Reality Shmeality

Chapter Eighteen

Saturday surpassed anyone's expectations as the turnout for Kili Crafts for Kids drew nearly fifty children. We had to assemble a special seating arrangement just for all of the kids to fit in the studio. Everyone from the hostel and Path to Love was there, and Sarah interpreted for Polina whose Swahili was nonexistent. It was a proud moment for her. She had been working all week on a presentation, and she watched on with great pride as Sarah spoke to the children, explaining the intentions of the project. We had snacks and drinks for the kids, and the parents quietly sipped tea in the back as their children, most of whom had a passion for the arts, listened intently. Even though we didn't expect such a large turnout, we put together a plan in case there were too many kids to participate at once. We created a schedule for Monday through Saturday and had the kids sign up for one day a week to come in and partake in the art lessons and training. We made fifteen slots available for each of the weekdays and tripled it for Saturday when more people from the hostel would be able to come and help out. The kids spent the afternoon moving from station to station where we had drawing, painting, and clay sculpting. The children's enthusiasm was electric, and Polina was glowing throughout the entire day. She was finally seeing her project come to life and it was a delight to see.

I spent the next week passing almost all of my time at the farm. I had felt a little bad focusing more on Kili Crafts for Kids, and I knew I needed to get back to the grind with the gardening project. The hard, uninviting earth had really taken a turn for the better and was starting to look like real soil. I was constantly tilling the plots and mixing in water from the well. A few hundred meters from the garden, in the middle of the farmland, was a hand-dug well that was about twenty meters deep. It wasn't the kind of well I was used to seeing on TV. This well had very few blocks surrounding the hole, making it quite dangerous when fetching water. The rope wasn't even rope and the bucket wasn't a bucket. The rope was fashioned from cut up rice bags tied in knots, and the bucket was a large plastic jug with the top cut off. Because the rice-bag rope was susceptible to fraying, we had to stand on the blocks and pull it from the dark depths of the well without it dragging along the side. It was petrifying to stand on the small walls surrounding the hole. One slip of the grip and it would be a dizzying fall to a wet and muddy death. The craziest thing about the well was the fact that it was dug by two men in one day. One man who had a shovel and pick made his way down while another man hauled the dirt out of the ever-deepening hole. I imagined it would have taken me years to dig the same hole if I managed to survive the excavation. Chris and I took turns hauling the water up and filling small buckets that we could walk back to the plots. It was an arduous way to pass the day but necessary considering how long it had been since the dirt in the garden had seen rain. The garden was almost ready to start planting.

Chris and I made our way to the public market to buy seeds. I had yet to visit the market and was curious as we made our way into the first row of stalls. The scents of spices mixed together into a potent invisible cloud that made me want to sneeze. The vendors were as colorful as the tables of fruits and vegetables in front of them, the patterns on their clothing almost camouflage behind their products. I saw fruits and vegetables I'd never seen before and kept falling behind Chris as he pushed forward quickly toward the seed vendors. People spoke to me in Swahili and I struggled to understand, my vocabulary still weak but constantly improving. I turned a corner and found myself in a whole new section of the market that I wished I had missed.

The first thing I saw was the bloodied, severed head of a goat atop a blood-stained tree stump. The floor surrounding the stump was soaked in blood and entrails. A man was carrying a live chicken by its neck and slammed it against the stump. He quickly slit the chicken's neck with a knife, the blood squirting with force almost to my feet. A woman handed another man some crumpled up money in exchange for a leg that had just been chopped off the body of a recently slaughtered pig. I had entered my own personal hell. I froze like I had the day I witnessed the mob justice scene. My stomach started spinning, and I felt dizzy. The smell of raw meat had infiltrated my nose and mouth, a strange and nauseating scent of death that will haunt me forever. As I stood there in a daze, a hand landed on my shoulder. I turned and followed Chris out of the market and back into the sunlight. I had never needed fresh air so badly in my life and tried to process what I just witnessed.