A Place Beyond Midnight

By Rodney Melsek

Set in a remote village in the wilds of the Kenyan bush, A Place Beyond Midnight chronicles the exciting and luminous stories from the journal of a young Peace Corps volunteer. Cody Hawks experiences the wonders, challenges, and personal injunctions in East Africa with friends bound together in noble purpose. He has come to Kenya to break from his past and write a new story for himself. A story of service and sacrifice. His indelible often humorous narration recounts the problems he and his friends face as they struggle to navigate an alien landscape, a different culture, and a new language. His journey to reinvent himself is framed by perils at every turn in Kenya's harsh environment. Along the journey, daring misadventures test his resolve while kindness, compassion and the lessons of genuine friendship and self-discovery evolve. He confronts ignorance, tradition and danger when faced with life and death, and discovers unexpected passion in the turbulence that is Africa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9798890611796

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Notes

Introduction

Prologue

Day 1

Day 2

Day 94

Day 94

Days 102–103

Days 105–107

Days 144–145

Days 177–181

Days 221

Days 221–224

Days 249–250

Days 269–272

Day 287

Day 320

Day 320

Days 353–354

Day 355

Days 356–363

Days 364–365

Days 366–369

Day 399

Day 399

Day 463

Day 464

Days 528–535

Days 585–587

Days 598–600

Day 625

Days 627–628

Day 648

Days 655–656

Days 692–697

Day 707

Days 721–727

Day 715

Day 715

Epilogue

About the Author

cover.jpg

A Place Beyond Midnight

Rodney Melsek

Copyright © 2024 Rodney Melsek

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2024

The opinions expressed in these stories do not necessarily reflect policies and views of the US Peace Corps. There is no intention to impugn the personal beliefs of any person or persons in these stories. No harm or insult to the reputation of any persons, places, or institutions described in these accounts is intended. Certain characters and events have been created for dramatic purposes or to advance storylines. Some names and locations have been changed to preserve privacy and honor reputations.

ISBN 979-8-89061-178-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89061-179-6 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

These stories are dedicated to the committed and valued Peace Corps colleagues, with whom I served in Kenya, and to the wonderfully resilient people in the village of Kapluk.

Acknowledgments

The following people helped more than they will ever know in telling these stories. It is with a grateful heart that I thank Brian, John, Hugh, and Julian. Bless you guys for the invaluable contributions that helped bring these stories to life.

Notes

Unfamiliar words and phrases in Swahili are italicized along with their English translation if not otherwise made clear to the reader.

Seasons in Kenya

Summer—January–March

Autumn—April–June

Winter—July–September

Spring—October–December

Conversion Table

To convert Celsius to Fahrenheit multiply Celsius by 1.8, then add 32.

Introduction

What follow are accounts of the exploits of a young volunteer in the Peace Corps in Africa. Chronicles of survival, sacrifice, and service. Of taking risks and embracing change. Of times to be remembered and times not to be forgotten. Much that is written here is fact. Much that is written is as close to what the people who lived it remember. These are the adventures of one Peace Corps volunteer out of many. There's nothing unusual about these stories, every volunteer has similar ones. But every story is profoundly different. Yet every story the same.

Cody Hawks had the impatient hungry look that many seeking a Bohemian life of daring and adventure have. Not hunger of the belly. Hunger for a chance in life. Hunger for the opportunity to demonstrate his worth. Service in the Peace Corps was designed to help alleviate that hunger. He wanted to break from his past, begin a new chapter in life. His journey was framed by perils that tested his resolve at every turn. He confronted tradition and danger when faced with life and death and discovered unexpected passion in the turbulence that is Africa. There are no grand themes here. These stories aren't mysteries; there are no shadowy figures in the night or wretched little men hatching devious plots. They're not comedies, though humor can provide relief in the most trying of surroundings. No, these are tales of challenging adventures and misadventures and, most notably, accounts of kindness, compassion, and the lessons of genuine friendship. Along the way a young volunteer discovers that service in the Peace Corps was as much about him as those he came to help.

Prologue

The ancients believed that beyond the limits of the known world there were dragons. They were right.

Atiny wooden shack sat alone in the scrub one hundred meters from the small village. Three young boys were lined up a short distance from the front door. The boys were traumatized by hours of sleeplessness and anticipation, thrust into a hypnotic state, eyes dilated. Each was naked, their black bodies turned white from dried limestone and mud. Their penises were tightly wrapped in a thick, green leaf tied with jute string or tomato twine.

An old man led the first boy through the door. The light from a single lantern burned faintly, and a small fire smoldered in a pot on a table in the center of the room. A large knife glowed red-hot in the fire. Two old men stood against the walls, the village traditional healer and the village spiritualist. One of the men stepped forward and put one hand on the knife and the other on the boy's shoulder. He slowly drew the knife from the fire.

Slipping the leaf off the boy's penis the man wielded the knife in shadowy silhouette on the wall. He carefully sliced the foreskin just behind the head of the penis and blood gushed from the wound. He then cauterized the penis and stitched the remaining edges of skin together with needle and fine thread.

It was a dark and stormy night … That's the way tales of adventure are supposed to begin. But it was neither dark nor stormy when this story begins. In fact, it hadn't rained in the valley in eight months.

Day 1

Welcome Home

January 1, 1986

Wednesday. The small covered pickup truck dodged boulders and trailed cairns as it guardedly wound its way over an unyielding terrain of malpais and loose shingle. Through deep ruts and around a dozen switchbacks and dead-man curves it crept at a snail's pace down a steep, semiarid landscape leading to the valley floor 800 meters below. The sharp serpentine course of the road tripled that distance and the driver drove with exasperating deliberation. The Kerio was an isolated narrow valley in northwest Kenya, 810 square kilometers of scaly, dry, desolate terrain. The discrete valley was part of the Great Afro-Arabian Rift, one of the most extensive splits in the Earth's crust. The enormous fissure extended from the Dead Sea in Jordan southward through eastern Africa to Mozambique. The isolated uplifts and valleys in Kenya, like the Kerio, were created in the rift by lava flows and volcanoes millions of years ago.

Bounded by steep escarpments on the east and west, the Kerio Valley had been occupied since the earliest period of recorded history 5,000 years ago. It wasn't beyond imagination to think that the ancestors of all humanity lived in the valley 130,000 years ago when people purportedly migrated from the area of the mystical Garden of Eden. The floor of the basin was characterized by grand vistas, poor soil and vegetation, unreliable rainfall, and oppressive heat. It was as dry and hot as the American western desert. The Kerio River, one of the longest rivers in Kenya, originated near the equator and flowed fetidly through the valley as one of many rivers to feed Lake Turkana, a permanent desert sea 300 kilometers north. At the mercy of the heavens, the Kerio River was merely a wide, sandy plain most of the time and a difficult, dangerous walk across the valley from a small number of remote villages. Lake Kamnarok, a small seasonal body of fresh water located at the north end of the valley was also dry most of the year. It rained very little in the valley and in the warm season the savage heat could be lethal. Settlements in the valley were 300 kilometers from the vibrant, modern Capital city of Nairobi but separated by a lot more than simply geography and distance. Villages in the gorge had the raw attraction of millennial-old traditions and were places where ancestral customs and the intrusions of the modern world often collided.

A small light on the ceiling illuminated the pickup camper where Cody Hawks sat alone on a hard wooden bench. A handsome young man in his twenties, sturdy of build with sculpted shoulders, a bit of mischief in his engaging smile and a touch of rascal in his sapphire-like, piercing blue eyes. A crop of thick, dark, shaggy hair fell easily low on his forehead, down the nape of his neck and over his ears. With a twinkle in her eyes and a devious smile his grandmother told him he was far too good-looking for his own good, or other people's good. She once told him,

You're as devilishly handsome as a warm spring day is long, and better looking than any boy deserves.

But then she was the one always reminding him to comb his hair. Overshadowed by a feckless sister and two older brothers, Cody most often took on the role of mediator and jokester. He was a naturally curious person about people and places. He was a bit cautious of blindly exposing himself to others but not overly fearful about what they thought of him. He had a disarming, boyish innocence about him. Known for self-deprecating humor, he enjoyed making people laugh. Humor, like paraphrasing lines from his favorite films or songs into ordinary conversations, was his way of distracting them from examining his anomalous frailties too closely. Like the sweet tooth he couldn't control. His love of old movies. His fondness of big band swing, doo-wop, and disco music when these were passé. And of course, the Beatles. Humor was also his way of dealing with uncomfortable or unfamiliar situations.

Cody's head banged against the window of the topper as he bounced up and down. He pushed back the flaccid hair on his forehead with one hand. Jesus, take the wheel, he muttered to himself. Not the way he usually spent New Year's Day, that was certain. Twenty kilometers more of loose rock and clay at the bottom of the escarpment, the pickup turned north onto a winding clay washboard path through colorless thick scrub and mesquite. It rumbled along faster than was safe this time of night. Vehicles that chanced the trip down the precipitous ascent and across the valley risked possible impairment. Those that turned toward the small villages up the valley risked much more. The gray, bleak, black-and-white landscape looked like it was created millennia long before yesterday. On each side of the pickup were dry, spiny trees old enough to have survived the flood, the one with Noah. The pickup careened through large fissures in the earth and numerous deep, dry creek beds that forewarned of the dangers ahead. Visibility was restricted to a struggling corona of light from headlamps waxed over from years of abuse. The bouncy pickup made it too difficult for Cody to focus on anything beyond the din of the overhead light. What was beyond that light at this time of night was anybody's guess. Banging a fist on the window at the back of the cab Cody yelled at the driver, How much longer?

"Soon, bwana" (sir), the local driver yelled back. Thin and wiry, the driver looked ancient of days, much older than he probably was. His weathered skin was shriveled on his small frame and looked like leather. His face was drawn and tired but his eyes were sharply focused on the road ahead, through almost trackless bush after dark. Dressed in a simple button-down shirt that fell over dark, worn trousers that sagged front and rear, a pair of worn sandals moved effortlessly over the clutch, brake, and gas pedal. He owned his pickup truck and had been driving this road for as long as he could remember. Still, there were dangers in this remote part of the valley not even he wanted to imagine. This wasn't a place to be stranded in the dark.

Cody settled back on the bench, his head banging again and again against the window. That's what you said over two hours ago, he shouted, more than a trace of disgust in his voice. He sat silently for a few seconds. Sorry, he yelled apologetically, my pod was defective. A reference to a science-fiction thriller in which humans are replaced by emotionless aliens in giant pea pods. Cody, always a sucker for science fiction, thought it was great filmmaking.

Finally, the pickup rolled up a short incline off the main path and stopped. Kapluk, bwana, the driver yelled. Cody rubbed his head, grabbed his duffel bag and backpack, and threw them on the ground. Climbing out of the pickup he couldn't see anything. Visibility was confined to a strangling darkness that extended in all directions. The only light radiated from a blanket of stars in a moonless sky and seemed so close he could touch them. The nearest electric was on top of the escarpment in the town of Kabarnet where the trip to the valley began. Light from that town didn't reach the valley. Cody stretched out his arm toward the sky and spread his fingers. His hand covered a thousand bright stars in a pitch-black sky. Moments later the pickup rumbled as the driver swung around and ground into gear. Cody waved as the vehicle was quickly sucked up by the cloak of night. Looking around to get his bearings, he pulled a flashlight from his backpack and shone it around 360 degrees. Shit, he exclaimed loudly. Good idea, bwana, drop me off in the middle of nowhere. He aimed the flashlight at his watch. Goddamnit, where is everybody? It wasn't late but the village was shrouded in obscurity and inexplicable ghostly shadows, as mysterious as its name implied.

In Kapluk, late obviously came early.

Cody slipped his backpack over his shoulders, picked up the duffel bag, and peered into the darkness. He followed the beam of light across the main road and entered patchy bush on uneven ground. He wandered about for a few minutes totally lost until he stumbled across a large acacia tree.

Ah, shit, he cursed.

He threw his packs on the ground and quickly settled under the tree exhausted from a day of travel. Sleep easily captured him.

Earlier that day

It had been a long trip earlier in the day from the Peace Corps Training Center in Naivasha, 88 kilometers north of Nairobi, where Cody and his colleagues spent their first three months in Kenya. First by bus for the one-hour ride to Nakuru, then cramped in the backseat of a weather-beaten Land Rover for the two-hour ride across the barren landscape of Baringo District to Kabarnet. Then the last ride to Kapluk, a two-hour crawl over the steepest and most rugged terrain in Kenya, all 40 kilometers of it.

The day began early at the Training Center. Cody boarded the bus in Naivasha town center at eight o'clock after saying goodbye to his Peace Corps colleagues. A party the night before lasting into the wee hours of the morning didn't help his disposition or his constitution. A few of his colleagues rode the bus to Nakuru for other destinations in west and northwest Kenya, each as excited as Cody. In the town of Nakuru, one of the largest in Kenya, it took Cody and his friends a few minutes to maneuver their way from the bus station to the area where smaller vehicles made trips to outlying areas of the country. Like any big town in Kenya the streets were filled with adults, children, animals of all descriptions, and vehicles of all makes and states of repair, from farmers with ox carts full of fruits, vegetables, or manure, to well-dressed chauffeurs in black Mercedes pandering to businessmen and local officials. The wide main streets of Nakuru were lined with two-story concrete buildings, shops and markets on the lower floor and professional businesses on the second. Everything needed a coat of paint. It wasn't long until Cody located a Land Rover headed to Kabarnet. The change in Nakuru was quick, the driver leaving once all seats were occupied. If the back seat was designed for three people, there was always room for four—or five. The same in the front seats. Designed for one and the driver but accommodating at least three passengers depending on their size and shape. The smaller the customer the better and children were a bonus. They could sit on someone's lap and still pay full fare. It made for a very uncomfortable ride, especially in the Kenyan summer with no air conditioning.

Once in Kabarnet Cody had to wait most of the day for a ride into the valley. He sat on the steps of the Green Hotel, alone at one end of town across from the local passenger pickup point. The dusty lot served as a local farmers market on weekends. Kabarnet wasn't nearly as large as Nakuru and it was easier for Cody to find his way around. Unlike Nakuru, Kabarnet's narrow unpaved streets were lined with wooden buildings melded with one-story concrete ones. The Green Hotel was the second-best hotel in Kabarnet, a two-story, U-shaped concrete building with green stripes over a white façade. The building surrounded a barren courtyard of scrub and short grass parched for water. Makeshift vegetable stands stood vacant along one corner of the pick-up lot across the street. A merciless sun beat down like fire in a blacksmith's forge.

Demolition derby

Cody watched with fascination as local matatus maneuvered this way and that in the lot in no particular pattern and without regard to one another. It looked more like a demolition derby than a parking lot. And it was just as dusty, Cody's hair layered in more and more gray soot as the afternoon wore on. Matatus were taxi-like vehicles, usually small Datsun pickup trucks, used to carry passengers from one point to another. Matatus were numerous in every town and village in Kenya. From Kabarnet one or two even dared the trip into the Kerio, across the valley and up the western escarpment to the town of Eldoret. One story had it the name matatu, meaning three in Swahili, derived from the fact the original wagons used for transport in Kenya had three rows of bench seats. Usually matatus were privately owned, with rows of wooden seats that held as many people as needed a ride. Matatus never refused a ride to anyone no matter how crowded they were. They stopped for anyone who flagged them down. Most times matatus operated in total disregard of traffic laws, speeding, cutting dangerously in front of other vehicles, running stop signs, and driving recklessly. They reminded Cody of teenage hot rodders racing up and down the island in Florida where he lived. Same thoughtlessness, different purpose.

A tout, called a makanga, attempted to attract riders and stood on the rear bumper of matatus collecting fares. Makangas were often a young male relative of the driver. Pounding on the roof, touts yelled pole, pole (slow down), simama (stop), and twende (go) to the driver. Matatus were not for long-distance trips. Those were often reserved for larger minivans. But what was even more annoying than the cramped space in a matatu was the music minivan drivers played. With speakers in the most precipitous places in the vans they continually boomed loud, boisterous tunes from sketchy cassettes played over and over. No Rolling Stones, Queen, Beatles, or Abba here, although some of the songs sounded like poor imitations of the original groups. Or was it that Cody didn't know what Bananarama was supposed to sound like? If he was only going a short distance and had no other choice, he could put up with the racket. But on longer trips, it was almost unbearable. Even the likes of Little Richard sounded tame to some of the stuff Cody had to endure on these trips. Luckily, no minivan risked the torturous trip to Kapluk. That would have been too much to bear. There was only one matatu that risked the trip from the turnoff at the bottom of the valley and followed no regular schedule. Drivers of other vehicles told Cody a matatu to Kapluk could come anytime and not to leave his perch at the hotel. As the day wore on Cody realized that anytime had a totally different meaning to locals. He drank bottles of tepid Coke purchased from the hotel clerk and ate unrecognizable sandwiches of egg, peanut butter, cucumber, and sliced avocado packed by staff at the Training Center that morning. The pickup truck to Kapluk didn't come until sunset.

The next morning

Cody was still asleep in the cradle of the acacia tree when the sun crept over the eastern cliffs. The village of Kapluk sat at the bottom of the escarpment, 1,100 meters above sea level and 64 kilometers north of the equator. Along that imaginary celestial divide in towns and villages across Kenya enterprising slicky boys kept the myth of counterclockwise swirling water alive for gullible tourists. That myth made no difference in Kapluk where most villagers had never seen the flush of a toilet. The village was a blank spot on the map, mostly a mix of grit, scrub, sparse forest, thick brush, windswept rock, and on a meridian roughly east of nowhere. It was a patchwork of bomas, bandas, kiosks, and wooden shacks, home for a few hundred people. A boma was the term used by Africans to describe any structure used to safely house farm animals. American hunters would think of a boma as an elaborate well-constructed duck blind.

In Kapluk most villagers lived in bandas, small conical huts made of mud, cow dung, hay, or sticks with a peaked thatched roof and dirt floor. A banda was resistant to strong winds, and the circular shape allowed smoke from fires to twirl up the vortex of the walls and out ventilation at the rooftop, much like American Indian lodges. Inside a windowless banda was usually dark and smoky. A small door opening allowed only one person at a time to pass. Most villagers in Kapluk were involved in subsistence farming—corn and beans. Vegetables when there was rain. Some kept domesticated animals for meat and milk. Money wasn't the measure of wealth in Kapluk. the number of chickens, goats, milk cows, and children was much more important.

When Cody finally woke, a rotund, apple-cheeked five-year-old boy stood over him. The boy was barefoot and shirtless in a pair of dirty shorts. They were almost as dirty as he was. A large scab encircling one eye wasn't healing properly. Good morning, Cody murmured, still half asleep. He was stiff and sore; every part of his body ached as much from the cramped travel the day before to the hard ground that refused to acquiesce to his sleek frame. The boy quickly turned and ran toward a banda where four small children played in the dirt.

Way to go, Hawks, Cody said aloud. The first person you talk to in the village runs away.

He stood up and looked around. Picking up his bags he felt warped and a little humpbacked. Gathering himself together he walked toward a small house in the other direction. The house was four wooden walls over a concrete slab, not much larger than a horse stable. It was thirty square meters under a slanted tin roof. Windows with wooden shutters were framed in each wall. Cody walked slowly to the house. A handwritten banner was tacked over the front door.

Welcome, Mr. Peace Corps

Cody stared at the banner for a minute before picking up his bags and walking through the front door. He had been in the village once before but only for introductions in the village. But that first trip upcountry had opened a portal to another world, a world which piqued his senses and challenged his perceptions as nothing before. After three months of training, he was ready to begin a new life in the Peace Corps. He was leaving his old life behind. A life that didn't have much content for him. He wanted to embrace a new beginning and write his own story in a place where he began with no regrets and no loyalties. This was to be his home. Survival would challenge him in unexpected ways.

Cody was eager, excited, and more than a bit terrified.

Day 2

Poseidon's Kiss

January 2, 1986

Thursday. A few minutes later two local boys approached Cody's house. One was in his late teens, of general height and a solid build he carried proudly. There wasn't an ounce of weight on his body that shouldn't have been there. The other was much younger, thin, and gangly. Both had closely cropped hair and were barefoot dressed in shorts and soiled T-shirts. The writing and images on the shirts had worn off long ago. There was no uniqueness to the way people dressed in Kapluk. Women wore bright-colored kangas (wraps) , but Western clothes were the norm for men. Young people and children wore shorts and T-shirts.

The older boy held an empty plastic jug in his hand. Mister! Mister! he yelled as he knocked on Cody's door.

Yes? Cody shouted from inside the house.

The chief sent us from the village! the boy yelled.

Cody stepped out his front door. He was still in faded jeans and untied hiking boots from the night before. His best John-Paul-George-Ringo T-shirt was getting too small for his muscled torso but he refused to give it up. He quickly sized up the two boys in front of him, rugged as the terrain around them. As the sun smiled over the escarpment, a sea of parched earth reached up to touch it, slowly and grudgingly. The unpretentious geography was as straightforward as the boys at his door.

Word gets around fast in this village, Cody said. I just got here last night. What's your names?

Daniel, Daniel Kwanbi, the older boy answered. This is my brother, Joel.

The boys had Christian given names because English functioned as the second language in Kenya, brought to the territory in the nineteenth century when the British colonized it. The colonialists decided to give Kenyans Christian names because they couldn't pronounce traditional African names like Chiumbo, Thabo, Alemayehu, and Chiyembekezo. Subsequently, Daniel, Joel, Mary, Paul, Eunice, James, and Charles were common names in East Africa.

Well, boys, my name's Cody Hawks, and it's like this. I slept under that tree over there last night and I'm still settling in here.

The boys had no idea why this white man had slept under a tree and weren't about to ask. Their encounters with other white men had taught them one thing. There was a narrow line between sanity and just plain nuts. And white men usually fell too easily into the latter category.

The chief asked me to show you the water this morning, Daniel said. And anything else you need. We didn't know when you were coming.

I need water, Cody said.

He already knew that access to clean water was the number one challenge in the village. A lethal combination of cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis, typhoid, and even polio from bad water was the sword of Damocles that hung over the valley. If they kept busy enough; if their troubles and problems were immediate and numerous; if they kept occupied with their next meal, then and only then could the villagers, for a time, wall off the sword, forget the insidious, implacable challenge they lived with every day.

I'll go with you, Cody added. But first, do you know anything about the chickens in my house this morning?

The chickens are a gift from the chief, Daniel said. He left other things too.

Among those were a half-dozen candles, two kerosene lamps, a small flashlight, and a metal basin.

Thank the chief for me, but if you and your brother would like, you can take those chickens.

During his training, local staff had shown him how to kill, prepare, and cook a chicken. They also showed him the same for a goat, except in the case of the kid he joined colleagues and drank the blood from a large incision in the neck. The blood went down like thick salt water. Cody was told certain tribes in East Africa drank the blood of animals, especially goats and cows, on special occasions—the circumcision of a child, birth of a baby, a girl's marriage. As a nutrient when food was scarce. To alleviate intoxication and the hangover of drunken elders. Cody had friends back home who wouldn't appreciate that cure. It may even have made them think twice before their usual Friday night pub crawls. He knew one thing for sure. He never wanted to kill and dress any animal again. Plucking chicken feathers was simply a pain in the ass. And goat meat tasted like tallow and was passable only if roasted into jerky.

Cody motioned for Joel to come in the house. The boy darted in the door and quickly returned, smiling broadly, holding a pair of squawking chickens by the feet. They would provide more than a few meals for the boys.

Why are you here, Mister Cody? Daniel asked.

I'm going to teach at the secondary school and build a dormitory for the students. Do you both go to school?

No, sir, Daniel replied, we don't have the fees.

Fees for attendance at the Harambee Kapluk Secondary School were approximately 1,600 Kenyan shillings per year per student. In Swahili the word harambee meant all pull together. It was a community self-help concept of pulling together to raise funds for all types of projects, most notably schools. It was the official motto of Kenya and schools like the Harambee Kapluk Secondary School scheduled harambee events throughout the year to raise funds for the school. This local financing feature of the Kenyan educational system was a movement traced from colonial days when local villages established and supported their own independent schools. These independent schools