Ambroseli Safari 2019

Ambroseli Safari with 2019 Kili Initiative team. The previous evening at the hotel in Marangu I had eaten goat entrails stew, despite our commander Tim Challen's warning. I ignored his advice and paid the price. I was deathly ill and the next day we went on a safari to Ambroseli. We sighted lions, elephants, zebra, baboons, and giraffes, who are not hard to miss. All I wanted to see was a rest room, which was atop a hill in the plains. Safe from the wild beast, but not goat entrails stew.

On the climb my puking earned the nickname '000-aak'. Never again goat entrails stew.

Kibera The Slum of Hope - 2019

Kibera
The Forest in Nubian
Nairobi
Kenya
A million souls
Living by the Nairobi Lake
On $2 a day
A slum
Bigger than Boston
Filled with every tribe in Kenya, Uganda, the Sudan, Nubia, Somalia
Living together
On $2 a day
Never giving up
Kibera is the slum of hope.

I have walked through the paths
Between the colonies of mud shacks.
With young friends
On a sunny winter day.
Banda likikushinda, jenga kibanda.
An oldiu Swahili saying.

'If you can't build a hut, build a shack."

There are hundreds of thousands
Of huts and shacks
In Kibera.
We go inside Steve's shack
Pop posters
A single overhead bulb
Dirt floor
Clean
$20 a month
It is home.
He lives the same as we all do
From past to present to future

I am a mazungoo.
A white man
I am here thanks to Tim
We met in Tibet
He was shot in Nairobi
By slum criminals

His revenge was to help Kiberans

Why am I here?

To help the team walk through the Masaii Plains
And climb Kilimanjaro

I know nothing
Of Kibera
But
I live in a ghetto
Clinton Hill
I have lived in others
In Thailand
In Indonesia
In the East Village
The poor there are poor
Same as the poor here
Same as everyone
Seeking an end to greed
And happiness.
Furaha

My friends are young Kiberans
Felix, Slow Steve, Vanessa, Maureen, Ubah, and Jackmon.
This is their home.
My friends are young New Yorkers too
Larry, Laikyn, Nathalia
Red Hook and Queens
I am a mazungoo
But here my name is not my mazoongoo name.
My name in Kibera is Mzee
Old man.
I was once young like them.
Not today.

We walk through the paths
Of Kibera.
Mud and tin shacks rise two-storys
Over paths of compressed garbage and mud.
Children play
They smile
Kibera all they know
Their world.
Gunmen roam Kibera
I'm not scared
I'm only scared of my wives.
Steve knows everyone
Everyone knows everyone
Now they know Mzee.

A dirty stream trickles along the path.
No running water
In Kibera.
Only these streams.

Vanessa's eight year old sister recites SLUM GIRL
"I am a slum girl "
Proudly defiant a slum superstar.

Hope

We walk more.
I buy watermelons at the shops
For the children
They smile with delight
They follow Mzee
Throwing gnawed rinds
On the ground to join
Dried mud and garbage
Further on
I buy another watermelon
More kids
More smiles
Old toothless women
Eat watermelon
Toothless smiles
Gunmen eat watermelon too
Fast Steve, Maureen, Ubah, Jackmon, Young Steve, Larry, Laikyn, Vanessa and Mzee smiles too u
We all love watermelon.
It offers happiness
For Mzee
For the young and old
For Kibera
The slum of hope
For the world
We are us
We are family

Today Shannon and Charlotta walk Kibera
With Steve and other Kiberans
I cannot fly yet
u They are my eyes and ears
They saved my life
Steve knows that
2024
I will be in Kibera
I will walk the paths
I will buy more watermelon
Mzee is coming
Nakuja 2024
https://youtu.be/eBpYgpF1bqQ?si=D7jlEpaAsjah_sX4

The Loss of Caul's Vision

On March 4, 2020 after a simple breakfast David, my guide, and I left Kibo Hut on Kilimanjaro to descend to Hurumbo Hut. I turned often to eye Africa's tallest mountain rimmed by hoarfrost. Near a grouping of old volcanic rocks David said, "We can get the Internet here. Maybe even a phone home."

I tried to contect my wives in Thailand without successs and read the Guardian online, while David spoke to his family in Chagga. The Guardian reported how the Coruna Virus was scourging Wuhan, China, Italy, and Iran. The world was a much different place than the one we left eight days ago.

David finished his call and asked, "You know about Covid?"

"Just what I've been reading over the last days."

"And what do you think?" David like many of the guides and porters trusted my eye on the weather.

"That we are in for a hard time, but not today."

Pendaeli, the Park ranger, greeted my arrival at Hurumbo with a broad smile. Basketball tied us tight. He was Lakers. I was Celtics. That night at dinner he whispered, "What do you think about Covids?"

I had been born with the placenta wrapped around my head. The phenomena affected one of 87000 births and the Celts believed the Caul granted the newborn with the gift of sight of the past, present, and future, but I admitted to Pendaeli, "I see nothing."

I hadn't foreseen the death of my longtime friend Dr. Bertoni.

Nor my getting Covid in March.

Nor the closure of the City That Never Slept.

All day I heard the sirens of ambulances speeding the sick to Brooklyn Hospital.

Death and illness.

No laughing matter as the world shrunk day by day, but I hadn't been so sick thanks to my Neanderthal heritage and O blood and Charlotta's D3 treatment.

I stayed home alone.

I spoke to the walls.

They spoke back in languages I refuse to decipher, but I understood they said, "Don't go outside."

I didn't listen.

I was a man of the world trapped in the USA.

I visited Guadacanal, an old punk friend, across the Hudson and saw the wonders of Jersey City. The guitarist never left his house and communicated with his wife in Kansas City and the squirrels in his back yard. He was leaving for the fly-over in the next month.

I wished I could click my heels to be transported over Kansas to Thailand to see my children and grandchildren.

The gift of the Caul was my only power and I remained trapped in Brooklyn.

FDTrump's HQ was on Broadway.

Fatso refused to believe in the pandemic.

Thousands of people died in New York City during May.

Then the ambulances stopped coming in June.

My downstairs neighbor Brigette and I became friends.

Her BF Jacob too.

We traveled to the Catskills.

I lost three more friends.

The numbers were mounting and FDTrump offered voodoo medicine as a cure.

I hate him more and more.

No one visited his Bushwick HQ.

There was no way he would win Brooklyn in 2020.

I wandered a little farther from the 'Hood.

Maine and New Hampshire.

Loitokitok - 2019 Kili Initiative - # 20

Back at the Kibo Slopes Lodge the Kili Initiative team relaxed after lunch. I hadn't eaten anything. My stomach was trembling at the sight of good and decided to wander into town for some souvenirs and maybe even a Guinness.

The Irish Stout was good for you.

This was our last day in Loitokitok.

Tomorrow the team was traveling to Tanzania to begin our climb of Mount Kilimanjaro.

My friend Ma'we joined me.

"Always good to have someone with you. This might be the country, but young men can get city very fast, if they see someone with money."

"Like me."

"Yes, like you."

I took only my phone and some money.

We walked down the back road.

Some girl approached us.

They offered fun.

"Sorry, I am a married man."

I have been faithful to Mam over ten years.

One of them said, "Muziki."

Even without knowing Swahili I deciphered the word and laughed, giving them each enough money for a meal. $3 in total.

"Why you give those bad girls money?"

"We all are bad. They are bad 100%. They are just not lucky, same as that flower. Beautiful one day. Not beautiful another."

Ma'we understood and

School was in session and few people were on the street, except for a couple of children on a dusty street.

"Why aren't they in school?"

"Maybe family have no money. School is very expensive, but I think they be too young."

Their smiles were things of beauty.

"Same in Thailand. No money. No school."

"Corruption."

Kenya was richer than most countries on the continent, but the money flowed up to the rich and never down to the poor. Same as everywhere in the world.

"Just a second. You go ahead."

"Sick?" asked Ma'we.

"Only a little."

He walked ahead and I voided my body and soul onto the dirt.

Damn goat entail soup.

We turned a corner and were in the market.

Passengers were loading onto buses destined for unknown towns.

Ma'we had friends here. Everyone knew him. Everyone wanted to say hello. He introduced me as his brother. I felt good about that, but then my stomach gurgled like the inside of a fetid geyser.

"Watch out. M'zee zamani."

All the old men laughed, because nothing was funnier than a fart. I took my revenge and let go. The old men reeled back in earnest and I said, "M'zee # 1."

We left quickly and within two minutes people shouted out to me.

"M'zee Zamani."

I had been here for a couple of days.

They also shouted out, "Konyagi."

It was my drink and in small towns everyone knew everyone's stories and quick.

A bar was located on a back alley.

Ma'we led me to a seat by the window.

He laughed with the other drinkers, telling a tale of my farts and after a brief conversation in Swahili he asked, "Guinness?"

I nodded my head, hoping I could keep it down in my stomach and control my zamani. I told heroic tales of passing gas to the bar drinkers and raised my hands to signal I needed to get outside.

The Preacher Man was kicking off his evening session.

I walked across the dirt road. Flowers floated from the green. I tested the wind and aimed downwind. I spread my legs and let go the wind within me. A song came into my head. CANDLE IN THE WIND. Elton John.

I turned around and entered the bar to cheers.

My fellow drinkers were holding their noses.

I sniffed the air and said, "Big nose smelled bad everywhere."

The next round was on me, because Guinness was good for you.

No matter how bad was your guts.

ps. I bought a Kenya baseball cap.