Time

Written around 1997

I was happy to get out of Nairobi. Not that I didn’t like the place, but it simply wasn’t Africa. Instead, a cosmopolitan, faceless anti-utopia of our urban future: concrete and glass, yuppies, flashy restaurants and fast-food joints, tired workers and smoky, crowded pubs, police and security people with guns and clubs, philty slums with muggers, beggars, glue sniffing, abandoned kids, zombies scavenging on human waste. Every day someone got shot, a place got robbed, a thief got beaten to death. I will have plenty of time to see all this shit in the years to come when I’ll get back to Budapest. But right now I was in a different mood, trying to forget about it all, about things in the past or future. It was just here and now. I wanted to stop time. Put my earplugs on and tuned in to an alien music with the voice of a mad scientist in the background … ” if I could discover just one of those things what eternity is, for example, I wouldn’t care if they thought I was crazy…”

So here I was, sitting on a crowded matatu driven by a guy chewing a handful of mira to keep him from falling asleep. The distance was not that long, but we stopped every kilometer to cramp in some more passengers. By the time we reached Nanyuki it was getting dark and I was pretty tired. I found a place to stay just across the station, Hotel Whatever, inside some tourists planning to climb Mount Kenya the following day with their local guides, a bunch of drunk English soldiers from the nearby Army Base in the circle of wigged prostitutes, and locals sipping their warm White Tusk beer while watching a Rambo lookalike on video killing countless of Vietnamese. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong”, I thought, so just sat in a quiet corner, ordering a plate of chips and a beer. That’s where I met Fortune, a Rasta wood-carver. I offered him a drink, but he opted for a soda. He asked if I wanted to visit his family. “I show you real Africa” he said “you just pay the matatu and buy some food. You leave your bag and money here in the hotel, just bring enough for a few days.” Don’t know why, I trusted the guy, so we agreed on an early time to meet in front of the hotel. I got up and returned to my room, looked out of the window, watching the street kids and bums taking over the street, thinking that I sure won’t miss the scene. Tomorrow there’s another day, another surprise.

We were rolling towards a place I forgot the name of, in a 20-30 year old Peaugeot, nine people cramped in. The scene wasn’t that exciting, but still beautiful: as far as the eye could see rolling savannahs with the occasional trees, the whole landscape yellow-green coloured as it was the dry season. It was early afternoon by the time we got to a small village, and I was getting really hungry. Fortune took me to a square mud hut. “I want to take you to a special place tomorrow, but tonight we stay at my family’s place. But first we have some food here.” The hut turned out to be a restaurant, and not his family’s home as I expected. We ordered what they had — ugali, a kind of firm corn porridge, with some cabbage and little pieces of goat meat, with some milky-sugary tea. After the meal we bought a few things on the market, than we had to walk over to the next village where his family lived. We walked not more than half an hour, along the way meeting more and more of his little brothers and sisters. The more we grew in number and the younger and louder the kids were, the closer we were getting to the village, and I’m sure every one knew we were coming. While neighbours watching on I met his family, his mother and some shy women, and the men of our age. We set down outside on small wooden stools and I had to tell the usual story, while the men passed around some busa, homemade cornbeer. We had ugali for dinner that night, with some cabbage and little pieces of chicken for the change, then most of the family went back to their huts, only a few of us remaining for a last puff. “See, this is how we live. We haven’t got much, but we’ve got everything. I mean, if the rains come on time. We’ve got food, shelter, family and friends, music and festivals. This is how it’s always been. Not much has changed. Until you people brought time here… ”

We got up early the next day, but Fortune’s mother was already making tea. After a bit of pop-corn made over open fire and some tea we packed our things and left the village. “It’s gonna be a long walk, but worth it” Fortune assured me. We walked and walked for hours, but the scenery hasn’t changed a bit. Still the great open savannah, although we left behind all signs of life — no more villages, no more people, no animals of any kind. And suddenly Fortune said, here we are, pointing towards a small hill. I didn’t say what I wanted to, but Fortune read my face. “Wait until we get to the top” – he said smiling. I don’t know what can be on the top of a barren hill that’s worth this much walk in this heat, but let’s do it, let’s walk another half an hour and let’s see what can be so special about it! However, as we almost reached the “top”, I realised that Fortune was making a fool out of me — this hill did not have a top at all: we were standing on the rim of an extinct vulcano. “I told you it was worth the walk.” – he laughed as I stood there astonished. And in front of my eyes, deep down below there was a dark green forest surrounding a bright green lake, with a small group of pink flamingos resting on the surface of the water next to some hypos, antelopes and zebras grazing among the trees, black-and-white monkeys jumping around from branch to branch. It can’t be real! “Hey, Fortune, do you know the way down? Let’s go, let’s go …” But he just sat down on the rim and said – “Pole Pole , brother. Just slowly, slowly. It’s been there forever, it will wait. First let me tell you a story.” he said, and went on “According to tribal legend the Maasai first found themselves in a crater-like country surrounded by inaccessible hills and escarpments. One season the rains failed and great suffering resulted, with people and cattle dying. But during this drought it was observed that birds used to come down the steep escarpments and bring green grass and leaves which they used for making their nests. The elders met and decided that the birds must fetch their grass from areas beyond the escarpment where rain had fallen. It was then decided to send scouts to examine the land beyond. But how were they to ascend the impossible cliffs on the hills and escarpments?

Eventually a small track was found, but it was so steep that people had to go sideways or walk on all fours. As soon as the scouts reached the top, they were staggered with amazement at the beauty, the fertility and the greenness of the land they found. There were wide stretches of pastureland, many streams and rivers and lots of living room. Furthermore the land was empty and all that there was to be seen were wild animals and the birds of the air.”(1)

I still heard these words as the aeroplane was taking off from the Nairobi airport. I looked out of the window but couldn’t see much, it was dark, and we left behind the lights of the city. We must be flying over the Rift valley, this gigantic crack on the surface of Mother Earth, that gave birth to human kind, extending from Israel all the way down to Mozambique. I tried to imagine the time when all the Rift valley volcanoes were full of activities, all containing a very similar but slightly different eco-system, looking from a distance like the endless self-repeating and self-similar patterns of a fractal picture. And, as far as science is right, a very small difference in one of these eco-systems is what put us here. It must have taken a hell of a lot of time, but then again, from an eternal point of view that does not really matter.

I still had a few hours before the plane would land at Heathrow, so I opened up the book I’ve bought the day before, and started reading it: “The forces which fragmented the Rift Valley and formed its lakes also created a string of volcanoes running along the valley floor in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. Such volcanoes are to be found in Lake Turkana, and on the south shore.”

When Lake Turkana “was 475 feet deeper many thousand years ago it was connected to the White Nile basin by an outlet through the Lotikipi Plain beyond Lokitaung and the Murua Rithi Hills. Now all this is part of the semi-desert of thorn scrub which streches from the foot of the Loriu Plateau in the south to the slopes of the Ethiopian Highlands at Kedada in the north. Yet if historical perspective has any accuracy the bleak east shore is the one place on earth which can rightly be regarded as Eden, that lush garden of Biblical legend turned to knife-edge lava wastes and petrified forests. From Ileret in the north to beyond Alia Bay in the south, and inland some twenty miles, the exposed fossil beds at the Koobi Fora site are telling eloquently of what used to be a verdant land which was, perhaps, a true ‘Cradle of Mankind’.

Today this land yields little. The soil is worn out. The people hardy, spartan and indifferent to progress. Nothing much counts but human dignity. The only profit is survival: merely staying alive requires considerable resourcefulness and skill.”(2)

I looked up from the book, and thought of what Fortune said. Not much has changed, in one sense at least, yet everything is different now. But no matter how much I wish, we cannot stop time.

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(1) S.S. Ole Sankan, “The Maasai”, p.67-69, Kenya Literature Bureau (PO Box 30022, Nairobi), 1971
(2) Mohamed Amin, “Cradle of Mankind”, 1989, p. 18 and 21, Camerapix, PO Box 45048, Nairobi