postcard no.//007 – countdown: kisumu
22:17:20 E.A.T. november 04, 2008 – club obama!
the terrace restaurant at the kisumu imperial hotel 01:15am. swatting the mosquitos, clapping them really. alone, in a dirty banquet room, the tables dressed in maroon fatigues, the chairs with those white slip cover things look like klansmen or maybe something out of fantasia. lots of bad african woodcarvings (are there good ones?) and mirrors.
filing the three photos that i managed to create tonight. there is no reaction, so far at least. some jaded african journalist reminding me “it’s not their election.” as if to say, “how could the americans be so conceited?” a t.v. in the other room blares CNN, for all the foreign journos that have descended on western kenya to cover the “reaction” — catching mosquitos in mid swipe, they’re so slow and fat here in the humid lake air — slow like the wireless connection; 35min’s to transmit 6mb…ouch, smack!
the reaction and my three photos, two of which are different frames of the same situation. damn pathetic. i’m pretty surprised though, i thought there would be one, a reaction. i think it’s the bloody time difference, the fact that it’s 1:20am here and no results have been announced, just wolf blitzer bleeting “soon…soon we’ll have the exit polling,” over and over again. the day, after two years of battle royale, is finally upon us and i’m 8 hours ahead of it. it’s like i’ve missed it all together. i get to occupy myself contracting malaria while my 3 combinations of 0′s and 1′s find their way across cyber continents and oceans between here and new york.
the door man (also seemingly a character out of fantasia dressed in his buckingham palace costume) has come to check on me, maybe he’s here to protect me from the mossies, leaves–nope.
slept at some point for an hour or so, with wolf telling me bedtime stories. the chorus of “still too early to call” echoing blankly on my consciousness, wrapped in the glow of CNN’s magic map lighting my mosquito net. blackberry alarm set for an hour not altogether different from the one at which i set it, placed under my pillow for somnambulant ganders at the NYT website to see if somehow they were reporting something the tele wasn’t. before light, i peel my eyes to the trickle of results, somehow only catching all the mccain wins….enough for nightmares. i slide from under my net and peer out the window into the still dark night, and nothing. not a sound. still too early to call.
but as the sun rises pink over lake victoria i hear proof of life on the planet below–the ubiquitous minibus horn, but not much else. with scarf, vest and cameras i stumble out un-caffeinated into the quiet kisumu morning. looking for something, enjoying the nothing. the no one bothering me, the freedom as the morning breaks and the half-asleep don’t know yet that they should care about a guy wandering the streets with lenses. un-hindered by my inept fixer and the car-cum-prison i perpetually end up roving about in. hoping for a shot of some suits reading the morning papers i find only the vendors themselves reading the morning papers. ok…not great. i set about wandering again, back up towards the hotel where i’m thinking, since it’s still so bloody quiet, i might actually be able to grab a coffee.
07:52:20 E.A.T. november 05, 2008 – democracy’s day
but who needs coffee when mccain has just conceded? what? randomly running into my driver who, at the city park across from the hotel, where they, someone, i’m not quite sure who, has jury-rigged a 21” rabbit eared t.v. for people to follow the results, tells me that “they’ve announced it!”
“what? who? they’ve announced it??? shit.” and my phone rings–NY. my editor on the line, “are they reacting?” “did they just announce it?” i ask again. “yeah, they just announced it” “shit…uh, yeah, let me get into this” I say, not really knowing what that means, but knowing that I couldn’t really grasp what I was hearing “they announced it” and what I was seeing; about 25 kenyans watching a tiny t.v. not reacting at all. “aarrhhh” come on people! (they did get excited when jesse jackson was shown on the screen) and me thinking, man, why isn’t this west africa, nigeria or something, some bias against east africans as being boring slipping out. but this IS western kenya, closer to western africa, and it was only that it was going to take a bit, some time to settle in. in a country where everything happens slowly except death and pickpocketing… why rush to excitement.
08:24:11 E.A.T. november 05, 2008 – the results and the reaction
slow to begin, the idlers, the boda-boda bicycle boys, and street kids realized they had received an answer to all those requests for “hope” and poured into the street, chanting “o-bama, o-bama” emphasis on the “o”, singing songs celebrating his ancestors village of kogelo. after them i went, chasing the joyous through the streets, now sweating with my vest and scarf in the mid-morning sun, jumping into a passing mini-bus caught up in the jam for a stretch and then backwards onto a motorcycle like i’m shooting the tour de france. winding the neighborhoods of town, as celebrants amassed along the edges of the road, to chant and smile and revel in the election of kenya’s native son.
08:30:43 E.A.T. november 05, 2008 – wild in the streets
i can’t help but miss being in the states for this unbelievably historic moment. i can’t think about what’s happened without tears. i can’t fully yet understand what it means, and yet to be here, in kenya, where it means so much i do feel is appropriate for me, having been away for so long, now a representative of my country, a citizen in a new world.
