Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Kili at night by Tunc Tezel

This is no ordinary nursery rhyme but it kind of reminds me of it. I was catching up with a friend sometime back on Skype and one of the things he was telling me about was how he loved the view of the stars from Africa. He was born and bred in the US and is now living and working in Kenya. He challenged me to get outside and look up to the sky. Being that I live at camp and we basically have no ‘street lights’ like we have in the city, the only source of light I had was the torch that I was holding. I was a bit skeptical at first about looking up without having to worry about the wild animals that roam freely within the camp. But the moment I walked outside and saw the sky, I forgot about everything; the torch, the animals. The night sky was so beautiful and full, and I mean damn full of stars. I was wowed. You would think something like this would be normal, but I had never really taken more than a moment before to just look at the stars and appreciate them. He had made my day, and probably changed how I would view the skies for the rest of my life.

I went back inside and we continued to chat, excitedly explaining to him how beautiful it was. I then asked him to describe to me how the night sky looked like from his end and he told me that he couldn’t see any stars; that it was too cloudy wherever he was, and that even if there were any, the city lights outshone them. I was amazed because when he told me to look at the skies, I actually thought it was because it was beautiful from his end as well, but I later realized that he wanted me to experience the beauty of it even though he couldn’t experience it at the time, but he had before, and he knew that I would love it.

Reminds me of a story I read sometime back. I can vaguely remember it but I will try to narrate. There were two patients in the same ward. One of them had a bed close to the window, and the other would always ask him to describe to him what he could see outside the window as he could not view it from his bed. Every day, this patient’s friend described everything beautiful; blue skies, colorful days, and happy people walking by-just beautiful things. Then one day, the friend passed away. The other patient asked the nurse to move his bed next to the window. He was so happy that he could now finally see it all by himself. He sat up to have his first look and to his surprise, there was a large building that was blocking all view. He asked the nurse how then could it have been possible that his friend saw all the beautiful things and described to him all of it every day, and the nurse told him that his friend was blind, that there was no way he could have seen all the things he was telling him.

Sometimes all it takes to make the other person happy is to give them a beautiful view, feed their lives with all things beautiful especially when they can’t view it for themselves. For that, I am grateful to my friend for helping me to discover a whole new world up above my head, and more grateful that I can experience this almost every other day from my porch, and so can you. The world is wild, exotic, extravagant and bright. Instead of making hay, we should be making whoopee, that way we can rightfully appreciate what we were given to enjoy in the first place. Plan your safari today. Dream it. Live it. Be it.

Milky Way over Kilimanjaro by Dale Johnson

Written by Essie Kirai