Jambo
Every year around this time I think of one of my good friends: Godrick. When Godrick came to America, I was a bit of a mentor to him. I brought him to the mall to buy his first pair of “American” shoes and a winter coat that wasn’t a woman’s purple parka.
“What is wrong with my coat?” my friend asked. “It keeps me warm. It is a fine coat.”
“It is a woman’s coat,” I said. “When you walk down the street people point at you a laugh to themselves, ‘That man is surely sho-ga.’”
“No,” he said incredulously.
“Yes,” I said firmly.
Sho-ga is the Swahili word for homosexual. And, like many American curses, it transcends its original meaning. Calling a man a sho-ga is the wost thing you can call him, even if he is gay.
Godrick told me, “If you call a man sho-ga, he will certainly punch you.”
…
He moved here from Kenya and decided to use his middle name, Godrick, instead of his first name, Kokonya. “It sounded more American,” he told me.
“No more American than Kokonya,” I said.
“In Kenya they call me Kocks.”
“Well, then it was smart to go with Godrick, wasn’t it?”
…
Godrick was born and raised in a very rural village just outside the savanna in western Kenya. “In the shadow of Mount Elgon.”
Growing up, nothing scared him more than the sounds of lions at night. Monkeys threw fruit at the girls (not the boys, because the boys had slingshots — monkeys are quick studies). Young boys became expert in packing t-shirts into tight balls that the older kids and adults used as soccer balls. There was a communal water pump and no electricity.
He wanted to be a doctor, “but I didn’t have the grades.” Instead he was educated as an Occupational Therapist. He went to college in Nairobi City. Soon after graduation he told his family that he wanted to move to the United States. This was a scary idea. Even scarier when you consider what they thought about the United States.
“We thought that there were no trees in America,” he sai. “And everything was made of metal. Robots, my mother told me, did everything.”
“This is what you thought?”
“This isn’t what we thought. This is what we knew.”
Other than that, Godrick knew very little.
…
Every five years or so, Godrick goes back to Kenya. I ask him to bring me back a necklace from a Masai warrior. “But I don’t want the trinkets he’s selling. I want the necklace from around his neck.”
“I cannot ask that of a Masai. They are fierce. And they carry spears.”
“I’ll pay any price.”
“They will chase me!”
He did finally bring me back my necklace. It is draped on the lion on top of my bookshelf. I love my Masai necklace. You can see a picture of it here on Flickr.
“Did you get it from a Masai, Godrick?”
“Yes, of course, like you asked,” Godrick answered sheepishly.
“Did he take it from around his neck?”
Godrick was slow to answer, “No.”
“No?”
“No, Jim. He had his spear; I did not want to be killed that day.”
…
I think about Godrick (who I just spoke with yesterday) every Halloween because fifteen years ago last night, his plane landed in the United States. Tired, he hobbled to his hotel room and slept until afternoon.
“I went down into the lobby when I woke up, you know, to see America. I was amazed. The people all dressed in wonderful, elaborate clothes. Costumes. And some had masks! And they all handed me candy! Mother was right about America!”
…
Godrick is a citizen of the United States now. He has since sent for his wife and, four years ago, they had a child. A boy the same age as my youngest.
A couple of years ago they went Kenya. They lost his young son in the forest. At night. You know, wild Africa.
Do you know how they found him? His sneakers. Every step that the young man took, his sneakers lit up. Someone eventually saw the flashes.
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