I closed the door and did some push-ups, hoping they’d rid me of my guilt. I was glad things didn’t develop, though, so I kept doing push-ups.
Eventually, I got into bed. I closed my eyes. I fell asleep.
In the morning I ate only tea and toast, so as not to ruin my appetite, but I wanted to have something in my stomach before taking my pills. I finally felt somewhat rested, even though we were out late, but I’d slept a bit at least, a few hours, like four or five — the most I’d slept since landing in Nairobi.
My eye looked a little better, too, the bruising underneath fading.
I bumped into Mark at breakfast and he said, ‘I was just talking to Elizabeth, the Esquire writer, and she isn’t doing so well.’
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
‘I guess after the club last night a bunch of them went back to Kenneth’s sister’s place and they were all boozing, but Elizabeth decided to stop drinking and instead drank water from May’s Brita and today she’s having GI issues.’
‘Oh man, that’s terrible.’
‘Yeah, not pleasant.’
‘I have some pills the doctor gave me at the Tropical Diseases Clinic in Montreal, like basically a double dose of Imodium with an antibiotic, too. He only gave me a few,’ I said, ‘because I gather they’re pretty potent and will block you up for like a month if you overdo it. I’ll give her a couple.’
‘I’m sure she’d appreciate it,’ said Mark.
After breakfast, after returning to my room to take the antimalarials and grab the stomach meds, while waiting for our bus, I spotted Elizabeth in the lobby and walked over to her and said, ‘Hey, I heard you aren’t feeling well, like having stomach issues.’
She said, ‘You could hear me from your room?’
‘Ha, no,’ I said. ‘But Mark told me you were having some gi issues, from drinking from May’s Brita.’
‘I feel like I’m dying,’ she said, rubbing her stomach.
‘Well I’ve got some pills, some Ciprofloxacin, for bacterial infections.’ We looked at each other. ‘It’ll help your stomach,’ I said. ‘I got the pills from the Tropical Diseases Clinic in Montreal, before the trip.’
I produced two large pills from my pocket.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘Take these.’
She accepted.
‘Thank you.’
‘He only gave me four, said they’re powerful.’
‘Excellent!’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’ll try anything. Thanks again.’
On our way out of the city we drove past Kibera, one of the largest slums on the planet, both retrograde and futuristic, off in the distance. Boris had visited once and taken some stunning photos but that’s the closest I’d get.
The bus stopped once, so people could pee if they had to and I did so I did. I got off the bus and looked down onto the endless valleys and urinated in the shade of thorny acacia branches.
A Maasai, not a herdsman but a herdboy, stood on the side of a hill, wrapped in a reddish shuka, a long straight stick in hand and a small skinny calf at his side, negotiating the rocky hillside. Our shuttle bus wound its way up and around the hills. The landscape was crushingly beautiful. My ears popped with the elevation. Most of the green hills were more beige and red than green, the grass patchy and sunburnt.
We arrived at the restaurant, which was outdoors in a Maasai village, though for tourists. Everywhere there were Maasai men in red shukas and covered in colourful beaded jewellery, the beadwork stunning and intricately patterned.
We sat at picnic tables on a patio precipice overlooking the deep, infinite valleys. I saw a young man with a goat on a rope.
Boris said, ‘That’s our lunch.’
We drank beer and bottled water and took in all the wonder. The air was fresh and I kept closing my eyes under my sunglasses, breathing, meditative.
Although I’d been feeling generally lousy, the beauty of the Rift Valley overwhelmed me. The endless blue sky, the perfect rippling cloudbanks, low down, casting shadows on the valleys, the greens, reds and browns. I’d never seen such perfect sky — the cradle of civilization, without a doubt.
Our lunch arrived on wooden cutting boards.
Basically, it was piles of fresh goat meat, with little piles of salt on the corners of the cutting boards, so as to rub on the meat. We rubbed salt on the goat and ate with our hands. We also ate ugali, a doughy cornmeal starch dish, and collard greens.
Kenneth, Boris, Stanley and Sharon all sat at the same picnic table as me, as did a few other people I didn’t know. I felt grateful for my friends, for the food, the goat that gave its life, the salts at the corners of the cutting board, the beer and water I drank, for all the love under heaven.
At the end of the meal, a blood sausage called mūturawas served.
Kenneth said, ‘Most wazungu don’t like mūtura. It’s a little intense for them.’
‘It’s not for me,’ said Boris, a sentiment echoed by pretty much everyone at the table, as we stared at the pile of extremely bloody stuffed intestines.
Kenneth ate a morsel and said, ‘Delicious!’
I took up the challenge and ate some, too, and blood exploded in my mouth.
‘It’s good. Bloody,’ I said, and everyone laughed. I swigged back some beer.
On the bus ride back from the Rift Valley, I received a text from MC Karen, asking me if I’d be available to meet around six. The cultural attaché of the Embassy of the United States of America, Aruna Jayaraman, had invited a group of us, with embossed invitations, to his home for a literary soireé, ‘Spreading the Words,’ to be given by some of the visiting American writers, for six-thirty p.m.
But we were flying out for Lamu the next afternoon and the prospect of hanging with MC Karen interested me more than another reading, so I texted Karen back saying I’d love to go to her studio. She wrote saying she’d pick me up in a car at the hotel at six and I said I’d be out front.
I told Boris I’d be skipping the event at the cultural attaché’s so as to hang out with MC Karen and he said, ‘Man, good choice.’
III
I paced out front of the hotel waiting for MC Karen. I was nervous and wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Jason gave me his cell number, if for some reason I got lost or something. My abdomen hurt a little, a soreness incommensurate with the few sit-ups I’d done. The bus to the cultural attaché’s house left at five-thirty. Only a small group had been invited. MC Karen was late, like half an hour late, so I went to the restaurant and ordered a bottle of water and watched for her from the terrace.
She showed up a little after seven. I went to greet her and she emerged from the backseat of the car looking gorgeous, again in short-shorts and smiling, with her arms open to greet me, and I no longer cared about her lateness.
A few festivalgoers saw me get in the backseat of the car with MC Karen and I felt good; I felt excited.
‘I thought we’d have a beer or two,’ she said, ‘and meet up with Flora before we hit the studio.’
‘I’m game,’ I said.
We sat in the backseat, both facing forward, both smiling widely. The sun was bright but starting to set.
The car ride to Westlands took about twenty minutes and we got dropped off at a multi-floored plaza. I paid the driver. Inside, it seemed nearly abandoned, a small abandoned mall. We walked up a few flights of stairs to a food court, an abandoned food court, though one concession remained open, a small bar, with a limited selection: beer, wine coolers or Kenya Cane.
About a half dozen people sat on and around the food court tables. Flora saw us and greeted us right away.
We went up to the bar and I ordered a Tusker and MC Karen ordered the same and Flora opted for a wine cooler. I paid the bartender, who, other than being behind the bar, gave no indication of being a bartender. After he served us, he went and smoked and drank with people at another table.