Bottletops

It is funny the things that take you back to different and past times and places. It seems that the smallest little trinket can trigger an ocean of memory that puts me back in a place where smells and textures are very real.
I am currently in the process of unpacking my new house, Maggie and I are moving in to our adjoining room, and having a bit of fun fixing it up just the way we like it. I just hung up, on the rim of my book shelf, thirteen pop tops from glass bottles. Four of them aren’t from Africa, but the other nine are, and each one, as I sat back and admired my work, reminded of some amazing times.
There are two ‘Krest’ tabs, one white and one green. The white one is a ginger ale and the green is “bitter lemon.” The white one I drank while Rob and I were in the guesthouse in Nairobi. We were looking about in the gift shop and decided to get sodas. It was our last time in the Nairobi guesthouse, and the memory brings back the layout of the first floor. There was the front desk and two wooden chairs with a table and magazines between them. There was a rather large living room area with African art hung on the wall and African style furniture arranged in a welcoming way. The other Krest cap was from Litein, I had it the night that I was very sick.
There’s an “Alvara” top that is an orangy yellow colour. This we picked up in Kajiado town when we went and had yama choma in the locker of the town. Yama choma is a leg of goat put on a rotisserie apparatus and cooked for a while. Then they bring the leg in on a large wooden cutting board/plate and cut it up with a huge knife. On the edges of the plate are little mounds of salt, which you dip the meat that you tear off in and eat. Daniel (the director of the Kajiado Child Care Center), Rob and I all had this soda with our goat leg. It was a fizzy pineapple and it was very enjoyable.
Another tab is a lime green colour and it was from a “fanta citrus.” This was the soda that I had in Amaya, a mobile clinic that we did while we stayed in Churo. Festus, the nurse for the clinic, went and brought in soda for all of us when we were nearing the fourth hour of our work that day. It was very generous of him, and we all appreciated the cool drink and the break for our feet.
There are more tabs, and each with specific and detailed memories. It is good to remember.

A little girl named Pialo

Kajiado, Kenya is very deeply located in Maasai (a Kenyan tribe) land. Maasai huts are mostly mud and dung mixtures with sticks dried into the mud to stabilize the hut. The cooking is done in the middle of the hut over an open flame. There can be one or two small peep hole windows in huts, but many have no such windows and therefore, Maasai huts are very poorly ventilated. In Kajiado, Kenya there is a child care center (amongst other things) that takes care of children who are physically disabled. Most children suffered Polio when they were very young and still bear the consequences today. Some have spina bifida, some microcephaly or hydrocephaly. Pialo doesn't suffer under such conditions.

Pialo, when she was about three years old walked too close to the cooking flame in her hut and her skirt caught on fire, and she was badly burned in the accident. Her family brought her to the child care center, and she has lived there ever since, because she is of less value because of her scars and condition. She has a beautiful heart that wants to learn and serve others. She vaguely reminds me of Samwise Gamgee, the beloved hobbit from the Lord of the Rings, because she is never far off from another girl, Esther. Pialo helps Esther in and out of her wheel chair and takes Esther everywhere in the chair. They are neigh inseparable.

Though children in Africa were far more friendly and loving towards us wazungu (white peoples) Pialo seemed to love beyond a mere fascination and being around her was quite different than most of the other children that I met while I was gone. She included me in the games that her and her friends were playing on the play ground after school. I went down slides, through tunnels of water vats, ran about buildings and hid nearly everywhere they could think of to stick me. Later that night, after they had all gone and had supper, I was invited into the disabled girls dormitory by none other than the precious Pialo. I helped Esther to understand the one children's book that they had, a Christmas story as she read it in English to the others. Esther had no idea what a reindeer was, and frankly, I think I called it a moose that can fly. When I was going to leave, to be with my team for the night, Pialo teared up and didn't want me to go. To see this broke my heart and made me cry a bit too. Love is strong in the children of Kajiado, Kenya.