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Kenya watercolor #9
One of the girls in a wheelchair is wearing a blindfold. She’s laughing that open mouthed I-can’t-get-enough-air-because-this-is-so-hilarious kind of laugh and groping around the room for someone who breathes too loud or can’t stop giggling. Blindman’s bluff, that’s what Father Yacob, the 20 something sunburnt American tells me he did the last time he was at Cheshire.
Inside women and men are knitting melvins (toboggins for kids with chin straps and pointy tops), making purses, and aprons. This, Cheshire, is half catholic church, half farm, half dorms, half part boarding school for mentally and physically handicapped Kenyans (That’s too many halves, but you get the picture). And first thing first, I learned how to crochet a Kenyan doily. Then I awkwardly ran around trying to endear my rusted self to the ladies and gentlemen of Cheshire. Later there was a break and we played a rousing game of charades, followed by dancing. While learning some moves from Sara – effervescent curmudgeon-tamer with a club foot. I notice one quiet girl, eerily beautiful girl in a wheelchair and I painted this portrait of her.
