the dorm.
I get the feeling that the side gate is the official pedestrian entry anyway. Posted on a stick just inside the fence is a squat billboard that reads St. Philips Theological College, with arrows pointing to the Office, Nursery School, Bookshop, Computer Centre, Hostels, Library, Dining Hall, and Chapel. In big letters is a friendly, baby-blue WELCOME, splashed across the bottom. The first time I spot the sign, I am puzzled. Where exactly is all this stuff? As it turns out, everything advertised does exist, housed in buildings that all look pretty much alike and are scattered about the property among the trees and fields, seemingly with no order or plan. And everything is not what one might expect from the descriptions, but nothing in Kenya is.
The office is Nan’s domain. There are a couple of desks and chairs, some file cabinets, a computer and printer, and a separate cubicle with a window looking into the main office for Nan’s Kenyan bookkeeper. The nursery school, a single, long, stumpy row house with two classrooms and a tiny office way off to the rear of the compound, is where I’ll end up spending a good deal of my time.
The bookshop is just past the sign and inside, has one cabinet with some random school supplies like paper and standard No. 2, as well as colored, pencils. A couple shelves display local crafts for sale, woven baskets and such. And there is a wall shelf of mostly paperback books that are for trade—bring in two and get one back, kind of deal. For everyone but David, that is. He confides to me that he alone is permitted to browse, borrow, and read unconditionally.
The computer centre is a small airless room with half a dozen or so prehistoric desktop models for the seminary students to practice on. No Internet access, though. The hostels are our dorms, five in all. One building is for the volunteers, one is a house for the two female students, two are houses for the dozen or so males, and one is for the instructors. The library is another house that has books in it, mostly religious reference books for the theology students. The chapel is right smack in the middle of the whole shebang. It is one unadorned, narrow, rectangular room with a steeple, pews, and an altar. I can see it from my door, walk past it anytime I go anywhere on the compound, hear all the daily prayer meetings and songs, and never once step foot inside. How odd. It just never occurs to me.
Rounding out the compound is the Hardisons’ cottage, a couple of other small, modest, house-type structures for various special or long-term residents, the dining hall and cookhouse, and a massive fire pit where positively everything gets tossed in to burn. The flames smolder day and night producing a leaden, toxic, smoke cloud that hovers menacingly over the whole of St Philips.
Just in front of the Hardisons’ house sprawls a largish building with a couple of big-windowed, open classrooms. And there’s a smaller, darker building—also with classrooms—over by the nursery school. I rarely see or hear the seminary students in class, although I have to think that they attend some of the time. I see them filing in and out of the chapel and at meals and often just milling about in small groups where they perhaps could be discussing theological notions. There is a table and a couple of chairs out in front of our dorm where they tend to gather. In the beginning, whenever I’d join them there, one of the students would run over and set up an umbrella for me.
That made me uncomfortable, but it ceases to happen after the first few days. A ragged volleyball net droops in the clearing near a couple of lines strung for hanging out the wash. We often watch and sometimes join in the late afternoon volleyball games with the seminary crowd. Some easily identified item of my eccentric clothing can usually be spotted flapping uncouthly in the breeze.
Everything I wear in Kenya is off those seasonal racks from one of my husband’s drugstores. Each item cost me only a couple dollars and some shrink up to the size of a handkerchief after the first wash. Others stretch to fit a linebacker. When my daughter sees one particular skirt that I’ve chosen, a multicolored, tablecloth-like frock with bright ruffles covered in sequins, she says, “Oh nice, Mom. I can just picture you in that, being chased through the jungle to the shrieking taunts of ‘SHA-KA-KA, she-devil.’ ”
I’ve mentioned the cow and several sheep that are herded and staked about the property, led to wherever the grass needs chomping down. It is not uncommon to see adorable baby animals following their mothers around, mewing and stumbling, all big-eyed, soft, and downy-looking. But the Kenyans ignore these babes, as they do all non-essential animals in the country. Puppies, kittens, calves, chimps, goat kids, and chicks. No matter how cute or cuddly. Animals are animals here—either beasts of burden or sources of food. They are an additional mouth to feed or an extra orphan competing for the limited foodstuffs. Even the children don’t play with them. Kenya is essentially a pet-less nation.
There is other wildlife on the compound but, like the deadly snakes, not much is said about them. One night during my first week at St. Philips, I am tiptoeing across the meadow after dark, obsessively following the weak, bobbing beam emanating from the idiotic headset that is strung around my skull and slipping down over one eyeball. We had been advised to bring this type of flashlight so that when we are walking around in the dreaded dark we’ll have our hands free to ward off whatever. I am trying to find David’s place. Because David is committed to the mission for a full year, he qualifies for residence in one of the private houses complete with its own kitchen where he has installed a water-filtering apparatus.
We are not able to drink the water in Kenya, are even cautioned not to use it to brush our teeth as there are all sorts of nasty microscopic bugs swimming around in it, waiting to ravage our intestinal tracts. However, we are each provided upon arrival with one bottle that we can refill at any time from the dining hall’s big black rubber vat with its ready supply of stale, standing, boiled water, which is permanently soupy, warm, and tasting like sour beef jerky that has been cured in an old truck tire. My gag reflex kicks in every time I try to swallow some. David and I become friends early on and he says I can fill up at his house anytime. The problem is remembering to check my water bottle before dark. Dehydration is a constant concern in Kenya and going the night without drinking is not an option. I would even choke down the jerky swill in an emergency, but the dining hall door is always locked after dinner. So I’m forced to grab my empty bottle and boldly strike out to find David. Nighttime in Maseno is pitch-black, but the mission glimmers from the buildings’ lightbulbs if the electricity is working, or candles or flashlights if it isn’t. They can be spotted floating like fireflies across the shadowy, forbidding expanse of meadow. I have significant difficulty locating David’s house during the day. After dark I am completely hopeless, but I am also thirsty.
Even in broad daylight the meadow is treacherous. Ruts, sticks, vines, and holes lurk everywhere, waiting to trip up an unwary walker. I fall down all the time. At night though, the obstacle course grows deadly serious. All the “knowns” are bad enough but a whole slew of unknowns emerge after sundown and African unknowns are not to be trifled with. The dim lights radiating from the various buildings on the compound provide my only relative bearings, so I make my way from one building to the next, zigzagging a course which seems to connect the dots. I have neglected to pay due heed to the zillions of strange brown orbs dangling from the trees throughout the property. During the day they are curious non-entities that mildly spark my interest. I haven’t yet thought to inquire about them, and that turns out to be a big mistake. At night these orbs transform into packs of darting, swooping, attack-bats in a feeding frenzy. I have to bob and weave to keep from being dive-bombed by swarms of the ratty, airborne creatures. So I take evasive action, avoiding the wide-open areas as much as possible, and try to stay within arm’s length of the buildings, clinging to them like safe-bases in a game of tag.
While oonching around a shed attached to the computer lab, with my headlamp pointed down so I can safely plant my feet, I smack square into an alien. Well, it looks like an alien and it is armed with a menacing, bulky weapon-type thing. Before I can catch my breath and scream, the monster begins apologizing effusively in Swahili. Whew, Swahili! Who’d have guessed I’d be relieved to be alone, bumping into a gigantic Kenyan man in an eerie disguise, in the middle of the creepy night? The vision