The Value of Life
The bright red scar running down the middle of my knee is the only
reminder of my narrow escape from the prospect of a life without skiing
and tennis but now, thanks to the ACL surgery, I’ll soon be as good as new.
I monitor the progress of a ten story apartment going up as I pass
it everyday. They’re now painting the towering concrete structure,
itself an anomaly in our area where nothing rises above two stories
except the tops of palms or the spiked hair branches of the ancient
baobob trees. I watch in awe as an eighth-floor painter climbs up on
the narrow cement balustrade that encloses the balcony - untethered,
completely unattached - and bends his body backwards until he can paint
the ceiling overhead. The tingle in the pit of my stomach makes me
wonder what sensations he must feel, and then for next two days I keep
returning to the image of the man, an image stuck so powerfully in my
mind that I can’t even think of it without that tingling feeling coming
back.
 Fishing the Bay
I was sailing with Alfred the other day, a Mombassa native who has
spent his life at sea, and he told about a man he’d rescued from this
exact spot the previous day. He said he’d almost missed the bobbing
sailor
who was too tried to lift his arms above the waves. Alfed told me that
when he’d finally managed to pull the man aboard, the man had told him
that
he’d fallen off a fishing boat and that – though he’d watched his boat
mates struggle – the high winds had thwarted their efforts to get bring
the dhow about. Not a strong swimmer to begin with, his fate was sealed
by his decision to put on all the clothes he owned to keep warm when
the wind picked up. He was wearing two jean jackets and two pairs
of jeans when he'd fallen in the sea. He never explained why he
hadn't tried to remove the clothes, he'd simply sighed and let his hands
fall to his lap. “I
knew it was over,” he said. “Two more minutes I’d have been dead.”
The Butterfly Man sings as he climbs the palm, a
machete in his belt and his arms, stretched and straining like braided
rope, encircling the tree. 75 feet X 2 feet
The boys stand up in the backs of flatbed pickup trucks, hands held rigidly
at their sides, in a game they play as the trucks race all through
town. Other kids pick up extra quarters for lying like bungee
cords on the tops of over-stuffed lorries where they act as
‘human tarps’. Some of these guys may get lucky and get their
quarters
but they are just as likely to end up as flotsam, scattered
along the road. But they’ll take their chances and try to make it look
like
fun while it lasts, and if it’s over - I figure they must figure, that's life, what
the hell?
And as far as it goes for me, the really good news is that I’ll be back
on the tennis court soon – I mean, I’ve got my new ACL - but then that
would fall under the category of 'quality of life' rather than the
'value of life'. And those two things seem so far apart that I
have to continually remind myself that we are all created
equal. But being equal clearly has nothing to do with getting a
square deal, because brother I can tell you, just about everyone I run
nto is one hell of a long way from getting one of those.
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