DEVIN’S JOURNEY ~ PART 9

Story by Linda S Barth     Artwork by Carole W

~ Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya ~

RED JASPER

“Hey, Alex – are you ready? The group from Dublin should be out here any minute.”

Binoculars slung around his neck, Devin swung open the door to his room in the staff quarters at Masai Mara. He rubbed a hand through his hair, still damp from a quick shower, and tried not to yawn. “Yeah,  I’m ready.”

Dodging shallow puddles, lingering left-overs from the rainy season, he followed Oltome down the path to the parking lot where their open-sided 4×4 was waiting. Sunlight gilded the tops of acacia trees scattered across the pale gold grass of the savannah, and they patted their jacket pockets for the dark-tinted glasses they’d soon need. 

Oltome checked their notes on the clipboard. “It’s a group of six, all adults, so no one is likely to fall out when they spot their first giraffe.”

Devin laughed. “Don’t be too sure about that. I’ve known a few Irishmen in my time. A lot of them tend to lean into the anything goes approach to life.”

“Sounds a lot like you.” Oltome grinned at him. “Were your ancestors from Ireland?” 

“Maybe.” Devin shrugged as a faint ache throbbed within “So, do you want to drive this morning or should I?”

“I will. With your gift for chatting people up, they would probably prefer you.” He glanced toward the group heading their way and lowered his voice. “They’re staying in suites in the lodge.”

“Got it.” Devin grinned. “We might earn enough in tips today to make heading out at five a.m. a little less painful for once.”

“And if we are lucky enough to spot at least four of The Big Five, everyone will be very happy.”

Devin made sure to smile as they greeted the camera-toting tourists, eagerly jostling for seats in the Land Rover. But in his heart, he hoped the bronze mane and burnished gold fur of the lion they’d spotted a few days earlier, would be invisible today.

His wish had been granted, and he had felt only slightly guilty for making it. The Dubliners were thrilled to have seen three of The Big Five on their first day out and had taken dozens of photos of rhinos, buffalo, and – most exciting of all – a pair of leopards.They’d still have the rest of their stay to try their luck at viewing elephants and lions.

He glanced at the chronograph watch strapped to his wrist, a gift to himself on his thirty-fourth birthday. It was just past eight o’clock, enough time to pour another cup of coffee from the urn in the staff’s kitchen. Oltome would join him soon for an outing on their afternoon off, one Devin had been anticipating eagerly since it was suggested a week earlier.

His job as a photo safari guide had been more than he’d hoped for. Immersed in a world unlike any he’d seen in all his travels, once again it all seemed to him the living embodiment of those old, well-loved books and a few fantastical tales from a well-traveled Helper. The occasional surge of long-ago memories, while still disquieting, no longer hurt quite as deeply as they once had. They were part of the past. But today in Kenya – this was real, this was life, this was everything. If he lived a hundred years, he’d never lose his sense of wonder and gratitude.

He wandered to a window overlooking stretches of the reserve. A woman in this morning’s group had asked him to name his favorite time of year for photographing the landscapes of Kenya. He’d found it impossible to choose between the wet, lush greenness of the grasslands in the rainy season and the dusty gold-brown hues when the dry season claimed the vast savannah. Now, in early June, the streams and small rivers that had appeared in April, as if by natural magic, were slowly vanishing, leaving fewer remaining water sources for the wealth of wildlife that lived there and other animals – zebras, wildebeest, gazelles – that had begun their annual migration from the Serengeti to join them.

Even the youngest, those born months earlier in the heart of the rainy season, would soon learn to be wary of crocodiles lurking in the Mara River. It had shocked Devin to the core of his being the first time he saw a year-old lion cub, once destined to become a powerful predator, transformed to a massive reptile’s prey. It was an image he sorely wished to forget and, as he had many times before, he pushed it aside.

“Alex! Sorry for being late. Are you ready to go?” Oltome grabbed a set of car keys from the pegboard and checked off their names on the adjacent list. “We’ll still get to Narok in plenty of time for what we wish to do.” He carefully guided the jeep along a dusty trail, then sped up when they reached the paved main road. “It won’t take much more than an hour to get to Babu’s house. He called me earlier to make sure we still want to see his collection.”

“I’ve been looking forward to it since you told me about it. It sounds amazing. Anyone would be lucky to see it.”

Oltome smiled at his friend. “That is very kind of you, but it seems not many these days are interested in viewing an elderly man’s collection of rocks.”

“In all honesty, maybe ten, fifteen years ago, I might have felt the same. But some things have happened to make me look at rocks and stones in a different way.” He smiled as he glanced out the window, memories flickering past, replacing sweeping views of the savannah.

He turned back toward Oltome. “So, I’m very interested in seeing your grandfather’s collection and hearing his stories.”

Oltome’s warm laugh sputtered in the breeze. “Don’t be too enthusiastic, Alex. We might never get out of there and back before dark. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to risk encountering any hyenas or leopards out looking for a nighttime feast.”

“No worries on that!” Devin chuckled. “I’ve made it through a year and a half here without even a bite – well, except for those damn mosquitoes – and I don’t plan on being anything’s dinner anytime soon.”

“Me neither, mate.”

* * *

As Devin folded a selection of clothing into his suitcase, leaving behind what he’d no longer need, taking only what would suit the next identity he would set free, he glanced at a sturdy cardboard box near the door. Tomorrow on the way to the airport in Nairobi, Oltome would detour to the city’s main post office, and, with any luck, the heavily taped carton in time would be off-loaded at the James A. Farley Building in mid-town Manhattan, to be stashed with all the others stacked in the general delivery storage rooms.

Still, even if the box arrived intact, he’d only have a fifteen-day window of time to retrieve it before its contents were returned to their previous home in the study of a British Colonial style manor house in Kenya. He shook his head hard as if to disperse doubts that would probably prove to be unneeded. He’d been assured the shipping service was reliable, and in their familiar place in his leather belt bag, his personal insurance policy still lent him their impact. The stones he’d gathered throughout his journey, as well as one newly indeed to the collection, had never varied in their steadfast vows, in all their promises of now, promises of someday. There was no reason to believe the others carefully packed in the box would be any different.

With his preparations for leaving completed, he stretched out on the single bed and rested his head on his folded arms. Outside the screened window he could hear undulating waves of sound – the calls of pearl-spotted owls and nightjars, the cough of a leopard venturing closer under cover of darkness, the eerie shrieks of hyenas, a cacophony of chirps and clicks and whistles from frogs and insects…the deep rasped vibration of a lion’s roar.

It would not be long before this hauntingly untamed music would be replaced by an urban symphony of blaring taxi horns, unceasing sidewalk conversations of strangers, rattling rumbles of subway trains…and maybe…or maybe not…a rhythmic rapping on pipes, a softness of footfall on well-worn brick and stone…the sound of a brother’s voice, remembered as the lilt of a child, unheard as the rasp of a man.

For months he’d felt a pull, a drawing back to where it had all begun. He’d seen their faces and heard their voices in his dreams. But when he awoke, he knew it was nothing more than fantasy. In the twenty years he’d been away, it had changed as had he. There was every chance the world he remembered was far different, maybe even unrecognizable. Should he choose to return, he might find himself even more of a stranger in an altered world than he already knew himself to be. Even so, the impact of physical differences would be far less than of those that came from within.

He tried to tell himself it would be a mistake to even try. How would he be able to find a way to make them understand the truth that was his life? Maybe it was all a fool’s errand, far too much to hope for. And maybe this was the price he’d have to pay for what he’d done. He breathed a ragged sigh. Still, if he could somehow return to that day in July when he was only fourteen, he knew he’d do it all again. But this time…this time he would not leave the one person he’d loved best without telling him, no matter how painful it would be, that it was his time for going. That he wished more than anything they’d be leaving together. That he knew…they both knew…it could never happen.

The tears that soothed the stinging in his eyes could not reach the pain in his heart. There was only one way, one chance to make that happen. But would it be possible to repair even a small part of the heartbreaking damage he’d inflicted? The scars he carried with him, in the depths of his soul, on the flesh of his face, would still have their counterpart in the tenderness of his brother’s heart.

He felt his jaw clench. Maybe it would be best to leave things as they were, to accept that he was a faded memory in the minds and hearts of his abandoned family. Why attempt to prove them wrong? And even if he went back, his journey would not end there, that much was certain. Maybe it would be best to let it play out in other places, other worlds. Maybe…maybe…

He sat up and stared at the box by the door, its contents awaiting their journey to their new home in the place that had once been his. He thought of the man who had insisted he accept this gift, as if in the wisdom of his long and varied life, he knew it was meant to be. And he savored again the stories Feruzi Amani had told him, as he and the man’s grandson had listened and learned.

A lifetime of fascination with rocks and minerals, gemstones and fossils. The benefit of wealth that allowed him to travel the world, collecting specimens, collecting stories. Years of enjoyment seeing them displayed in the home the elderly widower owned with his equally aging brother. And the desire to share their beauty, their legends and love with like-minded souls, even those he’d only known for an hour.

Delighted with Devin’s genuine interest in his collection, he’d given him a piece of red jasper as a keepsake, a reminder of his time in the Amani family’s homeland. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of rocks and minerals, he’d explained that the red ochre stone was a form of fine-grained chalcedony, an opaque crystalline quartz native to this part of Kenya. He watched Devin turn the stone in his hand, one side slightly rough and dry like the earth from which it had come, the other polished by hand, revealing swirls of carmine and burnt umber, like ripples in the streams that gave life to the beings who depended on them.

With a smile, he added that according to legend, red jasper was said to have special properties similar to the earth it resembled. It was a stone of grounding, of rooting one to the earth, and strengthening powers of stability and strength. But it was not a stone of static inertia. Instead it encouraged boldness and bravery, the power to make necessary changes to achieve a balance of strength and safety. He’d shrugged as if to say believe what you will, but Devin sensed Feruzi’s skepticism had vanished long ago just as his had. 

As the visit lengthened and Feruzi noted the depth of Devin’s interest, he’d offered an array of specimens as his gift to the traveler, to take with him and perhaps someday share with others, as they had done today. At first Devin had tried to refuse, for it seemed a gift far too valuable, but Feruzi had firmly insisted, saying it would make him very happy to know the stones had found a home with someone who truly appreciated and respected them. Still, Devin resisted until another story was shared.

While Oltome’s grandfather had roamed the world, he still returned now and then to his home in Narok, only to leave again when another adventure piqued his desire to explore, to see, to do. Yet for reasons they did not share with Devin, his younger brother, Tumaini, had always remained behind. Since the time they were boys, they had shared a dream to venture off together, to seek and discover worlds they’d longed to see. But life had held different plans for them, Feruzi explained, and it had never happened the way they’d imagined it would. Until now.

In a month’s time, the brothers would arrive in Singapore, the first destination on the list of longed-for places written by children’s hands over fifty years earlier. Then, Mount Fuji, Buenos Aires, London. Diamond Head, the Blue Lagoon, the Isle of Skye. Maybe even cities in the US – Los Angeles, Chicago, New York.

As Devin witnessed another world of dreams hovering on the edge of reality, a sense of wonderment became a surge of understanding. He’d been brought to this far away home to find the path back to his own. And if he’d seen even the palest shadow of doubt cloud what he’d learned, it vanished in the light of a few simple words, another prophetic sharing.

As he’d written Feruzi’s address in his pocket notebook, he’d been taken with the idea of asking the meaning of the man’s name. Feruzi proudly explained the brothers’ surname Amani in Swahili meant peace and harmony, while Feruzi translated as the blessed one, the chosen one. And Tumaini, his brother, his finally soon to be partner in the wondrous act of assuring their dream still lived, meant hope and trust.

There was nothing more that needed to be said, to be felt, to be believed. When Devin left the Amani brothers’ home late that afternoon, he carried with him a box filled with new pieces of very familiar stones. Orbs and geodes and clusters of lapis lazuli, amethyst, golden topaz, moonstone, malachite, carnelian, turquoise, rose quartz, and red jasper.

And he took with him, as well, a soul-deep knowledge. These stones, just like the ones that had helped guide and heal him, that had made him believe in their power and promise, that had been gifts of the heart from those whose lives had entwined with his in essential, enduring ways, would take on a parallel role in a place far from here. They would be placed into the hands of the man, the friend, the brother who had changed his life forever.

AND THEN …