[from my journal, the day I did the original pencil
sketch]: "On a farm near Kanduye, Kenya 28
April 1999, Wednesday
Somewhere between Iganga and Tororo -- but at a precise point,
sharp like entering a new country -- the architecture of the modest
houses and other structures visible along the roadway [from Kampala]
changed completely. Whereas before they had been brick, of a dull red
color, or faced with gray or painted cement, and invariably boxy in
shape, often with a portico supported by spindly columns or pipes,
now the built space was entirely traditional. Small mud-and-stick
cylinders with thatched roofs grouped in a circle around an open
space of smooth, beaten earth, sometimes with a sort of corn crib in
the center of the circle, and occasionally with one or more somewhat
larger mud huts, the eaves supported by thick sticks or poles. The
tidiness and symmetry -- and the uniformity -- was impressive and
calming. There was nothing glaring or obtrusive, nothing individual
or self-important, nothing ostentatious. The poverty must also be
extreme, because there was not even any junk lying about: no old
steel or plastic containers, no discarded paper packaging or
wrappers."
(Later I learned that I had crossed a non-political border between
the Bantu and Luo speaking peoples. The Bukusu are a small group of
Luo speakers along the Uganda-Kenya line.) That night, from under the
eaves of the round hut in which I slept, I sketched the fairly large,
squarish hut facing me. Heavy, menacing clouds and a rapidly
darkening horizon line of hills enclosed a still-bright evening sky.
A greenish light filtering through the banana grove suffused the
middle-ground, and the figures, clearly visible earlier, gradually
melded with the landscape.
Alas, none of this came through in the print!
I carved five blocks (this is my first-ever woodcut), each of a
different tropical hardwood, since I didn't know what might work (and
what might be available in the future). The key block was nkalate
(paschystela brevipes), a wood that Graham told me upon examining
& cutting a sample has characteristics somewhat like Japanese
cherry; the others were muvule (Chlorophora excelsa), a
teak-substitute from which I've had some great furniture made;
mahogany (hard to get a crisp line); cypress (soft and long-grained)
and Elgon olive (hard!).
Oil based ink on dry masa paper; blocks locked in a flat-bed chase
with spring-activated grippers for register (but you can see I had a
problem with one block); one pass through a home-made etching press,
then finishing work with a spoon.
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