Free Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton by Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna

stand is to take a piece of rubber and tie it over its nose and mouth. When it realizes that it can’t breathe, it gets up. So that’s how I got to Nairobi. I was a wreck by the time I got there: 330 miles, two days, standing in the truck with the cows going to the bathroom on my shoes, on my clothes. You can imagine how strong I smelled. That’s how I had my interview: smelling of cows. Then I went back to the bank and waited. A few months later, I got a letter: I’d been accepted. I was going to St. Lawrence University, in Canton, New York, with a full scholarship.
    No one I knew—except those missionaries—had ever been to America, and I knew nothing about it. I’d been told all sorts of stories.
    “Don’t eat with the wrong fork.”
    “Always watch your things—in New York, they’ll steal them right from you.”
    “American women? Don’t mess with them! They have little guns in their bags—small guns you can’t see. And if you bother them, they just shoot you.”
    So there I was at Nairobi Airport, alone, with stories like these in my head, scared as a puppy. I’d been home to say good-bye to my mother and my brothers. My mother asked a lot of questions: “Are you afraid? Will you come back? Is America close to Nairobi?” Not that she had ever seen Nairobi. The Americans she knew were missionaries. She’d seen what they could do—drill wells, give medical treatment—and I think she thought I’d return like them. With my brothers, it was all man talk: the cattle, the weather, the grazing. They did not understand what I was doing, and they did not ask.
    I rode a cattle truck from Marsabit to Nairobi, just the way I had for my interview. For two days before leaving, I literally couldn’t eat—not a thing—I was so nervous. So by the time I checked in for my flight, I was very hungry. I was wearing a three-piece wool suit, witha collar and tie. I wanted to make the right impression. I had no idea how hot it was going to be in New York in August.
    The first part of the journey was to London. I boarded the flight, and in the next seat there was an American man. I asked him where he was from. He told me, “Ohio.” My English was terrible, but my geography was pretty good, and I knew where Ohio was, so we got along all right. An hour or two into the flight, they served a meal. I wanted to be careful not to embarrass myself in front of Americans. I certainly didn’t want to offend my seatmate by using the wrong fork. And I wanted to be sure not to make any other mistake, like eating from the wrong side of the plate or starting with the entrée when I should have started with the salad, or something like that. The only way to get it exactly right, I thought, was to watch the man next to me, so when my food arrived, I sat reading a newspaper and sneaking glances to see what my neighbor was doing. He picked up his fork, so I picked up my fork. He pushed his food around a bit and picked at his salad, so I did the same.
    Then he put his fork down. “Aaah! I don’t like this airplane food,” he said. “It’s really bad.”
    So of course I did the same. “Me, too. It’s very bad.” And I was so hungry that I could have eaten my shoes!
    Later, the flight attendant came by again and asked if we needed anything else. My neighbor told her, “No, I’m fine.”
    “How about you?” she asked me.
    “No, I’m fine, too.”
    By then I was dying of hunger. But that’s how it went, all the way to London. My neighbor didn’t eat anything—just drank water. I didn’t eat anything either, and I just got hungrier and hungrier. In London, I changed planes for the flight to New York. And do you know what? On the New York flight I was in the same seat, with the same guy next to me! By then I knew he wasn’t going to touch his food. As soon as the plane took off I got a blanket, covered my head, and tried to sleep.
     
    NAIROBI IS BIG , but it is nothing like New York. I looked down, and there was this huge