Home Visits

10/26/05

I was behind my simba, giving myself a haircut, the early morning light reflecting off the cracked mirror I had leaned against the wall. Daniel walked down from the main house. I greeted him, and strangely enough, instead of coming over to try and beg money off of me, he started picking leaves off a bush by the fence. This was different. This was new. He even looked a bit shy doing it. What the hell is he picking leaves for? It turns out, they were for the long drop. The guy uses leaves, not toilet paper. That is old fashioned.

I walked with Robert back through footpaths to a big compound of an old Mzee who had five wives. I asked the son how many children there were ("including girl children?" "Yes.") "About 30." Whoa. And so in this homestead there were maybe 15 homes, five for the wives, and maybe ten for the sons who had yet to branch out and start their own homesteads. We talked to the son, Tom, who is a police officer, and who just recently tested positive for HIV. He was funny, in a way, he started off by saying that he has no fears concerning HIV, that it is "just like malaria." But when I asked if he had told him community, his children, his brothers, his mother, he said No. When I asked why, he said he was "afraid that people would speculate." But when I asked if he would go public with his status if there was some kind of financial incentive was quick to say Yes, and that he would use the money to go get a meal at a big hoteli. It was sort of sick. He also told me that most cops solicit sex from prostitutes and female criminals. Robert told me after we left that there are lots of stories of police framing women they want to sleep with, planting drugs on them or whatever and then forcing them into sex.

We walked on, deeper and deeper into the footpaths, father than I had gone, and we finally reached the home of a boy, actually a man who looks like a boy, he looks 13, 14 tops, but he told us he was born in 1984, which makes him 21. Robert told me that he heard that the boy has sickle cell anemia, though the boy, the man, sorry, Kevin, told me that his only physical problem is chest congestion. His other problems of course are his parents being dead, not being in school due to lack of fees, only having a mat and a thin blanket and a dirt floor to sleep on, etc. But also, and obviously as a result of all of these things, he has a serious lack of self-confidence. We asked him if he would like to go back to school. He didn't think he would be able to pick up where he left off (first year of secondary), he would need to go back to 8th grade. We asked if he would want to an apprenticeship with a carpenter, he said he couldn't, he wasn't strong enough to do carpentry. I finally asked what he though he could do, he said that he though he could 'maybe be a driver.' Fucking heartbreaking. This guy thinks that the best he could do with his life is drive a fucking minibus back and forth?! He's 21 and he looks 14 but he's 21 and he hopes are to either go back to 8th grade or get a job as a driver… I was baffled. What do you do? I invited him to come learn poultry farming, and that at least seemed to interest him.

We walked farther and farther, I got the feeling we were looping back down towards the tarmac road. The kids who we were coming to visit weren't back from school yet, so we pushed on, passed a white goat sleeping in the middle of the path, past a grandma who laughed when I greeted her in Ki'Luo, past a little girl that screamed and ran inside when I waved at her, and then we were going towards the tarmac road, and then we were there, about half a mile down from Kanga center. This was another shopping center (which means a few clay rooms with tin roofs selling warm sodas and stale bread, a lady with a sowing machine making a uniform, a lady selling beans and tomatoes and little packets of cooking fat, and a dozen kids in ragged clothes just back from nursery school, playing in the dirt.) Robert and I sat down on a low wooden bench to wait; the kids of course became enthralled with me, my skin, my leg hair. I took out the camera; they loved it. A fellow came up; he had a huge boil (or tumor) on his forehead. We greeted, he started talking to Robert in Luo, he reeked of alcohol. Before he left he started begging for money, I didn't even consider giving him any. (As I write this, a lizard just fell from the roof and landed inside my shirt. It gave me a little shock. I stood up and shook him out and he scurried back up the wall and back into the roof.) As soon as the drunk had left, another drunk came up and started doing the same thing. Robert told me later that there is a Changaa den right behind the shops. We passed the hour, Robert put his head down and I watched the kids show off for me, climbing poles and doing handstands. It was time to go back and check on the kids. As we left another guy ran up to us and started talking to Robert. He had been to VCT, he had tested negative and he wanted advice on how to stay negative. Robert counseled him a bit and invited him to join us on Saturday afternoons, and then I asked the guy, who was maybe late twenties, why he decided to get tested. Robert translated, and the guy responded, so nonchalantly that I almost didn't even believe it when Robert translated back, "He said that his girlfriend died when he was in prison, so he suspected himself." What?! But the guy just said thanks and trotted off. Robert told me later that he was in jail for chopping off a neighbor's arm with a panga. They were arguing about a boundary between their two homes.

Our next destination was kind of a mansion; the father had been a wealthy photographer. But his wife died, and then he fell sick, leaving his seven-year-old son to take care of him as he died. I talked to the boy, Ian, now ten, I tried to get him to talk about that experience, but he was very shy. I want to try again without his step mom and his sisters and everyone around. Maybe even just set him and the camera up and leave, let him be alone. I don't know. What I wouldn't give, purely as a filmmaker, to have been invited into the house where the boy was taking care of his dying father. That is drama. That is compelling.

It started to rain as we walked home. I pulled out my emergency trash bag and put my camera bags inside to keep them dry, then threw the whole thing up on my head… I felt like a Kili porter.

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