Travel writers and explorers have long bemoaned difficulty in adequately describing Victoria Falls. Most toss in the towel, declaring with poetic license, “You just have to see them to really understand.” Words fail. Guidebooks move on after a paragraph’s description to list best nearby hotels to stay at and restaurants to try. Who am I to think I could do better? Tonight in my journal, sitting on the back porch of Clive’s thatched-roof home, listening to children snore upstairs in open-air rooms, I find myself able to do little else.
During my sessions with Nora in Chiang Mai, I discovered a dependence on poetry. I knew its antidotal powers in my real life, when work via the Internet and hours staring at a screen required a forced clean break to something utterly different. I kept a book of poetry on my nightstand back home and would read a few pages every night before bed. I didn’t think there’d be much of a need on the road, however, and as I sit here in Clive’s backyard, having seen another of the seven natural wonders of the world this morning, I wonder why on earth I made such an assumption. Perhaps I thought our entire trip would be poetry in itself, that all the sights and smells and sounds would be enough beauty. Reading and writing poetry might break me.
Turns out, poetry is becoming a lifeline on the road. I need to read it, and I need to write it. Reading it reminds me I’m not alone in my witness of the indescribable, the unprocessable; writing it forces me to slow down, to grasp what I’m really gathering on this journey. That lamentation I wrote at the monastery was ointment for an open wound. Reading and writing poetry afterward have been bandages. They’re protecting my soul from deeper infection as I heal.
I scribble in my journal a terrible, ramshackle poem about the falls, but at least it gives substance to my being here. I close the journal, pad into the kitchen, and brew some rooibos tea I find in a drawer, then wander into the living room as I wait for it to steep. I peruse the dusty collection of books on the shelves and pull out a book of poetry, wipe off its spine, and settle back outside with my cup of tea. A trumpeter hornbill flies overhead, greets the purple evening sky. I sip my tea.
I flip through pages and read a poem about the falls by a Scottish poet named Muriel Spark, published in 1948. In it, she writes that the sound of the falls begins as the hint of a sigh; then, “the cry becomes a shout, the shout a thunder.”
That’s it, I think. That’s the sound of Victoria Falls, the drainage of water over rock into earth’s deep. They frame the resonance of the falls and do an adequate job at the impossible. But these words—the sigh, to a shout, to a thunder—that’s also my insides right now. We left to travel the world without a home, so we’re walking the earth’s paths without a safety net. In China, this was a sigh. I didn’t know where to call home, but I knew it wasn’t there. In Australia, currents gained speed, and my murmurs were cries; it felt good there, and I remembered that even this—the hum of that refrigerator, the chores of backyard chickens—this wasn’t really mine, either. It was familiar, yet unfamiliar. It felt like home, but it wasn’t.
And now, Africa. Africa is a cry that’s become a thunderous shout. Here, people commune with the land and with their neighbors. Isaiah, Joy’s gardener in Uganda and their next-door neighbor, is her sons’ kindred spirit, their older brother; he watches over the kids as much as the flowers and grass in his custody. Joel considers it his honor to invite foreigners into the family of the Nile, to escort them up her glorious channels in his fishing boat. Abubeker’s siblings raise their little brother and watch after their mother; they invite us into their family for the day. Clive cherishes his beloved Victoria Falls, makes his home available so we can experience them. Africa is a community of strangers, but they extend hospitality like a family of humanity. Perhaps we will leave here more than just acquaintances of the continent.
The next morning, we pack up to leave. Our flight isn’t until the afternoon, and Clive invites us to stay as long as we need. I assign schoolwork for the kids, and I sit with them on the back porch and work while they work on their math and writing. Kyle sips a beer out front with Clive, who’s waiting for a friend to arrive.
“When he comes, he’ll have papers for me to sign. He’s selling me a house. Would you be willing to sign as our witness?”
“Sure,” Kyle says.
A few minutes later, Kyle signs official Zimbabwean documents as a third-party witness to a real estate transaction. Then they set aside the papers, and the three of them sit for several hours, sipping beer and discussing the merits of Buddha, Muhammad, and Jesus until it’s time for Clive to drive us to that café-pub with airplanes parked next door.
13
KENYA
Frugality is our mission in Nairobi, since we’ll only be here one night. We just left Zimbabwe and are spending another small fortune and a sizable chunk of our travel budget here in Kenya, so the cheaper our quick, overnight stay in the capital, the better. Nairobi’s traffic is notoriously bad, so staying close to the airport to minimize our commute is also ideal. Pamela’s house is perfect.
We don’t know her yet, but Pamela listed her house on a booking website, and it’s barely big enough for all of us while still cheap. John is our driver, a colossal man with a jovial belly laugh. He’s picked us up from the airport and has immediately won the kids’ affections by laughing at their terrible jokes.
“What’s brown and sticky?” Reed asks him while we wait for Kyle to run back in the airport to search for, to no avail this time, Tate’s hat from the Johannesburg airport she’s just left on the plane.
“What?” John replies, squinting into the noon sun and searching for Kyle outside the airport.
“A stick,” Reed answers.
“I don’t—oh. Ha! That’s funny. Yes, that’s a good one!” John says. He laughs for ten seconds, a high-pitched snicker the antithesis of his gargantuan frame. I instantly love anyone who appreciates my children’s quirks.
Kyle returns and shakes his head, ruffles Tate’s hair and tells her she’ll find another hat somewhere. We climb into John’s vehicle. It’s another safari van, but this time it actually makes sense.
We pass through Pamela’s neighborhood security gates, and John remarks, “I’ve never been in this neighborhood before. In fact, I don’t think I knew it existed.”
This is because his typical clientele, whom he customarily transports from the airport to a five-star hotel and then on to their destination, probably travel on a slightly higher budget than we do. He turns off the ignition and hops out to help bring our bags inside.
“Hello! Welcome to Nairobi!” Pamela waves and smiles, runs gaily out her front door as though she knows us.
“How was your flight?” She shakes all our hands, including John’s. “Come in, come in. Hello, children!” she exclaims in a delightful singsong Kenyan cadence, hugging each of them.