Ebony Mask / Ebony Gold: Ebony Mask

By Wallace B. Collins

Years ago, I met a friend in London I had not seen in many years. He posed a very interesting question to me. He wanted me to give him a statement on Jomo Kenyatta, who was then incarcerated as the leader of the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya. Though I did not have an answer for my friend, I kept his question in my mind. Then, years later, my wife and I decided to visit Kenya on Safari with friends, which I recount here, vividly in this book.
They were like two birds set free, hoop the coop, flew away from their prison abode, caged for decades, until Februrary 1990, on that sunny day in Capetown when I saw Nelson Mandella, live on CNN Television with his wife Winnie Mandela. They strolled through the gates of pollsmore Prison, away from 37 years of incarceration by the Apartheid Regime. That experience intrigued me enough that my wife and I decided, with a group of friends, to visit South Africa and see what would happen to us as a group of African Americans; it was while there that I touched yellow, Ebony Gold, as detailed in my book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 22, 2003
• ISBN: 9781450247450

Wallace B. Collins

Wallace Collins is the author of eleven books and now has returned to playwriting. Born in Kingston Jamaica, he lived in London and Toronto, before moving to New York, where he is a graduate of Queens College.

Book preview

Table Talk 

"People! Here we are in Kenya, sitting around this tastefully decorated table, ready to dine on this splendid dinner The Nairobi International Hotel and its staff prepared for us. The Travel Club appreciates you joining us on this momentous occasion to mark the end of our eye opening tour of Kenya. The experiences we shared during the past weeks erased any doubts in anyone’s mind that this belated return to Africa, our ancestral home, is not a tremendous success. We have met, and we have interacted with the proud people that are Kenyans, whose apparent unity elicits a feeling of pride in us African Americans as we observe this Kenya nation in progress.

"The goodwill Kenyans showed us, highlights their sincerity in welcoming us. They reassured us that we belong; it reinforced our enthusiasm of coming home to mother Africa to see, experience and to relax, while having a good time in Kenya. We recognized Victor for overseeing the planning for our travel venture, helped by Cynthia, who records our meetings. Wilma manages The Travel Club finances, while Jesse coordinates our tours, and has proven how invaluable he is to this tour. Regardless, even Jesse needs an able helper as Sibyl. Yours truly, Stanley’s role in The Travel Club is fluid. I try to keep everyone informed, as much as I can, and venture to make everything goes well for those in our group who will listen, advisably, to what I have to say on this tour.

You’ve told us how much you enjoyed the tour, and it made club members treasure this tour even more. You’ve commented on how good the food is! Our hotel accommodation surprised everyone with its high quality service. Our transportation around Nairobi is excellent, with our bus drivers doubling as tour guides. They were kind, considerate and helpful in making our speedy drive from the airport culturally enlightening, and later driving us through Nairobi and Mombasa, winding their Toyota bus through the savannah’s, high grass and the seeming jungles in the distance beckoning to us. They saved our skins from marauding Lions on the Savannah plain after our tour bus broke down in the middle of the never-never jungle, savannah, land; it happened in the late African afternoon as the sun was going down and night suddenly descended, with us sitting in the Toyota mini van looking scared stiff. We thank them then for saving our hides, but just as important, we thank you, our clients for remaining optimistic, all the way through, by sticking with us long enough for us to end in this gracious room, ready to eat this fine dinner. All this is in appreciation of your support, particularly to you who traveled with us before, just as it is for those who are traveling with us for the first time. Now, we are all an integral part of The Travel Club. We are grateful to you on this trip to Kenya Nairobi, enough to give this dinner to celebrate the momentous occasion of meeting successfully with people of our origin in Kenya.

1 

Nairobi

We returned to Nairobi’s Hotel Intercontinental after a fantastic Safari tour of the Sarova Lion-Hill Lodge and the Masai Mara Game Reserve, feeling and looking weary after an eight-hour drive on mostly bad, pockmarked, dirt roads. We remained however, in high spirits after our marvelous experiences and fond memories we had on our incredible safari tour. The hectic tour schedule, magnified by the Spartan sleeping tents, we un zipped to open, as with the bare bones lodges we slept soundly at the end of a grueling day. In the mornings before we leave for our tour, the entire lodges’ area was strewn with a gang of cheeky monkeys jumping from the roof of the building to the patio where they snatch handbags and anything left unprotected on the patios. Then, they spirit themselves away across the path and into the trees in the nearby jungle across from the patio we stayed during our Safari romp. It is then that ones immediate consciousness is heightened enough to overpower, if not inhibit the need for reflection. Similarly, this brimming sense of awe and wonderment at our new environment ant the actors and wild animals in it that we see as imminent death, should we dare to leave our bus; the realization of this dissuades one urge to record, immediately, ones experience and the spontaneity of ideas that floods ones mind at a sustainable level. At the end of each breathtaking day, all we wanted to do was eat and sleep. Subsequently, what follows below is my attempt to revive, if not resuscitate my reflections of a Safari tour that began with our tour group’s meeting at Kennedy Airport on a sunny Friday morning July 1988.

A neighbor wanted to see us off at Kennedy Airport, but for the limited space in the little car that took Cynthia and me with six pieces of luggage to the airport. Nevertheless, she and her husband stood at their front door smiling broadly at us, waving and wishing us safe travel on our African trip. I did not believe, until then, that it was a big deal going to Africa, even for a short visit, but my neighbors’ enthusiasm about our trip made me realize its significance. They were genuinely happy to see us going Back to Africa. I felt disappointed when I saw the vehicle the car company had sent to take us to the airport, which was not the spacious new van they sent for us on previous trips to Kennedy Airport. The driver was a wiry looking young man with dreadlocks, who did all he could to get most of our luggage in the trunk of the little red car, after which he piled the rest of it and us in the car; I sat in the front with him as he drove carefully, which made me felt safe with him. We got to the airport with time to spare before the plane takes off. Though some people in our group were already there, we waited for the others to arrive, including our son, Osei who arrived shortly after with his aunt, Pansy to see us off. He began to get reacquainted with people he traveled with before. His mother, Cynthia, had taken him on several trips from his junior high school days when she took him to places like China, Hong Kong, Brazil and Japan, while I stayed at home, until a few years ago, when I decided that New York is not the entire world. Finally, we said goodbye to them and left for the departure gate.

A large group of Moslems converged in a corner of the airport departure lounge, spread mats and sheets on the floor then bow down to face Mecca and began to pray to Allah, audibly. Temporarily, they impeded our pathway to gate 11 where we were slated to depart. Eventually, we got a path and boarded the 747 Jet. Cynthia and I were relieved as we sat in the airplane after she had spent nearly an hour outside the departure lounge trying to locate late arrivals and steer them to the departure gate. Until then some of us became anxious that we might have to leave the tardy travelers in our group behind in New

York, then I began to meet people traveling with our group for the first time. Their greeting of one another in the departure lounge made me felt enthusiastic to start our African adventure with native New Yorkers, some of Caribbean origin and others from the Southern United States, all smiling, looking eager and prepared to visit where their ancestors had come. My optimism for a successful trip to Africa remained firm, cemented in my positive vision of Kenya, despite the independent attitude by some people in our group I viewed then, as negative. In their hurry to get their luggage checked separately at the baggage counter, some people became anxious and unfriendly, while others behaved conservatively with their luggage, as their only posses-sion—they told me later. Lindsey, a tall, good-looking, fair skin, lady with black, horn-rimmed glasses appeared cool if not skeptical of my security concern for her and the group’s luggage, after which she ambled behind me in the departure lounge. I told her that I will take care of hers and the group’s luggage checking in at the various places we go for the rest of the tour. She looked at me suspiciously, then with caution played out on her expansive face, it lingered on her face before she eventually smiled, sympathetically, at me. Eric, another traveler arrived with his daughter and grandson to see him off, as was his girlfriend, Betty, who came with her daughter to see her mother off. The daughter was a mature young lady of ebony, hue, compared to her mother’s copper-color tone. My impression of the mother was that she is one of these stuck-up Jamaicans; it was my immediate impression that I apply as a vehicle to propel my ready opinion of others, where I become judgmental of someone I differ with on an initial meeting. Then, as now, if I recognize a negative attitude in someone toward me, automatically, I will create a matching opinion about that someone.

Similarly, when I met Betty there for the first time, I thought she exhibited a well known Jamaican independent attitude that often provokes social resentment as it does with Reggae’s lyrical denunciation. But, she proved, however, that my first impression of her was wrong. For she emerged a vital force within our group when she organized added tours for us in Kenya and nearby Tanzania. Betty’s sense of adventure, and her daring to see everything in Nairobi and Kenya, resulted in our making a memorable trip to Mombasa, and later, she was the glue that put together, a day trip to Mount Kilimanjaro. I did not go, instead chose to stay in Nairobi and rest up. I greeted Eric, who traveled with us before, with a hand shake, who reacted with skepticism in his voice, as he said Africa? I sensed, by his demeanor, cynicism toward the trip; that, despite the upbeat mood other travelers showed when they arrived at the airport. Chandra arrived late, exuding her optimism like a breath of fresh air, smiling from ear to ear. She combed her hair loosely around her head with a front bang that masked part of her wide, cinnamon, brown forehead. She wore a bright red lipstick on her large, luscious lips; the color contrasted her brown sugar complexion and accentuated her dusky rouged cheeks to tarnished brown, sugar, sweet, that mask her strict religiosity. She looks sophisticated and she was a New York cosmopolitan, though born in Jamaica, she was ready and eager, nevertheless, to start the trip. Chandra said she was late because she had mistakenly gone to the arrival’s gate instead of the departure; she was not alone since few of our people had a similar problem. Luckily, Cynthia and Sybil along with others had waited outside for the late arrivals’ like Dominique, a petite, bright, eyed young lady with a pleasant disposition, she finally arrived, looking slimmer than the last time I saw her.

The airplane flight was smooth. I sat with my wife, Cynthia, who chose the window seat, while Dominique sat between us. She slept through most of the flight from New York to Frankfurt, Germany, with a blanket pulled up to her chin. The in flight food on the plane was good, but the entertainment was poor though I hired a four-dollar headphone to listen to some B movies that I didn’t watch. Fortunately, I brought my Walkman tape player with me, as I always do on tours, which kept my flight musically rewarding while I listened to tapes of Miles and Coltrane playing Modal Jazz that made my time in the air pleasantly sustainable. Six hours later the big 747 jet landed in Frankfurt Germany. Minutes later we were walking through a modern Airport with the most efficient workers moving about the complex on electric carts. We had some time before our departure for Nairobi, so we walked down to the duty-free stores, where we saw that there were little if any price advantage we could get from those stores. Yet a few people in our group did bought wine and liquor, and we returned to the departure gate and checked in our hand luggage. It was some time after when we heard our flight number announced that our flight was delayed and that we should leave the departure lounge and return to the main area.

While we waited in the departure lounge Dudley and I locked horns in what, I viewed then as a futile discussion as he tried to overpower me with his wartime experiences in Germany. It came a time where he had to discipline some of his German captors who were still proud to be Germans and remained defiant in captivity just as they were as aggressors. Dudley knew a lot about airplanes, for he flew several engagements during World War Two, and for 17 long hours without rest. A white American young woman from Boston joined us in our conversation as we watched the 747 and 727 airplanes shuttling around the airport. The popular Airbus 3210, used by several Airlines from the Arab countries and India. We watched them as they taxied in and out of the airport, with the Iranian airlines seemingly, prevalent at Frankfurt. They flew Air Buses only within their fleet coming and going at quick intervals.

The white American young lady began to explain to Dudley her training as a flyer in the United States. He replied to her flight naivete with his professional flight experience and war acclaim. He routed her with several technical aspects of flying that seemed to have her in awe of him. The white American young woman and I then began to comment on the airplanes we saw taxing into the gate and leaving for takeoff, as she continued to relay to us her learning experience to fly an airplane back in her hometown in New England. She kept me spellbound while she remarked to Dudley, the intricacies of her learning experiences. Not to be outdone, he seized on the opportunity to graphically relate to both of us his flying experiences during World War Two. He explained to her the differences between some planes he flew and those she was learning to fly. She argued that she wanted to gain enough flight time to obtain her pilot’s license. She was expressive and we stood, the three of us talking amiably, while our group sat around waiting. I could see members in our group sitting at a table and, no doubt, wondering what we were talking about so intently with this white American young woman whose boyish mannerism and strong gesticulations contrast her feminine voice. Meanwhile her female companion she was traveling with, stayed in the background, and interceded briefly, speaking French.

The continued delay of our flight to Kenya brought us with other Americans in transit, as the African American Serviceman on his way back to the States for a vacation. He said that he is a sergeant, and that he was originally from the Virgin Islands and that he can’t wait to do his seven and half years stint in the army to complete his tour of duty. I thought that he looked thin for a sergeant, but his tough and resilient demeanor, convinced me of his killer instinct. I asked him how long he was in Germany and he said two years and that he is returning to US to visit his sister in the Bronx, and that he is looking forward to enjoying his stay in New York. Dudley was eager to get into a conversation with this young army man and began to bend his ear about his time in Germany during the second world war. I walked away to join my wife in the departure lounge, where I noticed interracial couples in transit that drew little if any attention from other Whites, except us Black and White American tourists. The Germans appear more concerned in their efficiency to do their job at the airport, where they took pride in whatever they did there.

Meanwhile, Jesse, who is always on the ball, reminds the airline’s officials that we were due to get lunches from the airline after our three-hour delay in the airport. They agreed and gave us vouchers for us to order dinner in an exclusive, looking restaurant. We trekked down to the main lobby again, this time to the Airport Restaurant, where we were seated in two groups by a head waiter who appeared austere, contrary to the hotel’s art-decor of Nineteen Twenties vintages. The waiter who attended our table was as proud and as rambunctious as his military bearings commanded his diligence in taking our orders. His tendency to get everything right, which became obvious to me, as was his skill to carry six plates of food at once on one arm, while moving smoothly between the tables and other waiters, whom were gliding along with even more plates on their arm and a napkin in the other. Eventually we were seated in two groups. With his rigid, if not, his demanding efficiency, the waiter brought my steak. It was cooked rare, without salt, and it was good. Ellen had ordered rare steak, but when it came she said she did not like it that rare and asked the waiter to take it back and have it well done. He bristled at this and marched off in a huff, obeying her orders, nevertheless. We took photographs after our meal and all seem to enjoy our four-hour, delay at Frankfurt Airport.

I recalled that on our flight from New York I sat beside a group of Indian doctors traveling to Frankfurt, Germany in transit for their flight to India and Pakistan. One sat beside an American Doctor who said he was on his way to Moscow. They began to talk about their profession and about their returning home on vacation, then began to argue about medicine among other things happening in their profession that was out of my welkin, or scope. Suddenly the Indian doctor turned and asked me what I thought about Jesse Jackson and his run for the American Presidency. I took the high road by replying that it would be good for the Third World to have a Black American as President of the United States of America. The good doctor looked at me uneasily, almost in shock at my response; it was as if I had offended him. He loosened his seat belt, then squirmed in his seat as he turned to face me fully before he replied. Well, Yes! He turned further and looked directly at me then said, intellectually, A black President of the United States might be good for the Third World. It would be much better for black people in America. He said this much, of which I paraphrase the following; Jesse Jackson was an excellent orator who had the right answers to questions. Admittedly, this put him and his proposals for a better life for Americans under his Presidency, not to mention the hopes and wishes of the people of the world to improve their lot. I could have told the good doctor that Jessie Jackson did not speak only for the people of the Third World who was unhappy with America’s heavy handed approach in the execution of its Foreign Policy but for many white Americans who were then in dissent with the way things were in the USA. It seems then that Jessie Jackson did speak for all the humble people in the world, which I thought then to be extensive, and something I do not believe he foresaw as the meaning of his candidacy. The good doctor then voiced his thoughts that American whites were not yet ready to elect a Blackman as President of the United States of America. His summary declarations brought angry remarks from another Indian, doctor, who sat in the seat before him. He castigated his colleague for, Our inferiority complexes.. .when will Americans are ready for a black President? The time is now! My interlocutor was visibly upset by his colleague’s pessimism that Jesse Jackson’s chances to become President of the United States of America. I backed away from any further argument, since the other doctor had thrown down his gauntlet and sound ready for a verbal fight.

Finally, we boarded the spacious, Air-Bus for our Pan American flight to Nairobi. Seven hours later, and late in the night after most of us slept through the flight, we arrived at Jomo Kenyatta’s Nairobi International Airport. It was one o’clock Sunday morning July 17, and we had left New York the morning of July 15 thinking that we would be in Kenya the same day. So, there we were, in Africa nonetheless, walking on African soil, ogling at the dated colonial structure of the building arrivals area, boasted by a proud and authoritative staff. The scene was both similar and dissimilar enough to make one wince and immediately woke up to the immediacy of our African environment. It reflected a racial genre and cultural nuance one equates with the West

Indies, as we walked quite a distance, straggling with our many, hand, luggage behind other tourists, then treading down steep, and treacherous steps to the customs area below. The wooden booths with turrets as roof, set on platforms high above floor level where wooden guardrails separated tourists’ entrance from that of Kenya residents returning to Kenya. The whole shebang appears designed, most probably by the British to enhance their superiority over the African, which they inherited and use similarly, to give the Kenya customs officers deliberate prominence, and understandably so after years under British colonialism.

Returning residents had no option but to look up to the custom officers, as we had, to hand them our passport for their casual and indifferent perusal, all of which ramify their superiority, as it demeans the tourist’s stature of looking up to the man in the booth, and decidedly time consuming. Nevertheless, I felt a sense of pride in seeing people like myself, black Africans for sure, controlling their destiny and our own, for that matter, as visitors to their country. Though most of the people in the building were whites, some visitors and a good deal of them were returning residents; all were being processed by the customs, who seem to maintain their respect for them, and whites in turn appeared as proud and comfortable to return to their African home. Some was in the visitors line with us, who, no doubt, was visiting Kenya like us to see the African Safari with its animals, humans, and wild ones. They were sure of themselves, enough to smile evenly at us without compunction, a genuine smile. Conversely, it might be just my being niggling or sensitive, I detected a look of curiosity on some of their faces, as if to say, Here come some Black Americans who are trying to find their roots. We, looked at them with suspicion and wonderment.

One official asked me how long I would be staying in Kenya. I told him that I was with a group of American tourists who would be staying in the country for two weeks. He appeared relieved and gave me a cursory nod. Minutes later we received our luggage from the customs without a hitch, but for the perennial suspicious look a customs official gave us, who apparently, wanted to intimidate us in showing us the extent of his vigorous authority. His paranoia motivated him to be on guard and constantly aware of suspicious looking characters entering his drug free, and the chaste environment of Kenya, all of which justified his intimidation of us. It might be that he was looking for an excuse to discredit his African American brothers and sisters, by looking overtly for contraband he thinks us New York tourists would bring along with us. That is, if we were those sorts of people, which we were not, but simply hard working stiffs affording ourselves vacation to his country as our means of relaxation. Naturally, we were there to see the wild animals and the jungle environment where the former Mau Mau roamed the Savannah in search of their freedom from British Colonialism. But we had no suspicious clues that would incite his bloodhound instinct to latch onto it like a lion biting into the neck of its Wildebeest prey. I noticed that all the workers I saw at the airport were African males, and that virtually no women were included in the airport service, except a female guard, no doubt, to search women’s visitors for suspected contraband.

Weary from jet-lag I straggled along with our bewildered group from the unpretentious customs area, outside onto the driveway where a few minibuses parked at the curb, ready to transport us to our hotel. A young, soft-spoken, African greeted us warmly and introduced himself as Mr. Bonsu. He welcomed us with the word, Jambo and said that it meant greetings, and that he was our tour guide in Nairobi. We met the drivers of the minibus who will take us to Nairobi’s Hotel Intercontinental. Pat, was an amiable Kenyan who immediately endeared himself to us, as if he had known us all our lives. Jack, another driver was quiet and self-assured as if he were superior to us, progenies of former slaves. He soon emerged as a personable fellow whom we relied on during our Safari tour. Nudged by our tour guide’s cordial but informal attitude toward us, the bus drivers piled us into the three minibuses; then, for the next twenty minutes, drove at breakneck speed to the hotel, where, for the following two weeks, it became our home away from home. By then, it was early morning when we checked in our luggage with the staff at the Inter Continental Hotel, who were young men working at the reception desk, and in the room service, like the busboys who were waiting to take our luggage up to our rooms. Mr. Bonsu then reminded us that the drivers will pick us up seven o’clock later in the morning for our Safari trip. That made it six-hours after our arrival in Kenya, and feeling still groggy with sleep and jet-lag. Nevertheless, for the few hours before our wake up call came from the desk, I slept well despite the late hours we got into Nairobi.

2 

On Safari

A good night’s sleep became the high point in Nairobi, where ones’ restful sleep can best be ascribed to 5,000, feet’s elevation of the city elicits a good night’s rest. Around six o’clock, the following morning our group joined up in the hotel lobby. Most of us were yawning and looking bleary eyed at each other. Yet, we were anxious to have our continental breakfast, check out from the hotel then leave seven o’clock for the Safari Tour. Because we would be away from the hotel for three to four days, the desk told us that they wanted our rooms available for visitors, while we were away. Mr. Bonsu, our Nairobi tour guide instructed us to check our luggage with the bell captain who will put them in storage for us. Victor and I checked the groups’ luggage and saw that the bellboys take all of them to the hotel’s storage area. After we had breakfast, the desk clerk told us that we must reclaim our valuables from the safe and take them with us, which we did, regrettably. Two men ahead of us in the check out line were arguing vehemently in French, with the desk clerk about the inaccuracy of their hotel bill. One desk clerk was answering his disclaimer in English, while another conveyed it to him in French. Two young women speaking French, and having satisfied their racial idiosyncrasy by looking at us African Americans laughing, and talking with each other animatedly, left the line grudgingly to wait for their men. Soon after the two women left the line in a huff, a squat, middle-aged, Frenchman, followed in their wake, but the other man became more vociferous as he questioned the desk clerks about the inflated cost of his hotel bill. The evidence, the now impatient, African, desk clerks showed him, could not convince him that he did have meals in his rooms. They showed him his room service bills he signed on receiving various drinks and meals he had in his room. Even I could see over his sturdy shoulders his signature on the bills as clear evidence. Meanwhile, our group was urging me to get a move on since the minibuses were waiting for me to complete our checking out from the hotel. When I saw how much time my French Thomas was taking I called out to the desk clerk that l had three mini buses waiting to take our group on Safari and that he should check us out immediately. He complied, despite the Frenchman’s scowl, and we were able to leave happily for our belated Safari.

Cynthia and Chandra sat in the back of the bus, while I sat next to Dominique. I chose the bench seat next to the sliding door because I wanted to use my camera throughout the entire trip, and to give easy access, not only to those who sat behind me but to Eric and Betty who occupied the seat ahead of me. Jackson, our driver, was also our tour guide, and someone who, in many ways we entrust our lives, as we witnessed later. As the hours passed in our drive to the Safari scenario, we became a cohesive group in the bus, which continued outside the bus, because we came to understand and recognize each other’s idiosyncrasies, and the cultural similarity we shared. Accordingly, with us riding for hours in the bus and talking about our lives, while ogling at the flat top, thorn trees we drove by, it made us see, in comparison to our immediate scenario that we had a lot in common with each other. We talked to Jackson, our driver and tour guide, about the bad roads we drove leading out of Nairobi, where huge potholes, craters really, hogged the roadway. Often he slowed and steered his vehicle wide into the curb to avoid descending in one, and at other times, he drove into the path of oncoming traffic to escape another deep ditch. We got a good view of the city of Nairobi as we drove through it on that sunny Sunday morning, with its modern structures, like the Jomo Kenyatta Conference Building and many other fine structures nearby, which emanate an African architectural mode I found impressive.

The bus drivers drove some distance behind each other, steering carefully around a plethora of threatening ditches and potholes. Groups of people, mostly women wearing white dresses with lace, head-scarf, walked deliberately on the dirt path to church for their Sunday morning service. The church appeared quite a distance from where we saw them skirting the narrow dirt road. It was a sobering sight to seeing rustic and proud black people stroll on the red dirt path to church, amid tall trees and lush greenery; then to see piles of agricultural food stuff, with vegetables in abundance, and animal skin and furs placed on the roadside, all for sale. Their shoes were red from the African, clay, roadside they ambled on, clay that showed us later, it was the nucleus of African soil, where children scampered happily alongside their parents as they trod in the red dirt to church. I did not see anyone riding a bicycle, or was there anyone driving on motorcycles, or were there any motorized vehicles to transport them to church. It was just their plain foot power they applied as they go to worship their Christian God, in church buildings reminiscent to those I saw in the West Indies and outside London, England. I felt a certain kinship with these people, my African brothers and sisters, and I fell in love with them there and then. For, I felt at one with them as I observed them, on way to the Safari, how they displayed their agricultural produce along the roadside on sale; the different agricultural and other products they produced like sheepskin rugs and woolen hats, all were there for tourists as they were on sale to local travelers. It was a sobering sight that made me felt at home, and I began to reminisce about my life as a boy in Jamaica, and the people I grew up with. I visualized people in the Parishes in Jamaica who traveled in similar circumstances to Kingston’s Coronation Market to sell their agricultural produce. I recalled how similar they looked as these Kenyans on the roadside selling the produce from their land. Similarly, they had taken long walks to the village, church Sunday mornings, and that thought gave me a happy feeling for these proud people with their inborn honor and native pride. I traveled thousands of miles just to see them in their noble new country.

Jackson meanders the minibus around pockmarked roads as he skirted ridiculously, ditches as drains by the roadside. I chose then, a most inopportune time to begin a conversation with him about his country’s independence and his politics for good measure. It was fair game, I thought then, since he was our tour guide and was not giving us any insight about Independent Kenya, or was he giving us any description of where we were or where we were going, where my attempt to talk with him about his country, I thought as appropriate. I asked him what life for was and how much his life has improved since Kenya became independent, and I mentioned Tom Mboya, whom I had read a lot about. His brief reply was that Tom Mboya was from the same Luo tribe that he belonged. I ended the attempt at a conversation with Jackson as we approached a difficult mountain road and I did not want to disturb his concentration on that treacherous mountain. Though I wanted to hear first hand from him the changes that had taken place in his country since Kenya’s independence from Great Britain. We entered a mountain range where the minibus climbed the narrow, winding road slowly, and straight up the mountainside. We moved dangerously close to precipices, where we saw, in the distance, another level of the mountain below, and people, tiny in the distance moving about tiny houses far away. The view of the land below appeared as a tabletop laid out for a huge meal. We were then in Thika, which was about two hours drive from Nairobi. The driver stopped for us to stretch our legs and take pictures of the beautiful scenery below. The land was flat atop another mountain, boasting lush cultivation atop flat land that stretched for miles in the distance. Street vendors were waiting for us at that particular roadside stop that apparently, was up for tourists. Persistent eager, young, hawkers besieged us with their wares of native artifacts that appeared hurriedly put together, which did not equate the value we paid them. My view of the valley below was breath taking; I viewed it more than enough a price to pay the couple of dollars we donated to those eager hawkers. Just looking down into the valley below, cultivated with trees and peopled with houses and farms tiny in the distance, buttressed by mountains far away in the background, was worth the brief stop to see it all. I got the impression then that I was looking down onto another country, other than Kenya. We took several photographs, bought soft drinks, then left on our journey to Sarova Lion Hill Lodge.

PART 2

SAROVA LION HILL

Jack drove the minibus straight into the game reserve where, immediately, we were greeted by a few wild animals, cows with long curving horns, similar to Texas, Longhorn cows, Waterbucks, that stared strangely at us in the minibus, as if we were the wild ones. I thought then, should we get out of the bus then we would see who are wild animals, from those who are tame or domestic. I shuddered at that thought after Jackson told us that Waterbucks are the most dangerous wild animals in the jungle, for though they look tame, they are responsible for killing several tourists and local people who mistook their apparent passivity as tameness, but that the Waterbuck will attack Lions who wanders near them. Further on into the jungle game reserve, we stopped on the other side of Lake Nakuru, we ogled at the most frightening display of nature’s cruel act in the jungle. Huge trees, of about four feet in diameter, their trunks torn, ripped down the middle and twisted to the smithereens, as would be a thin, wispy branch, then rooted out of the ground by a mysterious power of nature. Jackson said lightening struck trees and cut them down. I saw some with their roots oblique to the earth, and exposed to the elements, and revealed every strand that nurtured and held up the tree. Others were left with stumps standing ten feet out of the rich, looking, loam soil, with its 100 feet long tree trunk, crashed through dense undergrowth that cut a wide swath in the jungle. Several trees were in a similar position, cut down throughout the thick forest.

Jack came to an opening in the jungle where he stopped and parked the bus, got out and told us to follow him. We left the bus and followed him reluctantly, fearing that there might be wild animals nearby. Betty asked him if it was safe for us to get out. She like other women in the group was not sure if there were any wild animals lurking in the underbrush ready to pounce on a group of unsuspecting Black American tourists. Jack reassured us that it was safe, and that we should have no fear of Lions for they do not live in the jungle or the bushes where we were, but out on the grassy savannah land. He then led us across water logged, stretches of grass and clayey soil that he said were a part of the dried up lake we saw in the distance. The sudden, wide clearing revealed large trees ripped by lightening and by marauding elephants, Jack told me when I persist to know if lightening could cut such a wide swath in the jungle and stripped the bark from trees. The eerie vegetation made some in our group approach with caution and with trepidation, as they skirted muddy patches in the dried up parts of the Lake Nakuru, fearing that they might have to beat a hasty retreat back to the minibus from things that go bump in the thick undergrowth that surround us. I was not sure how far I should continue walking in the waterlogged soil, getting my loafer shoes completely soaked and muddy. Jack continued to reassure us however, and that it was safe for us to follow him to where we could see a sea of pink flamingoes hopping in and out of the lake. Our tour guide told us that, over the years, Lake Nakuru had receded from its banks for miles around and ahead of us. He continued to ask us to look keenly ahead of us at pink blobs shimmering in the midmorning sun that he said were Pink Flamingos congregated on Lake Nakuru. We strained our eyes to see what he was trying to show us, while I used my zoom lens camera, but could see only the faint images of the Pink Flamingos, as I tried to capture the far away scene on camera. Chandra and Dominique stopped and said they would return to the bus, for they could not continue because of the mud that seeped through the grass into their thin sandal shoes. Meanwhile, the rest of the group followed Jack farther out onto the dried up lake. We found it nearly impossible to continue because of the unending mud we were stepping into that stuck to our shoes, eventually, made us retreat to the minibus, but not before taking photographs of one another to record our attempt to continue, and our lack of desire to go on. That muddy walk on Lake Nakuru marked the beginning of our Safari Tour.

A bevy of young men met us at the entrance to Sarova Lion Hill Lodge. They took control of our luggage while we checked into the lodge for our respective rooms. The building was an impressive log cabin structure of huge logs that forms its main, if not, complete structure. The lodge boasted a big swimming pool with a modest waterfall attendant to it that provides the comforting sound of water trickling into the pool below. Curio shops with African, handicrafts appear inserted into a beautiful restaurant and bar area. The ceiling of the restaurant and reception area looked awesome to me with its simple, geometric design that seems to supplement the service provided by the staff, which was slow and leisurely, but efficient and courteous. Posted on a large bulletin board near the reception desk were the camp’s rules and regulations for visitors to observe; the instructions included warnings against feeding wild animals such as those cheeky, little monkeys that spring from cabin roofs to the next and onto the patios looking for larceny. The reception desk advised us to check our valuables into a safety deposit box the hotel provides for each guest at a small fee. I became fully aware then of the procedures the camp had laid out for its visitors, as Cynthia and I walked to our cabin.

I made a hasty retreat to the rest room where I wanted to go while we were still in the jungle with me stepping gingerly on Lake Nakuru’s muddy, lake bed, fearing not only wild animals but that I might be unable to hold out. We checked into our cabins after we had stashed our valuables, passports and cash, in safety deposit boxes, then went to lunch in the chalets’ communal restaurant that served delicious food.

Jack had told us, before he left us at the lodge that after we had lunch, he would drive us onto the other side of Lake Nakuru. The chalets’ wood and stone structure took the contour of the sloping hillsides. The high elevation and the steep climb up steps that zigzagged to off set the stamina one needed to climb to the chalets was enough to make one dizzy getting to our cabins. We stayed in single room cabins that had baths and a front patio with tables and chairs where we sat and enjoyed the light, refreshing air. It gave me a restful feeling to sit on the patio and watching hordes of little monkeys leaping up and over things while they made squeaking noise as they whisked by, trying to invade our space, or loot whatever we might leave unattended on the tables. The hotel’s staff told us that these cheeky little monkeys were not averse of stealing women’s handbags or anything they can carry away with them.

It began to rain heavily, despite the yellow sun that shone bright and unswerving, to discredit, if not fight against the heavy downpour that cascade off the hillsides and unto the lodge. I joined Cynthia on the patio to watch Satan fighting with his wife, as the saying goes, while heavy rain drops ricochet off the lush hillsides in the distance unto the concrete walkways and the patio. We left the patio just before it became flooded in the deluge that cascade on the foreground of the mountains close enough that one could almost touch them. From our rooms where we took shelter only to watch little monkeys romp from one cabin to another as they came out in force to rummage for food or something to fleece. W took several photos of the aggressive little monkeys marauding along the cabin patios. Wilma and Jesse became particularly interested in the monkey scenario, and we talked at length about them and the Lodge, to the extent that just before we left for the other part of our tour of Lion Hill Camp, we were in high spirits. Everyone was pleased with the tour and their accommodation.

The price of our lunch was more than affordable, and many of us would have had seconds, but we could not stay, since time was against us. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and our minibus drivers were waiting on us in the limited parking space they were awarded by the lodge, to take us on our Safari jaunt to the other side of lake Nakuru. We left the lodge fifteen minutes later with our bus drivers looking exasperated as they sped off, as promised, to show us Lake Nakuru’s National Park. Jack asked us if we enjoyed our lunch, and we answered, in unison that we did and that it was delicious; then we all began to express satisfaction and delight with our cabin accommodation. Cynthia and I were pleased with our cabin and its number, 52, situated beside Wilma and Jesse’s to our left, while Betty and Eric’s cabin were to our right. I was looking forward to seeing up close, the famous millions of Pink Flamingos Jack said he wanted us to see. Equally, the huge trees I saw chopped off in mid trunk, and stripped of their bark, while others appeared rooted up by some violent force, fascinated me. The sorry sight of these dead trees cut down in the prime of their lives was as common as the tangling vines that choked the living trees, just as the weeds that scar, if not threaten the survival of the dense wooded growth in the savannah and forest we drove. Often, we felt our safety threatened when the bus would descend suddenly into a huge mud hole, in the dirt roads that are really tracks. The minibus would suddenly descend in one of these ditches that seem to populate, if not, dominate the dirt tracks we drove. Some of these gaping holes, filled with tree branches and debris from the jungle, remained, even more treacherous to our vehicles than before we came upon them. When we got to the other side of Lake Nakuru, Cynthia, Betty, Eric and I left the minibus and walked hundreds of yards out on the dried up lake, while the others remained in or near the bus, as if to watch our violent death from wild animals. We were simply heeding our tour guide’s instructing in trying to get as close as possible to the birds without leaving ourselves high and dry should a lion or leopard rushed us, then we would have a short distance to run to the bus. Unfortunately, we were in a wide-open lakebed where we had nowhere to run, but to become easy prey for any wild animal that chose to attack us. That was what occupied my mind as I advanced toward a several flocks of Pink Flamingos and took photographs of them in the distance as I approached them, cautiously. Though Eric was using his video camera to film the birds, he wanted me to capture himself and Betty on film; so, he gave me the camera and asked me to film Betty and him approaching the Pink Flamingos.

PART 3

My impression of our morning and afternoon Safari jaunt, after Jack drove us to the other side of lake Nukuru, was how strange a world it was, a world different from any I knew or was conscious of. Our tour guide had promised us that the tour of Sarova Lion Hill Lodge and that of lake Nakuru would be the high point of our trip. He was right, as it turned out to be. The drive through Lion Hill Game Reserve fascinated me with strange sights and sounds in that unique part of Africa in Kenya, noted for its lush vegetation that overpowers any vision I might have had of myself to function in unison in such an eerie environment. It forced me to see reality as presented to me by this African scenario in Kenya. I became preoccupied with that immediate reality, where I thought that should the minibus have a mechanical brake down, or got stuck in a deep mud hole, as it did earlier, of which we managed to escape the ordeal of our half hour delay in the bush, and that eventually, we would succumb to wild animals that eyeball us from the undergrowth. We kept spinning our wheels in a futile attempt for the minibus to emerge from the mud. And justifiable so, our group became apprehensive as we travel further on the muddy dirt road that, we would become stranded for hours in yet another inescapable, muddy ditch for days even; that was what my growing misgiving told me. Jack pointed to a wild and rarely, seen animal, the Dick-Dick, which is a tiny antelope or deer. It stood frightened in its tracks as the bus stopped for us to view him close up. He obliged us by turning around to show us his hind quarters then, satisfied that he posed long enough for us, he scooted across the dirt track ahead of the bus to the other side of the road. His departure revealed the presence of several wild hogs emerging from the underbrush, with their fearful looking double tusks. They grunted noisily as they rooted eagerly at the edge of the track and in the underbrush. One turned around in the bush and looked at us as if we were the wild ones in our wheeled cage, and he was not the grunting, wild one, groveling in the mud. Dominique expressed her curiosity of not seeing any lion in the area; Jack immediately assured us that we were safe from Lions and Tigers and other more ferocious animals in the Lion Hill Game Reserve. His optimism did not ease our fears from taking any chance however, and we refrained from getting out of the minibus since we simply did not know what might be lurking in the bushes waiting to have us as their prey. That realization of the proximity between life and death became a moving experience for me as we drove through the savannah and jungles in Kenya; it tempered my innermost feelings as a vibrant, living human being, whose existence could end savagely should I chose to step out of the minibus.

That realization roused a spiritual awareness in me. It embraced me long enough, where I had a strange feeling I could touch and communicate with what I was experiencing, which made me felt puny in the great presence of an omnipotence that validates my sense of mortality, and vouch for my very existence as a human being and an integral part in nature’s creation, as opposed to wild beasts that knows instinctively, their function in the food chain, which is to kill to survive. Conversely, one posed the question of, If these wild animals could think, what would they be thinking about? Which is a futile attempt to get an answer to these strange looking beasts that stare at us in the minibus. I became curious of them staring at us; it signified to me that they think they know something about us, of which we do not know anything about their cognition, if any. It says to me that they think they are guiltless, free of all constraints, there they are not sinners like us, they do not suffer from moral guilt that plagues mortal man. Then again, when I see an immovable Waterbuck staring at us with his head tilted to one side, I wonder if the animal is a reincarnation of a dead tribal

chief, or if he was a deity appearing in the body of a beast. It presented to me a creditable and unique occurrence that afforded me a rare quality of ambience with the immediate world I traveled in the thick, wooded area infested with wild animals. This immediate awareness revived my consciousness to a definite, though dreamlike, visualization, analogous to that of, an out of body experience, where nature’s creation stimulates my immediate appreciation of the untouched topography we drove; the effect of which stung my native memory with a sharp pang that urged me to perceive and preserve what I saw and felt, as experience. It was that eerie, nostalgic, occurrence that surprised me, and which beckoned my familial, collective, subconsciousness that enabled me to visualize Kenya’s Great Rift Valley on a wide screen, where the earth was torn apart by the incidence of nature’s work millions of years before. It left serrated, saw-tooth, edges that descend to the lakebed of Lake Nukuru as I saw it then, which produced my understanding of it enough to transmit my inner view of this Eden, or after the flood environment I found extraordinary. The Great Rift Valley chasm that skirted the Game Reserve said something to me; it told me that on seeing this deep gorge, at the bottom of which are lakes and extensive cultivable land, resulted when the earth opened its serrated, jaws, like a huge piece of bread broken hurriedly by someone impatient to eat it. It was that awareness of my immediate environment that, not only intrigued me, but heightened my sense of time and space as it manifest the brevity of ones existence compared to the Rift Valley that began with the tearing, and splitting away of the earth’s surface, rending itself apart from its whole.

It began in Syria eons ago, then continued its profound gorge, cutting a wide swath deep into the African continent that starts from the Gulf of Suez in Egypt. From there the Rift Valley unzips the African terrain down to Ethiopia, splitting its Ebony Soil to South, East, Africa, where it disappears underground in Kenya, creating lakes and in lush vegetation in the Southern Kenya. The North remains largely arid, with acres of acacia trees that pitch precariously on the top edges of the valley and below where big game animals dwell. At the bottom of this depressed valley is red, raw earth that stretched for hundreds of feet in the abyss, where the earth’s corrugated edges appear alike a cake broken by someone who left uneven bits that spill over its edge. The entire scene appeared fabricated, yet awesome in its fantastic scope of time and place, the magnitude of which caused me to ponder at the magic of nature and the miracle of its regenerative omnipotence. I tried to reassert myself, of where I was, and my consciousness of sitting in the minibus with others as it trundles on a muddy path through the Game Reserve by glancing around at my fellow travelers in the Japanese minibus. They appeared caught up in the unique scenery as the bus staggered through the jungle path. I wanted to reassure myself that the sudden death environment that engulfed us was real. I coaxed myself into believing the lush, yet eerie scenery that held my being captive, was true, tangible and immediate. I was not having a strange dream, I thought to myself. For I could see the others in the bus looking anxiously from the safety of our conveyance, with a look of wonderment. Their expression conveyed