled up through six thousand feet, like the strong and refined essence of the continent. The colours were dry and burnt, like the colours in pottery. The trees had a light delicate foliage, the structure of which was different from that of the trees in Europe; it did not grow in bows or cupolas, but in horizontal layers, and the formation gave to the tall solitary trees a likeness to the palms, or heroic and romantic air like full-rigged ships with their sails furled, and to the edge of a wood a strange appearance as if the whole wood were faintly vibrating." (14)

And after seeing the giraffes running across the plain on Crescent Island during my visit to Lake Naivasha, Kenya....

"I had time after time watched the progression across the plain of the giraffe, in their queer, imitable vegetative gracefulness, as if it were not a herd of animals but a family of rare, long-stemmed, speckled gigantic flowers slowly advancing." (Page 23) 

During the past month I have met many East African natives from the Masaai in Tanzania, the Kikuyu and Luo tribes in the village in Kaputiei, outside of Nairobi, Kenya, the children and grandmothers at the Nyanya Project Preschool center in the Kibera slums, Sho Sho's family in Mathare slums, outside of Nairobi,  the grandmothers and grandchildren from our projects in Mwanza, Tanzania and after today, all of the people who we encounter  in Kigali, Rwanda... the list goes on... I was especially struck by the following passage which I can strongly identify with. I often wonder, how are we born into the environments that we are born into? Who decided that I was supposed to be a Caucasian from Greenwich, CT and not a Masaai woman living a life of suppression in a Manyatta (cow dung hut) in Tanzania?

"It was not easy to get to know the Natives. They were quick of hearing and evanescent; if you frightened them they could withdraw into a world of their own, in a second, like the wild animals which at an abrupt movement from you are gone- simply are not there. Until you knew a native well, it was almost impossible to get a straight answer from him. To a direct question as to how many cows he had, he had an eluding reply "As many as I told you yesterday." It goes against the feelings of Europeans to be answered in such a manner, it very likely goes againist the feelings of the Natives to be questioned in this way. It we pressed or pursued them, to get an explanation of their behaviour out of them, they receded as long as they possibly could, and then they used a grotesque humurous fantasy to lead us on the wrong track." (25)

I have mentioned some of the thoughts, of the many, that are swirling around my over crowded head.
We are on the way to Kigali, Rwanda right now and can only imagine how this feeling will grow as we enter a society affected by one of the world's greatest genocides of our time.