We left the park the next day. Maasai Mara had been seriously intense in several ways.
Outside the park Joseph took us to a traditional Maasai village, where you paid some money to be shown around. Given I had set Sam the school task of researching and writing about the culture only a few days earlier, this was perfect.
We learnt a man could have several wives, if he owned enough cattle to buy them with, but that each wife would have to live in a mud hut she built and maintained herself. The village would move holus-bolus every few years because that was the lifespan of the huts they built. If a man had no cattle he was expected to try to steal some from another village. There was a lot of fighting in Maasai culture, hence their fierce reputation.
The men all wore red cloaks. At the coming of age at fifteen, the Maasai youths were required to go out and kill a lion while wearing their cloak. The theory was that the lions learnt that humans wearing red were a threat and left them alone to tend their cattle. I tried to imagine Sam, who would be turning fifteen in a few months—or indeed any pampered teen from the West—hunting a lion with spears and arrows.
Sam and I joined in the jumping dance with the warriors. In Maasai culture being able to jump high is considered a sign of virility. Sam was, of course, a skilled jumper because he jumps up and down so much anyway. Maybe he could find himself a Maasai bride if I could just rustle up a few head of cattle.
We headed north towards Nairobi and stayed near the Hell’s Gate National Park. At dinner, Sam had yet another meltdown when I insisted he eat more of his meal. Embarrassed by his yelling and screaming, I got cross with him. These tantrums were becoming altogether too frequent. We returned to our room where I told him he would only be allowed to use his DS if he watched an hour of a movie of his choice. He chose Toy Story, and ended up watching the whole thing, which was fine by me; the more narrative he is exposed to the better.
Once again I reassessed my plans and objectives for Sam. I needed to draw a halt to this increasingly obstructionist and defiant behaviour, but getting him on board would require both a carrot and a stick.
I sat down with him for a talk. ‘Sam, you are getting in too much of a habit of saying no or negotiating, and not just saying yes to things sometimes.’
He looked sheepish. ‘Yeah.’
‘We need to change this,’ I said firmly.
‘Yeah.’
‘How about, if you start saying yes when I ask you to do something, that is, yes without arguing or negotiating, I’ll let you know you have done it, and if you do it a few times I’ll give you a secret reward.’
‘What’s the reward?’
I didn’t have one figured out. ‘It’s a secret.’
‘Hmm, okay.’
‘Also, if you argue or negotiate, especially over silly things, I’ll let you know, and you’ll receive negative points.’
He looked down at his feet. I gently raised his chin with my finger to make eye contact. ‘So, are you going to try really hard?’
‘Yes, I promise,’ he mumbled.
I’d planned for us to do a walking tour of Hell’s Gate National Park, which Mike and Lenneke back in Malawi had highly recommended. It sounded interesting but it was three hours long, and I felt I didn’t want to stress the two of us out anymore. We’d already seen such amazing wildlife in Maasai Mara. I decided to pull the plug.
Instead we took a one-hour boat tour of nearby Lake Naivasha, part of the Rift Valley system of lakes. It was a soft option but that was okay. We saw some interesting birds, a few hippos, and our guide threw a fish to a fish eagle, which scooped it out of the water with exquisite style and grace. An added advantage of our abbreviated sightseeing was that we would now arrive in Nairobi at lunchtime, allowing us extra hours to fit in some schoolwork and neuroplasticity exercises, and get back on track.
We climbed out of the Rift Valley for the last time, and inched our way further east across Africa.
Nairobi. Nai-robbery. Nai-Hermione Granger. I didn’t quite get the last of Sam’s mash-ups, as he called them, except that Sam continued to be obsessed with Hermione Granger, and her alter ego, Emma Watson.
But Sam was right: Nairobi had a reputation as a dangerous city, especially at night, and everyone we’d met who had visited there said it was the sort of place you stay in for as little time as possible. Get in, get out.
I actually didn’t think it was that bad, and Sam loved it. The crime rate apparently rivals that of Johannesburg, so maybe we were just lucky. The hostel we were staying at was basic but functional. There weren’t mosquito nets but the wi-fi was the fastest we’d seen.
However, there was one serious issue. McDonald’s. I’d just assumed that Nairobi would have several, but it turned out there were none, only three KFCs set away from the city centre. At first Sam wasn’t happy, but then he thought about it for a few seconds. ‘I can have McDonald’s when we get back to Sydney.’
Despite the thousand or so conversations we’d had about going to McDonald’s in Nairobi, when he discovered there wasn’t one it was dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders. It seemed he was measuring the sophistication of cities by what takeaway chains were present, and when he saw that Nairobi had big modern buildings and other trappings of a major city, McDonald’s didn’t really matter to him anymore.
We had a few days of school, shopping, neuroplasticity, restocking and recharging. Pythagoras, a PowerPoint on the Congo, public-speaking practice, chess (minus the missing bishop), boxing. Kick, kick, uppercut, uppercut, cross. Meeting people, talking to staff, ordering meals, playing pool. Riding pillion on motorbikes, walking down broken sidewalks, ignoring hawkers, discomforted by disabled beggars rattling coins in plastic cups. A blind ten-year-old boy, a woman with cerebral palsy propelling herself with her arms while her twisted legs trailed behind, a pre-school-aged girl thrusting her severely deformed wrist at us as we passed by.
For our third and final day in Nairobi, I’d organised for us to visit a school on the outskirts of the city where a cousin of mine, Denise, had worked as a volunteer. The school, funded by the Australian consulate and donations from Australian sponsors, taught children from Kibera, the largest slum in Africa.
Home to one and half million people, the tin and mud-brick shacks of Kibera latched onto the rolling hills; a chronic rash on a scarred surface. Denise’s close friend Sister Leonida was there to greet us. A vibrant and kindly soul, her sharp eyes examined us from behind her thick-rimmed glasses. She outlined the tremendous work the school did and introduced us to her staff members, who were all fascinated, of course, by Sam and what we were doing. We were well used to that.
The head teacher, Jeremiah, took us for a walking tour of Kibera, which he had called home for all of his life. Smartly dressed in a pressed white business shirt and tie, Jeremiah had a gentle and tilted smile. He rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie when we walked out into the searing sunlight. As a child, he had been bright enough to earn a scholarship to complete his schooling and, subsequently, an education degree at university. As a teacher for the most disadvantaged, he was now giving back to his community in spades.
We walked down narrow winding alleyways, where rubbish lined the open drains, children tumbled through doorways and chatter filled the air. Rusting tin roofs covered tiny mud-brick houses, doors open, but their dark interiors impenetrable as we squinted in the sunlight. Overhead was a spider web of tilting electricity poles, thick black powerlines and fuse boxes.
Jeremiah apprised us of life in Kibera. ‘A typical house is about six square metres, and somewhere between six and twenty people live in that space. During the day there is a table, but this is packed up at night and people sleep together on the floor.’
I was astonished. ‘Is there a lot of crime here?’ I asked.
‘In some areas, but not this one. I was brought up here. If someone came up now and stole your camera, they would chase him, catch him, and beat him to death.’
He smiled as I replied, ‘Well, I certainly hope that doesn’t happen!’
Despite the poverty, people were smiling and laughing. Jeremiah told us about the sense of community spirit. ‘You know, you see people who live in big fancy houses in other areas of Nairobi, and they don’t even know their neighbours. Here, everyone knows each other and looks after each other.’
I suspected Jeremiah, intelligent and articulate, was a local hero. People smiled and nodded at him. We were welcomed because we were in his company. I looked at the communal water pump, funded by the World Bank, where women and children filled their yellow plastic containers, at the local medical clinic where apparently some doctors and nurses stole medications to sell to private clinics, at the garbage, the chaos, the confinement, and was in awe that he had come from this to be where he was today.
Sam was cool. This sort of experience didn’t faze him at all these days. I thought back to Cape Town, where the sights and smells of the township had distressed him so much. We had come a long way in a geographical sense, but he had come a long way in many ways.
Back at the hostel, Sam jumped onto the bed to settle for the night, and several of the wooden slats under the mattress snapped, leaving the mattress tilting at a thirty-degree slope.
He was worried. ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I reassured him. I took one for the team and swapped beds with him, spending an uncomfortable night sliding off the mattress.
Early the next morning we left the creaking city and drove south to Tanzania. Along the way our altitude descended and the temperature ascended. It was flat and dry. Sam remarked that the landscape resembled Namibia, but the occasional flashing red robes of the Maasai driving the cattle on the side of the road revealed we were in east Africa.
Our penultimate African border crossing into Tanzania was the usual slow-motion affair, but then the flat straight road started to undulate as we approached a massive conical volcanic mountain and swung around its foothills.
On the southern side of Mount Meru we cruised into Arusha. The tourist town served the Northern Circuit, a collection of spectacular national parks that dot northern Tanzania. Arusha was full of tour guides, hawkers and more tour guides. Outside the front door of the hostel, people standing nearby would suddenly gather, like moths to the flame, with a patter of questions.
‘Hey, where you from?’
‘My friend, my friend, what do you want to see?’
‘Do you recognise me?’
Whatever it took to start a conversation. Unfortunately, it was just about impossible to finish one without getting confrontational.
Apart from this hassle, the town oozed charm. The mystical, smooth upper slopes of Mount Meru peered through breaks in the cloud hovering around its waist, like a shy lady aware of her beauty. Flashes of mauve jacaranda blooms decorated the bustling city streets, where red-cloaked Maasai strutted, veiled Islamic women travelled in groups and boda bodas and minivans honked and weaved. It was a town small enough to be digestible to the newcomer, but large enough to have vibrancy and vitality. Arusha was a liveable city.
We sorted out money and SIM cards for Tanzania, our last African country, accompanied by Morton, a Danish tourist we’d met in the hostel in Nairobi, who’d joined us on the bus. Despite his youthful appearance, Morton had a master’s degree in international relations and was a seasoned traveller. He was a rolling stone, trundling his way around Africa, trying to figure out what to do next with his life. He was also a thinker, enjoying chess challenges with Sam and philosophical discussions with me. Morton had a brother with Down syndrome and was evangelically enthusiastic about the purpose of our trip: improving outcomes for a disabled loved one. Another welcome support, another companion for both Sam and me. We weren’t to know then how great a role he’d come to play to our future travels.
Even though I now had a SIM card, my phone was out of battery and we’d arrived in what we’d soon learn was a daily blackout, usually ending towards sunset.
That evening, with the power finally back on, Sam and I discussed going home to Australia and I confirmed what I’d previously only hinted at: we were going home sooner than planned.
He looked me in the eye. ‘For sure?’
‘For sure.’
‘So I don’t have to get seven eights in a row.’
‘No, you don’t, but I think you deserve to go home. You’ve tried very hard. You should be proud of what you’ve achieved in Africa.’
Sam sat back, exhaled, and beamed. ‘Yes, I am.’
He starting singing the Green Day song, ‘When September Ends’. While the song lyrics actually explore American paranoia after the September 11 terrorist attacks, they also summed up Sam’s point of view perfectly.