Adventures in Art

Then, this evening, Jackie and I had yet another adventure! Jackie had gotten an invitation earlier in the week for… get this… an ART EXHIBIT! Wow, right here in our own town. Real art. So we were pretty excited. We took the map that was posted on the internet and set off into the night. Now, keep in mind that there are NO street names, no street signs, no street lamps… and hardly any streets in this town. Most of the roads here are barely more than tracks winding their way around mud huts. Remember, we had to use the 4 wheel drive to visit our translators houses a few weeks ago… and it’s been raining since then. And it was dark. And we’ve never been to this place before.

But for the sake of art, we were willing to try. We almost threw each other out of the car, arguing over where we actually were at one point. I guess Jackie’s German stubbornness and my Dutch hard-headedness don’t mix too well in certain circumstances – driving (could you really call creeping over the rocks, through the ravines and fields driving?!) around the back-tracks of the town in the dark is one of those circumstances!

Anyways, after we both got out of the car on two separate occasions to ask various people if they had any idea of where this place was, we managed to find some lights in the distance, and we sort of drove towards the lights, assuming that the place we were going to had a generator! There were a few iffy moments where we weren’t really sure which track to choose, as we didn’t want to get stuck in a ravine or in a muddy mire. Twice we passed a landcruiser, surrounded by a group of men, digging and shoving and pushing. It was really, really stuck… me and Jackie certainly didn’t want to end up like that!

We had almost given up hope of finding the place, especially since the exhibit was supposed to be over at 8pm… and it was now going on 8:02. But finally… the lights in the distance were right next to us, and we had managed to find the place. And happily enough, they were still serving up drinks and samosas!

This place was really quite posh – beautiful wooden tables and chairs with cushions, and a handful of lovely photos on the wall. The photos were of some of the cattle camps in the area, and some were really stunning. We enjoyed the company of the manager of the place more than the art, though! She’s a lovely woman from South Africa, who is actually friends with our South African friends who stay in our guesthouse from time to time. She obviously has very high standards for her guesthouse and restaurant, and has made the place into quite a posh place, with a lot of the comforts of home. You can even get a hot shower there! Yup, hot water falling from the shower head! Amazing.

She’s trained the cooks there to make all sorts of wonderful things with what’s mainly available locally. So we sat for a couple of hours over Coke and samosas and exchanged recipes and where to find things in which market, and which little supermarkets have the best selection of whatever. Funny, since even things like oats and yogurt are specialty items, and you have to know just which shop has which specific item! She gave us some good ideas for some new food things to try, and we told her about the joys of “jibna” goat cheese (tastes a lot like feta) and the new shipment of strawberry yogurt that’s just come in.

She was so laid back and easy to chat with, even though she obviously has a lot of very wealthy guests in and out of that place! But I really like anyone who can sit and make jokes about the reinforced sports bras that you have to wear when driving around on the roads here! It’s always fun to get out and meet new people like her. She’s trying to get their cappuccino machine going, and when that happens, she’ll open a proper café, with lattes and muffins and internet. Wow. Of course, our Coke cost over $2, so who knows what it would cost to get a coffee and a muffin?! Maybe I can get a part time job as a barista there, to save enough money to have a coffee and muffin once a week - I’m certified, after all, from my days at the Second Cup :)

Even though the evening was supposed to end at 8, and everyone had already gone home, our new South African friend sat and talked with us for quite a long time, and her waiters kept bringing me more samosas… so I just kept eating them. Hope I didn’t make a pig of myself. But they were filled with ground beef! First ground beef I’ve had since leaving Nairobi a month ago!

Eventually, though, it was getting late, so we had to jump back into the truck, and find our way home again, though the ravines, over the rocks and boulders, past the poor guys who were STILL stuck in the mud, past all the sleepy goats and burning trash piles, back home. It felt like such a lovely night out – for a few hours I completely forgot which city I was in, which is sometimes a welcome diversion.