The Maasai Mara will forget you. But you will never forget the Mara. It’s open space – acres and acres of it. It’s lone acacias standing erect in the unbroken horizon, thrusting at the heavens like defiant protesters. It’s the cheetahs, those beautiful but meek excuses of cats, staking the plains for a snack; a gazelle with extra cheese. It’s the hyenas with their bad legs and the hippos with their big asses. It’s the Buffalos who refuse to smile. And it’s the pride of lions, with their overbearing arrogance but the enviable charisma of warlords. You will never forget the chasm of the Mara, but the Mara doesn’t care for you. The Mara doesn’t care if you have 2,000 followers on Twitter.
I – together with fifteen other journalists – was in the Mara over the weekend for another media trip courtesy of Sarova Group. It was a riot, to say the very least. I’m not going to regal you with travel tales from the Mara. Not today. Old hat.
I like writing about people because people will surprise you with stories that you didn’t expect from them. You will get the unlikeliest quote from someone you didn’t expect, or some twisted wisdom that heals your own fears. But also sometimes people will disappoint you with such shallowness, such selfishness that you thought was above them. I like those stories as well. But this is not about people; this is about what people carry with them, the things that people hold close to them, the things that they never leave the house with. Things with stories. Things that offer us insights on who they are. The things they carry.
And what better people to ask question than the guys I spent two nights and three days with. I asked them questions about things I saw on them, things that piqued my interest. I asked them about objects that meant something to them and why. And their answers were revealing. Then I sat down last night to write this piece under a raging haze of fatigue, post-whisky hangover and sleep deprivation. And so guys if I got certain details about you wrong forgive me, you know I wasn’t in no state to remember everything, and neither are you anyway. Here goes.
Justus, Cameraman Citizen TV
Item: Wristband
He wears a greenish band around his wrist. It’s written “Soldier of God.” He has had it for 4months now. “I’m born again,” he explained to me at the buffet table as he chose steak. “One year now.” He has found the lord and now he walks in his light. He lives in virtue. He was never like this; he drunk, too much, to his admission. He partied had. And you can still see those tell tales signs of hedonism on his face, on his arms, and in the way he speaks. They are like a tattoo from a different period. A story in themselves.
I asked him what the green band meant to him. “A turning point, a new leaf, its green you see. It also reminds me of the life I led, the life I’ve left, the life I don’t want to go back to. A useless life. I wear this band everywhere. Does that kunde like vegetable have milk in it?” Yes, I told him. He moved on to the chicken. He’s lactose intolerant. A Soldier of God. Amen.
Susan Wong, Capital FM.
Item: Photos
“Hi, I’m Susan Wong,” she stood up from her breakfast when we met at the beginning of the trip.
“Susan Who?”
“No, Wong.”
“I’m wrong?”
“No, I am.”
“You are wrong?”
“Yes, Wong!”
She started laughing. She gets that a lot; jokers like me making a pun of her name. That’s just insensitive…and Wong.
China is far. So does Canada where she grew up. Her family is away. She just relocated from Ethiopia. Seven days old in Kenya. I asked her what she treasured the most on her and she said the pictures of her family in her phone. If she lost the pictures she would be gutted. She carries the photos everywhere, which means she carries her phone everywhere. She doesn’t miss home or anything, not when she has the pictures. Home to her are images. Pictures heal. So she keeps them.
Her blog: http://www.thebiggerpicture.wordpress.com
Cedric Mbiu, Brand development manager, Sarova Group
Item: Handkerchiefs
Don’t laugh. Cedric owns fifteen handkerchiefs. Never leaves the house without one. He lives with his chick, who doesn’t own a single handkerchief in that house. All handkerchiefs belong to Cedric. She doesn’t understand his handkerchief habit. Neither do I. He says he doesn’t sweat a lot, he says he hardly ever uses the handkerchiefs he carries around, but just having one in his pocket makes him feel complete. If he forgets one he gets into what he calls a mini panic. “Have you sought for help?” I asked him. Fifteen handkerchiefs are a lot of handkerchiefs to own. You can own fifteen boxers, or ties, but handkerchiefs?
“Do you have any with pink flowers?” I asked.
“No!” he laughed.
“You might as well.”
Wanjiru Gaitho, Business reporter, Citizen TV
Item: rings
She has two rings on one finger, a gift from her boyfriend. One was from Ethiopia, and the other from South Africa…the rings, not the boyfriend. The jagged one is always on the inside, the smooth one on the outside. That order never changes, it means something but she doesn’t know exactly what. But it feels right. The rings never leave her finger under any circumstances. “Lucky charm,” she calls them. She says if she lost the rings something would change between them. They would break up, she is certain. It has happened before.
She has an inexplicable attachment to those rings, and the cross penchant on her necklace that she calls, “My Jesus.” These are things that hold her up, things that perhaps represent stability. Ciru over lunch says, she has a problem with attachments, to people. She doesn’t mind losing friends, she can always make more. “But you would feel crushed if you lost something innate like jewelry? Aren’t those double standards?”I asked. She shrugged, “People will always disappoint you, innate things like jewelry won’t.”
“Jewelry get lost.”
“What doesn’t eventually?”
We ate in silence.
Her blog: http://shelikessweetthings.blogspot.com
Joseph Bonyo, Business writer, The Daily Nation.
Item: watch and a pen.
You can tell what kind of a man is by the watch he wears. I noticed his watch while we all had drinks around the sundowner bonfire. Its white face glowed in the fading light. An interesting watch. “Two things you will always find on me; a pen and a good watch.” He said. Then later, with his glass of whisky in hand he leaned closer and said, “Biko, you can always gain more money, but you will never gain more time.”
He resents people who can’t keep time. And he hates to keep anyone waiting. “I’m a busy guy, and a busy guy has to respect time – his and others. If you can’t keep time I will dismiss you as a joker. And I will leave.” He said these words with a dash of unapologetic arrogance. He also keeps pens. A pen collector. Speaks to his profession.
Here is the thing. He likens friendships to watches, when either of them stops working, when either of them stops telling the “truth” he loses them. Because they’ve lost their basic purpose. What if it’s the strap that fell off but the watch is still telling the right time, I asked. “When
the straps fall off, a strap that was made specifically for the watch, doesn’t it say something about that watch generally?” I nodded, made sense. I remembered something I read in a Paulo Coelho’s book – Winner Stands Alone – , he asked, “If the handle of a sword fell off and you replaced it with a different handle, would you say it’s the same sword?”
I pointed out to him that his inability to replace his watch straps and discard them because of that, is a sign of his inability to offer second chances to people, now that we are likening watches to human relations. He turned it over in his mind for a while and said, “That’s the even-a-broken-watch-is-tells-the-right-time-twice-a-day argument isn’t it?”
Yes.
We went back to our drinks.
His blog: http://bizextras.wordpress.com/
Remmy Majala, presenter/producer, K24 TV
Item: Tattoos
The easiest way to break ice with men is to ask them about their cars. The easiest way to break ice with mothers is to tell them their kids are adorable. And the easiest way to break ice with anyone with a tattoo is to ask them about their tattoos. People love to talk about their tattoos. I once saw this hippy middle-aged white lady at the airport who had a tattoo of something that looked like a teardrop on her cheek and out of boredom, curiosity and intrigue I asked her what it meant and she curtly explained that it wasn’t a tattoo, it was a birthmark. I managed not to break ice but my heart.
Every of the four tattoos spread on Remmy’s arm and back are all themed around music. Tattoos of treble clef, pianos, quivers, stars and of an eagle. She says she loves music because it makes her “zone out.” To escape to a different world. And to want to escape, I think, you have to have a considerable weariness for your surroundings. Music, to her, is a bridge that leads her to a place where humans don’t live, her little place. The tattoos mean more than just body art, they’re a representation of places she takes off to, away from the living.
Ravneet Sehmi, Feature writer, The Star
Item: nose ring.
A few years ago three teenagers got together to pierce their bodies. Rav and her two friends. What informed this decision was not even because they wanted to but because their parents hated each other, like a family feud of sort. But they loved each other so it was some sort of a pact. A symbol of defiance. I guess that’s what happens when the story of Romeo and Juliet gets into your head.
So Rav got herself a nose ring, her friend pierced her navel and the other person pierced their ear.
“So you and your girls felt connected by this act?” I asked.
“Yes, and we weren’t all girls, the third was a guy.”
“Still, it was you and your girls. Come on the other guy is gay, right?”
“Yes. He came out not too long ago.”
Anyway, this little ritual happened at midnight in a tool shade behind a Hindu temple. OK, it didn’t but won’t that make a killer story?
Their parents still hate each other, but their friendship with “the girls” continues to flourish. A friendship held together by blood, punctured body parts and pieces of jewelry.
Ferdinand Mwongela, lifestyle writer, The Standard
Ferdinand doesn’t believe in rings or handkerchiefs or wrist bands. There is nothing he would never leave the house without. He’s like the character in Denzel’s movie The Book of Eli. Lone man, unattached to nothing but his sword (metaphorically this should fit as well). A man who doesn’t attach much value to things made by man, or machine. A man on the move, living on only the bare essentials life provides. He owns things; he loses them he gets others. And life continues.
Dorothy Matheka, Web marketing manager, Sarova Group
Item: ring
Sometimes the cheesiest things are the things women love the most. Men bust their asses trying to impress women by being creative when all they have to do is something so small, no, by doing something so simple and she will refuse to climb down the nine nimbus clouds. So I see this ring on Dorothy’s finger while we were out on a game drive, it’s out of place because she is wearing gold all over and the ring is silver. The words “Lucky” are inscribed on it.
“Lucky?” I asked her, “Not the name of a racing horse, I take it?”
Demure smile. “No, a gift from my boyfriend.”
“He’s called Lucky?”
Admonishing smile. “No, he said he’s lucky to have me and this ring symbolizes that.”
The girls in the van all went “awww, so sweet.” She swears since she started wearing the ring she has had many bouts of luck. Things seem to work for her; at work, at home. So she never removes the ring, not even when she is showering, because she doesn’t want to stop being lucky. Or she doesn’t want him to stop feeling lucky.
She asked me if I believe a ring can bring someone luck, I said only God gives luck and God is not a ring. She asked me how then I can explain her bouts of luck since she got the ring and I told her that it wasn’t the ring, it was her. She was happy, I told her, happiness breeds positivity and positivity makes things work out, or even like they aren’t. Happiness breeds more happiness.
“You think?” she asked.
“If I’m lying, I’m flying.”
“So it’s not the ring.”
“Of course not, now toss it to that buffalo, it helps with their digestion.”