When exhausted, do not attend constitutional conventions. They make C-Span look Big Trouble in Little China.
Why exhausted: walking around in the Nairobi sun (when is the danged winter going to get here?), doing the reporting that flowed out of the two days of research. Asking government official after after government official about problems and being told, "Oh, that's not really a problem. I don't think anyone needs to worry about that. We are a new country now."
And I need to talk to members of parliament, but they're all out in the bush at the constitutional convention. So I go to the bus station and bumble around. Is there an easier mark than a white guy with a bag in a bus station obviously in need of aid to get where he's going? No, but people help me and I grab the next shuttle out of town. The bus drives past Kibera, and then we're out in safariland. Little rich-guy planes fly low over the higway, and everything's green prairie or blue sky.
I get off where the bus driver tells me, walk where he pointed before he drove away: a dirt road into the forest that looks like a road to a sawmill. The guys cutting the lawn with machetes stop swinging and watch the mzungu in the suit walk by. Hi!
Eventually expensive SUV's start to pass me, so I must be on the right road. Then I see tents for "The Kenyan Human Rights Commission" and "Kenyan Women's Caucus" behind them, and then the auditorium. Inside its like a roman ampitheater: circular rows of seats with a big pit in the middle, and a broad table with people wielding gavels.
I take a seat and descend into delirium. It should be fascinating watching a system of government take shape. But the hall is half empty, most of the speakers read haltingly from prepared statements, and probably most importantly, my brain is too tired to do the work of deciphering the nuances of the Kenyan dialect. But worst, far worst of all, is the young indian woman with the camcorder linked to a huge screen behind the broad table of gavels. Her camerawork is pure herky jerky fumbuckery: camera centers on a speaker, then lurches past them into the crowd, then focuses on their midsection. When a new speaker stands up, the screen flails around like the last five mive minutes of Blair Witch. I am tired, I am smelly, and I cannot for the life of me understand what is going on. I check with some young helpful people, and they tell me the MPs I'm looking for went home early.
I stumble back out into the sunlight to do one more phone interview. Looking for a quiet place to talk, I spy a thatched umbrella. I walk closer. There's a table with deck furniture attached! Next to it, another umbrella, but this one red and covered with Coca-Cola logos. And beneath the umbrellas, people lounging in chairs, drinking coffee, eating sweets.
Country club life! I get a cup of coffee, grab six little donut things, sit beneath an umbrella and chill. Once the coffee's gone, I call my interview. Nobody home! Day! Is! Over! Another coffee and many more donut thingajigs follow, as does sitting in comfy chair like a vegetable and watching the big trees swing back and forth. I talk to no one.
At about 6 I get up and walk back towards the road out. What's this? Big buses labeled 'Observers' heading back to Nairobi for free. I climb aboard, take a seat. A woman whose face bears a striking resemblance to Gary Coleman's strides up to me. "Who are you?"
"John Ness. Newsweek magazine."
"Newsweek magazine?" I show her accreditation. She is skeptical. "This bus is for official observers!" The lady sitting in front of me says something to Gary in Swahili, but Gary snaps back at her. "I will be back," she says.
Young man sitting behind me taps my shoulder. "She's crazy," he says with a smile. The woman in front turns around.
"Don't worry. She's not normal." I laugh.
"She is tough," I say.
"She is crazy!" she says.
Then Rastaman gets on the bus. He's got dredlocked hair, dredlocked beard, wool rastaman hat. Gary goes after him, they argue for a second, and then he starts pointing to all the busgoers. "I am observing you! I am observing you!" Everybody laughs, and Gary is stripped of all her authority. Rastaman sits next to me, and tells me how he was a DJ for twenty years before he became "a political artist." On the way home, he tells me about disco in Nairobi in the 70s.
