The Hardening

Truly, I found myself on the edge
of that profound pit of pain,
that reservoir of endless tears.
Inferno. Dante.
Canto 4, 7-10.

After the fact, full disclosure: we just completed what the foreign affairs departments of Western nations would deem the most hazardous portion of our year long 'vacation': the route overland, four days by public bus from Nairobi to the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. Foreign affairs departments, you see, have neat little websites with neat little icons in which are condensed vast, tumultuous nodes of information into neat little warnings ranging from the best travel conditions (moderately unsafe, like hiding a drunk's last beer) to the worst (completely unsafe, like drinking it.) These security warnings are born of the same logic as the Yank's Impending Doom Colours...green for live as normally as possible, orange for be constantly but not debilitatingly afraid, red for murder your womenfolk before the enemy takes them. At least I think those are the colours. Do you guys still have those? Dunno. Anyway, they're vague and sinister and completely useless, a neo-con plot to monger fear, or just another dumb idea thought up by impotent people pretending to do something. But we know this.

Or else. There must be something to them, right? Enough that travel insurance companies void their policies for people willing to travel in regions with the no-go warning. C.Y.A. We told you not to go there, you didn't listen; no, we won't pay your medical bills. The embassy won't pick up the tab for your flight home. Won't pay ransom money, either. You're on your own. Be afraid.

And, to a certain extent, we were. The 1700km road North from Nairobi warrants a total travel ban by the powers. The sternest of paternal finger-wags. For some reason. Could be the roving bands of shiftas, border-hopping Somali bandits out to raid a few Landcruisers. Could be the intensifying drought, the starving farmers who are no longer content shooting one another for livestock, and have begun eyeing richer targets. Could be the rumour the Kenyan government will close the North completely to foreigners in the next few weeks. Yeah, that could be it. All those.

Do 'your own research'. Stay 'current'. Make an 'informed decision'. Trouble is, this kind of violence, as we discovered on our Samburu trek, is entirely unpredictable. Unknowable. The papers don't tell the stories. You can't fucking Google it. Nothing. A blank of information -how rare! How wonderful! Think of the unique, wraith-like nature of violence, its constant invisible energy. Think of it like an undiscovered particle, something physically foundational about which we know little. This is why it's called the potential for violence. It's intrinsic potent capacity. Think of it, like J.G. Ballard, as a requirement. A fist in the face is merely the least interesting expression of that which was always already there. Violence as sorcery, as invocation...and so transitory it makes the diaphanous web of international capital flows seem as simple-minded and straightforward as a sweaty thug with a bat coming to collect his thirty percent.

So we did what all prey does: sniffed the air. Ask the taxi driver. Heard anything? Know anyone who did the trip recently? Ask the vendors, the hoteliers. Collect fractured remnants of stories, dream a plot line out of them. Hope you haven't confused climax for denouement. Hope you haven't got it all bass-akwards, that you haven't fucked it all up. Hope for the non-event, the nothing that doesn't happen that will see you safely through. Go over what you know conclusively:
1) That the bus is still running.
2) That the last violent robbery targeted at tourists was over five years ago.
3)

Think about the #1 rule of robbery: just hand over the fucking goods. Lest you wind up like that asshole walking alone on the Lamu beach who refused to give up his camera, and ended up losing both his camera and his arm. Travel stories. You hear about that guy? Yeah. We heard. But that's the simplest scenario. I think about early evening on the beach in Mexico with three guys all in black, and the handgun, and my belligerence standing over the tent with Day inside half undressed. And their momentary hesitation at what to do next, a confusion that allowed us to pull our tent fifty feet back into the halo of the nearest casa. Hear that story? Ended alright. But underneath the narrative is this: am I capable of staying calm while they walk off the bus with our backpacks? Sure, fuck it, let it go. Am I capable of staying calm while they walk off the bus with Dayna? Does a starving man with a hole like a pit-mine in his belly even have the will for it? These questions. Look at them. They're like gristle and bone you have to crack open to suck the marrow of truth out of. The truth about actions and consequences, about yourself and others. And I suppose you could just launch off all jolly with a shit-eating grin, and you'd be fine, no problems, what's all the fuss about? But then you've kinda missed the point of going, haven't you? The opportunity to see yourself in the narrative presented to you?

The bus left Nairobi from the middle of the Somali slum of Eastleigh. Just because a statement is insipid doesn't make it untrue: you haven't seen a slum until you've seen a Nairobi refugee slum. Every African city has a homegrown tactic of wealth redistribution. Call it guerrilla tax collection. In Nairobi, the preferred method is to duct tape a length of 2"x4" to your forearm and hide it under a bulky jacket. Club your victim on the head, from behind. Loot his unconscious or dead body. Run. Ten seconds or less. The guerrilla maxim.

We take precautions, hire an expensive taxi. Entering Eastleigh the driver stiffens, drives too aggressively, refuses to stop at intersections. He is also afraid. We ask to be let out at the corner and he refuses, insisting on driving us to the doorstep of the ticket office. That's a new one. Asanti, we say. Thank you. We hop out, unload our bags. In the sedimented grime of the street we seem to sparkle, everything about us shiny. Shiny clothes. Shiny backpacks. Shiny skin. The street stares as if we rode a cloud down from above. Two hundred eyes. Four hundred. A thousand. This is feeling uncomfortable in your skin. This is a small ostracisation, a tiny fraction of the old not belonging that is nearly impossible for a Caucasian to feel in Europe or North America. Reverse the situation and apply the lesson to home. Carry it with you, a talisman of empathy, this knowledge.

Think of inside and out. Feel anxiety tracing shock-lines along nerves; ignore a vein calling attention to itself just below your jawline. Don't strut, don't swagger and push your chest out and pretend to be big. Don't stand with your arms crossed subtly pushing out your biceps hoping to frighten someone off. Don't be a fool. But don't shrink up, either. Don't fall back and falter. Occupy your space without bluffing. Make eye contact. Survey. Find the most openly hostile faces and say Jambo! (Hello!) and offer your hand. Yes Bill, a man may smile and smile and be a villain, but in all but the most brilliantly evil, nine times out of ten a man's smile will expose him, and you can cull harmless from horrible: he doesn't like us but he's not murderous; he's just exhausted; he's curious; he's one to watch. Wonder briefly how much more frequently women feel this tense awareness. File the thought to ask Day about later.

We make our way over to a tea-stall, sit on a wooden bench, slowly drink our tea: clove and cardamon. Arabic. Watch a group of men unload a truck full of shrink-wrapped bundles of old clothes. These were once your clothes; they're the ones you donated to a local goodwill, who cherry-picked the resellable ones, then sold the rest to wholesale brokers, who bundled them up and shipped them here, to Africa, where street vendors buy your used clothes by the pound and sell them on sidewalk corners. Which is why people are wearing 'Carleton University Orthopaedic Conference 2005' t-shirts and old hockey Jersey's. Lap at the irony.

Pay attention. The neighbourhood is a Western conservative's terror: poor, black, Muslim. Describe the poverty. Describe the desperation. Describe the need. Because a pithy description is as close as you'll ever get. And for that reason, don't describe it. Leave it alone.

Feel the lie, try describing that. A Western conservative's terror? Too easy. Isn't it also your terror? You're not exactly comfortable here, hmm? But the neighbourhood is undeniably dangerous. The fear of violent attack is profoundly different than the fear of the poor, the black, the Muslim. Isn't it? Of course it is. Sure. Draw sophisticated distinctions, weave them together like so much flexible bamboo, to create a creaking bridge across that chasm suddenly beneath you. Queasy. Sip tea and watch back.

Dayna is marvelous. Within an hour she makes small connections with a dozen people: the mothers who gleam as she tackles and cuddles their sticky infants; the group of labourers who share her laughter as she knocks over a signboard; a crippled old man enamoured by her stumbling Swahili. Her grace, her openness. Fleeting intimacies, arrows that pierce the lonely fortresses we construct around ourselves. I sit slightly behind and to her left, marvelling at her ease.

It has worked well for us travelling, this strange dynamic of roles: the Icebreaker and the Watcher. I practice a new skill: three-way vision. Directly in front, I watch a tiny muscled man smash at the axle of our bus with a two foot piece of lead pipe. In Africa, the right tool for the job is whatever you can find. The bus is an old gray beast, circa 1950's, with straight-backed wooden benches. We haven't left and it's broken down. We will spend 1700km of unpaved bush road, thirty six straight hours, choking and sweating on this bus. I'm watching him, and simultaneously, I'm watching the left and right corners of my vision. To the left a Somali woman is buying bus tickets. She carries an infant wrapped like a parcel on her back, and holds two more older ones out in front. She is arguing with the vendor with the kind of indignation and vehemence a very poor person summons when they feel cheated. To the right a beggar approaches. He noticed you from 200 metres away, and you saw his mental focus narrow to a single pinpoint of a thought: muzungos, money. Being aware of him in advance makes him easier to ignore when he thrusts his charred and mangled arm between your lips and your tea. You won't be startled. You will sip your tea, maneuvering it delicately around his destroyed limb, gaze motionless. He will leave.

Think of coveting a grievous wound, a wound that will eventually kill you, because for the time being it increases your daily earnings. Think of intentionally maiming yourself to eat.

Widen your mental perspective into the macro, into the abstract, to escape the fleshy reality of that wound. Poverty. The obscene disparity of wealth that is insidiously, inevitably destroying the moral fabric of humanity. Think of the emotional scales you've had to grow, a kind evolutionary self-preservation turned inwards, to hold off a complete fucking breakdown. The Hardening: the calcification that surprised you when you finally became aware of it, realizing one sleepless night that you had fossilized a part of your being, buried it in the hope that later it will be dug up and reborn.

And sitting there not looking at the wounded beggar a familiar desire suddenly assumes the autonomous shape of a compulsion, or a function beyond the body's control, like a racing heartbeat. It is the desire to leave, to go home, to retreat, to see none of it. Not my problem. Some folks are capable of living happy lives this way. Good, for them. We dream ourselves a life. This, I'm beginning to understand, is necessary. Happiness is the careful selection of what not to see, to feel.

We made it out of Eastleigh. We made it through the lands of drought and famine. One flat, two breakdowns, push-starting the bus. Are those the details needed, to fill out the narrative? We made it to Addis Ababa, where I sit writing and sipping incredibly decadent five-cent espressos (another detail: Ethiopia is the home of coffee), watching veils of rain flush out the sewers and being reminded of other cool blue rains I've come to miss, feeling unharmed and grateful. But not entirely whole.