The mixed enthusiasm, mixed expectations, mixed curiosity, mixed anxiety of the unknown was all aimed at Italy, but as soon as he arrived in Mombasa, Grandpa Kazungu realized that there was an obstacle to overcome, an obstacle as big as a prehistoric bird made of sheet metal.
"It always makes me smile that in your language you call the airplane - ndege -, bird," said the Swerve, who perhaps had read in the old man's gaze, just off the bus, a veiled terror. "Without even specifying, not - ndege kubwa - or anything else, it really makes me think of the first Kenyan who saw an airplane flying in the sky, which surely belonged to some English air explorer of the 1920s, so it was really like a big, funny bird."
"A bit like the locomotive," added Kadenge Davide, as the four of them walked towards the check-in, trying to keep up with the brisk pace of Mrs. Octavia, "which we call - gari la moshi -, literally - smoke machine -, even then I imagine a masai in the savannah, when he saw the first convoy of the Mombasa-Nairobi line exclaiming - gari la moshi! - and running away as if possessed by the devil."
Grandpa also felt like he was possessed, by an agitation he had never felt before. He tried to find that state of mind in the archives of his long memory and arrived at the first day of work, when he had come down from Kakoneni with his father to Malindi and had been directed to the seaside villa of an English couple. He had never seen the sea and had always listened to legends about the vast expanse of water populated by terrible sea monsters that sometimes came out of the water and ate the unwary who ventured too close to the shore.
What he felt was fear!
Fear of rising from the ground, fear of flying!
"Grandpa, think that your grandson has climbed on that big bird at least ten times - chuckled Kadenge, trying to reassure him, mindful of the anguish of his first trip, partially mitigated by the occasional encounter with a blonde Dutch girl - it's a wonder of science, you have to live the exciting part of it, you'll be part of a man-made miracle."
"I prefer miracles created by nature, like the donkey..."
The customs officers were ready to ask for a gratuity from Mrs. Octavia, who was proceeding with an austere look, but they froze when they saw with her two compatriots and a kind of mzungu with a bush on his head and an un-western step.
"We are taking my old father to Italy," Kadenge explained in Kiswahili, "he needs special care, these mzungu have done so much for him and for me, they are good and eat ugali like us."
"Yes, but the lady has a rolex on her wrist and the cell phone is an iPhone 13 Pro Max...- pointed out the airport customs boss - something could have fit us too..."
They boarded the big bird an hour late and Grandpa Kazungu was reserved the window seat. Like a little boy, the old man rested his chin on the edge of the porthole, looking like a bulldog puppy on a Sunday outing. He explored each hangar of Moi International airport, assessed the work of the porters, checked the zigzagging drive of the freight elevator, read "Air Zimbabwe" on the side of a smaller bird.
The noise of the reactors reached his stomach like the goring of an unruly goat. For a moment he asked himself, with a look borrowed from the bulldog, if he should stand up and explain to everyone inside that giant rhino's belly that it had been a mistake, that he did not want to go to Italy. Then he said that it was not true, that he had wanted to go to Italy since he was thirty years old and that the mistake had been, if anything, not specifying how he wanted to travel to the Western world.
By donkey, if possible.
Or at most by train.
"Grandfather - the Sobering One aroused him, sitting at his side while his grandson was already groping for a stewardess, under the stern gaze of Mrs. Octavia who was granting him a temporary probation - think that in a moment we will pierce the clouds and pass to the other side of the sky!"
"All my life I have believed that I am going another way," replied the old man, who appeared more serene, "delirious from malaria or the bite of a snake."
"I'm always a little afraid too - said my friend mzungu - but statistics comfort me, very few planes fall, 0.00001 of those that fly!"
"The average number of people dying of malaria in Kenya is actually higher."
Reassured by the numbers and percentages, he almost didn't feel the huge bird get up in the air, and when he saw the clouds at his side playing with the sun's rays, he knew Nature wouldn't abandon him this time either.