Father wrote; "We drove away toward the control point. There at the British customs, a lot of paperwork. A suggestion the officer said; 'Drive on the left-hand!

Another suggestion, load the caravan on the train because

you will not get through. The roads are in a bad state with all these rains. Only main streets in the main cities are paved with asphalt. Otherwise the laterite street that in dry season are dusty, turns soapy with rains.'

What to do, because road and rails crisscross to end at the same terminal in Kampala.

In view of taking the road, the custom officer asked if we were willing to give a native retuning to the Belgian Congo a ride. The custom officer added; 'He speaks French and helpful in communication with the natives along the way.'

We accepted."

I emerged on the next stage of a conscious existence feeling a shoulders warp. I had a sense of being inside the head of an African pachyderm off which washed the waters emerged from a water pool. An extra-sensory perception of the Mediterranean sea, and the Indian ocean so impregnated in my being by the length timeless journey ding for the blues. The beast waddling dripping waters off its hide, while I had that feeling of being perched high over the dark wet beaten tracks of a herd.

In these first moments of a toddler's mind, taking father's notes, my mind seems to dust away the layer of similitude and dirt from which it wanted to shy away from remembering the disappointed scene at berth in Djibouti. The relative existential perception, of small mind blowing the balloons of thoughts which, like heading to a balloon merchant by car and packing to returning transporting a car full of faceless balloons for one's daughter's birthday party. That day existing moments in the first years of my life. Inside the confinement of the cabin of the dumper truck. while an anxious atmosphere reigned, nevertheless conform to a toddler's expectations, feeling secure in the shadows of the comforting wings to my wellbeing that parents and a sister brought about.

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Starting in life, African style Starting in life, African style 

my eyes in the dark and focus on a choreography of the present new adventure. My brain shunt into darkness the mind already seen scenes of the , where cranes hoisted down the dumper truck and the caravan, repeated from boarding the ship. An ambiance dissolved, leaving its place for serious assimilation of the senses, like that of a farmer's routine at getting up before sunrise and with a plow in tow, he edges toward the fields in view of laboring daylight away. Such was the anxious atmosphere, inside the beast droving me ashore, crawling up the slope of beaten dark grit that tapering down in the far distance with a roll over the hill.

Crawling onto a new world

With both palm of the hands flat on the red pressed metal that stretched across extremes out of my field of sight. Stretched on the ball of my feet, my rolling eyesight overlooking a dashboard high over the road. tentatively, I ignored the rising warm current up my naked legs that alluded to a steel ventilation grid. Apart, that the pressed metal cabin at the dark foot well kept the growling gasoline engine caged-in. On the outside and between the roll of crescent mudguards the hood was squeezed to a point marking our direction. It was obvious that I stared ahead into my future, and caught the shadows rising from the surface and figures merging to a growth of traffic.

Black camouflage, white eyeballs

With objecting snorts, experiencing a fastidious crawl, necessitating the change of gears. I fixed with fascination beyond the split of the upright windshield, a chaotic new world on the rise. My mind filtering out the dark shadows of confusion, chucked at random into a wast basket, everything that didn't relate to the men dress in stone washed white shirts and pants. Their tribal past ghosted underneath the white man's impeccable in the limelight with his outfit that pilfered the black man's soul. I sought for that facial expression, before the metis dark of a natural night camouflage inhibiting language, contrary to the white man's apparent open expressions. Instead of their facial expression, I anchored sight on the black man's white rolling eyeballs that followed me. still against shy and faded commercial buildings, with the roll of the heads in the passing and adapted to a street paraphernalia bound to inspire troubles by the rural influx.

Gateway inland

I raked by sight women who brought their natural instinct to town. Their pride of bright colors and patterns that marked a culture and legends from a climate limited to a dry and rainy season. four seasons was as far from their understanding, the third cycle in my life uncompleted, a cognitive smoke from a distant subconscious fire. There, shining bald and cold cobblestone street where stores displayed with a perfume from orderly rows of local grown peers and apples, delicate arranged similarly to rhubarb, leeks, and green salads. Boxes bearing that invisible label saying; 'For the eyes only, don't touch!' Backstage my mind enacting those lingering perceptions. While, in my forefront brain lobe, I concentrated on carpeted vivid flourishing colors. small heaps, by a glimpse of naked feet, a pattern of exotic fruits on display from the merchants haunched close to earth.

Upfront the snorts of gear changes, the engine in a relentless all out effort, growls towing the caravan over the hill, and from the ocean shore That left a sensation of the pachyderm shedding its hide.

I dropped my heels, slipping by sight left along the red dashboard to the angle pressed metal red upright where the windshield makes a break. I jumps by sight to the passenger window. In turn the women's white eyeballs fixed the snow child face portrayed in the passenger widow.

I jumped from the windshield onto the passenger window, reading the women's saturated regards from a routine early morning trudged to the city, saying; 'What are you Whites coming here for, than infesting our fives with your G-d and all the misery of a promise brought with!'

In style tennis shoes

While following the cycloramic windows, I gathered the glass bubble sense from the foot well metal interior, and the thinning out of these thoughts blowing balloon that unburden the atmosphere, with the sigh of a voice, saying; 'Were on our way at last!' the listless the engine at

my feet while eased its grind, caught up at lengths nearby black male figure in their stride of a fake destination. In turn the men threw a squint. Relapsed in their strides, with a glimpse that turned to a fixation on the snow child that one day they were going to serve at the cost of shedding a part of their culture.

As the side window crawled by moving up by feet in white and soft in style tennis shoes. Those were the city dwelling copycat elevated to colonial whites without socks. those men not so fortunate perspiring sock-less, which I will associate through my childhood, with the puff of a stench left with each stride.

Father wrote; "The next morning at first light... "

I didn't see that break in my toddler's mind, only a continuation of the natives strolling through the treads of heavy tires that didn't given a blade of grass the chance to a life. By sight stopped before the windows meet from both sides in a complete cycloramic view. The window behind the driver. abandoned in its darkness. my eyesight falling down off the rear window from the shadowy commotion in retrieving from the past with its corrugated iron siding of shacks and shelters. in the spirit of a native activity of industrialization towering cranes over sheds, I sulked that skyline of the meeting blues. return sight to fetch the stiffing notion of the road with the upcoming gateway. eavesdropping in on every thought, associating voices and words which, exchanged round about me. The anxiety that the open road inland led us right into the mouth of the uprise Mau May tribe against the British.

Father wrote; "Toward midday we were already in Voi, in the national park, with the Kilimanjaro showing its flanks."