A Boy's Life

It's the school holidays. We've been in Nairobi and for a week at the coast. And I've been reflecting on the different experiences for 8 year old SecondBorn, compared to our earlier UK holiday times.

Picking SecondBorn up from a playdate last week, the host mum was a little sheepish.
'Umm, I'm afraid he may have seen a goat being killed. Sorry, I know that's something some parents feel sensitive about, but hope it's ok.' 
While it's not something any of us would have planned, well, here in Africa, it is part of life.  It was the host mum's birthday, and they'd given a (live) goat to the house staff, so that the staff could have a celebration too.  Nice idea, - but not one which had previously dawned on me. My previously proffered slices of birthday cake now revealed as clearly rather inadequate. Whole panoramas of new social niceties. Arghh.

But gifts of live goats are more common in the expat community than one might imagine.  Right in the middle of the Nairobi summer one of our milk sachets split in the car. Days later when my cleaning had proven unequal to the task, the car smelt decidedly ripe for the afternoon lift rota. FirstBorn's worldly friend noted,
'It smells like our pickup did, when we brought the goat back with us from Nanyuki (3 hours drive away) to pay off the bet my Dad lost with his friend!' 
Ok, so not a smell which can be swept under the carpet, or brushed over with all windows open. Powerful spur for immediate, more energetic elbowgrease.

SecondBorn and his friend were clearly not traumatised by the encounter with the goat. Far from it. Over the supper table SecondBorn, normally a taciturn lad, started at the top, and ran through it all. How the goat hadn't bleated - mouth gagged. How the legs had been tied. The colour of the meat when the skin was taken off. The colour of the intestines, how long they'd been, how examination of the stomach had revealed what the goat had last been eating (grass). An impression for a mother, of two small boys gobstruck and completely mesmerised by experiences previously beyond their ken. And, if we're honest, beyond hers too. And in this land where we frequently pass five and six year old boys armed with a branch, responsible for a full flock of goats, their grazing that day, and the flock's safe return that night, well maybe not a premature experience.

At the coast, at 10 and 6, families of monkeys staked out our cottage.  Windows open all around, canny monkeys, in through one window, out through the door.
'Oh look, that monkey's eating what looks like a beigel.'
It IS a beigel. Our (former) beigel.  As the cottage owners told us, 'Monkeys are like humans. They like bread, cakes, fruits, vegetables. Don't leave anything out.'
But it was too hot for total lockdown. Felt a bit like an episode from The Birds. Lowering monkeys, nonchalent in the grass, essentially teenage hoodlums in hoodies.  Until the arrival of the cavalry. The compound's guards, armed with rubber catapults. 'Oh wow' yelled SecondBorn, and disappeared for an hour, till well after dark.

And returned, all aglow, after we'd made a worried second circuit of the site to find him.  He'd apprenticed himself to the guards, been allowed to shoot small pebbles at the monkeys, to have a go with the bow and arrow. Spent an hour being a teenage hoodlum himself, or a trusty protecting the family from the intruders, depending on your perspective.

On our way back we stopped overnight at a posh lodge on the banks of the Tsavo river just outside the national park. Pancakes for breakfast by the river. Saved by SecondBorn to eat the best last. Mad dash by another, solitary, monkey - grabs both SecondBorn's pancakes from his plate and retreats. Upset from the neighbouring German tour group. Sorrowful SecondBorn. Until our kindly elderly waiter appears bearing a rubber catapult JUST like the one at the coast. Miraculous beams from SecondBorn, who rushes off to parade it, brandish it, and then aim and fire it at the monkey. Ouch. Revenge.

Watching the muttering from the newly arrived German tour group I became aware how much my perspective has changed. Monkeys, yes, good shots for photos. Sweet in their ways. But, outside a national park, essentially vermin. Fair game for a catapult if they're being predatory in the same way as rats would be.  But for the tourists, SecondBorn, worse his hands-off parents, were hoodlums, spoiling their photos, terrorising the poor sweet exotic animals in the wild. Oh dear. Rapid retreat, clasping catapult booty to bosum, reputations in tatters.  You can't win them all.