The morning heart rush

ITS ALL OVER....as I grasp for the handle above the window, my heart immediately goes from a peaceful early morning flutter to a flurry of irregular beats out pacing the rhythm of the Chris Brown song 'Forever' being broadcast from small factory speakers in a early 90s Toyota Corolla...we are picking up speed as we head, not around but between a series of notionally working cars crossing our lane. Harrison, our driver, rockin' a classic Phoenix Suns starter jacket seems unnerved as he successfully navigates all the moving obstacles. He knew exactly how it was going to turn out. A moment of reality...Chris Brown is still singing to the club. I can no longer focus or even hold a conversation with my colleague who sits adjacent, sharing the tattered back seat pinned between dark pitched stain windows.



I do notice however that we have entered a very different part of the city but one theme is consistent the reddish brown earth, the dirt roads, deep lush green foliage, the steel wool gray sky and the exhaust spewing dilapidated vehicles.

We arrive at an oasis amongst a shantytown of make shift wood and corrugated steel shacks. The client site a sprawling campus of open air buildings a top a sloping lush green hill populated by beautiful flowering trees and animal pens. We are meeting the client for the first time so I share emotions. A bit excited and a bit nervous like the first day of school...excited to show off my new clothes and see friends I haven't see for a summer but nervous that the new teacher won't like me or my friends from last term won't be my pals anymore.

I sit on edge waiting for 'Our Client' to appear. Uncertain who I are looking for? A lady or a man. Around the corner comes someone....small in physical stature but a real 7 footer in personality and character. This fiery woman, an Ethiopian doctor of agricultural bioscience research carrying an even more amazing life story. If I were a writer of screenplays or novels I would title her piece "The girl who climbed trees".

And then....the my most challenging adventure so far....LUNCH....I tell the chef behind the cafeteria style feed line "Give me whatever you recommend". He chuckles and points to a crumbly white block substance (Ugali- made of mashed maize) and a green saucy dish of textured roughly chop something that I swore was broccoli.

It was too late....I committed...the plate was in my hand....the Doctor was eying my authenticity. The green textured 'morsels' was not broccoli at all it was actually Matumbo (unwashed tripe), cow stomach, green from the chlorophyll in cud the cow had just been chewing before he was humanely slaughtered. The ugali was bland but the matumbo... the matumbo tasted exactly how it sounds...DISGUSTING. The taste, was exactly that of the smell of a barn lined with a mixture of cow manure and straw.

Out of politeness I chewed the rubbery, follicle line morsels and gaspingly swallow bite after bite to make a least a significant enough dent to not seem to have totally waisted the food. There sat an opportunity, a bottle of hot sauce...the plan to drown the green alien like morsels with taste bud numbing hot sauce. The plan, a flop, the hot sauce tasted more like a watered down ketchup. I could no longer bare another bit and thankfully we had to get back to work.

The trip home was no less adventurous then the morning commute....again my eyes are drawn to the reddish brown earth, a contrast to the lush green foliage that points to a billowing gray sky. The city seems more alive in the evening as rhythmic beats homogenize with smoke from cooking fires and seep into the taxi window. Nairobians risk crossing the street in front of the never slowing traffic...Matatus add another level of risk and uncertainty to the traffic patterns. A matatu is a small shuttle sized bus that are everywhere(Matatu is derived from the Kenyan word tatu meaning three ten cent coins, the original cost of a matatu ride). They dangerously dart back and forth across the street like honey bees flying from flower to flower collecting passengers while coming to an almost immediate stop. On the back of one is written "Its too late to apologize". As I bring the inscription to the attention of my colleague, our driver Peter, who sports a huge scar from his eyebrow above his left eye to below the ridge of his cheek bone, chimes in an indistinguishable sentence and then chuckles in a deep, raspy and bellowing count dracula laugh. The laugh is contagious yet a bit scary.

We are behind the security gate at our apartments but the night is young and Nairobi has to be explored....