A TRIP TO THE COUNTRY (CONTINUED.)

Looking out I could actually see two bulls, skins browned by the invading African dust, horns blunt and unthreatening, and fat as can be, running as fast as any cow ever should, under the encouraging incentive of some young master's whip. It looked all so unnatural - a big animal, forced by its master's meagre conditions to serve the purpose of a horse. And at that moment in time, I couldn't help but feel sorry for it, a sentiment which, I must admit, have attached to everything I have laid eyes upon in this land that leaves everything to be desired.

It is, in more than a few ways reminiscent of Gatsby's 'valley of ashes', having inherited the characteristic lingering dust and oh so painfully unconcealed poverty.
Inside the car, which I like to think of as a moving oasis of modern technology and, as always, a spectacle to all and sundry (the village locals), I hear of the typical blame-game of citizen against politician, voiced by my mother and her brother.
I'm not against this but am simply making an observation of how the man-eat-man mindset has undoubtedly resorted to the sights beyond this thin-glassed window; a point that was echoed by some American socialist just the other day on live radio, that "the fact that local politicians once elected simultaneously disregard the wellbeing of their former societies is utterly self-destructive to the nation, and has been a key factor towards us being consequently overtaken by Singapore" - a foretoken, one may argue, to what has become of this once promising nation?

A TRIP TO THE COUNTRY

Just to clarify, the 'Country' here in the third world that is Kenya, in which I was born, is in every way contrary to the green, luscious, thriving meadows and vineyards of Italy or sweet smelling alps of some Western State.

When you hear from your mother, we're going to 'ushago', a national colloquial term for homeland, you automatically think of annoying flies you just wish you could strangle, you think of sweltering stultifying heat, labored perspiration, wanting, if any, infrastructure, and, needless to mention - the dust. The dust on which malnourished chickens scrape for worms they'll never find. The omnipresent dust, particles in your morning tea and even to your evening's impoverished blanket.

Rightly so, I have, in the back of my head, the well warranted dreadful thought of a thick mix of salt-tasting sweat and dust- sand in my forehead, entangled in my kinky African hair - an inescapable conclusion to a day in 'the country'.

Even now as I am engrossed in Strandes' 'The Portuguese Period in East Africa', I just think of how this expanse of valleys and escarpments has, as per destiny, been shortchanged by the West. To think that they didn't even bother to keep enough sufficient records of our pre-colonial history, courtesy of our uninteresting, primitive and socially isolated past. And I quote, we were apparently "too far removed from the stream of world affairs".

TO BE CONTINUED.

A WALK IN THE CITY

How could I possibly describe such a seemingly monotonous task- which I undertake day come day go? Well, if there were ever something that jolts my every phobia, bringing to surface my complete consciousness, alas it is indeed a walk in the city.

People. Of all shapes and forms- a question I ask myself is simply: why should a face never before and shall never again encounter arouse in me such insecurity? Such a sense of disorientation, such that I cannot recall where I am coming from or where I am going to?

I guess I could blame it all on the marriage of colors, sounds, no 'noises', moving and ever-changing forms. No, not even that is a math to the one moment in time- multiplied by the population of heads around me- that split second when you notice someone looking at you, longer that natural, and you make the mistake of staring back.

They say the eyes are the window to the soul. I'm positive that such a man who had coined the wise phrase was, at least once on a walk in the city. The cold unfamiliar place, the hardly habitable unfriendly milieu. Of invariably unfriendly, misunderstanding people; who look at you once and have already unfairly placed down a judgment, a nasty remark which they may or may not out rightly reflect in their expression.

Is there ever a smile, heck, a smirk, in the ocean of man-eating, suit-wearing sharks? Has this cold desert ever known happiness? Courtesy? Respect? Kindness?

And you wonder why I am ever at a break-neck pace whenever I do, on any other day, take a dive into this psycho-emotional deep-end? Into this unpredictable jungle, of mask wearing thieves, of murderers, of hate-filled souls?

Moreover, you wonder: what is the root of this oh so unsociable perspective? Well that is a fact that will indeed conspicuously reveal itself on first sight of me, if we ever do gain the pleasure of stumbling into each other on 'a walk in the city'.