Plato's Cave

Having climbed to the top of Menengai crater, and had a wonder at the view of Nakuru and it's lake, elevated and elated in spirit - you will find that your journey is not yet done. You must then make your way down again via a precipitous, slippery and frankly treacherous natural ladder of twisted tree roots into the very bowels of the caldera. On the way you'll be asked to repent your sins. This is a “Holly place”.

View from the top

At the base is a vast circular cave, pitch black even after your eyes adjust, and inexplicably smokey. It is a site of pilgrimage. Just as my pupils strained to adjust to the dark, so my eyes also began to widen to the spirituality of the place. Even stranger things began to materialise, though the true corners of this religious sanctuary would always remain dark to me. Scattered around outside I was surprised to find unobtrusive little lean-to's, consisting of nothing but a scrap of potato sack pinned in some fashion to the walls of the crater. More surprising still were the feet poking out of one such barely-a-meter squared dwelling. I realised that there are actual people sheltered more or less efficiently beneath each such construction. Apparently they live there, fasting and praying for months at a time. Is this living of a very extreme kind, the kind of intense rarified existence that approximates oneself to God? Or in fact it's exact opposite? Does the process of approximation to death make one  in reality more, or less alive? You are at least, more acutely aware of your mortality when enduring such a degree of discomfort and hunger. And yet certainly the beings beneath each little annex exhibited worryingly minimal vital signs.

The place is decidedly beautiful, and I thoroughly enjoy the few hours spent within the crater. However, the vibrant green that contributes so much to the beauty of the place when passing through, is the consequence of a the sort of bone penetrating dampness which is already seeping under the seams of my Oasics waterproof. 30 days and 30 nights of slow disolution did not appeal, even to that most competitive side of my nature, which is so often the most persuasive.

The hight of the crater, the depth of its caldera, it's beauty, the fact that it's the only place where you will find snakes in Nakuru... it all feels very biblical. Aggressive graffiti telling me to “Trust in God and Fear” disturbs me slightly whilst I inoffensively and innocently contemplate my empty tummy and potential lunch. All this thought of fasting made me worry that I hadn't packed enough food. I wonder that I am vaguely amused and maybe slightly irritated by the sign, rather than profoundly moved. Maybe I will return some time in the future as the prodigal daughter to be redeemed, that would be more than alright with God so they say. Right now however, I feel more like the blissfully ignorant, errant sheep of the flock, obliviously munching through a pack of salt and vinegar crisps. The greater good's and bad's and terrors of this world passing without notice comfortably over my head.

'And Plato they say, could stow it away, I drink therefore I am!"

An even more surprising discovery still was an empty bottle of vodka in the centre of the cave, being filled drip by drip by natural spring water trickling from the ceiling. The deliberateness of the scene was striking, the brand, the hollowed out dint where it stood just in the right place to catch each drop. I wondered whether God was now being sponsored by Smirnoff, or whether I hadn't in fact accidentally come upon the Holy Grail. I remembered Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and though I'd better not drink from it, else I might disintegrate into dust, or worse still, achieve immortality and thus still be alive to see the End of Days.   

Missing my beautiful people, from a beautiful place - Menengai Crater

Whenever I catch a sight of Jamie, or Nina, when I am not expecting, nor they - when they are busy looking so much like themselves, so much as I know they are and love them to be, they seem to take on the qualities of almost a symbol or cartoon. How can the strength and depth of someone's reality for one, afford them qualities of fiction?

Part of the reason my heart lifts for the sight of them so is that they are the few I truly recognise, I see them really, and that is so much of why one comes to love someone. To share in the realness of each other, no superficiality or pretence or self-delusion. Sometime I realise they see me better than I see myself and I am overwhelmingly grateful that such a real me does exist, and that they can abide it.

But why is it that the better one knows and loves the more caricature like such a vision becomes? I suppose one could argue about the nature of 'realism', that wholly elusive and subjective concept. As soon as we see something as real, it almost immediately becomes too much of itself to be so, especially in memory, that astigmatic mirror of reality such as it is. I miss my Mum and my sister so much. I remember the last time I saw them as I left them at the airport. They have a dimension and a colour for me which is so much more than real.

I think of the fantastically beautiful plants I saw in Nairobi, in the palatial estate that Amy's grandparents inhabit. They looked so so beautiful to be real, too large and bright, my Nina's and my Jamie's. Was it any different in this case? These 'real' flowers were after all, deliberately placed and manicured. But then again they do actually grow that way by nature, they bloom and photosynthesise and wilt in this efflorescence of exaggeration. And then what else is the inside of ones head, other than such a garden in which you nurture and care meticulously for those that you know and love?

Kenya Premier League - Muhoroni Youth vs AFC Leopards

Me and Freshy from my Mabadiliko Youth group

Peter and Shosh just outside the Devil's Bedroom

Amy <3

Naibei, and Joseph with my shoes (Masai)

Peter defying gravity, spectacularly

Lake Naivasha (full of hippos!) the morning after camping 

Hell's Gate national park

Me, Peter, Josh, Lauren and Doug after a Masai guided tour 

False start

Wake up freezing cold and tired, but have a rush of nervous excitement about the day ahead. It's ok, I've done all I can myself to prepare. Lauren and I have designed our first lesson around getting to know you activities, combined with the slightly more frivolous of educational exercises proscribed by our curriculum, such as the spaghetti challenge. I imagine on the one hand a modestly sized, happy bank of receptive female faces ranged in front of us. Lauren distributing our marshmallows round the class,  whilst I scrawl islands of assets and aspirations across a whiteboard, meticulously picked out with palm trees and frolicking dolphins.

Then the alternative rears it's nonplussed, utterly unimpressed head. An intimidating posse of 20 surly old year old Kenyan business men wondering what these faintly ridiculous mzungu kids are doing prancing in incomprehensible and irritating circles in front of them. I am suddenly very glad we decided not to include the 'let's all create playdough alien's!' exercise at least before we've met each group. All I can do is make like Lucy and trust to God rocking up at the 11^th hour, and giving us a receptive and enthusiastic class.

It feels too early when I wake up. As I crawl out of bed I become aware of the water pump roaring, as though for a shower, only louder than usual. I cast around feebly for a victim to hang my pissed-off hat on, but I know no one is really up and having a shower at this time of night. An investigation of the hall and shower confirm what I already suspect. It's just the house doing what it does best, royally screwing us over with precision-planned timing.

The sound of rain is deafening, it seems to be inside the house. In and out of the thunder I hear squealing. I prepare myself for the worst.

I return to my room and open the door to a scene from Jumanji. I seem to have rolled 'monsoon' on the magic dice. The deluge is confined exclusively to the area over my bed.

Lucky? To have got out of bed in the nick of time. My midnight melodrama of mood dwelled grimly on my narrow escape from certain death. To be fair, the water tank had actually just exploded above my head.

Thank the lord for my laptop being down stairs and not on the floor. Money, hairdryer, straighteners, ipod, all in my suitcase which now looks like a miniature ornamental pond with murderously floating electrical devices, all plugged into the plug rank I bought for a mere 400 shillings.

Someone turns the power off, and sorts the tank out. I lift not a finger but sit downstairs unhelpfully weeping. Josh lends me his hoodie and I sleep on a too short sofa under a couple of Amy's scarves, all very pretty but not particularly distinguished for their thermal qualities. Amy's bed is already soaked from the reservoir of water dripping down through my mattress from the top bunk. We both get a little hysterical, she is good at diverting a potential psychological breakdown into a giggling fit. Tomorrow, or next week, maybe next year, I might find it genuinely pretty funny. It's not even 2 am yet.

The nightly canine cacophony strikes up on queue. It's finally quiet circa 3.24 am.

After about five minutes peace, a tiny yap from what must be Satan's chihuahua. Like the first nervous clap of a controversial applause, started by someone who normally does not dare to initiate such things, there's a wickedly expectant and self-satisfied pause before the barks begin to roll round the neighbourhood once again.

Lucy

This morning I have tea with lucy. I pass her every day at least a few times and I miss her when for some reason she's not there. Every morning it's 'Jambo', a wave, some fruit for 5 bob and/or a chat about something inconsequential. I look forward to this exchange of friendly noises in a way I would never do at home. At home I rush around hoping against hope I don't bump into anyone I kinda know and am forced into inane chat about the weather. I like Kenya Anna much better.

Today though she asks me to stop. My tea cup gets filled from from her own cup and her daughters as there isn't actually any left. Her daughter gets up to offer me the only stool at Lucy's stall, and some fresh mdazi.

We talk of her morning and laugh over shared and unshared vocabulary. She is generous with my toying swahili and pretends to understand my often frustratingly skitty and mumbling english, which even my mum often has difficulty deciphering. Her morning involves going to the market and stocking up on produce, I see that she has bought much much more than usual, due to the mzungu presence down the road? She stays in a room in the house opposite us, our regular avocado and tomato based lunches must have meant a substantial boost in trade for her. I ask her about it, brashly inured to asking such indelicate business questions from my work so far on the program. She doesn't directly respond, I think due to embarrassment this time rather than my enunciation. I wish I hadn't asked, she is modest an shy with regards to our 'business' relationship. I am her friend and guest and take an mdazi and another cup of tea to make up for my insensitivity. The tea is typical Kenyan tea, thick like cream with at least 5 sugars, builders eat your heart out. Mdazi are kenyan donuts, their gilded caramel casing giving way to a sweetly disintegrating eiderdown interior, when done well. Usually they tend to be slightly yellowing and flabby with grease. Lucy's are the best I've had.

She talks to me about her brother's sons who want her to move out of the house she stays in but which is technically theirs. Patriarchal inheritance laws. She cooks and cleans and gives them her money, she cant save anything for herself. Where will she live with her daughters? As she confides her hardship her talk shrinks to a whisper, I have to strain with all my auricular and mental faculties to piece together what she's saying. It's a painful while before I perfect a method of responding in a way which prioritises expression of sympathy, whilst temporarily deferring full understanding, and thus prompts repetition. I begin to be able to replace the frequent 'loom's' I hear with 'room's', etc until the articulating bones of her story animate themselves in my imagination.

Why is shy confiding this to me? She is generous to me with her secrets and troubles as well as her hospitality. That disagreeable and decidedly western sensibility I felt stir its ugly head inside me from time to time in Lalwet, is suspicious that she wants something from me. Is that the only reason she is treating me like this? How selfish of me to think so. What do I want her to want from me? I want her to like me for 'myself'? What on earth does that mean?! Nothing but western egocentricity, mixed with equal parts of MEDCentricity (more economically developed country).

What is this ambivalence I sometimes felt in Lalwet, feeling pressure and sadness that I couldn't respond to their exorbitant hospitality with a guarantee of a scholarship to an english university that they so covet. The painfully uncomfortable awkwardness I felt in the market when the woman I bought my plimsoles from aggressively insisted I become her friend and take her back to england with me goes some way towards both understanding and excusing it, but you can't generalise like that.

What is it exactly that makes me uneasy and suspicious? Do I think I am being put under obligation by her kindness? Why should I think this? It is an unpleasant sensibility which does not exist in other societies, in ancient Greece and Rome such ties of 'obligation' underpinned interpersonal relationships, strengthened the fabric of society and did not necessarily diminish one iota the 'authentic' ties of love and affection between friends. It is different with Lucy. I find myself thinking of the bible just as she would, 'do unto others as...' I am very suggestible, not a great quality usually, but on this occasion at least I am am grateful for the empathy it affords me.

Perhaps she thinks I might be put here to help her, I know that it would be within my power to so. To do much more than she might even hope for, not that I should of course. I could help any number of individual Kenyans. I struggle to hold in my rational mind that this is an inherently flawed approach. This entrepreneurship course is specifically designed to help in a sustainable and still meaningful way. But what about Lucy? She 'only' needs the one off 5000 deposit on top of the first months rent for a new room, (she can keep up her rent easily after that if it weren’t for the advance).

I have to move the conversation into less fretfully treacherous waters. Shy, generous woman, I try to explain my new found taste for roasted maize, she misconstrues and thinks I mean gidethi which is a dish of maize and beans boiled to within an inch of their lives, and boiled again till they finally submit their bullet carapaces to being chewed. My heart sinks a little as she says that it's her speciality and she would like to make me some, I tell her that's a really nice offer, and think no more about it.

Lauren and I are working together on our first session with a Kenyan group. We spend the rest of the day drawing up a pretty comprehensive lesson plan. Josh comes through the door with ingredients for our dinner and informs me that Lucy has made a pot of what transpires to be more like a vat of beans and maize. I feel terrible. I decide that I'm going to bloody well eat them, and bloody well like it, but does she want me to pay? I wish I understood Kenyan etiquette better. It could either be terribly rude to offer, or terribly rude to not. Dougie and Lauren come with me for moral support which is lovely. Doug also shoulders responsibility for untangling the question of payment. I'm so, so grateful.

She wont let me pay, 'I am her friend'. She won't meet any of our eyes when she says this and I go a little bit crumbly. Caleb, our Kenyan in residence adds potato and tomato to the mix and it actually tastes fucking fantastic.

Lauren and I finish planning our sessions for tomorrow. Absolutely terrified. Two lessons of 2 hours with 2 groups, one at 10 and one at 2.

Go to bed.