Our trip. Update 7

One of the purposes for coming to Kenya was to Trigger Memories. It is very odd and sad to have five children with overly documented childhoods and one whose childhood is like having only five random pieces of a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle.

So the biggest thing on my agenda was going downtown and walking around with Steven to see if any places look familiar and trigger a forgotten memory for Steven which he can then share with me and I can write in his baby book.

Since we all know how Steven likes to share his Feelings and have me whirl around and grab a pencil and write it down like it was the latest word from the Oracle.

Sammy the blessed guide took us to all the current haunts of the street boys. First we went down to the lake where three vehicles were parked in a little pond of water at the edge of a vast field of lush green hyacinth that used to be Lake Victoria and three street boys were washing them, sloshing lake water on with rags.

Along the lake stood a line of ragged, open, makeshift buildings held up with posts crooked at odd angles and decorated with bits of ragged lace curtains. Most had the word "hotel" in their name, and I couldn't imagine staying in such a thrown-together package of loose corrugated tin and crooked sticks and lots of dust and air.

No, Sammy told us. A hotel is where you eat. See, the boys gather here, and people bring their cars to get washed, and while they're getting washed the owners eat at the hotel, and then they pay the boys a few shillings. The boys will often do a few jobs such as washing dishes for the hotel owners, and then they get to eat the leftovers from customers' plates. Not get a fresh meal of their own. Just leftovers.

"Did you wash cars here?" I eagerly asked Steven. He said no.

We went to a different part of town, a market area. If you've ever been to a county fair on a summer night you can maybe picture it. Heat, crowds and crowds of people, little shops and loud music and people-action all around. That's what it was like, only it was the heat of the day, with the sun at its usual wattage of ten times any sun I've seen in Oregon, and the shops a hundred time dirtier and more desperate than any at the county fair.

"Do you remember coming here?" we asked Steven. "No," he said, with a Pleeease, Mother, look in his eyes.

Suddenly I spotted them, a small herd of street boys across a deep drainage ditch. They looked about ten years old and had the requisite filthy brown clothes and old water bottles with mind-numbing glue hanging from their mouths. I started taking pictures and they came to life, grinning and lining up beside each other, arms across shoulders.

How does a half-high street kid know how to look cool for a picture?

I shot a few pictures and then pulled a handful of little candy canes out of my pocket and tossed them to the eager boys, all the while trying not to think about who these boys were and what their lives were like.

Then I caught up with the family and Emily said, "MOM! Why did you take a picture of the guy with the obscene t-shirt?"

"Huh?" I said. "I didn't notice his t-shirt. Only his face."

We walked through the teeming crowds and smelled the terrible smells and came out by our van again. Within a minute the street boys found us. Who knows how they got across the ditch and knew where we were, but no doubt they have great instincts by now. They held out their hands and begged for more candy, which we were happy to supply.

And oh yeah, the one kid had a shirt with a few unsavory words and a large anatomically correct picture of a woman.

They darted around the van as we backed up, hands out for more and more. And all I could see was their eyes, their haunting, empty, terrible, drugged, suffering eyes.

I still see them. Those eyes, those eyes, those eyes.

Steven does not have eyes like that--that is my sole comfort.

And down another street as we passed a gas station he said, "Oh, yeah, I used to sleep there." I got a picture. One of these days I'll post it.