Disembarking the plane
To step the marble of the terminal,
“Welcome to Kenya” on a blue advert
With “Microsoft” in the corner.
Ants with indigo bums. Termite-mounds.
Acacias amongst the grass-tufts
Protruding from clay soil.
The mound of viper’s nests
I’d sit on beside our lodging.
We stayed in grandma’s house
Mother, granny, brother and myself,
In the village of Moi’s Bridge.
Granny’s was a bit like home,
But so close to grandpa’s work
And to the inviting wilderness.
Black kids always selling
Corn and other produce, while I wait in the car
As the grown-ups buy the shopping.
Loitering out the front, a child
In white shirt and black shorts
Gnaws a sugar-bar
Bigger than his head.
Two women talk:
Dressed purple and red
Like robes one wraps around.
They thread their bead-designs into
Metal-wire nick-knacks:
They can do it in their sleep.
~
I’m taken to see
The Great Rift Valley-
The birth-place of Humanity.
Baboons ran past the car-
Hunched-up grey midgets.
“Stay inside the car,
They will rip you apart.”
“This whooole ting can be mined!” granny says.
“No,” mom says, “The ecology.”
Taken to Niarobi,
The trip had more new sights:
Farms with women toiling.
Mud huts in lieu of brick,
Attached to power-lines.
Shop-keepers show their
Goods upon the ground
Out of inventory-huts.
Nairobi was more familiar:
Skyscrapers as expected.
Mum bought me a soft drink
From Wimpy’s Burger Bar.
We left Kenyan soil
For the gaudy Mauritius tropics,
Then back home in a week.
Home was the same as always,
Only the lawn needed cutting.
