That's just cricket(s)

Sunday

This morning around midnight I awoke to what sounded like a 1955 speed typing class beside my head. These were old-school, clackety-clack typewriters. Or you could say it sounded like someone snatched every ball from a pool table, put them in a giant cocktail shaker and shook them beside a microphone. Their crickets in Africa must be on crack.

At least that’s what I think it was that made that racket. After a while, said crack cricket must have crawled under my door and down the hall, because I think I heard Pfummy chasing after it. Someone must have got the critter. Things quieted down except for the neighbors.

In case you’re worried that the monster cricket might have crawled in my ear, have no fear.

Here is the way I live:
I have a yellowish-beige bedroom that is very sunny. It has two wide windows, one on the wall in front of me when I’m lying on my bed and one to the left, which you can throw open as if you were in Italy. White security bars criss cross the windows. Sky blue curtains hang from rods, their design featuring white bare trees and birds that look like pelicans. The floor is linoleum. There is a closet where Puni keeps her clothes and I’ve hung a few things. I sleep on a single wooden bed, part of a bunk bed. Pfummy has the other piece of the bunk in his room. When I get ready for bed, I prop my handy-dandy REI domed mosquito net (a must for long-term travelers in Africa!) on my bed, put on my headlamp for reading and crawl under the net and into my REI cotton sleep sack.

Now the mosquitoes and monster crickets can’t get me. Heh. Heh. It’s hot, so obviously we leave the windows open, and the wide world of insects moves on through. The room would be bare otherwise. No table, desk or lamp. My huge bags are strewn about – I can only surmise what spiders have made them their new home. In one corner I have created an altar of sorts on my sleeping bag roll. Atop it sits a single ceramic tile Puni gave me that has a candle on it to deter mosquitoes. On the tile I have a little ceramic bear that represents spirit and the West that Julie I. gave me; a tortoise of gem stone from Robin since I keep writing about turtles in children’s stories and turtles play a prominent role in the world’s ancient epics; a miniature sculpture of St. John, patron saint of travelers and writers, from Kelly; and a paper-cut-out screen that a stage designer I know made. Its arch features dolphins, and it creates the semi-enclosed space for my entourage. Surrounding the tile, on the floor and propped against the sleeping bag roll, there’s a photo of my parents and one of my nieces. You’ll also find a photo birthday card of a snow-covered Mt. Shasta that Dee Dee gave me, a cherry-blossom card from Julie A., an artistic b/w photo of the N.C. coastline just before a storm and the precious handmade and hand-tied book of inspirational sayings and photos that Mell, Stacey and Maya crafted for me in Austin. (When I unearth Dorothy Korber’s corgi card to me, it will be propped here, too. Corgis rule, as Dot will tell you.) And then I’ve made a book collection alongside: the Bible from 7-year-old Trent, the Thich Nhat Hanh book “Peace is Every Step” from Mell, Stacey and Maya, the prayer books of the Bahai’i faith that the artist who had lived in Africa 28 years, Mary Jane Volkmann, asked me to open once I was on the plane to Johannesburg, taking a deep breath and in the air. One of the books she carried with her for 30 years, and Mary Jane selected me as its next proper home. (Thank you, Mary Jane.) You can create sacred space anywhere. And I make sure I have art, even in a bare room. And I always have music: birdsong. And, now, at night I have castanets, a la crickets.

For bedtime reading I have my Amazon Kindle. What a great invention! It’s an electronic gadget the size of a paperback that holds 200 books, a real winner for me, because I read constantly and there’s no way I could haul all of the books I would need in a year in my suitcase. Whenever I whip out the Amazon Kindle in public, I have an audience. It’s got buzz – it sold out in November in only a couple of weeks – and every accolade is on target. With no dictionary in hand, I have a miracle in this device: It lets me look up any word in the books I’m reading with two clicks of a button. Zee, the Amway home executive here, has already visualized her purchase, saying, I will own one of those things; I own it already. No doubt she will find a way to get one.

The rest of the house: This is a one-story brick house surrounded by a cement block wall with razor wire on top. That’s the norm here, anywhere you go in the city. There are 3 bedrooms and two and half baths. No shower. The kitchen has a gas stove with a giant propane tank that Puni and Sechele bought after incessant power shortages. They rarely use the built-in electric stove anymore. They have a water filter (lucky me!), a microwave, a washing machine, dish TV, a stereo and a sweet young woman who comes two times a week to clean. She even irons my clothes. The fierce German Shepherd mix, Junior, serves as the watchdog and loves that other Maria, the housekeeper. He didn’t like this one – at first.

You should have seen me come home the first time when no one was here and I had to unlock the gate and face him. With his bark I was sure he’d chew me up and eat me before anyone got home. Nope. He let me in. And now we are friends. He wags his tail when he sees me, and I’m glad he’s here. He’s our impassioned askari, which means watchman in Kenya.

Puni and Sechele didn’t just take me in. Their 16-year-old nephew Pfummy (pronounced Foom-ee) is with them now that his boarding school in Zimbabwe has closed because of the country’s perilous condition. He is quiet as can be, very handsome and dutiful. He gets up at 5 a.m. and home around 6 p.m. He cooks his own food (except now he seems to be lapping up most of the groceries I bring home; cheers! I guess I wasn’t going to eat that yogurt anyway.) and washes his clothes. He and I have watched some Setswana soap operas together. But when he turns on world wrestling, full volume, I run back to my room and my mosquito net. (You can tell I’m really jumping out there into the rockin’ city night life. In bed by 9:30-ish, up at 6 a.m. or before. But it’s good. I’m getting on the schedule for safari camp life.)

Bottom line: I couldn’t ask for a better place to stay or nicer hosts. Isn’t it grand?!