"Go West, Young Woman......."

".....or Middle-Aged Woman," as it were.

I'm typing this post at a cyber-cafe in Kisumu, in far western Kenya. I decided to wear my black cowboy boots for this trip, because, like, it IS the West, right?? Besides, I'm feeling daring, and bold, and totally grown these days.

In fact, I'm actually feeling a bit TOO grown these days. I leave for Kakamega tonight, where
I'll be hanging out with a man named Bryan and his friends. Bryan is in Kenya working for a technology company based in Kakamega. We met briefly in Nairobi on Monday, where he was having meetings with UN folk.

Oh, and he's the best friend and former college roommate of the son of one of my friends. You know you have messed around and gotten old when you can actually admit to something like that. I was thinking about this horrifying phenomenon yesterday....I am only 2 months younger than the next President of the United States. I mean, how scary is that?

Anyway, another reason I'm feeling so bold is that just 8 months ago, Kisumu was one of the hotspots during the post-election violence. I'm getting a tour of the city later today, and it will be really eerie seeing the places that were consumed in flames and fury in the year. That I'm here in the aftermath of that violence, to work with Nation bureau reporters, makes me feel downright gutsy.....

.....to a point. I mean, I know I'm one seriously game sister after surviving Gulu. Remembering how petrified I was during my first boda boda ride, I've come a long way in just one short year. In some ways, I'd even call myself a bad-ass. But the limit of my bad-assery was sorely tested this morning when I went to buy a paper outside the Kisumu Hotel, and this row of young men leaning against bicycles started beckoning to me.

FYI, boda bodas come in different forms throughout Africa. Some are motorcycles, and some are regular bicycles with padded rectangular seats attached. This morning, these guys were enthusiastically offering to take me wherever I wanted to go.....on the back of a flippin' bicycle.

How can I describe the expression on my face that instantly silenced their clamor? Like this......my furrowed brow and pursed lips were the physical version of the oft-posed hip-hop question,

"Jigga WHUHHHHHH?????" I mean, with my jeans and cowboy boots, I'm ready to straddle anybody's motorcycle in a heartbeat. But I am too damned grown to go bouncing over the rutted roads of Kisumu on the back of some kid's Schwinn. At least there would be some James Dean style bravado associated with being mangled in a motorcycle crash. How would I look lying splayed on the side of the road with a bicycle chain wrapped around my throat???

I ain't going out like no punk, you feel me?

BTW, WHY the hell am I writing this nonsense?? It must be the cowboy boots. More later, after my trip through the Kakamega rainforest.