Mwenda Bure

The other day on a dirt back highway I saw a motorcycle rider, a piki piki jamaa going the other direction.  His shaky metal dirt bike sported two flags on the handlebars: an Arsenal pennant, and the Kenyan national flag. Two deep loyalties, head high lyk royalty.  He was playing some KE pop from a roped-on radio, which is: electric-piano riffs played in descending three-note chords, creating a mobile sound-surround that followed him as he drove. On the back, a mama who carried her groceries in a plastic bag, which was squeezed between her bosom and the driver's back.  It was this joyful, itinerant atmosphere -- I wanted to stay in it, or keep it with me, but its movement was essential and non-negotiable.  The music, the man, the bike were forward-rollin/ not-slowin/ waving from a road I wanted to be on.

Many more streets and seas and back alleys (and highways, airwaves) coming up soon, I hope.  I close with a Kiswahili proverb, an axiom I will cling to in the coming months: mwenda bure si mkaa bure, huenda akaokota. An aimless traveler is not like an aimless sitter... a traveler might pick up something.