First #1:

“Do you want to go to the opera?” Jo O’Brian, our boss Mike Harrison’s wife, asked. “It’s Don Giovanni. I’m not sure if it will be live or a movie. It’s up in Nanyuki and Maggie and Al are putting together a picnic. It should be fun.” I immediately said “sure.” Formal entertainment around here is so rare that I’d attend just about anything; certainly Mozart and maybe even Wagner. John and Mike pursed their lips, looked skeptical then hesitantly agreed. They would go for the food. I could tell John was already planning to endure the experience by loading up on “savory bits” and wine and then sleeping it off during the show.

We needn’t have worried. It was a live production of a condensed Don Giovanni translated into English with ribald, contemporary Kenyan dialogue thrown in to transition from one song to the next. Don Giovanni, who spends his weekdays as a secondary school music teacher in Nairobi, wore a fedora, sunglasses and a maroon velvet smoking jacket as he ducked in and out of a hastily painted forest keeping one step ahead of his pursuers. Giovanni’s sidekick, Leporello, also a musician from Nairobi, wore a baseball cap and a red and black letterman’s jacket with a New York Yankee logo emblazoned on the front (baseball fans will recognize how incongruous this is). Donna Anna was the only mazungu in the cast, a svelte German who came to Kenya for undisclosed reasons. All of the voices were tolerable, though that last aria gave Donna Anna a bit of trouble. The acting was enthusiastic, the piano accompaniment flawless and the audience – about 50 well weathered white Kenyans, a few members of the British military and us — appreciative. John kept his eyes open the entire time. Since it was in English we understood the entire story which left us pondering, once again, opera’s weird pairing of highbrow music with the most lowbrow of plots.

First #2:

“Beef Bob” (aka “Mango Bob” aka Bob Appel for those of you who follow this blog) arrived at Lewa on the morning of November 14th, tired after his 36 hour trip but ready to tackle his new assignment; helping NRT Trading put together a business plan for a new abattoir (nice word for slaughter house). Before Bob could unpack, we piled him into John’s car with Patrick Ekodere, our livestock manager, and went out into the Lewa backcountry to visit the cattle and talk beef. As we drove, we heard an intermittent knocking and the occasional metal-on-metal thunk coming from somewhere toward the back of the car. We ignored it figuring it was just another rock caught in the wheel.

We had a very nice walk through the grass to where the cattle were grazing and then stood around for about a half hour chatting as the cows wandered to and fro nibbling the fresh shoots of grass. The rains have come and the landscape has transformed from greyish white to green. I kept myself occupied snapping pictures of the elaborate pastoralist brands that scarred the sides, rumps and humps of some of the cows.

Once the sightseeing was over, we drove toward headquarters. Two thirds of the way back, along a straight stretch of plain where we often see rhino, zebra, giraffe and gazelle, the back of the vehicle crashed to the ground. I looked to my left just as the rear wheel overtook us and rolled, bouncing over the hillocks, out onto the prairie. The car dug a 70 ft. trench in the dirt road and then ground to a halt. It took about an hour to get the wheel back on and drive slowly to the maintenance yard to make sure everything was OK. George, the maintenance manager, looked at John and said sternly, “Mr. Knapp, have you not been checking your lug nuts?!”

Have you been checking yours?

First #3:

This week John, Bob and I spent the night at Sweetwater’s Tented Camp, a nice tourist facility on the Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancy. Ol Pejeta is our livestock trading partner and we were there as part of the abattoir project. With an evening stretching before us, we signed up for a professionally guided night game drive. We had a good time.