MSG in Africa? Big deal. On a scale of one to ten, a minus suck in terms of issues to be alarmed about. I once broach the subject of switching to brown versus white rice and get a similar exasperated response. And my jaw never does lock.
For lunch we have either gethari or “green grahams,” a local term. Gethari is a mixture of boiled beans and corn. Both ingredients are of animal-feed quality—big as marbles, roughly hulled, and chewy. Green grahams, which is the odd phrase the locals have for cooked lentils, is also rough and has little pebbles in it. Many visitors complain about both of these dishes but I quite enjoy them. There is usually a bowl of starchy white rice with a smattering of tiny black weevils peppering it to complement the meal as well. It is stick-to-your-ribs fare for obvious reasons. There truly is next-to-no fat in the Kenyan diet and nary a whole fruit or vegetable to be found in the dining hall. Consequently, most folks devour whatever will fill them up that they can keep down. On Friday nights the main course is tilapia. Although I haven’t eaten meat in almost forty years, as a result of my years at sea, I do justify an occasional attempt to eat fish. So I’m excited when I first learn about the tilapia. We are each served one small fish, about the size of a baby perch. It is whole and looks to have been boiled. My new friend and frequent dining companion, Alfous Wambani, a teacher in the theology college, instructs me how to eat it.
“Pom,”—this is what my name sounds like when the Kenyans say it—“you must use your fingers like so and pick around the bones to get all the meat.” His “all” amounts to little more than a mouthful. These are puny, bony critters, with scales and eyeballs to boot. “Then you must eat the brain, the very best part. Now you are a real Kenyan!” he announces proudly, watching me struggle to swallow, clearly pleased that his muzungu is an unflinching fish-brain eater.
“You know, this is a very popular fish in America,” I inform him, making lively dinner conversation, Kenyan to Kenyan. I go on to tell the story of how, as a young woman in New England, I had volunteered at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. At that time the institute was researching, among other things, the superior nutritional value of a fish discovered in Africa called tilapia. The scientists were excited about how it might help stem the tide of the present state of malnutrition and starvation on the Dark Continent. I’m not sure how much of my English Wambani understands, but he seems interested. “So where do these fish come from, anyway?” I inquire, blasé enough in between hacking and extracting tiny bones from my throat.
“The lake,” Wambani answers, sounding equally blasé.
“Uh huh. What lake?” I continue, nonplussed.
“Why, Lake Victoria!” he answers, like it’s obvious.
Lake Victoria. The Lake Victoria that we are not only warned never to swim in but the one in which the shore grass is even off-limits, so as not to contract the multitude of microbial diseases rampant there? The Lake Victoria that is portrayed to me as one giant septic tank of death? I just ate a fish, brains and all, from that lake? As soon as I’m able, worrying I might be in dire need of antivenom, I run over to the Big House and ask Dr. Gerry Hardison about the tilapia and the formidable list of the ghastly diseases attributed to contact with or ingestion of anything in or around Lake Victoria.
“They don’t think the fish carry the parasites,” he grunts dismissively.
They don’t think? Well, fine. That will be my only Friday night dinner eaten in the dining hall, my only tilapia eaten in Africa and my only chance to be a “real Kenyan,” I suppose.
After returning to the States, Marilyn, a longtime friend of the Hardisons and a frequent Maseno visitor, receives a progress report about the mission that she is kind enough to send to me, which includes a list of recent upgrades in the visitors’ facilities on the compound. I feel vindicated upon reading that the practice of visitors receiving special foods such as the peanut butter, jelly, and cocoa mix while eating in the dining hall with the locals, has been scrapped. That arrangement always made me uncomfortable. But the baby may have been thrown out with the bathwater. It is reported in the newsletter that a new and “fully equipped” Visitors’ Dining Hall, complete with “modern cooking appliances” and a “gourmet cook,” has been built on the compound. Personally, I liked eating with the locals and I liked eating what they ate. I didn’t however, like getting preferential treatment in front of them and I don’t think they were too keen on it either. Honestly, I think they were probably relieved to get their dining hall back to themselves. We never mixed all that cozily. I expect the visitors who now come to St. Philips are relieved to be eating better and are feeling guilt-free as well. Still, I feel that the separatism both implied and actualized by this new system is unfortunate and counterproductive. Although we volunteers who had the privilege of eating with the locals never went so far as to turn up our noses at the provided extras, we did choke a bit when confronted with the compromising realities of our elitist status.
Early on in my stay, Nan commissioned me to keep her apprised of the visitors’ stock of PB&J, cocoa, etc., so that she could replenish when she went shopping. When I dutifully reported to her that the items were diminishing, apparently more rapidly than she liked, she scoffed, “Well, the cooks are probably dipping into the jars back in the kitchen. If you want to have anything left, you’ll just have to start keeping the tray in your dorm and bring it with you each morning when you come in for breakfast.”
“I’m not doin’ that,” I asserted. If our show of superiority could be any more glaring, parading in and out with our special plate of nibbles ought to clinch it. Not surprisingly, no one volunteered for this job. We began to quietly re-stock the dwindling reserves ourselves, at least I did. Once, when Ian came early to help the cook make the ugali, simply because he was interested in the process, he strolled in and caught the old man shoving jelly into his mouth by the filthy handful. No one blamed the hungry cook. All the same, though, I for one made sure there were always plenty of reserves in general after that. As icky as this visual is, it was just something we had to expect and accept. Period.
With the exception of the time spent in the dorm, dining hall, and the Hardisons’ house, my most productive hours on the compound grounds are split between researching and writing The History of St. Philips document, a project Nan asks me to take on, and working in the nursery school. The history document project is informative and gratifying. My involvement with the preschoolers is captivating. Both will be described in great detail later. In fact, the bulk of the hours of my life in Kenya will be spent in some endeavor concerning the Maseno Project on the grounds of St. Philips Theological College, a place I often refer to in my writing as “the compound.” It should be noted that there is absolutely no connotation of a cult intended. It just becomes my private euphemism for the place.
With respect to the prophetic expression, “Wherever you go, there you are,” I come to Kenya and am most definitely muzungu—one seriously confused person wandering about. Nowhere is the allusion of having been misplaced more self-evident than when I find myself stumbling around the old compound. I finally get myself to Africa, exactly where I bowled over considerable emotional, financial, and political obstacles to be. And nothing, no one, not any single feature is in the least bit what I expected.
My overprotective big sister gets through to my cell phone sometime during my first week at St. Philips. Even in my customary pocket-less peasant blouse and long skirt, I refuse to be without my mobile, ever. I even take it into the shower with me. It is my lifeline. My tether to everything and everyone I have left so very far behind. I develop this neurotic compulsion to have it on my person at all times. My bulky, walkie-talkie-like, quad-band phone resides wedged down the front of my skin-tight sports bra. The first time it goes off, I’m in the dining hall and it scares the ugali out of me.
When my phone begins to vibrate, I think I might be having a seizure almost certainly induced by the dreaded tilapia from the previous night. In full frontal view of my mortified fellow volunteers and all the stunned seminary students and workers, I clutch my chest. Suddenly an obnoxious doorbell dong buzzes out of my boobs. I grope around in my shirt, frantic to dislodge the phone from my squished, sweat-slicked