I predict a riot

Kenya, Lake Naivasha and Masai Mara

We went to the Masai Mara and saw lions and elephants and giraffes and hippos and blah blah blah.  Who really wants to read about game driving? Well tough, I don’t want to write about it, watch a David Attenborough documentary.  Wild life trumps wildlife every time in my book so I shall tell you of how we escaped from a riot. 

I should clarify my terms somewhat.  When I say ‘riot’ I mean ‘protest going on riot’, but there’s never been a catchy song title of ‘I predict a protest going on riot’ (not even by the nice young men in Coldplay), so you’ll excuse the hyperbole. When I say ‘escape’ I mean ‘bribe an enterprising mob so we could gun the Land Cruiser across a swollen river bed, up the mud bank on the other side, and not get rocks hurled through our windows, dragged out of the truck, beaten and robbed’.  Given this context I’m comfortable with using the term ‘escape’ without guilt.

We were on our way back from the Masai Mara (big sky, majestic plains, flagrant violation of animal-vehicle distance rules by the local drivers) after the aforementioned game driving, halfway back to Lake Naivasha (hippos, camping), our base for this little jolly around south west Kenya.  As we drew close to Narok, a small town supporting the tourist industry along the only westbound thoroughfare to the Masai Mara, traffic was backing up, with coaches and trucks parked up by the side of the road.  One of the many advantages of being in a Land Cruiser is the ability to use the laissez faire attitude to lane control in Africa and as we weaved our way past the stationary vehicles and down into the centre of Narok we discovered that no, this wasn’t rush hour, this was a protest.  It transpired that the heavy rains had flooded the town the previous night, washing away buildings and (according to unsubstantiated reports) a baby.  This was a protest to the local council about the lack of adequate drainage, with a rhetoric of anti-corruption layered on top, obviously. 

I turned to James Bond’s harder sister Helen to check she was okay and could tell that she’d already mentally scribbled one word across her internal risk assessment form: whatever.  ‘I’m hungry’ she said.  So as she and our two delightful travelling companions, Fran and Anna, got busy behind the heavily tinted rear windows making an impromptu lunch, Tim (more of whom later) and I turned to each other in the front seats with raised eyebrows.  ‘The drunk guys will be about soon’ he said.  ‘Yep’, I replied, insightfully.  Clearly our own mental risk assessments forms had been similar.  Mine read: angry people + booze + ineffectual army presence x mzungus = trouble. I was surprised to see a troupe of young Italians in matching t-shirts dive out of nearby minivans and head directly into the throng, followed by several camera crews.  I figure they were teams on some kind of gap year yoof reality TV show.  Never saw them again.  I reckon that if you’re after some high-end shoulder mounted camera equipment then Narok market might be a good place to grab a bargain.  They might even throw in an only-slightly-soiled t-shirt. 

The army started to move in on a truck, only to be rocked into retreat by the protestors, whilst the riot police were sheltering in a nearby café with looks that said ‘we’re not paid enough to deal with this shit’.  Then the protestors started to burn the road. Yes, that’s right; they dug the road up, covered it in petrol and set it alight.  It was at this moment I realised that if I had to write a job spec for the ideal Africa overland tour leader it would read: Needed – a well-educated ex Royal Marine and biker gang member to lead overland trips through Africa, must be experienced in unpredictable conditions, erudite, diplomatic and great company. A quiet but indisputable ability to handle both oneself and booze preferred.  Tim fits this bill. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of dodge’ he said.

Weaving our way back up the hill and out of town we were flagged down by two chancers urgently pointing over to a field.  Through the crack in the lowered window they explained to Tim that we could cross the river bed and use the back road to pass the town.  Now, chaotic as these situations may be, there will always be someone smart enough to capitalise on the chaos and profit from providing a solution.  If you want to make gazillions, have no scruples, don’t mind living in a gated and heavily guarded compound, and have an ambivalent attitude to how your neck is connected to your head get into ‘reconstruction’.  Or if you live in a small African town that’s gridlocked by a protest and full of mzungus in 4x4s wanting to get home, get a group of your mates together, stand on either side of a swollen river, and charge an illicit toll for safe passage.  My immediate reaction to this shameless shake-down was ‘screw you’.  And that’s why I’d be dead if I lived in Africa, because my 0.01% reactions would simply not fly here.  Fortunately, Tim is not an idiot like me and immediately figured out that not paying the bribe on one side of the river would lead to the other side being blocked as we crossed, punctuated by a rock through the windscreen.  One needed only to see the tourist minivan fishtailing on the muddy bank, spewing black smoke as the clutch gradually burnt out, and with the faces of scared witless tourists peering helplessly out of the windows to know that getting stuck was no fun.  Tim’s reaction; ‘that driver’s a fucking knobhead’.  He and I get on. (Illustrative aside: Tim, Helen and I were sitting around a dinner table near another large group of overlanders from a different company.  Their tour leader, an utterly unlikeable Afrikaans woman, asked them to each introduce themselves and share with the group their favourite animal, which they dutifully and dully did.  I turned to Tim and said ‘just so you know, if you ever ask me to do that I will kill you’.  Tim’s reply: ‘if I ever ask you to do that I’ll kill myself’.  Like I say, we get on).  

Anyway, back to the great escape…Bribe paid, tourist minibus temporarily out of the way, and the diff lock on the Land Cruiser engaged  Tim revved the engine and gently suggested we might want to hold on to something.  It lasted no more than five seconds, it was relatively un-dramatic, it involved only one brief fishtail, and it was, without question, the most exciting thing I’ve done since stepping off the plane in Nairobi two months ago.  Three quarters of the way up the opposite bank I involuntarily let out a guttural ‘GO ON TIM!’   And go on he did. With just the tiniest trace of air as we popped over the upper rim of the river bank he gunned the truck away from the vigilante with the rock who hadn’t got the message that we’d already paid for safe passage, and pausing only to switch the diff lock off, we had indeed got the fuck out of Dodge. 

Read the news media version of events here.  I prefer my version.  They weren't there man, THEY WEREN'T THERE!

Opt in

Kenya, near Makuyu, 60km from Nairobi

Every person you ever meet, every situation you ever experience, every act of love, and every act of hate leaves its mark on you, like a tiny piece of mental DNA slotting onto a chromosome.  And you, in turn, always make small marks on others’ mental DNA.   So in my lighter moments I resolve to make it count, make an impact, make it matter – and if I can, to make it better than yesterday and even better tomorrow.  One must opt in to the web of the human condition because opting out is no real option. I figure that making a small difference means big differences will take care of themselves.

Reflecting back on our time working at Watoto Wa Baraka makes me wonder what small differences we made, however marginal and temporary they may be.  We collected water, we mucked in to make each day that tiny bit easier for the staff and the children, and we set them up with professional documentation that will, I hope, be read and acted upon by people who have the means to make a bigger difference than we did.  I wrote a blog post that explained how easy it is to make a child’s tomorrow better than their yesterday, and some of you responded by saying why the hell not and just doing it.  Thank you – it is you who has made a difference, and maybe reading the below will take you that little bit closer to understanding just how you’ve done that.

On our penultimate day before ending our time with Watoto Wa Baraka we bumped our way back to the orphanage in Mithini to visit a child called Joseph who lived nearby and whose situation had swirled around our minds for the two weeks since we met him and his seriously ill mother.  So applying the tried and tested logic of ‘if not now then when’ we decided that today was the day that their life would become just a little better.  Joseph is ten years old, he has three younger siblings, his father is long gone, and his mother is sick a lot.  When she is well enough she works as a casual labourer at local farms, earning less than one pound a day.  She told us she has typhoid, I think she has AIDS.  She had only just been discharged from hospital when we visited.  They live in their grandmother’s small home, scraping a living from the land, and often foregoing meals which has caused Joseph to have that cruel little joke of a pot belly indicating malnourishment. We learnt from the charming deputy headmistress at his school that his school lunches payment was in arrears so he was not guaranteed a lunch.  To fix this, and pay in advance for the whole next term cost us 90 Kenyan shillings – about 75p. Next!

We went a little bit nuts in the local general store spending every shilling we had on us on food and household provisions – never have I enjoyed food shopping so much.  Dumping the loot on their table his mother, too sick to stand, burst into tears.  Most days are shit for this woman, today not so much so.

With Ziporah translating we explained that we would be sponsoring Joseph, and by extension the whole family.  Each month Watoto Wa Baraka would use the sponsorship money to provide them with food and whatever assistance Joseph needed to continue his studies.  To a bashful looking Joseph we explained that sponsorship is contingent on him working hard at school, and in response to our question he explained that his ambition was to become a pilot.  Maybe he will achieve this ambition, and maybe he won’t.  Frankly I don’t care, I just don’t want him to die of malnutrition or leave school early to work in order to support his siblings.  It’s up to him now to break the cycle so that when he grows up his family have a better life than he had.

So with this last real, and most important, job done it was with a sense of sadness which I hadn’t expected that we said goodbye to the children and staff at Watoto Wa Baraka.  Heading to Nairobi to begin our six week overland adventure to Johannesburg, the children’s shouted goodbyes dimming as we drove out of the compound, I pulled out a small piece of paper on which James, one of the older orphans, had drawn a map of East Africa.  On it he had written ‘a drawing by James Irungu I am giving to Ian like a present’. 

And maybe that’s what I really want to say with this post – give someone something ‘like a present’, and do it today.  Say thank you, say sorry to heal a rift, tell someone you love that you love them. Opt in today.       



To the left - James and I sharing a high five. 'Playing with the boys' from Top Gun was on the radio in the background.
To the right - goodbye group shot.  Helen got widdled on in the excitement. Tee-hee!

< You may have noticed that the blog has smashed through the 1,000 page views mark so thank you to everyone for dropping by.  It would also appear, judging from the comments and referring URLs, that there are some new readers - very welcome, hope you're enjoying it. >



Mzungu tax

Kenya, near Makuyu, 60km from Nairobi

I’ve revealed rather a lot about myself in these blog postings, perhaps too much*. And yet it’s not just me who has revealed more than is perhaps wise.  You, the readers, have revealed what a sadistic lot you are.  My dashboard tells me that the top two most popular postings involve me experiencing either physical pain or discomfort. So it will come as no surprise that when I asked you whether or not I should vent my spleen the overwhelming result was to the positive (83% vs. 17%).  Good for you.  You weirdos.

So allow me to start this venting with a confession.  I’m an angry man trapped inside a calm man’s body.  There, I’ve said it.  I can now commence my 12 step recovery programme 12 whole steps, are you fucking kidding me, why don’t you walk down those 12 steps into my basement full of Get a Grip torture implements!?  I exaggerate somewhat, and the truth is that 99.99% of the time I’m fairly easy going, and my outer self really doesn’t stress the little things.  But sometimes the façade cracks and I lose it.  To be clear, anger doesn’t equate to physical violence in my case – I abhor physical violence, not least because I’m rubbish at it.  But I can, 0.01% of the time, be verbally violent.  My brother once confessed to me that he’d feared I’d had a rapid mental breakdown after he watched me scream obscenities through the car window of a man who’d just dropped another empty packet of cigarettes at my feet after I’d already told him that the floor wasn’t a bin.  In my darker moments I still regret not following the guy home and then returning in the dead of night with a week’s worth of rubbish to dump through his letterbox.  And a machine gun.

Last week was a 0.01% occasion.  It had been coming – I could feel myself getting more irritable, less patient, and it was sitting on a packed and steamy matatu that it happened.  Matatus are minivans that serve as the public transport in Kenya.  They seat 14 but regularly cram in 25 or more.  I’m sure some travellers enjoy the novel experience of being crammed into a rusting death-trap, figuring they are experiencing ‘the real thing’.  I’m not one of them.  The reason these matatus are crammed is because of police corruption, because the swathe of underpaid and unscrupulous traffic police will take a bribe before they prosecute a driver for overfilling his vehicle.  The impact is that ordinary Kenyans continue to experience discomfort at best, death at worst, and that there is a smaller competitive market in matatus, and therefore less competitive imperative to reduce prices.  Plus they stink.

Each matatu has a conductor who collects the fares and manoeuvres the passengers for maximum capacity.  And each conductor is a chancer.   They regularly try to scam the passengers by withholding change, claiming they received a lower denomination bill, or in the case of mzungus (white folk) straight overcharging.  On this 0.01% day he tried to overcharge me five times the fare.  Five times!  And I lost it.  To the amusement of the other passengers (for they hate the conductors too) I started shouting at him.  I recount here a slightly censored version: ‘what is this you mother-crusher, a mzungu tax? Yeh, I’m talking to you scally-wag.  I’m not paying a mzungu tax you flipping thief, give me my change or I’m gonna turn that smile upside down!’

I got my change.  We parted company with my suggestion that he go away and perform a biologically impossible act upon his person.  My anger at this one incident was probably unjustified.  But anger at corruption, which was really the root of my displeasure, is not unjustified.  Corruption in Kenya trickles down the many layers of government and has become normalised.  And as with all trickle down theories it is those on the bottom rung who feel its impact the most. 

Take this one, particularly insidious, example.  The Kenyan Ministry of Education have recently declared that all children in education must have a birth certificate before they can take their national exams.  Education in Kenya is a big deal, and Kenya has a high literacy rate as a result, and a massive youth population who are about to take this country into a new era of prosperity.  And yet the very poorest children who would benefit from education the most rarely have birth certificates.  Watoto Wa Baraka, the organisation we have been working for, are helping the children they sponsor to procure birth certificates from the local government.  To do this the local sub-chief has to write a letter to the government ministry confirming that the child does indeed exist and is a certain age.  And to do this incredibly simple, yet important, task the sub-chief expects a bribe.  Watato Wa Baraka always refuse and politely explain that they are helping the children in the sub-chief’s area, and maybe he could forego his personal interests on this occasion so that the child could be educated.

And all credit to them for keeping their cool and their principles.  I’m fairly certain that my reaction would be to not only suggest the sub-chief conduct the aforementioned impossible act upon his person, but I would help him do it with a broom handle.

And before you ask, you weirdos, no I won’t conduct this experiment myself and post pictures.    

* Note to current or future employers/clients – it’s all fiction**, I’m completely normal and really quite exceptional at my job. 

** OK, so it’s not fiction, but the rest of that sentence is true***.

*** Maybe.



A matatu.  Pronounced maa-ta-tu.  As opposed to a Yorkshireman's ballet outfit - ma -tutu.



<I’ve calmed down now.  I would like to make a special mention for those of you who have left comments – they really are appreciated so keep them coming.  And a double special mention to those of you who have become followers – you’re my favourites.  I’m on a soft promise from a literary agent that if I get 5,000 followers a publisher may take interest.  Only 4,990 to go!  Any ideas to send this blog viral are most welcome.  Whilst you’re thinking why not become a follower yourself? >

Crime and punishment

Kenya, near Makuyu, 60km from Nairobi

Having no children of my own puts me in a perfect position, I think, to pass judgement on how to raise children correctly and, more importantly, to objectively point out where parents are going wrong in their own efforts at parenting.  This constructive and impartial criticism is, I feel, a valuable service; particularly for new parents.  It is, after all, important to listen to outside views if you want to take parenting at all seriously.

I’m joking!  You can stop sharpening the rusks into daggers and emptying the rattle into an IED.  Dora the Explorer need not switch careers into Dora the Assassin.  Worry not, I’m the last person you’ll ever hear trotting out the limp cliché ‘everyone’s opinion is valid’, the motto on the flag of the fictional Nation of Cretin.  In the Nation of Cretin everyone’s opinion is valid, no matter how ill informed, illogical, or evidence free the opinion may be.  One result, among many, is that creationism is taught on the same science syllabus as evolution. It’s a good job the Nation of Cretin is virtually every nation on earth a fictional place, otherwise I fear I might start receiving death threats from its citizens – the cretinites.  Having said that, I am tempted to post that first paragraph onto Mumsnet, perhaps supplemented with a five point parenting plan. I think receiving a death threat in crayon and alphabet spaghetti would be rather fun.

So, having established my non-credentials in the raising of children I’d still like to share with you what, in my non-credible opinion, is the most effective (and funniest) piece of child discipline I’ve ever seen.  Little Daniel is five years old, and he has a sweet tooth. That’s him in the picture below, cute huh? He was caught with a pocket full of sugar that he’d pilfered from the kitchen, and was sitting in a dark corner licking it off his fingers.  I thought this, in itself, was pretty funny, but the punishment he received from Zach (Orphanage Manager whom Helen childishly, although accurately, keeps accusing me of having a bro-mance with), was even funnier.  Little Daniel was forced to wear a sign around his neck  and carry a cup of sugar around the compound before having to stand on the stage in the dining room with a torch played onto the sign.  He was embarrassed, he was teary, and he was ridiculed by his peers.  He’ll get over all these things.  He stole - that’s bad news even if it was just sugar.  Hopefully he won’t do it again, and therefore the punishment fitted the crime.  Just my opinion.

The sign reads: This is my story… My name is Daniel.  I love sweet things and I am a thief.  Like today I stole sugar (also maize and beans) in the kitchen.  You better watch out, I might come after you. 

<We have a winner! From the veritable deluge of two whole entries for the ‘dunny debate’ in a previous post it is after much careful consideration that the plaudits go to Matt, despite strong competition from Rhi.  I urge you to read both comments, but it was Matt’s invention of new African proverbs that snaffled him first place.  Matt (and I think I know which Matt this is) – you are a scholar and a gentleman, and we miss you and R very much. By way of a prize here is a proverb just for you:  Sometimes the gloss of friendship presents itself as Matt. >     

Maji Imeisha. Water – all gone!

Kenya, near Mithini, 70km from Nairobi

Francis doing his best Comic Relief pose. 
He's not sad, he's just a bit lazy and hates collecting water

The rooster crows, the randy goat does his best Barry White impression, the puppies whine, the children run about making children noise, and I blearily wonder if Slimer will ever piss off and stop sticking my mouth to the pillow with ectoplasm each night.  It’s 6.30am and morning broke about half an hour ago.  My bed seems to have sagged another couple of inches during the night.  It’s time to get up.  It’s time to start the daily routine. 

 

Guilt propels me out of bed (another example of how you can’t leave your self behind). The older children have already left for school, and Ziporah – the eternally patient and caring house matron – has been up since 5am doing a selection of the million tiny jobs that make this place function.  Ciggie for me, porridge for the children (made out of millet, crimson red, minging) before they wander off to school repeating back to us ‘good bye children’.  And then there really is no more avoiding it – water collection time.

What’s your reaction when a colleague says they’ve just been for a workout at the gym before work?  Mine is ‘oh, wow, felt that burn huh’? before disappearing as quickly as possible in the assured knowledge that I have just escaped from a PROPERLY MENTAL person.  Well, I’m that properly mental person now.  Except my dumbbells are 25 litre jerry cans, my step machine is a hill, and my water fountain is a small water hole at the bottom of said hill.  

Bleary eyed we bump the wheelbarrow and jerry cans down the hill, 250 metres.  Yeh, well it feels long on the way back.  At the hole the water is scooped into the jerry cans, ideally from my favourite prostrate position laying over a rock, like the bastard lovechild between a beaver and a seal.  It’s then loaded onto a wheelbarrow and pushed back up the hill.  We do this two or three times, and tend to take it in turns for who pushes the wheelbarrow and who pulls it using a rope.  It was this activity that caused a domestic one day (hilarious I thought, not so much she thought) when I decided, as ‘pusher’, to act out the role of an ex-military personal trainer.  This involved shouting to the ‘puller’ (my wife, and a nickname I hope is limited to this activity) such encouragement as ‘you’re pathetic, that’s not the wall you’ve hit, the wall thinks you’re a joke! and ‘you don’t know what pain feels like, pain is what happens if you don’t pull harder’!   The flames were hardly doused when, as she dropped the rope halfway up the hill and stomped off back to the compound, I shouted out (still in character I’m keen to add) ‘yeh, well cry me a river, build me a bridge, and GET OVER IT’!   

Fortunately, the drudgery of this water collection will soon be a thing of the past as an American based organisation, Well Aware, have agreed to create a bore hole, an act that will transform life at the orphanage, and also support the local community.  And when I say local community, I mean local women, for whom a patriarchal tradition dictates that they are responsible for collecting water and then carrying it on their back, with a strap over their forehead.  Women drive this small part of the world, but have none of the power that should accompany their hard work.  It’s only feckless, useless layabout men you see slumped under trees, and it is only they that breathe their stinking alcohol breath over you and stare with their stoned eyes as they harass for a few shillings ‘for their children’.  I swiftly added the word ‘toke’ to my small Swahili collection as when ‘no’ doesn’t work, ‘piss off’ normally does.

Whilst we are on the subject of inspirational womanhood (that’s right sisters, we’re doin’ it for ourselves!) the founder of Well Aware, Sarah, visited the new orphanage with her boyfriend, Bradley, on a whistle-stop tour of Kenya to assess potential projects.  A youthful looking 36 year old from Austin, Texas, she gave up her successful law career to start Well Aware figuring, I suppose, that water trumped writs, that the ground beat the gavel.  She told me about a fantastic fundraising activity they run, the name of which I’ve completely forgotten so I’ll call it the ‘7 day stinkathon’, that requires participants to not shower until they have raised $1,000.  A great idea, and one which some of the commuters on my old tube journey seemed to have embraced fully. 

Her charitable spirit didn’t end with providing a well – on the morning of their departure Sarah handed us a bag full of treats such as porridge and, joy of joys, gen-u-ine Texan beef jerky, explaining that as their trip was nearly at an end they figured we needed it more than them.  Well, on the sight of the jerky I’m not proud to say that I lost my British reserve, and gave Sarah an impromptu, and no doubt fragrant, hug.  It was clearly her powers of lawyerly discretion that prevented her from asking if I could become the ‘after’ example for participants in the 7 day stinkathon, a warning against raising the money too slowly.

The well they are planning to install really can’t come too quickly.  Daubed in chalk against the limestone walls of the watering hole is the legend maji imeisha, the Kikuyu for no more water, written by some wag as a darkly humorous comment on the difficulties of the dry seasons.  Not only will it provide the orphanage and the community with a steady supply of clean water, but it will also reduce the number of water collection domestic disputes.  Now, FEEL THE BURN, MAGGOT!

<I've had a couple of people tell me they couldn't leave comments. If you're stuck try using this help page from Google. >

I don’t believe in anything

Kenya, near Mithini, 70km from Nairobi

I’ve not been sleeping well recently.  To those of you who know me this will come as no surprise given that I exhibit five out of the six scientifically recognised sleep disorders.  Namely: sleep anger, sleep fear, sleep anxiety, sleep aggression, sleep copulation, and sleep eating.   It’s only the last – sleep eating – that I have escaped from, leaving no wiggle room for flabby excuses.  This fine physique is entirely of my own, fully sentient, making although I can’t categorically deny ever having done the truffle shuffle during the night. 

 

These sleep disorders generally manifest themselves in sleep walking and talking.  Well, except one, which I don’t think even the most optimistic reconstructive physio and speech therapists could describe as the acts of walking or talking.  More like grunting and flailing. These night time shenanigans are, I think, a symptom of my brain which just never stops whirring. This is not an indicator of useful or productive brain activity, oh no, knocking around instead in my cranium is the most random, illogical, and ultimately pointless debating chamber ever called into session. 

As a result, relaxation of the spa brochure description is elusive to me, premised as it is on the assumption that the body and the mind take a break.  I feel more wound up after having a massage than before.  Sometimes there’s a jolly good reason for this (a story for a later, adults only, posting), but mostly it’s just that an hour lying flat on my front with nothing to do but think is hard work.  So when I go to bed it’s often as if the day is continuing, but with the daytime constraints of society, manners, and logic removed. Going to bed drunk is the same but to the power of 50.  There’s a top five countdown at the foot of the post that reveals, somewhat embarrassingly, that my nocturnal activities are probably more interesting than my waking moments.

Anyway, this preamble is purely to provide some context as to why I sat bolt upright in bed last night and declared to myself, out loud, ‘I don’t believe in anything’.   It’s rare that I remember my night time activities, but last night I remember having some crazy fever dreams that revolved around things disappearing, forever. Apocalyptic dreams are my assigned feverish state, and I believe that everyone has a recurring theme that dominates their mind when a fever takes hold. Rather than fluffy bunny rabbits and kittens mine is the apocalypse, ‘dem da breaks I suppose.  What I remember from last night is feeling terrified but strangely calm, even liberated. The feeling was, I imagine, the one you’d get after you accepted that yes, this asteroid is indeed heading towards earth, and no, Bruce Willis isn’t really a drilling expert, and no again, Will Smith can’t take his place instead, this is an asteroid not a group of aliens, otherwise he’d be perfect.  It was this mental cocktail, I think, that eventually transmogrified into the declaration that ‘I don’t believe in anything’. 

Ordinarily I dismiss random outpourings from my subconscious (If I didn’t I’d be in prison for violently but methodically killing the next person who didn’t say thank you when I held a door open for them).  But this time I’ve spent all day thinking about it, and what with it being a Sunday, and with me finally drawing a line in the sand and politely refusing to attend church with the children, it seems right to address the idea of belief.  It’s a bit like string theory this one, tricky subject.

So I got to thinking – what really are the big things one can believe in? What are the anchors against the choppy waters of chaos?  What can one cling on to that says ‘that’s me’, ‘that’s my identity, right there, with those folk (no, not them, they’re the Other folk)’? And when you limit it to the ‘big things’ only there’s only a couple, I think, worth considering: there’s religion obviously, and then there is its secular twin - political ideology. To be clear - I’m not talking about principles or ideals, but about belief – about something that one takes a Kierkegaardian leap of faith into, something that provides the basic skeleton of what it means to be ‘you’, and not ‘them’.  I have principles and I have ideals, and I try to structure my life in a way that more or less adheres to them, but do I actually believe in anything greater, or more supra or super natural than these? I don’t think I do.

Religious belief is out for me. Whilst it sometimes confuses me, sometimes terrifies me, sometimes angers me, and always fascinates me, I very cogently chose to take the leap of faith in the opposite direction, into atheism.  In some ways I’m jealous of those with religious belief – they have something that explains the often inexplicable human condition and a daily playbook for dealing with it, finding solace and fortitude in times of strife. And they have a community who help define who they are, and whether implicitly or explicitly, aggressively or peacefully, this definition sets boundaries by defining who the ‘other’ is – a ‘do you wanna be in my gang’ mentality that protects its own. 

Right here, in this rural isolated spot in Kenya religious belief sits as the backbone behind acts of kindness towards children who need kindness in their life.  It inspires, and it guides, and it comforts – it makes life bearable when it is hard, and joyous when it is not.  Take this random, but illuminating, example: the bathing and latrine rooms at the orphanage adjoin each other in a single tin structure and one day it happened that they were both occupied simultaneously – the latrine by me, the bathing room by the deeply religious (and utterly selfless and lovely) Ziporah.  Whilst I was throwing curses at the universe for my aforementioned lack of flexibility and temperamental constitution, she was belting out Amazing Grace.  An alien surveying the scene would undoubtedly conclude that it was Ziporah they would abduct as it was she who demonstrates the qualities their planet needed (unless they were from the Planet of the Apes in which case I’d be returned as the new king).  It is she who actively chooses joy over despondency in her own life. Their judgement would be absolutely right, of course, and off she’d go, leaving me to also clear up the goddamn marks from the tractor beam.

 

And yet despite all this, despite the often admirable and categorically ‘good’ approach to life a religious belief can engender, to me none of these things actually require religious belief – I don’t believe in God, and nor do I have any need to invent him.  I can write my own playbook, thank you very much, and guess what – half of what’s in there is a copy and paste from yours, the common sense and decency bits.  What it doesn’t have is a creed that spawns contradiction and conflict, that removes the need to think independently, and that at its core has, quite frankly, absolutely no basis in reality. I don’t believe in pixies or dragons either, even if lots of different people have written lots of different books about them, and I still wouldn’t believe in them if said books were compiled into an anthology over the next few hundred years.

Similarly, political ideology is a non-starter. We’ve already dealt with religious belief, so those political ideologies that are grounded in a religious conviction are off the agenda for me (aided in no small way by the fact that this ginger and brown tiger stripe beard I’ve been sporting looks, well, daft and would still look daft even if it was demanded by some religio-politic dogma).  Equally, the other ‘isms’ – Marxism, communism, socialism et al hold no real appeal for me, dogged as they are with the kind of fundamental contradictions that has consigned them permanently to the trash can of political history. Man may have been born free and equal, but nobody said he wanted to stay equal.  And whilst democracy may be used to occasionally justify wrong-headed wars, it is still the lesser of many evils, recognising as it does the fundamental conflict at the heart of the human condition, and providing a mechanism to mediate this conflict.  But it is just that – a mechanism – not an ideology.  So whilst I can admire democracy, and act democratically, I can’t really claim to have any fundamental belief in it.

So, where does this leave me? No beliefs, no stability, no anchor, no pre-written narrative for my life. Scary? Nihilistic? No, I don’t think so.  Believe it or not, it sounds absolutely bloody marvellous to me.

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Yeh, I know, that was a bit heavy. To lighten the mood here’s the top five run down of my night time adventures, taken from the top 40 (winks), the head-board 100, Top of the Cots.  

5. Exit at 35,000 feet: At 12 I slept walked on a flight from the UK to Johannesburg attempting, twice, to open the door ‘so I could get out’.  Much to the relief of the other passengers, I was intercepted by a kindly air hostess.

4. Sshh, spiders: a few years ago I awoke my then girlfriend by attempting to set light to our duvet using a zippo lighter, muttering ‘sshh, need to kill the spiders’.  She still married me, the fool, although marital relations are more difficult wearing a full fire-resistant body suit.

3. Help! I’m trapped in a quarry! My teenage years were littered with sleepovers that took a disturbing nocturnal turn, not least the time I fell down a set of steep stairs from an attic room, getting wedged between the bottom stair and the door, dreaming I’d slipped into a quarry and screaming out for help. Awoken by my screams my friend’s mother opened the door, causing me to fall out, foetal like, onto the landing. I’m not quite sure how I explained that one, but still have the scar to prove it, and was later offered my first proper job by this wonderful, and understanding, woman.

2. You know Alex, in the bedroom upstairs, he just got out of prison, for murder!  Ah, young love.  Birmingham University, 1999, five boys sharing a house, the first night my new girlfriend agreed to sleep over (now my wife, she never learns), slumbering peacefully in the dead of night.  That is until I sat bolt upright in bed, eyes open, and turned to her to urgently utter the words above.  Before falling straight back to sleep.  It took two weeks and, in retrospect, a strange dynamic between my girlfriend and one of my housemates, before she declared that she simply couldn’t believe that he could do such a thing.  I thought she was properly mental, and was edging towards the door, until she explained the provenance of the rumour.  ‘Ah’ I replied, ‘there’s something you probably need to know…’

1. Tie a knot in it or something! A simple tale. Me sharing a room during school holidays with my two female cousins, aged 7,8 and 9 respectively.  I pissed on my cousin’s face, mistaking it for a urinal.  Between hysterical laughter my auntie managed to suggest the above piece of advice to my mother as she battled to gain control, a la Charlie Chaplin and the fire hose.

An idiot’s guide to packing shopping




Diagrammatic Step-by-step guide

 

Kenya, near Mithini, 70km from Nairobi, 2cm below kneecap, just to the right of femoral artery

Follow these simple steps, and the diagram provided, and you too could be the proud bearer of a scar on the back of your knee cap:

1. Purchase 6 inch steel knife from local market
2. Hastily throw into hessian sack with several kilograms of potatoes as your matatu (minibus) turns up
3. Retrieve hessian sack from matatu’s roof at completion of journey
4. Pick up heavy sack in a backwards swinging motion
5. Allow protruding knife blade to swing into the back of your leg
6. Turn white, bleed a lot
7. Apply gauze and duct tape, be officially banned by WatotoWa Baraka management from using knifes in future

If you only read one post, make it this one

Kenya, near Mithini, 70km from Nairobi

I’m only going to do this once, I promise.  Please don’t stop reading (there’s a secret at the end of the post to keep you interested).

And YES, good people, this is an INTERACTIVE activity. Whoop whoop! Just thank your lucky stars I don’t have access to a flip-chart and post-it notes.

First things first, I’d like you to fetch a pencil and piece of paper.  Better still, grab a calculator.  Then I’d like you to use the following calculation to work out roughly the amount of time it takes you to earn $25 USD (US Dollars) per month:

1. monthly salary divided by 30 days = average daily salary
2. Divided by 8 = average hourly salary
3. For those with good jobs (i.e. most of you) – Divided by 60 = average salary per minute
4. Convert the amount you have into $USD
5. Multiply this figure until you reach $25 USD
6. The number of times you multiplied = the number of minutes it takes you to earn $25 USD per month

I would wager that for many of you it takes less time to earn $25 than you spend messing about on the internet each day.  For those of you who couldn’t find a calculator, that’s OK, just keep your receipt for the next round of drinks you buy, or next shop you do, or next taxi you take, and figure out how many times you need to do this to reach $25.

Why $25 Ian? What’s the significance, I hear your breathily pant. Well, it’s the cost of my recent gonorrhea test monthly sponsorship for a child in rural Kenya who has nothing, but who still goes to school in an effort to improve their lot.  It can be donated for as long or as short a period as you want.  It goes to an individual child, who you will be introduced to electronically, who you can write to, and who will write back.  Hell, you can come and visit them if you want, on the way to Safari, or the Maldives, or Cape Town.

It. Will. Change.Their.Lives.

 

Bit of a change of tone, what? Where are the toilet gags?  Not this time amigos, this time I’m not messing about.  

Do it now, right now, this very moment. Send an email to Geoffrey Ndungu (Founder of Watoto Wa Baraka) indicating your interest.  In fact, to save you the bother for this first step, just copy and paste the text below (content at your discretion):

*************************************

To: info@volun​teerafrican​orphanage.o​rg

Subject: Registration of interest – child sponsorship

Dear Geoffrey,

I am friends of Ian and Helen Thistlewood.  They have told us about the great work you do through their frankly amazing blog. I wish to register my interest in sponsoring a child, and would like to understand what the next steps may be.

Kind regards,

A good person

*************************************

Right, that’s it, stop reading, send the email.

Postscript: Oh, I forgot, I promised a secret didn’t I?  OK, here we go, hushed tones.  There was this little girl called DarmarisWayua. You will never believe what she did! Seriously, this is Heat magazine fodder!  She accidently burnt down the tiny wood and thatch shack she shared with her six siblings after their father died, and their mother abandoned them.  Now their 15 year old eldest sister has quit school so she can act as a mother.  Scandalous huh?! (she might even have cellulite if viewed through a telescopic photo lens!). Now this is the best bit, but you must promise not to tell anyone.  Promise? Good.  So, they all squat on a mountainside, all seven children, the youngest only three years old, all malnourished, surviving off scraps the local community can throw their way, prey to child prostitution.  I know, wild! Promise you won’t tell? Promise?

I heard this with my own ears, I met this little girl, and her twin sister, and her older sister.  It’s not a secret any more. She, and many more, need help.  This organisation helps them, I’ve seen them do it. I’m not joking about.  Send that email now.



Darmaris - she's 9, believe it or not



Normal service resumes next time.  PARP!

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Great views, comfortable accommodation, room for pets, your new home awaits!

Kenya, near Mithini, 70km from Nairobi

I often wander around the different buildings on the small orphanage compound thinking that my friends at IKEA would have an absolute field day here.  Although they don’t, to my knowledge, have a ‘shack chic’ range currently, their approach to living in small spaces and smart storage solutions would transform this place.  I can see it now: a troupe of planners and interior designers scoping the place and visualising its transformation, logistics specialists poring over infrastructure and transport questions, and the creative team par excellence capturing in film and print the whole story.  For the people we are currently living with, that would really create a better everyday life.

Having said this, what the buildings lack in style, they do, at a basic level, make up for in function. There’s a kitchen with an open fire pit for cooking, four bedrooms, a dining room, a toilet/shower block, and a cow shed.  The kitchen and bedrooms are made out of flattened steel drums, and painted to remove the shanty town feeling.  Or as my hot-shot realtor Uncle Peter (THE man for property in Vancouver.FACT.) would say: WOW! Stunning mountain views, spacious and pretty lot, traditional and sympathetically constructed accommodation, with an open plan kitchen, and parking for eight cows, this property has to be seen to be believed. Don’t miss out!

Casa Thistlewood is one of the nine ft square rooms, furnished with a metal bunk bed (snuggle time is a strictlyself-imposed off limits activity when in residence – this is not where the magic happens), a table, and a dusty floor.  True to form, we have managed to make it a mess, although we have both broken the habit of leaving clothing and wet towels on the aforementioned dusty floor, hanging them instead from nails in the wood joists, and a makeshift clothes line. 

 

The room also serves as our open plan shower room. Every few days, tail wagging, I de-robe to be scrubbed down by my quip-making wife using a bowl of water, a plastic bottle, and a shower puff which I have since been banned from using on the justification that ‘this thing stinks after you use it, it’s mine, my sister gave it to ME, I keep finding hair in it’.  On this subject, the kids are fascinated with my excess of body hair, stroking my arms far more tenderly than they do the dogs, and prompting Jecinta (9) to ask Zach (orphanage Manager, 34) if he would get hair like me when he got older.  He laughed, and gently explained that no, he thought not, but his eyes were saying ‘I bloody well hope not, wookies are endangered around here’.  Recently after my weekly scrub down Helen’s been wobbling my ever-decreasing love handles asking ‘where has my Husband gone’? before tickling my belly until my left leg shakes.  After that it’s a vigorous shake, a Bonio, and a frolic in the fields.

On the subject of dogs, real ones this time, we’re now the proud sponsors of two puppies which we purchased for our new friend, the night guard Albert. Albert is a funny bloke. An ex-soldier I think, although I couldn’t get a straight answer from him other than ‘you weren’t there man, you weren’t there’!  He and I have built up a friendship based on mutual inquisitiveness.  And smoking*. He tells me about Kenyan life, I tell him about life in the UK (‘so let me get this straight Ian, sometimes a woman goes to work and a man stays at home as a “house husband”. Tee-hee-hee, that wouldn’t happen in Kenya’.)  I love his blunt line of questioning, and how quick he is to laugh.  On her first day the new volunteer, the charming and erudite Stephanie from California, was asked straight out by Albert: ‘so, you’re 30 and not married? Does that not worry you’? Bridget Stephanie took it in very good grace, realising from the small smirk on Albert’s face that he was purposefully clashing two cultures, and deftly rejected the suggestion that his brother was available, and also 30 (despite me stepping into a negotiator role and pushing the dowry up from four cows to eight cows and a goat). 

 

Anyway, back to the dogs. Volunteers had previously bought a dog for Albert (it continues to live at the other orphanage), naming it ooh aren’t we right-on smartasses Kofi Annan. We named the boy WotWot.  I know which one I’d find funnier hearing a Crufts announcer say.  The girl puppy was named Simba by the children -the Swahili for ‘lion’ Disney fans, and the source of a still unresolved childhood trauma for my younger brother – ‘why did Simba’s father have to die, WHY’?!

I would pay to see the moment in which my successful younger brother is about to close a deal and ‘circle of life’ comes drifting out of the radio, reducing him into a snotty and tearful mess, expensive tie used as hankie, head in hands sobbing, and explaining to his bemused client that ‘I just hasn’t got over the Lion King yet, OK pal, OK? Just let me bloody grieve’.  And if you’re reading this bruv, please can we still come to stay? Pretty please? I’ll buy you some therapy vouchers and burn all local copies of Bambi to prevent future problems.  I’ll even try to avenge Simba’s father’s death on the way down to you.

So, as you can hopefully tell, this isn’t such a bad place to live.  Book your viewing TODAY!

* Yes, I know this is a stupid, unhealthy, and socially inconsiderate habit, and I’m not proud of it, but the secret that all smokers know is that there is no higher quality face time than the five minutes of shared nicotine worship.  I have solved an unrepresentatively high percentage of professional disagreements and issues, and built stronger relationships, over a cigarette than I have done behind a desk or across a meeting table.  And for those singletons out there, I think smirting is more than just a neat phrase, I think it’s the new match.com. 

The toilet: a comparative study

Kenya, near Mithini, 70km from Nairobi

I really don’t want my epitaph to read ‘He died as he lived. Full of shit’.  I was thinking this as I squatted over the latrine hole, hanging on for dear life to the walls of the tin shack that serves as the communal toilet.  It’s not the stench that bothers me, nor is it the flies, nor is it the general idea, it’s the sheer logistics.  I’m just not designed for this, if you’ll excuse the pun, shit. At 6 foot 4 inches, with the flexibility of a lump of granite, and an aim that even the American Army would balk at, this is not friendly fire. Now, in the spirit of diplomacy and cultural sensitivity I’ve given some thought to the relative merits of the squat versus the bowl method of expulsion, but can now categorically conclude that the latter triumphs, for the following reasons:

• Unless you sit back to front you can’t miss when using a bowl. If you do sit back to front then, frankly, you have bigger problems, and should probably lay off the booze
• The bowl method is more politically correct, providing as it does a male and female option (lid up or down)
• It is far easier to read a paper/sit on a conference call (ideally on mute)/play Angry Birds when using a bowl
• The Japanese have never invented a squat latrine that, at the press of a button, extends a small arm from under the seat rim that, somewhat erotically, shoots a stream of lukewarm water up your backside
• It is not possible to topple face first off a bowl, landing in the dust with your pants around your ankles, to the startled bemusement of an innocent orphan (hypothetically, of course)

So, there you have it, I do believe that the contentious debate of squat vs bowl can now be closed.  Now, if you don’t mind, I have a paper to finish.

****************

Competition time! In the interests of a healthy and open debate I’m inviting submissions that argue for or against the motion above, namely ‘this house believes the bowl is the better method of expulsion than the squat’. Leave your entries in the comments section below, or by emailing me, marking them 'dunny debate'. The best entries will be published in a future post, and the overall winner will be the recipient of a special prize!* Clearly, judging criteria will be largely based on what I find funny, so please no complex explanations of how the squat method is the holistic extension of how the intestines blah blah blah.  Yes, that means you Gillian McKeith.

*The competition organisers would like to point out that there is no special prize.

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The kids are alright

Kenya, near Mithini, 70km from Nairobi

Kenyan 4th XI.  Spot the odd one out.

There are nine children who currently live at the orphanage, seven of whom are orphans from the local area, and two of whom (Alice and Stephen) are the children of the night guard, Albert, a board and lodgings deal that’s part of his employment contract.  There are three sibling pairings (Peter and Francis, Jecinta and Bonifus, Esther and Joseph) and Josphat (nicknamed ‘nmm nmm nmm’ by Helen on account of the noise he makes when eating mangoes).    They range in ages from three to fourteen, and all attend a local school called St. Teresa’s.

You may be expecting me now to cut to the ‘serious VT’, with a backing track by Adele or Coldplay, telling you their tragic stories, and urging you to pick up the phone NOW.  Well, their stories are tragic, but that was their past, and their future looks brighter, and what strikes me most is not that they are orphans, but that they are just normal kids. They’re sweet and they giggle, they love singing, sometimes they fight, they always make a mess, and they break stuff. They smile much more than they frown. That’s a cause for celebration, and a ringing endorsement for Watoto Wa Baraka in my book.  And though I realise this isn’t the done thing, I do have a favourite – 4 year old Bonifus, who does indeed have a bonny face.  A stocky little fella who reminds me of my nephew Ben, he has the following charming characteristics:

• He’s an eating machine. Bonifus really does fill the Dickensian orphan stereotype of ‘please sir, can I have some more’?  He’d make a terrible dinner party guest as for Bonifus dinnertime is not about socialising, about discussing house prices, and about pretending to have an opinion on wine beyond ‘nice body, good on the nose, will get me pissed enough to throw my keys in the bowl’.  Dinnertime for Bonifus is about eating.  If he’s too tired to lift his spoon, he just gets his sister to do it for him, silently masticating.  Then he falls asleep at the dinner table whilst the other kids are singing their post-dinner songs. I envy him.
• His monkey impression is ‘hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw’ suggesting to me that he has been part of a social experiment that tests what would happen if every time you showed a child a monkey you told them it was a donkey.
• He has just one word of English – ‘catch’, and follows me around with a tennis ball repeating it until we play.  Next on the curriculum are ‘howzat’ and the song ‘he swings to the left, he swings to the right, Mitchell Johnson’s bowling is shite’ 

Bonifus - on the far left. Anticipating food.

And so as the heading suggests, these kids really are alright.  That wasn’t always the case, but it is now. And we’re just here to lend a hand wherever we can to ensure that their future is more important than their past.  I realise that sounds sanctimonious so I’ll counterbalance it with the sharpest quip I’ve ever heard from a hawker, in the nearest large town, Thika.  Helen was walking along holding hands with one of the orphans, nine year old Jecinta, when the hawker shouted out ‘hey, Angelina Jolie, how’s California’?  Watch out Jon Stewart.

*******************************************

Special feature! Inappropriate t-shirt of the week. 

I couldn’t help but have a little ironic chuckle to myself when I saw one of the clothing donations proudly sported by the staff and the children – a job lot of black t-shirts bearing the logo ‘Slim Pledge’.  Seems to be some type of American based weight loss initiative, with curiously Masonic undertones.  In a continent infamous for distressing images of famine and malnourishment I’m pretty certain the dictates of the ‘Slim Pledge’ initiative would be laughed all the way up the Nile. A humourous (albeit darkly) rather than insensitive donation I think.

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