Walked down toward to the grocery, same way I walk everyday. But this morning, some Kenyan workers on the side of the road were doing something interesting: building a furnace the size of an American car. Rock walls, already plenty of cherry embers inside, and a thing on top that looked like an oversized version of my dad's pancake griddle, all filled up with liquid tar. The thing is half on the road, half off, and they'd put up little piles of rocks to warn drivers to swerve left. They put the whole contraption together this morning, just to reseal the my neighbors' driveway. As the man in black says, Impressive. Most impressive.
Down the road, a guy trims the shrubs. There's no ladder: he just stands atop the inchthick border fence, no more impressed with himself than the ladies who hike around town with shopping bags firmly balanced on their heads. Do you know how to balance something firmly? No, you can't walk from the counter to the sofa without spilling your Honey Smacks. And standing placidly atop a fence and swinging a machete? That's not gardening, that's something one of Spider-Man's enemies does.
And yet all do not work so hard, so well. Take the askaris—security guards—who often sleep on the job at night. Some booze it up, then knock out for the night. And mzungus paying them are bizarrely patient with this.
“But you're paying him to protect you,” I argue.
“I know. They shouldn't drink. But as far as sleeping, he’s got to be up all night. I don’t think I could do that. Could you?”
Winter of 1995 I worked at Video Central from 10pm to 8am. I thought the job sounded awesome: it had anime, those French movies that have colors for titles, and three rows of STAFF PIX videos that were way too cool for you. You could watch all these and be paid! You were allowed to smoke inside. Despite the snobbery of the place (When I brought in a comic to read overnight, the owner commented that all the best ones were in black and white. A coworker audibly sniffed at my suggestion to watch Eddie Murphy’s Delirious.), the idea that I could walk in at two in the morning and rent Transformers: The Movie and Citizen Kane and spend the rest of the morning trying to figure out which was the greater film was as sublime as sublime got at age 19. And smoking! If had smoked, then I could have smoked while I made my selections!
But just as every pretentious Village Voice cover story leads the reader to the paper's bread-and-butter nudie classifieds, thus did Video Central—at around midnight every night—take its own detour into Smuttytown. In the AM all I did was rent out oversized boxes for $10. Sometimes they returned them while I was still on duty. Insert Homer Simpson shiver of revulsion.
Also note that I was the kind of teenager who thought he was breaking a sacred social contract by not telling management that I would have to be going back to school in mid-January. It was all I could do to keep my brain pickled with Dew after Dew just wait for the shift to end. I made $5 an hour.
So I argue to friends in Kenya that Yes, the askaris could hack it staying up.
Our askari’s name is Nelson, and he wears the same faded-to-pink stocking cap every day, like a Peanuts character. He speaks two words of English to me: “Yeah” and “Socks.” Whenever I come in the gate, Socks the dog runs up. I say hello to Nelson. Instead of saying hello back, he pets the dog: “Yeah. Socks! Socks Socks Socks!” He grins at me like "Socks" is the best inside joke in the world, and only he and I get it. What the hell do I care if he's asleep while the pillaging hordes climb our property wall and unleash a pillaging that would make Cormac McCarthy blanch?
