No Hurry in Africa by Brendan Clerkin Page B

school—they found it cold after the rain. I was sweltering still. I took some photographs that the kids were thrilled to view when I showed them back on the digital camera.
    Before the November rains, I had been cycling to the mission house one day after leaving Sr. MM’s home. I had to pass over an ancient concrete bridge that was cracked and broken, and about to collapse. I decided to crawl down onto the riverbed (as it was dry at the time) and cross that way for fear of falling through the gaps in the bridge. Just then, forty or so children were walking home from school, coming in the other direction. As they were walking over the bridge, they spotted me below. Not one of them would get off it until I took a group photo of them on the rickety bridge. Quite concerned, I gestured to them to keep moving, but they insisted on a photo. I was terrified it would collapse as I took the shot. I could just picture how that would go down with everyone in Kitui—and in Ireland! The bridge got washed away completely the week after, and that photo is a piece of local history now, I suppose.
    Often when I was taking a photo of Akambas, they would tell me to wait, then disappear into their homes, and come back twenty minutes later dressed in their Sunday best. Fr. Liam, a trained photographer, possessed a collection of more than 40,000 photographs he had taken of the people of Kitui—a priceless archive dating back to the 1960s when things were even more primitive.
    ‘Back then,’ he recalled, ‘most Akamba didn’t wear the conventional clothes they do now.’
    Whenever I travelled around before, I always regarded the camera as a necessary nuisance. I preferred to enjoy the moment instead of capturing it for posterity. I still do, but I became a bit more snap-happy in Africa. But for all the photos I took, some of the most vivid images in my memory are photos that got away. Perhaps it was inappropriate to take a picture, it was too dangerous, the moment passed too quickly, people noticed and ruined the spontaneity, people refused to be in the photo, the camera was broken, the camera was forgotten, the batteries did not work, there was no memory space or film left, or else I thought I would see the same scene again and of course I never did. In any case, a camera can never capture the kaleidoscopic colours of a 360-de-gree African panorama, full of exotic sounds and smells.
    A truly bizarre experience, which I failed to capture on camera, occurred shortly after the rains abated. Kimanze had taken a break from work and was resting on the ground near the river. I was a distance away, on higher ground, when I heard a commotion. He had suddenly jumped up, screaming urgently. People were rushing over towards him amid a hullabaloo of shouts. He had nearly been completely wrapped up by a giant twenty-foot black-green python that had slithered up behind, unnoticed. The others nearby were desperately throwing stones at it. After a short frantic time, they were able to beat it off with their farming implements. Had there been no one around, it is possible Kimanze could conceivably have been killed. I had often wandered down to that exact spot on my own, not even aware of the python’s existence up to that point.
    The really odd thing, however, was the almighty rumpus that ensued immediately afterwards. Nearly everyone was gesticulating vigorously and shaking their heads, or had angry expressions on their faces as they made their point in Kikamba. Kimanze would not speak about it to me afterwards; he never did in fact, not about any of it. It took me two days to get it out of Mwangangi what it was all about. It was like a confession, the way he explained the incident in a slightly bashful tone.
    ‘Brendan, not everyone believes; it is just some people. That particular python lives under a mikuyu tree on the riverbank right next to where Kimanze was sitting. It is a species of tree associated with evil or magic.’
    In my head, I was