The Preppy Palagi: March 2014

A Kenyan girl returning from doing washing in the river takes our photo while we take hers,
near Eldoret, Kenya, January 2014

I would like to tell you that on my last morning in Kenya, I ran all the way up the long hill by Testimony School without stopping to walk, that I had so adjusted to the altitude and become so fit in my month there that I didn't need to slow myself. But I was not running like a Kenyan, like the lithe and lean Kalenjins with their endless graceful legs. I never will.

I did, however, take a different route on that last morning. It seemed an apt metaphor. And a few times, choked up by both emotion and red dust, I paused to admire and bid farewell to certain types of plants and birds that I am not likely to see again for awhile.

That was not how it was supposed to be.

As most of you stateside know by now, I'm writing from Rhode Island. Sadly, my time in Kenya ended nearly as soon as it began. I was gone only a month, and already I've been home a month, our house still not unpacked from all of the work Sam did when she thought she was coming to join me. And already there are days when it feels as though I never left, as if I've been here this whole long slog of a winter, instead of getting a few weeks' reprieve in warm weather.

I should have known that it wouldn't work out. After all, my first day on the job was terribly inauspicious. Somehow, I locked myself out of my dorm room when I went to use the toilet at about 5:15 am, a full hour before sunrise. I was wearing only thin cotton pajamas and it was cold enough (yes, at altitude it happens) to see my breath.

After realizing my mistake and quietly but proficiently swearing, I ventured downstairs to the common room, selected a Martin Amis novel from the lending library, and curled up on the loveseat as best as I could under a brittle old sheepskin. Joseph, one of the security guards, came in around 6 to use the restroom, and found the sight of me terribly amusing. He offered to get one of the compound's "team leaders" to let me in, but I said I'd wait until a reasonable hour (around 7) when I knew they'd be awake. Once I was let back into my room, I quickly took what my grandmother used to unceremoniously call a "chorus girl bath," since there was no hot water, dressed for work, and wolfed down some toast and tea.

By dinnertime, word had traveled among the guards about the silly mzungu shivering under the sheepskin, but I took Joseph into my confidence and made him promise NOT to tell my new boss under any circumstances, as I was already unsure of how much she trusted me.

That was it, really. I tried so hard, those first couple of weeks, to make my new boss happy, and in doing so, I quickly began losing parts of myself - the me who slept soundly, who whistled and sang in my idle moments. And as I began to realize that very little would or did make her happy, that I couldn't be the kind of manager she wanted, and that staying there would mean giving up my well-being - indeed, my being - I knew I had to make the hard decision to leave.

But I have always fallen hard for new places, and Eldoret was no different. The climate and the natural world were unparalleled, as I sensed even on my daily walks to and from the project office. Despite inhaling lorry smoke and risking life and limb as motorcycles, their filthy mudflaps pledging loyalty to Arsenal or other premier league clubs, ignored every basic rule of road safety, I often marveled at black and blue butterflies feeding on weeds in ditches. So much grew so easily, even in adverse conditions. Never before had I seen a volunteer hollyhock literally growing out of a pile of garbage "by the road to the contagious hospital," no less, as William Carlos Williams put it. Walking back into the well-manicured compound in the late afternoons, resplendent sunbirds would be feeding in the trees lining the drive. There was so much for an amateur naturalist everywhere, even more so on my weekend trips to forests and valleys and waterfalls, where I didn't tick off boxes on any life lists but simply marveled, as much as I could, at the country's abundance of beauty.

The town centre itself was gritty and chaotic in a way that growing cities are in places where there's insufficient infrastructure. Still, there's something thrilling about being in a place where one second you see men hauling a skinned cow into a butcher shop and the next you notice a street hawker with a bathroom scale - who, I assume, makes a few shillings by selling the privilege of weighing oneself. And the people watching was endlessly fascinating: young adolescent girls in royal blue taffeta, ankle-length gowns that may have come from prom dress overstock ca.1985 and young men in t-shirts referencing in-jokes from American movies of the same era. Bright young things, all, with so much promise and relatively few opportunities.

I got to know more bright young things - namely, the Kenyan staff on the project, who tolerated my apologetically rudimentary Swahili with grace, humor, and warmth, and the announcement of my very premature departure with sadness and resigned understanding. In the short time we were colleagues, some of us became friends, and it is they whom I will miss most of all.

What is next for me professionally is uncertain. Right now I'm underemployed, but seeking. I don't regret my month in Eldoret. It was a time of firsts: the first time I quit a job as an adult and the first time I slaughtered a chicken. Most importantly, it resulted in my first namesake, a little Kenyan boy, something I recently learned that moved me deeply and is, I think, the only real legacy I need to leave.

For now, I leave you readers with a few pictures documenting the high points of my month.

Peace,

Kelley