DAY SEVENTEEN

All I can do today is sleep for I feel so poorly.    Emanuel came to visit me last night and asked if I wanted to take the plane out with Dan and Linda the next day and go back to Nairobi to heal.  I’m tempted, for I feel so terribly ill, but I didn’t want to miss  sharing time with this lovely family and working in the school with the children.

The journey back is laden with holes and puddles for it has rained.  The car skids and slips over mud as if we were driving on ice.  We ride by men pushing bikes with wood piled higher than their heads and women carrying jugs of water.  Sacks of bananas line the road of small villages and people shout at us as we pass.  When we hit a paved road Emmanuel tells me that the Chinese built it.  “We trust the Chinese more than Kenyans to get the work done without corruption and pay-offs.”   All too quickly the paved road ends and we hit dirt again for most of the way home.

I feel lonely with Dan and Linda gone.  I had come to depend on them as a link to the world outside of Africa.  You seem to form a trust quickly here, as an outsider and I enjoyed sharing impressions and things I marveled at with them.   I’m glad when  Larousi curls up and falls asleep on my lap.

I was quickly drenched as I ran from the latrine to my hut.  I lay with damp hair against my sleeping bag and feel the blackness of the night weigh on my like a heavy blanket of Ugali, the wet, jelly like wheat paste that is eaten like bread.   Grateful for the small window where I see the faint outline of a mountain, I think about lighting one of the small candles I brought with me.  I count them out.  I don’t have enough to last the whole time, but decide I need the comfort of the small flame tonight for the hut has only a bed and small wooden chair.  I take a pill that Dan, whose father is a doctor, gave me for my fever and I pass the night in bouts of sleep, waking with alertness at every unfamiliar sound, fearing animals that may be prowling nearby.