with wild animals.
Like lions.
It was not a good afternoon. I dislike being regarded as lunch almost as much as I resent being regarded as a monster. Let's just say I finally reached the peaceful shores of that paean to modern civilization - the Hilton Hotel.
***
My welcoming committee in Nairobi should have prepared me for the realities of Kilango Cha Jaha , but as I was waved through the gates by a pair of Kenyan military guards I couldn't help but wonder if the fences were to keep the jokers in as much to keep the fanatics out.
Kilango was your usual third world shit hole, and as I drove I ruminated bitterly on the irony of the village's name - Kilango Cha Jaha , Gate of Paradise - yeah, right. There was a small river meandering through the mud and thatch huts, and a pall of cook smoke hung like a memory of a bad hangover across the entire village. Children, many of them completely normal, frolicked in the dusty streets, or paddled in the river. Somewhere a radio was blasting out Somali rock and roll.
I wondered at the lack of adult jokers. Were they all hiding shyly in their huts venturing out only at night when darkness could disguise their deformities? Did they all have jobs (unlikely), and were at work? Jokers tend to fall into two categories - the ashamed, who keep so low a profile as to be almost invisible, and the flaunters, who delight in shocking the normal world which surrounds them. I'm unusual (or at least I pride myself that I am) because I don't fall into either category. I just do my thing, and hope things don't get too uncomfortable in return. Still, I was bothered by the missing jokers.
Easing the van to a stop I called out in my halting Swahili to a nearby urchin. I must have picked one of the forty other ethnic groups which inhabit the country because I might as well have been speaking, well ... Swahili, for all the good it did me. Fortunately another child understood, and ran up, and chinned himself on the van window. I repeated my request for directions to the health clinic.
"Sure, boss," he said. "Gimme a ride and I'll show you."
I nodded my assent, and he raced around, and clambered in the passenger side. From this position of moral and physical superiority he gazed down on his fellows. Now that he was closer I wasn't liking what I was seeing. His lymph nodes seemed enlarged, and there was a swelling in his joints.
"You sick, boss?" he asked after indicating the direction with an errant flip of the hand.
"No," I said.
"Yes, you are. You're a mwenye kombo ."
My mind supplied the translation: crooked person , i.e., joker. "That doesn't mean I'm sick," I explained patiently. "It just means I'm different." My guide seemed unconvinced. "I'm a doctor," I added. That got him, but it wasn't the reaction I'd hoped for. His eyes became suspicious slits, he stiffened, yanked open the van door, and hopped out. I jammed on the brakes, terrified he'd fall, and my first act at Kilango would be squashing a hapless urchin.
Backing slowly away from the van he called out to me, "Just keep going that way, boss, you'll find it," and he was gone, vanishing in a twinkling of bare brown legs among the bare brown huts.
***
The clinic was what you'd expect from a public health facility in a joker village in the third world. It was a squat, ugly cinder block construction on the western outskirts of the village. Its position, huddled against the barb wire fence, seemed totally appropriate. It looked less like a place of healing than a sound proofed barracks where state enemies recant their sins. I parked, backed the length of the van until I could slide open the door, and jumped down. Medical bag firmly in hand, I pushed open the glass doors ready to begin my first stint as a real live doctor.
The tiny lobby was filled with squalling babies and their tired mothers. In one small corner a group of elderly jokers had carved out turf for themselves. There was one old guy with human faces covering his body. The
Like lions.
It was not a good afternoon. I dislike being regarded as lunch almost as much as I resent being regarded as a monster. Let's just say I finally reached the peaceful shores of that paean to modern civilization - the Hilton Hotel.
***
My welcoming committee in Nairobi should have prepared me for the realities of Kilango Cha Jaha , but as I was waved through the gates by a pair of Kenyan military guards I couldn't help but wonder if the fences were to keep the jokers in as much to keep the fanatics out.
Kilango was your usual third world shit hole, and as I drove I ruminated bitterly on the irony of the village's name - Kilango Cha Jaha , Gate of Paradise - yeah, right. There was a small river meandering through the mud and thatch huts, and a pall of cook smoke hung like a memory of a bad hangover across the entire village. Children, many of them completely normal, frolicked in the dusty streets, or paddled in the river. Somewhere a radio was blasting out Somali rock and roll.
I wondered at the lack of adult jokers. Were they all hiding shyly in their huts venturing out only at night when darkness could disguise their deformities? Did they all have jobs (unlikely), and were at work? Jokers tend to fall into two categories - the ashamed, who keep so low a profile as to be almost invisible, and the flaunters, who delight in shocking the normal world which surrounds them. I'm unusual (or at least I pride myself that I am) because I don't fall into either category. I just do my thing, and hope things don't get too uncomfortable in return. Still, I was bothered by the missing jokers.
Easing the van to a stop I called out in my halting Swahili to a nearby urchin. I must have picked one of the forty other ethnic groups which inhabit the country because I might as well have been speaking, well ... Swahili, for all the good it did me. Fortunately another child understood, and ran up, and chinned himself on the van window. I repeated my request for directions to the health clinic.
"Sure, boss," he said. "Gimme a ride and I'll show you."
I nodded my assent, and he raced around, and clambered in the passenger side. From this position of moral and physical superiority he gazed down on his fellows. Now that he was closer I wasn't liking what I was seeing. His lymph nodes seemed enlarged, and there was a swelling in his joints.
"You sick, boss?" he asked after indicating the direction with an errant flip of the hand.
"No," I said.
"Yes, you are. You're a mwenye kombo ."
My mind supplied the translation: crooked person , i.e., joker. "That doesn't mean I'm sick," I explained patiently. "It just means I'm different." My guide seemed unconvinced. "I'm a doctor," I added. That got him, but it wasn't the reaction I'd hoped for. His eyes became suspicious slits, he stiffened, yanked open the van door, and hopped out. I jammed on the brakes, terrified he'd fall, and my first act at Kilango would be squashing a hapless urchin.
Backing slowly away from the van he called out to me, "Just keep going that way, boss, you'll find it," and he was gone, vanishing in a twinkling of bare brown legs among the bare brown huts.
***
The clinic was what you'd expect from a public health facility in a joker village in the third world. It was a squat, ugly cinder block construction on the western outskirts of the village. Its position, huddled against the barb wire fence, seemed totally appropriate. It looked less like a place of healing than a sound proofed barracks where state enemies recant their sins. I parked, backed the length of the van until I could slide open the door, and jumped down. Medical bag firmly in hand, I pushed open the glass doors ready to begin my first stint as a real live doctor.
The tiny lobby was filled with squalling babies and their tired mothers. In one small corner a group of elderly jokers had carved out turf for themselves. There was one old guy with human faces covering his body. The
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