Graffiti

Storefronts are merely
witnesses of God
each one
more blessed than the next.

Sides of shambas
keep track, reminding
their absent builders
which pieces go where
who was there and when
how much a piece of wood cost
and why we were placed on this planet
in the first place.

Stalls of washrooms
house within them jewels
of education, teaching me
form four geometry
form two spelling
warning me
where smoking
is not allowed.

Small pieces
of communication, scattered
shreds of paper
in the napier grass,
in vacant football fields,
lining the road,
pressed by footprints
deep within the mud.

From a school child's homework

to a monument
for an honourable citizen

to the scratches of a man using the toilet
on a outhouse wall,

everyone

has a direct line to heaven
and chooses to access it
through the written word.

Ancient
new age
reformed
symbols
a shorthand version
of prayer.

Everywhere I look,
there is graffiti in Kenya.

**Author's Note: This one doesn't really require a whole lot of explanation does it? These are photos I've compiled since arrival, although I will admit I had to run back to the outhouse to catch a snap of the piece of paper on the floor (every time I broke down and had to use the washroom on farms I would see anything from past grading exams marked up, cheat sheets for tests, pieces from the Bible written all over, homework scraps, poems, stories, I finally realized I needed a picture of it one day). The story on the piece of paper I found literally in a vacated football field we were passing through one of the first times we went to one of our farms, I couldn't believe that not only was every square inch of it used (see the calculations in pen on the bottom of the story "Once Beaten Twice Shy" and then realize that the other story is actually just the flip side of the same piece of paper). I found it rather ironic to come to a place with a supposedly low literacy rate, yet everywhere I looked I saw evidence of writing and beyond that, a desire to write. What we view in North American as Graffiti (meaning unlawful writing, pollution, desecration by text or image) here was none of these things. It is evidence of hope for the future, of education, of lessons learned and of reverence. While I do note that often our graffiti at home in Canada is often of a much different nature, subject matter and form, maybe there is something to think about here. Maybe writing is just that, writing, no matter which way it is presented. As a writer myself, I feel everything which someone feels the need to record in writing deserves its own space in time so I will continue to pick up each and every shred of paper I find in my journeys and read it purely for the sake of it being read. Enjoy the pictures!
Jen