2019 Kili Initiative # 9 - Another Night Walk - Illasit

As the sun dropped to the west of Illasit. I stood on a hill to contact Tim Challen, the Kili Initiative director, in Geneva. Somehow a signal connected us and my friend asked, "How is everyone?"

"Better than good. They made it here on their own. It's not easy for anyone to read a map."

"That's why we bring them out there. To find their own way. I'll call you tomorrow."

I hung up, wondering what were the charges for a long-distance call from Kenya to Switzerland, as I descended the rocky slope to our campsite on the Illasit middle school grounds.

Dinner wasn't ready and Ma'we suggested a walk into town.

JM said, "Don't be too long."

"Just taking my brother to see our world."

We strolled away from the middle school down a narrow defile. Young girls and women stood behind a wired fence preparing the evening meal. Two guards in their forties stood at the gate. Ma'we explained, "That is a shelter for women fleeing Female Genital Mutilation or sexual violence. The guards take them back and forth to school. They are safe here from 'emorata'."

The guards shouted out his name and Ma'we waved to them, as we continued down the path.

"You seem to know everyone."

"I taught school here. A long time ago. I had a small room. I slept on the sleeping bag and stored it in the rafters. All the students said I slept on the floor. I never told them different and these people thought I was one of them, but they are Maasai."

"Warriors." I was familiar with the spearmen from Tarzan's BROTHERHOOD OF THE SPEAR.

Proud warriors too."

"This town grew when other tribes opened shops. Commerce gave everyone money. The Maasai were jealous and called for a meeting atop that hill."

"They told the other tribespeople they had twenty-four hours to leave and gave them a beating to show they were serious. The pother people left and within a year the town was only friends with the wind. The Maasai want people to come back, but everyone went somewhere else. Still they do have beer here."

"Sounds good to me."

I wasn't scared of anything.

Especially with Ma'we at my side."

Few trees had survived over-pasturization.

Dust was the main crop aside from cattle.

Everyone greeted Ma'we by name.

Some houses were closed for good and I imagined the ghost of the old occupants had also been exiled to other lands.

"Here we are."

"This is a bar."

"With Guinness."

I am Irish and entered the bar with eagerness.

We entered the bar.

A few young men chewed ghat in the corner. The stimulant was popular throughout East Africa.

"Ghat has been in Africa since the Pharaohs and it is legal in Kenya," explained Ma'we with disapproval.

The table offered me some of the leaf. I shook my head and Ma'we signaled for beer.

The Guinness was not cold. Electricity was saved for the overhead fan. Guinness was still good for you.

And even better with my new friends.

After an hour the mayor and his brother wished us good luck.

"Tumunyana."

It was night and after the gas station the stars guided us through the shadows back to the school.

No one could ever calculate their number. I lost track after a billion.

Drinking three Guinness didn't help my math and neither did my fingers, but I needed them to count us.

We were two.

Ma'we and me.

And up ahead I spotted a fire.

Our campsite.

Our friends.

Food.

Tents.

Sleep.

In Africa.

I was happy, but looked behind me.

I was happier to not see glowing eyes, because the night belongs to the hyenas on the Maasai Plains.

Never Call The Police

This weekend in Fort Worth, Texas police responded to a 911 call about a potential break-in from a neighbor, who had seen a woman's door ajar. The PD arrived on the scene. A rookie officer spotted a woman inside the house and capped 28 year-old Atatiana Jefferson with a 9mm. The victim was in her own house, playing a video game. BodyCam footage was spliced by technician to doctor the interpretation of the murder by showing a gun in the bedroom. The media hasn't helped the situation by reporting that the police had been called for a 'welfare check', casting the dead woman in a negative light, even though she was working full-time and considering going to medical school.

'Welfare check'.

Even The Guardian printed those two words.

Guilt is only a perception when accompanied by an erroneous accusation.

In Thailand no one calls the police or tam-luat.

The brown uniformed officers are only after a bribe or 'sin bon'.

Cops in the USA regularly responded to 911 calls from families seeking assistance in helping a troubled relative, because the communities have cut taxes for the rich. The police treat them to a bullet. 911 means DOA in America for people of color and poverty.

Treating the rich the same way the police treat the poor.

It's the only true justice.

28 W. 15th Street / A Friendship With Somebody Else - by Dakota Pollock

This summer I sold out and bought an a/c Artists were meant to suffer To transform their suffering Into understanding and hope By altering perspective For those who were unable To find it in themselves But now, I was no good.

I was heat struck and heat warped Caught in a fire like ash dump While the humidity swarmed Down on the rusted a/c units In cramped window sills And the old women Fanned themselves off With junk mail and rain beaten Coupon books on the steps of their stoop.

I gave in Cause I no longer cared. What it meant to be an artist.

What did it mean to be an artist? I didn't want to know because The art, the creation, the apparent magic Had failed me Had blessed others, That weren't me. Why would I continue to care?

I was hot I looked 10 years younger With smooth, glowing skin And a thinner belly From the sweating In my bedroom Which it felt like A Turkish sauna.

This was better Than suffering for art.

I should have charged admission Inviting over all the gay boys Who have to wait for the Men only days on the bathhouse calendars I could have played them my records Or read them poetry Or discussed the Matisse print outs I had taped to my wall While they rolled and licked And rollicked and rocked And fondled and felt In the glistening steam Of my intimate bedroom

But that wasn't going to happen Cause I had mounted the a/c unit To my windowsill.

Cool air surrounded me Like two towelless men Wrestling in the steam tinted shade Of a showerhead.

Trump's Nuclear Out

Donald Trump's presidency has been a series of lows followed by even more lows.

His telephone call to to Ukraine's leader to seek evidence of criminal corruption of a political rival's seemed a new low, however his followers immediately forgave # 45 by saying everyone makes mistakes and his Attorney General blamed the chaos on America's rejection of religion.

Trump has appeared at rallies accusing his attackers of treason, as the House of Representatives subpoenas White House staff and members of the Executive Branch to testify before Congress.

His Tweets about Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have been even more vicious.

"His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber. He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason....."

As well as "If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal,'" Trump quoted Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress as saying.

If this is what he thinks, then we are heading for a crisis greater than impeachment.

This man has his finger close to the Nuclear trigger.

He is quite capable of ordering an attack on Boston, San Francisco, or Los Angeles.

A danger to us all.

From sea to shining sea.

2019 Kili Initiative - Arrival in Illasit # 9

After crossing ten miles of the arid savannah Ma'we and I reached the road to Illasit, an isolated Masai town in the late afternoon. The equatorial sun was dropping to the west. My backpack weighed a ton. JM the guide had warned about carrying any extra weight and I thought about throwing away my toothbrush.

The dirt track led to the local middle school.

The 2019 Kili Initiative team had yet to arrive.

Ma'we pointed to eight figures atop a hill. It was our crew.

"They'll be here soon enough."

At the school gate JM and Fast Steve were speaking to the headmaster, whose right hand grasped a long stick. The students were arranged by boys and girls for release from education. Ma'we whispered, "When I taught in this town, the headmaster beat any troublemakers at the end of the day."

"I went to a school with nuns. They beat us all day long." The 1950s had been a time of penal education.

"Same as when I was a boy. Now they don't do it so much as threaten to beat them."

JM introduced the headmaster, who requested that I speak to his charges.

"Sure." I approached the students.

"Education is important. Knowledge is more important. Running fast is most important for Linet Masai and Eliud Kipchoge." I lifted my right hand. "On your marks, get set, GO."

They ran from the school yard with the wind, puffs of dust exploding beneath their feet.

Within ten seconds they were a hundred meters from me.

Even as a teenager I had never been that fast.

The headmaster smiled and left to attend to those students scheduled for detention.

None of them looked happy.

"Let's go to the tents."

Our camp had been set up by the tuk-tuk driver.

Female detainees stared out from the classrooms.

They looked hungry and I handed over my remaining lunch as well as my supply of chocolate.

Smiles gathered on their faces and I returned mine, thinking that was a good pound off my back.

Sitting with Ma'we and JM I asked how long they had known each other.

"We met in the late 80s teaching the Kenyan Army how to survive in the bush. We didn't think that we would be friends, but here thirty years later two old men working every year for this Kili Initiative trek."

"Not as old as me." I had a a good ten years on both of them.

"I was 18 the first time I climbed Kilimanjaro. I had never been so cold, but I made it to the top. The problem was that my water had frozen and I was dying of thirst. I thought I was going to die, but by the time I got back to Kibo Hut, I was fine. I've been up to the top maybe a hundred times same as Ma'we."

"Not everyone makes it the first time," added Ma'we.

"You think I'll make it?"

"Tomorrow if you can make it to the top of Lolapange, then you can make it to the top of Kili."

I looked around me. Nothing was as high as Kili in the distance.

Snow tipped the rim.

It was over a million years old.

I felt older, but not as old as the team walking into the campsite.

They set up a table for cooking dinner.

"How was it?"

"We found our way together," said Jackman and JM nodded, appreciating the backpacks were on the ground, instead of their backs. I felt the same way and tested the uglai.

The Kenyan staple tasted better on an empty stomach.

"Good," asked Maureen.

"Very good."

Everything was always better when you weren't alone.

Ma'We and JM - Illasit, Kenya

Ma'we and JM have been hiking through the Tsaavo Plains since 1989.

Both were teachers training the Kenyan army through the auspices of Outward Bound.

The two men have been accompanying the Kili Initiative teams for over a decade.

Neither thought they would be friends at first, but friends they are.

To hear their tale, please go to the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezC_rpULKvU&feature=youtu.be

Camping Kibo Lodge # 7 - Kili Initiative 2019

Over the next days the Kili Initiative 2019 team engaged in various bonding challenges presented them by JM, Ma'we, and Fast Steve. These exercises were designed to interlocked the team into each other. Not as rivals, but as comrades.

Jackman, Vanessa, Maureen, Ubah, Jaubah, Larry, Laityn, and Natatlia were young people.

None of them knew each other.

But they were growing close thanks to these games.

I remained at a distance.

This was their time to bond.

I was glad to be with the young.

We left the Kibo Lodge rooms for tents.

"When was the last time you camped outside?" asked Jubah asked.

I decided not to tell about sleeping in the rough on Rockaway Beach and said, "1990 in Nepal."

"I wasn't even born then." "None of us were." "You got that right."

I had a tent to myself and the evening air was filled by the scent of flowers

The night was special.

Ma'we and I drank Kingali Cognac with Crest Orange soda.

The young people remained sober. It was part of the rules.

We danced, sang, and laughed into the night.

I spoke with Vanessa, Maureen, Ubah, Natalia, and Laityn.

"Sorry, I've been distant. I might live in a city of millions, but I often feel alone."

"We all feel that way. Young and old, but not tonight," said Ubah and she smiled with s shyness swearing to her truth.

"Thank you" was all I could say.

In the morning the preacher man would wake us at 5:30 and we would hiking the Tsaavo plains.

They stretched across Kenya.

And for better or worse we were ready for them.