Ima Put It Down

Ludacris's sideburns (online image)

In the car again. Traffic was horrendous. Backed up for ages. I was pretty sure my co-worker Stephen was talking to me, but it was an uphill battle just to keep my eyelids peeled a crack and I was steady losing; jetlag was no joke. This did not seem to bother him. When I finally came to (no clue where the conversation had gone or hadn’t), we were a good ways from the city, groups of goats being herded across the street and fruit and vegetable stands popping up left and right. Clouds of dust and exhaust fumes created giant puffs of colored smoke as bus after bus passed by. At first I thought I was going crazy when I spotted Ludacris’s head on a roadside sign. But, nope. There was Chris Brown. I’m pretty sure that was Bow Wow. And I’m positive that was Alicia Keys. It seemed that though it perplexed some of my colleagues and countless others upon learning that no, I was not in fact Kenyan, and yes, there were plenty of Black Americans who looked a lot like me, or them, or us, it was nevertheless perfectly acceptable that major music icons in America were Black. Nevermind that there were maaaaaaybe a handful of Black people around in the States to listen to their music :P I made a mental note to keep learning Swahili and how to say, Black Americans exist who don't make music or become presidents, and contented myself with giggling and trying to get a good shot whenever a sign advertised stenciled sideburns like Luda’s. (I might have also imagined hearing “Luuda!” every time a man left the barber with that cut.)

Kinyozi (online image)

Ugali with chicken (online image)

For lunch, we grabbed plates of ugali (bland cornmeal rolled into balls between the thumb and forefingers) and chicken kebab (not to be confused with meat chunks on a stick, but rather ground meat rolled into a potato-consistency roll) and continued out into the villages about 45 minutes outside of Thika town. We carried myself and Stephen and one of our product representatives in tow. As the car dove off-road and up into farmland, rows and rows of sprouting greenery sprang up out of the earth. Our rep explained that these were pineapple farms owned by Del Monte and had I ever heard of Del Monte? I thought back to slurping the sugary pineapple juice from the bottom of fruit cups as a kid and assured her I had. Our driver, Joseph (what is with all the J names, really??) pointed beneath the plants to plastic pipes that steadily pumped water up and down the rows. That explained why they were so much more lush and verdant than pretty much everything else we saw. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had gone into designing and laying those pipes, he told us. How much do the farmers make? I asked. He just shook his head and smiled.

Demonstration

The small village was modest- a few low-sitting homes, some with plastic roofs, metal roofs, wooden roofs. A lucky few made of brick or mortar and cement. But the turnout was overwhelmingly warm, a nicely patterned clean tablecloth stretched over a wooden table, wooden benches for the community members, and sturdy plastic chairs for the guests, all beneath a green gazebo, vines intertwining above our heads. A jug of water and three glasses were placed out for each of us as the demonstration began. I stood and introduced myself, slowly in English. Our rep repeated in the local tongue (a dialect of Swahili), pausing for effect at the wide eyes when she mentioned I was American and spoke no Swahili. Everyone nodded as she asked if they knew about solar energy. Smiled as she brought forth the products, and clucked their tongues as she pointed out the immense monthly and annual savings over kerosene and the shocking fact that nearly a quarter of their income annually was literally going up in smoke. Just as she erected the little demo dark box to show proof of how the models worked, an all too familiar sound started, crescendoing after a moment. For a second, I grabbed my pocket thinking I had left that abysmal ringer on when I realized it wasn’t coming from me.

Women investigate the solar simulation dark box

Grimacing, embarrassed, Stephen tried to silence the device in his pockets, then in his hands, fruitlessly as he had borrowed the driver’s phone to take pictures of the demonstration and didn't know how to properly work it. Brandy and Chris Brown's voices echoed through the gazebo and beyond. Baby if you put it down, right like the way I want it, maybe we can fall in love. Over and over and over again. I grabbed the phone and started jamming the keys, trying to unlock it and silence the stupid thing. Baby if you put it put it, maybe we can fall in love. Ima put it down, you can  fall in love. Ima put it down down, you can fall in love. Eventually whoever it was gave up ringing and we shoved the thing deep into his backpack. Before long, we wrapped up, promising to return with several models and continued on to the next. 

Way to make an impression ;)