James from Kenya--First of two
It all started last Wednesday when Robert offered me up in his 5th grade class as a guide to James, an African man visiting from Kenya.
Robert came home in his usual exasperated, somewhat tired, low blood sugared spray of: this happened and that happened and you forgot my permission slip and can we go to the All Music store again, today…
Then he stopped. Paused.
“Mom, Mom, Miss Shampanier said she needs someone to get James from Kenya and bring him to the classroom next week.”
Wait a second. Kenya? I called the school to corroborate. Miss Shampanier talked me through her plan and I agreed to do it. Kind, was the word she’d used—Nuts was what my husband muttered. But Tom knows better after 12 years of marriage than to say he’d “let me do something.” He’s learned to embrace my many adventures which sometimes take me to places like climbing over the guardrails on the Southern State parkway picking through roadside memorials for an article I’d been working on or sharing my sexual fantasies on Dr. Ruth’s television show. Tom just charges my cell phone and holds the door open for me like a stray cat, “be home for dinner, hon.”
James Onsare, a tribal man from the Kisii village East of Victoria Lake in Kenya was indeed here in the States for the first time ever staying with his brother. John is a computer whiz still holding onto his job and sworn to secrecy at Merrill Lynch living on the edge of industry in Jersey City. I would be James the Safari guide’s guide for the day and drive in, get him, bring him out here to speak with the 5th grade, turn around and drive back to Jersey and come home. I was tired just thinking about it but jumped at the chance.
You see, I’ve had a secret love affair with Africa for a long time since I’d seen Out of Africa decades ago and spent many a night poring through a coffee table book filled with photos of regal, wild animals standing at attention on the plains of Africa. Isak Denesen’s poetic prose painted a picture of a life completely different than mine. AND I’ve been developing a charity Mothers Emerge Worldwide to help women get pre- and post- natal healthcare they need across the globe. So timing is everything.
Monday morning, I left 7 am thinking for sure I’d be through the LIE, Williamsburg Bridge, Holland Tunnel to Jersey City by 9:30 pick up time. I was wrong. I spent 3 hours in touch and go traffic inching along, crawling over the bridge and snaking through the streets of lower Manhattan. I called and pushed all the arrangements back to an afternoon speech.
James’s brother John owns a townhouse in Jersey City’s gated community Society Hill. It was this pocket of lovely Washingtonian looking quaint, well kept streets behind a mall in the middle of the dirty oiled machine of Jersey City.
James was smaller and slighter than I thought, with a thin, compact muscular body, his vehicle. he would later tell the 100 children who gathered ‘round him like celebrity signing autographs—because in Kenya you run the 8 miles to school, without shoes on your feet in rain or sunshine. Your body is all things, tool, plow, vehicle and brain. It’s the only way to get stuff done. In fact in the seven hours I accompanied him, a most fascinating experience hearing kind of Queen’s English Swahili mixture gentle voice of a man from a quieter world who need not raise his voice over the machinery of man made noise. It was James’s lilting voice I was at first struck by. Miss Shampanier explained that his accent was heavy and yet I understood his every word, even while we made business plans: he wanting me to help gain Safari travelers and me explaining “James I’ll do what I can, but I’m not a travel agent. I’m a writer.” But I did offer him space on my new website and we would work together to help build water towers for clean sanitized water for surrounding villagers and children.
As soon as I arrived, John waved me down while standing on the steps of the townhouse. With immaculately clean hardwood floors and solid muddied colored brick red bathroom, there wasn’t a decorative anything on any walls and paper towels to dry your hands. It indicated one thing and one thing only—there were no women here. No towels, doodads, nothing.
John graciously offered me a large glass brimming with orange juice. James less tall and more serious minded, was clearly one sharp cookie. He had a box of stuff for me, business cards, DVDs, brochures. He was more prepared than any Apprentice in Trump’s world. He would continue on to question me as to any limitation with or level set on my authority in opening my own website. He seemed grateful to meet people but always questioned their influence: how many people live in this town, and area of this state how many will he be speaking to?
He wasn’t sure Miss Shampanier had the authority to invite an outsider into the community’s school and was more ridged and all business when speaking to the principal shocked the authority figure is a woman. It was not disrespectful, it was his world where each step up hits a roadblock, level of authority--every move calculated and trust is key.
He was immaculate in his appearance with a beige Safari tee-shirt with his company’s emblem sown on the left lapel and Khaki pants. In fact, I was embarrassed my minivan was messy, typical mom-van stuff. While decorating the room with Wild animal posters, he made sure no edges curled.
“I am all my time, putting the thing back into the thing,” he told me in growing his business. "Here, the sky is the limit." It started as an off shoot from college where he made phone calls from his home, then shared a desk with his lawyer friend in an office. Now he lives and works in Nairobi with a staff of three.
And eloquently, better than any media-trained professional spokesperson that I’d ever accompanied on photo shoots or network interviews, this 30 something year old son of a primary school teacher father and farmer mother, who’d gone to a school with dirt floors and no running water, told a room full of 10 and 11 year olds all about Africa equating Kenya to the size of Texas. That’s something I’d like to do, drive James down to go two-stepping.
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