The Kuku Chizi

Sitting in my dark house, lit by a single flickering candle, thinking about one of the worst things I ever did to anybody. The background: my parents moved into their current office (thought current being a relatively temporary word lately with the Waldrons. I don’t think they’ve changed their citizenships. Yet.) in the early 90’s. I was a youngin, and got to play around, a lot, in the new digs. For those of you who haven’t visited the offices of Waldron and Waldron (not true, but brings to mind my parents as Muppets in the Christmas Carol, shackled in chains and singing to Scrooge. Watch the movie. Right now), you walk inside and you are on landing, stairs leading up and down. My parents work on the top floor. The bottom floor, for many years, was vacant. My sister and I used it as a place to play on the trampoline (...why was there a trampoline in the basement of a law office, Mom and Dad?), and to pass the time as children will do. And then one day...I let my better demons get the best of me. It went something like this:

I knew my sister would be coming downstairs soon. I don’t remember why I knew, but knew I did. And this was at a point in my life where scaring people was still really, really fun (I also used to enjoy hiding a rubber snake in my parents bed. Amazing I lived till puberty). So I went downstairs, into the cave. I remember it was always very, very cool down there...and just a little dank. And it was essentially underground. No light. None. And I waited.

Waiting in pitch blackness is an exercise in relativity. After 5 minutes, time begins to flow like a river through mine. You think you hear something, you make up a story for it. It could be anything. Someone sneezes three offices down, somebody pops open a soda, and you tense. She’s coming! Now’s the moment! You forget that when the moment does come, it won’t be ambiguous. You’ll know. It’s like waiting for the subway. You get excited for every flicker of light off the walls, then when the actual train comes, you remember...it’s a train. It coming, and it’s going, and you’ll know when it does. And all you can do is ride it.

Vicky comes down the stairs, slowly, quickly, don’t remember. She reaches the landing, the doorway, then starts the descent. I get excited, giggly even. Then the guy in white on the right shoulder mentions that this is a really terrible idea, a cruel idea, even. And he’s right, and I know it. But she’s coming down the stairs, and I’m here, and it’s too late now, even if I say something, it will scare her. So I might as well go for the gold. And when my wonderful, beautiful sister reaches the bottom of the stairs, she reaches her hand into the dangerous darkness, groping for a light switch she’ll never find. Because five fingers that aren’t supposed to be down there close around her wrist, and she begins to scream.

There are certain expectations you have to have in order to survive. Every day all of you live with the expectation that the other cars will stay on their side of those thin yellow lines. But those lines are thin. And they won’t stop a car. They won’t stop anything. And the moments we recognize that fact are the moments we realize how fragile our worlds are. You have to believe that the boogie man isn’t under the stairs, or else you’d never go down them. So we all tell our kids its safe, and we all tell ourselves its safe. But one day it wasn’t. Not at all. Sorry about that Vick. I really really am.

I wrote this because I’m reading Bag of Bones, by Stephen King, alone, in the middle of the night. I’m only a little ways in, but it feels like a good one (books and football games, you can tell early on if they’re gonna be good. Relationships and baseball are different. They can start slow but go the distance, or there can be fireworks at the start...and then the crowds end up leaving early). So far, it is the story of a writer whose wife dies before they are very old, and he is being figuratively (or maybe literally...dun dun DUN) haunted by her memory. Now I’m a guy who gets into his reading. Emotional reads get me going if they are good, and creepy stories give me the creeps. But if you want to really stand up those hairs on the back of your neck, try reading a frightening story alone, your house lit by one candle, your last candle, very far from home.

Because alone, in the middle of a new and strange land, all that lights the way is your sanity, your faith that your perception of reality matches reality. And sometimes, late at night, the wind begins to blow a little, and that candle begins to flicker. And you start to wonder...could it ever blow out? How dark would it get, inside my house, inside my mind? And the answers are...of course it could. And it would be very, very dark. And if there’s not enough light to see your hand, how can you be sure it’s still there? If you’re alone, in the dark, how can you be sure you’re really alone...



Well that got dark, didn’t it? Didn’t mean to frighten anybody, but I can assure you that I’m not sitting in the dark, water dripping through my fingers, talking about snails crawling on the edge of straight razors (first person to post the movie I’ve just referenced...can adopt a Tanzanian child?). Although I must say that one of the volunteers I met the other day was talking about living on your own, and he said something to the effect of, “yeah, you do find yourself saying ‘huh, I got a little weird for those last six months there, didn’t I?’” And I see what he means. Kwa mfano (for example), I was in town the other morning to get money and bread and a package (thanks Mom and Dad and Vicky!), and I went into a bathroom, and saw my own reflection. No, I hadn’t developed a uni-brow or a lazy eye or a swarthier complexion. But it was still really weird seeing myself. I don’t have a mirror, is the thing. I see my own face about once every two weeks. And while I don’t think anything is changing...I’m also not sure I would know. No mirrors, real, or otherwise.

What I mean is that if I started wearing skinny jeans and pink polo shirts around in Paupack (like an Italian guy I met a few days ago in Africa), odds are one of the people who love me and care about me would tell me I looked like a continental idiot. But here...they all think I’m crazy anyway. So anything I do is just another crazy thing the crazy guy is doing. They have no expectations of Dan Waldron, or at least no expectations of his behavior or appearance (going to segue out of the 3rd person now). Which means...I might get weird. Weirder. There’s an off chance I’ll have some moments of weirdness. Like talking to the cat. Or eating cookie dough raw. Or maybe occasionally sitting on the floor at the proper angle so that I can only see sky through the windows, so I can pretend I’m in the movie “Up” and the house is flying (two of those happened. Maybe three).

So this section I will write in Kiswahili. Translation to follow:
Ningependa kuchukua nafasi hii kupongeza rafiki yangu atakayeolewa Jumamosi inayokuja, Bibi Brittany Scott. Najua yeye na mchumba wake (Bwana ADAM HAMWAY) wataishi pamoja, watacheka pamoja, na Mungu akipenda, watashinda pamoja mpaka watakuwa wazee bila meno. Ninawapenda sana ninyi wote wawili, na nitakuwa na huzuni sana kukosa harusi yenu. Mcheze dansi kuku chizi. Nakuomba.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulation my friend who will be married this Saturday, Miss Brittany Scott. I know she and her fiance (Massa Adam Hamway) will live together, laugh together, and God willing, will succeed together until they are old people without teeth. I love you both very much, and I will be very sad to miss your wedding. Dance the funky chicken. I beg you.

I never want to make this blog about what these people don't have, and we do have. As I see it, we are all doing the best we can, and the people I love spend a whole lot of time giving back. There are people who take advantage of opportunities in both cultures, and people who make their own opportunities. That being said...I hate you all. I spent an entire day on Thursday building shelves with a hammer that was attached to its handle by hope, nails that had the strength of linguini, and a saw that I believe was used to amputate General Rosewall Stormyside's leg in the Civil War. Adding to that...I'm a really bad carpenter. The resulting shelves look like something out of a Salvador Dali painting. I miss flat floors. I miss power tools. Hate you all. Not a lot. Just a little.

To close, I am in fact doing some work, not just sawing off my own hand for the fun of it. We had our first meeting of my secret cow group the other day (I will be sad when we tell people about the group...and it just becomes a cow group). We are a long ways away from actually getting cows from Heifer International, but I do have high hopes. And one very special goal: I fully intend, for purposes of tracking the cows, to give them names. And what better names than the names of a certain Cow Group in Northeastern Pennsylvania? Debby, Molly, Susie, Marsha, Jeanne, Susie, you get the idea :) Though, assuming all works out, there will be one bull. I’m leaning heavily towards calling the bull Uncle Louie. But if anyone has a convincing argument that I should name the bull after them, write me a letter. I’m listening.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’m not supposed to be initiating projects yet. And I’m not. This was an idea from my neighbor (there’s a similar project in his parents’ village). I’m just the token white guy (this is true in most settings). Seriously, it’s a tricky balance. Pushing projects through quickly is a recipe for disaster. But I have people who want to do something special, and are ready to get to work. They aren’t asking me for grant money or material support, at least not yet. Who am I to tell them they have to wait for me to get my adverbs in the proper order? The key, I think, is to ask as many questions as possible, and to spend every moment thinking of all the stuff that could go wrong, then solutions. Kind of like preparing for a date. You bring that spare pair of pants. Cuz something might go wrong. Or right. Moving on.

But for all my wasiwasi (worries), I had kind of a funny moment the other day. A great old Neil Young song comes on. “Cortez the Killer”. And as I’m listening to the lyrics and remembering all the lovely development work my boy Cortez pulled off, it did occur to me that he set the bar pretty low for people working in new countries and with new cultures. I’m thinking I can do better.

Keep On Rocking in the Free World,

Dan