Beyond the Vapour Trail Page 17

  ‘Who is this?’ I asked.

  She picked up another photo of a girl, maybe a year younger than the boy.

  ‘These two children were not allowed to attend school because they are deaf.’

  Devika had organised for them to board in town to attend a private school. She visited both of them quite frequently in her own time to make sure everything was OK. The children began to come alive with all the learning and stimulation and opportunities. One of the boy’s emerging interests was dance. Since he was hearing-impaired, he learnt to dance by feeling the music. There was a dance competition at the school, and so the boy decided to enter it. He won. Now, you might think that perhaps the school had favoured him in the judging, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Because he then went on to win the traditional dance competition for his entire district, and had the privilege to represent his district in the provincial competition. Which he also won. He then went on to win the national competition against all comers his age in Sri Lanka.

  And this boy could have been sitting at home, looking up from his menial tasks to watch other children as they walked past, to and from school.

  Later that afternoon we went out to visit an eight-year-old girl, Krishnapillai, who Devika said was living with her family in a lean-to. When we arrived, we found that it really was a lean-to, emphasis on leaning: a few branches propped against the side of a proper building, covered with leaves to waterproof it. You would have to crouch down to get inside. There was barely room enough for the five of them to sleep. That was it. This was their home. I learnt that her father was a drinker who had lost hope. Or a man who had lost hope and turned to drink; it’s always hard to know. He was a small man with a small wife and three young girls. And he couldn’t provide for them. What does it mean to offer your services, the labour of your hands, and be turned down, to be told you are not wanted? Or when you do get work for a day, to work hard in the intense heat all day, only to be thrown a pittance, almost nothing. That is what your labour is worth. That is what the work of your hands is worth: this is what you are worth. To come home again and again and have nothing to help your family? To squat at night in a dingy shelter – one of the worst in the village – and have to crawl out into the heavy tropical rain at night to patch the roof yet again? To see your wife and children looking up to you, and this is the best you can do.

  His eldest, Krishnapillai, had been selected to be one of the sponsored children. That meant one of those enthusiastic young volunteers came to visit – extending the care, of course, to her sisters who were not sponsored. And one day she visited and found Krishnapillai feeling very sad. Things weren’t good. Recently her father had had to take all the girls’ earrings to sell them. In this community, they told me, this is one of the final steps down into the place of desperation. You never sell your daughters’ earrings. It marks you.

  So this young community volunteer went back and reported what she saw, and the project team discussed what they could do to help. After talking it through with the mother they gave her a small loan, which meant she began to earn a little money by husking and winnowing rice. I saw a woman doing this when I was there, sending the grain as a blur into the air to blow away the husk, and then the rice dropped again into a little woven basket, as though it could never spill. It was visual poetry.

  A couple of weeks later a group of the volunteers turned up together to help the mother dig their garden. When Krishnapillai’s father saw this, he couldn’t believe that these people would give their time to help. To help his family. He felt encouraged. He got out and started digging too.

  From that day, they said, things began to improve. Krishnapillai began to notice a difference in her father and in her family. They were eating better. Then one day, her father went out for the day. When he returned he came back with the earrings for his daughters. Now she didn’t have to feel like the poorest girl at school. And her father stopped drinking. Instead he began work on building their new house.

  From: Brett Pierce

  Sent: 08/03/02

  To: Kathleen Pierce

  Subject: Back in Colombo

  I’ve just had a bath and am sitting next to the window as the sun sets over Colombo. I can hear the imam calling the faithful to prayer. Those big billowy clouds are hanging like a question mark over the Indian Ocean. The sounds change when the sun goes down. I’m wearing a cool black World Vision shirt that I was given at the project in Batticaloa – they wore them there because of the war – so they would be recognised. They used to let the WV staff past even when they blocked the UN & general public.

  Remember that evening at the beach? I wish I could be back there and talking to you. I like your companionship a lot. It’s getting darker outside like the movie’s about to start. I wonder what’s playing on the streets of Colombo. They don’t have twilight in the tropics – just on and off.

  On the way to the office this morning there was this long, curved, narrow, completely empty street, and a ragged guy with a large crimson wrap on his head asleep on the path, with the light reflecting off the cobbled surface - it would have made an amazing photo. But if he woke, I think it might have been another heel on his dignity. No photo’s worth that, hey.

  Lots of love,

  Brett

  My accommodation at Batticaloa had been simple and basic. Well, OK, with a tropical lagoon right outside the door and frangipani falling at my feet, with sunset turning the sky into crimson mirrored across the still water. And then with fires being lit on the prawning platforms seemingly suspended above the chokingly black water, under the starlight.

  Back in Colombo the hotel was more comfortable accommodation and boasted fewer mosquitoes.

  But for the following week I attended a conference. The organisers had been given a really good deal at a resort out of town, on the beach. Even though the cost to us was small, I still had misgivings. It felt bad. And resorts remove you from the communities, from life, into the glossy unreality of a brochure. The mostly European tourists in expensive pen-stroke-sized swimsuits all soaked up the ultraviolet like seals in the Southern Ocean. (I won’t comment on seal blubber, that would be rude.) There was a beautiful beach nearby with coconut palms leaning over painted boats and surf breaking in, but the tourists felt no need to wander out the gates when there was a swimming pool right here. They could have been anywhere. Swimming pool, sun and cocktails. Sri Lanka was irrelevant.

  From: Brett Pierce

  Sent: 12/03/02

  To: Kathleen Pierce

  Subject: Don’t read in a hurry, ok?

  OK, so now I’m out at this Club Palm Bay place north of town. I’d rather stay in a local hovel – it’s a bit over the top. But if you were here, this would be just fine!! Get to treat you like a lady. It seems to have a half-acre swimming pool, immaculate gardens and opulence that suggests cheap local labour (must be at this low price). The inlet wanders around the edges of the resort, and, well, everywhere are palm trees (no surprises) – not neatly planted – but in wild clumps like tins of pencils. Here as everywhere there are these local crows. Crows are like disturbing thoughts and unanswered questions. They seem to gaze at you. You can chase them away easily enough, but you can’t stop them from returning. Bit like the overweight Americans at the buffet.

  But you should see the beach! Rough-textured sand, local huts under a forest of palms, fishermen … in the shade groups of people barter over fish not yet ghost-eyed on a hessian bag. Long fish, round fish, big fish. The fishing boats are like Dulux ads – swirls of multi-colours in local designs. High-prowed, flatbottomed, bigger-than-you-expect long fishing vessels – drawn up on the beach like parked dragons, leaning to one side or the other. I have to find out what time they launch them, and then be glad I carried that bloody big zoom lens all this way. Hope there’s surf – with a fast shutter speed I can freeze the drops of water (even in the tropics!). Sometimes I get my photos back and am disappointed. Sometimes pleasantly surprised.

  Not much happening, b
ut some interesting people here. I always really hit it off with the Africans (Ahh-fri-cahns - try it), particularly the Zambians (Zahm-b-ns) Once you get past their polite exterior, they have the most fantastic sense of humour. The accent is so kind to your ears, too. They think Mugabe is getting a raw deal from the press. A different perspective!(?) We agreed about the bloody-mindedness of Israel & the US, though. Met an interesting guy from Canada here called Patrick from North West Territories (20 below zero when he left). He has a beard and with his hair tied back looks like de Niro/Rodrigo in ‘The Mission’ – same smile. He works with the First Nations there – and is involved in fighting pipelines, land rights, etc. He originally went up there with CBS as cameraman, and stayed. His wife is First Nation and they have 8 children. I think there are 40,000 people in a province bigger than South Australia. Open spaces. 3 hours’ daylight in winter. Caribou, bears and snow, methinks. 500 miles further north and you have the long dark night.

  Went for a walk along the beach with Patrick & another Australian (we’re all kind of beer-drinking mates) as the sun was sliding away. Warm Indian Ocean surf breaks on sandy beach, fishermen fold nets into their boats for morning. The boats all face the ocean, as if anticipating something. Kids with dark bright eyes and uncomplicated smiles, mongrel dogs (rabies here! I nearly got bitten and would have had to have stomach injections – his teeth got my trousers, just pulled my leg away in time), palm forest with traditional houses, black pigs in compounds. Just like this as far up the coast as you can see either way. Tiny sand crabs dance around your feet to their burrows as you walk. Got talking to the local fishermen – with very little English. Some have these great colourful boats with motors, others have small traditional log-tied boats. Then it made sense – someone leases the big boats, then they take a hefty slice of their meagre earnings or catch. I got invited to go out in the boat with them – but it’s a 4 a.m. launch, so maybe later in the week – or I won’t function in the conference. But that’s a once in a lifetime thing, hey.

  Did I make it out on the fishing vessels? No, damn it.

  CHAPTER 25

  Mama Obama and Hyenas

  I needed to get to Kisumu in western Kenya, which sits on yet another corner of that massive Lake Victoria. I had never explored western Kenya, so I was looking forward to it. The queues outside Kenyatta domestic airport can be a bit of a drag to get through, but once my colleague Andrew and I got inside we discovered the entire Kenya Airways queue, up and down the ropes, was just sitting there. On the floor. On their bags. No-one was processing Kenya Airways flights.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  A Canadian sitting on the floor leaning against his pack looked up at us. You can often tell Canadians because they stitch their flag on their bags.

  ‘Nothing. They won’t tell us anything.’

  I didn’t want to miss this trip. As a teenager I had been shy, but now I often strike up conversations with strangers when I travel. I must have become like my mother when I wasn’t watching. So we chatted to three older Dutch tourists behind us. They seemed a bit distressed – their whole holiday was going to be messed up. The Kenyan guy behind them spoke up and suggested Kenya Airways was probably on strike. We chatted as time slipped past. He finally said he was going to go home, grab his car and drive there, and offered Andrew and me a lift. The advantages of talking to strangers.

  ‘I have room for three, so I can take one more.’

  Andrew and I looked at the three grey-haired Dutch tourists, and then at each other. They really did look lost and bewildered, so we let them take the three seats instead. I wanted to get to Kisumu, but they needed it more than we did.

  After a while, a Kenya Airways staff member appeared at the front desk. There was a clamour for her attention, but no-one got any information.

  ‘There must be something we can do,’ I said to Andrew.

  The Canadian guy in front of us was more philosophical as he lounged against his pack.

  ‘Nah, there’s nothing you can do. You might as well just sit back and wait.’

  ‘There’s always something you can do,’ I said to no-one in particular. I soon spotted another Kenya Airways woman right at the other end of the terminal as she rushed from one door and disappeared behind another. I thought, She has to come out again.

  ‘Hey, mind my bag,’ I said to Andrew.

  I went over and waited outside the door. Others had come over with the same idea. I don’t know how long we waited. Ten minutes? The door opened and she saw all the faces. Immediately people were pushing her for information. I didn’t want to annoy her, so I stood back politely. She gave everyone short shrift, one by one, then looked at me. Polite. My mother taught me manners, and manners are powerful.

  ‘Excuse me. My colleague and I really need to get to Kisumu today. Is there any other way to get there?’

  She paused.

  ‘Wait here.’

  Within another five minutes she had escorted us over to another airline, with one other man, and the three of us were given the only spare seats on the other airline to Kisumu that morning. We beat the Dutch tourists by hours.

  We arrived in Kisumu on a Sunday, so our driver asked us what we wanted to do. He was one of those laid-back, friendly people you instantly feel comfortable with. One of his suggestions was to meet Mama Obama, Barack Obama’s grandmother. Andrew was American, so he was keen. I didn’t really know what it meant. I couldn’t imagine any reason she would want to meet us, nor could I picture what the situation might look like. But compared to everything else on offer, it seemed the most interesting. I did feel mildly like a rubbernecker, though.

  Roads in Africa can be pretty rough, but this road to Kogelo village, to Mama Obama’s door, is one of the best roads in Africa. Almost as soon as Obama was elected, the road, the powerlines, everything was built with an efficiency that amazed most Kenyans.

  Mama Obama’s house looked like a military camp. Like a siege. They were taking no risks with security. She came out and gave us an audience, but at this point I witnessed a woman who was clearly tired of the complexity and isolation that fame had brought. She answered my questions about Obama’s father, a bright lad in a small rural school who simply excelled and was sent on to further education. Everything he touched seemed to succeed. But she appeared fed up with of all this, and I wished to give her back her space.

  It was a nephew, Barak Obama’s cousin, who I struck up a deep conversation with. He and his sister had founded their own NGO, the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation, and they were working with our organisation to improve the lives of children locally. He was vitally interested in the ins and outs of running NGOs, of what makes development sustainable.

  When we arrived back in Kisumu, we finished the day eating salad and locally caught fish in the open on the shores of Lake Victoria. For the first time I learnt how to eat a fish off the bone without spending my entire time picking bones out of my mouth. And once you have finished one side, how to pull the head, tail and all the bones off in one neat pull to leave just the flesh on the other side.

  My other adventure with Andrew was a little more costly. We were at a workshop in Lukenya in Kenya in 2009. I had just got back to my room after we had finished for the day when the phone rang. It was Andrew.

  ‘Hey, I’m going quad biking to look at the animals. Do you want to come?’

  He told me the price. It seemed pretty reasonable. As it turned out, this jaunt was going to cost me a lot more than that.

  ‘Yeah, sure. Sounds great.’

  ‘I want to get going before the sun goes down. Can you meet me at the gate in five?’

  ‘OK. I’ll be right there.’

  I rushed to get ready and grabbed the cash I would need from my wallet. I looked for the room safe and realised there wasn’t one. I thought better of leaving my wallet in the room and shoved it in my pocket and ran out.

  It was a short walk down a dirt road to the little tour operation, and before long we were thrashing the quad bi
kes around, and then kidding ourselves that if we rode them very quietly we might get close to the animals – impala, zebra, giraffe – animals that detect almost-silent big cats from half a rustle. I’m not a motor-head by any stretch of the imagination, but I was a total motor-head that day. It was a blast. As much as thrashing the quad bikes around, it was the freedom to explore the savannah, to see the animals. The sense of freedom almost had a taste to it.

  Finally dusk started to close in, so we headed back. As we pulled up I felt for my wallet to pay, and as I checked every single pocket I began to realise with horror that it had disappeared. And because I was considering buying my wife some tanzanite jewellery on the way home, I happened to have mostly my own cash. And since she’s worth a lot, I was probably carrying more than people usually like to carry. Enough for me to feel like crawling into a foetal position and say, Oh no. This didn’t just happen. Yes, that’s exactly what I wanted to do. But I thought it might be a bad look. Instead I said, ‘I’ve lost my wallet.’

  The young guy who ran the tour didn’t hesitate. He jumped on his motorbike and I followed on the quad as we began to retrace our steps. I couldn’t believe he knew it – we had gone everywhere like crazy random people, and he remembered the entire route we had taken, in order.

  This was a brown leather wallet – a gift from a team in Ecuador. Thankfully, I soon saw a leather wallet lying on the ground. Actually, there were lots of them. In fact, everywhere I looked there were leather wallets lying on the ground as far as the eye could see. Either that or animal dung, mostly about the size of leather wallets. Closer inspection on each occasion confirmed that they were indeed from animals, but not from the hide. It was hopeless. But my guide pressed on, even as the light began to disappear and it even become hard to distinguish the dung from rocks, then difficult to see rocks on the ground, and then … it was … black.