Amboseli

It must have been ninth grade with Mr. Foxlow that I first read Hemingway.  God bless you, Mr. Foxlow. Those short stories stay with me. Here are three of many: "Three Day Blow," "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber."  It is why I am in Amboseli, Kenya.  "Three Day Blow" is about getting really drunk in Michigan. Until then I did not know you could read about that in a short story, let alone recomended by a high school teacher.

By the way, if you enjoy reading about drunks read "Under the Volcano" by Malcolm Lowry.  Today the only Spanish I know is a phrase from that book: "te gusta este jardin?" Do you like this garden?  It was made in to a movie,  It is Joyce's "Ulysses" but with a muttering drunk in Mexico.  It is why I first wanted to travel to Mexico.

The other two short stories take place near Amboseli.  Not one hundred yards from me and my gin and tonic sipped slowly on a terrace overlooking a salty dust plain sit three water buffalo.  In one Hemingway short story a water buffalo charges at cowardly Francis.  He redeems himself by standing his ground.  Nearby his conflicted wife, Margot, takes aim and shoots Francis in the back of the head.  Francis is never happier.

They say bad luck runs in threes.  Driving in Kenya involves a lot of passing of semis and avoiding oncoming traffic.  Today, a white four door sedan was particularly adept at this challenge. I finally caught up with the sedan crumbled against an oncoming semi.  Not ten minutes later I was slowed by two police officers.  About ten people were gathered along the road. I realized a pedestrian had been hit by a passing vehicle.  The body lie face down along the highway.

A third bad never occurred.  I did stop for petrol and a toilet just outside of Nairobi in what to this Hoosier appeared to be third world chaos.  The public toilet was closed.  I headed back to the Land Cruiser but two men waived me across the street.  There a young boy handed me a key to another toilet.  On my way out he gestured for a pack of matches to light a cigarette.  Having none I reached in to my pocket found two coins worth fifty shilllings, about fifty cents, to present him.  He was ecstatic.

Anthony Bourdain's love for to travel is often traced to movies he watched.  His quest, which he shared with the world, was to find those places.  For me it has been books.