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This day was spent still at the Kimathi homestead. It is T M Kimathi's 83rd birthday. During the morning Speck played with his small friends, Lincoln, Gloria, David, and Rose. They dragged him from chickens, to quail, to rabbits, to cows to tomato trees (not a typo, the tree grows a fruit that tastes like tomatoes), and all over the place. Around 1 pm is the cake cutting which is preceded by speeches. First T. M. spoke, then his wife spoke. Then a man who was in his 70's spoke of how he had known T.M. for a very long time and come to all of his birthday parties for a very long time, and then told a fairy tale, and then kept talking and it looked like he was describing bowling because of the arm motions. The old man spoke and spoke and finally was finished. Then they cut the cake and repeated the process of feeding everyone one bite at a time from the same fork while singing. Afterwards Speck and Caroline took a nap, partly to onescape from so many people, it was a bit overwhelming. When they got up a little later they went for a walk,
this was the first time they stepped out of the gate in two days. Speck was out of gum so they got some from the Downhill shop, which was beside the Uphill Shop. They visited one of the neighbors, DJ Muturi aka Baba Wanjiru,whose daughters had gone to school with Caroline in the 80's. The walk then turned down a dirt road and they ran into a friend of the family who warned them to return to the house because it was about to rain. Caroline disagreed and they continued but soon found out that Caroline would be a terrible weather forecaster. The dirt road became a mud road and was soon caked onto the bottoms of their sandals. When they got back to the house they cleaned their shoes and left them outside their room so as not to dirty the floor.
During the day some of the men had taken the bulls head from the cow that had been served yesterday and roasted it. First they put it hair, skin and all, on the grill. As the hair burned off and the skin contracted they used the horns to turn it. Then the burned was scraped off
and the head was placed in a large pot to cook for soup. At 8 pm the soup was poured into cups and Speck finally was able to try it, he had been curious all day and was not disappointed, it was a taste unlike any he had ever had before. Unfortunately for Speck it was not one that he enjoyed, it was a strong oily meat taste, combined with a certain bitterness very difficult to describe. Speck tried it three times but when he still could not enjoy it on the third time he set it to the side. Then T.M. came into the room with the boiled tongue and esophagus. These Speck was able to eat and enjoy, and he ate them in the Kenyan way, taking chunks from the communal platter and raving them on the salt. It seems that Kenyans eat much later than Americans so soon after dinner it is time for bed.
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