Payin dues (revisited)

Because our car was in such bad shape, bad tires, and the engine was starting to stall whenever we idled or reversed, we decided to spend a day in a tiny town called Isiolo while we made a plan.

Isiolo was a depressing little town that was all too African. It was very poor and there were so many homeless kids in the streets, day and night, following us around asking for money or food. With so many kids, you really feel like nothing that you do will help. These kids are helpless. And we have run into situations like this everywhere we go but Isiolo seemed worst given that it was a one horse town... or one donkey town as it were. Actually there were lots of donkeys running around the streets. I woke up in the moprning and there was a donkey eating trash in front of our hostel. No joke. Does anyone own this donkey?

We threw way our meat that had been rotting for 6 days in the only dumpster in town. In Africa, people just throw their trash on the street. The streets are covered in fowl smelling trash, sometimes they burn it when the piles get too high. It is really disgusting. But what is worse is that ten minutes after we threw away our trash we saw a young boy standing inside the dumpster eating our rotten meat and eggs. It was so sad. He was literally squashing a rotten, uncooked egg into his mouth. Africa is a very sad place sometimes.

Everyone in this town sat around eating this drug leaf that made them high. I wondered why in such a poor town everyone seemed to be just laying around but our friend and road companion Abdi (slave) said, "you have not observed? These people are all sitting getting high on those leafs that they chew. By nightfall they will all be mad."

Sure enough, that is what happened. All day these people sat around in the shade eating leafs and by night time they were all walking around like madmen. One guy, a Muslim, told me that he doesn't hate Americans, just Jews and Israelis. Nathan told him that I was Israeli, which is believable since I look very Israeli with my beard, and the man laughed and sort of apologized, saying that what he meant was that "we" the Islamics, should have finished off the Israelis by now.

The best part of this slow, depressing day was going to watch a youth soccer game. Nathan had made friends with a couple of nice guys that were surely just looking for money but they were nice about it, hard working, and not pushy. Nathan had them wash our cooler (which reeked of rotten meat), change our tires, and do other odd jobs. They didn't ever ask for money but it was assumed that they would be paid. Because they were nice people Nathan gave them each 7 dollars and a book. They seemed very happy with that.

The youth soccer game was amazing. For starters, the field was all dirt with large stones and bushes spread out on the field. Players would literally have to avoid these things. Some players didn't even have cleats or shoes. It is amazing how tough these kids are. There were about 150 people gathered watching the game that took place at 4 in the afternoon, letting you know how much these people like soccer, but also how little there was going on in this town. No one was working except for the dozen or so shop owners. Everyone plays soccer out here in Africa. The kids play without shoes or a ball. They improvise a ball by getting trash and plastic and spinning it into a sort of rubber band ball. You can usually tell how old a kid is by how big a ball of trash he has. Older kids have a soccer ball sized ball that is fairly round. The younger ones have a tiny little ball with lumps all over. Poor is playing soccer barefoot in a thorny field with a ball of trash. Mom, tell the kids at the mission this next time they go outside and play soccer. I imagine it is a bit of perspective.

It is sad to see how this town spends their time getting high and drunk all day while dozens of homeless kids run around, half naked, filthy, begging for food, literally starving to death. Kids no older than 5 or 6 in some cases. The town is only one block long, maybe 5,000 people at most and at night there are anywhere from 30-100 people sleeping on the ground, most are children or women with children.

I spent most of my day here in Isiolo writing these blogs about our great adventure to Turkana. By night, we went to bed and Abdi left us, saying that he wanted to find some leaves. I was disgusted.