First meeting with civilization
"My Planet" publishes a fragment from the book of Robert Sapolski "Primate Notes: the extraordinary life of a scientist among the baboons". This book is the memories of more than 20 years old dating a famous primatologist with East Africa. Being a completely young scientist, the author first came to the reserve in Kenya with the intention to check on the wild baguans about the nature of stress in humans. Naturally? The author interacts with local residents: Masai and Kikuyu tribes. We bring one of the curious fragments of his memories.
That day I discovered that no one knows about the knee reflex. I was sitting with Richard in the administrative part of the hotel, he let go some joke, and I, rolling from laughter, slammed him on the knee. Foot jerked. "How did you do this?"He was surprised. I demonstrated, Richard puzzled, and soon a crowd of neighbors gathered around. None of them first noticed this effect. Someone dragged from the dining room for the staff of an empty bottle from soda, and soon everything, having risen around, pounded themselves with a bottle under the knee cup. "Look, twitching, I can’t keep it!»Burled fun and blossomed bruises.
Dr. Robert Sapolski © L.A. Cicero
I suddenly guessed that it may still be for them the discovery – floating in the eyes of the flies. "Someday it happened to you: look at the sky and in the eye something floats, goes down, such a transparent point, through which everything can be seen?"Several people were angry – the flies they noticed, but it seems that they did not bother to admit to anyone. Richard shocked my hand. "Yes, I saw! I thought I had a microscope in the eye ". Immediately it is clear that he is very much communicating with me. One more these flies have served all their lives that Jesus chose him for a special mission. I had to return the man from Heaven to Earth, explaining that the flies – these are the remnants of detachable cells on the surface of the eye.
But still the phenomena that everyone noticed, but preferred anyone about them not to spread. Deja. "I am once through the bushes, for the first time. I know that in the first, but for some reason it seems that I have already seen this bush, "explained one of Masai, who probably really did not cost anything to identify any bush. And the phenomenon, which I strangle them finally: here you have almost fell asleep and suddenly they get fat somewhere and fall ("My God, I thought it means that I am dying," someone confessed), and then consciousness wakes up Previously body.
Richard first found himself in a big city. What was the kayf! I dragged him through the whole Nairobi, taught to use traffic lights, loaded lectures on urban sociology, showed the first supermarket in his life, the first cinema and the first hour of peak
It was just a holiday for everyone – at such moments you realize how you are lucky to communicate with the inhabitants of the opposite part of the planet. However, this holiday is far from the day when I thought that the first time I rode Richard on the elevator ..
Recovering the darts in my own in the reserve, we went to another reserve as a wounded shooter in another reserve and stayed on the road in Nairobi to replenish the supplies. Richard first found himself in a big city. What was the kayf! I dragged him through the whole Nairobi, taught to use traffic lights, loaded lectures on urban sociology, showed the first supermarket in his life, the first cinema and the first hour of peak. The cars plunged him terror: "I think there may be so many cars here, because there is no buffaloes". Logical. Some kind of kikuyuyu (Kikuyu in Kenya are considered urban farts) accepted him for the tribesman and turned in his language – Richard, feeling himself a sophisticated town.
Richard ached a passion for books that didn’t notice any of the Kenytsev with me more regardless of education. He was presented through the text with his weak English (only the fourth of his tongue), I learned something and received immense pleasure, although the "brothers Karamazov" was still not mastered
Even more beautiful was at the first bookstore for Richard. He did not believe his happiness. According to the unknown reasons of Richard, the passion for the books, who did not notice any of the Kenyans, noticed by me, regardless of education. He was presented through the text with his weak English (only the fourth of his tongue), I learned something and received immense pleasure, although the "brothers Karamazov" was still not mastered. ("Well, how do you like the book, Richard, what’s there?" – "Can not understand anything. These brothers, they talk all the time, and their old man is a bad man, but then they talk again and speak, well, if only women will not get to cry. In my opinion, they are white, but probably not from America. ". On this he fucked.) And then a whole store.
I gave him money, ordered to break away to the whole coil and did not refuse himself, and my heart was overwhelmed with his joy. Then it was his first ice cream. Richard noted them for themselves – people with funny tubes that smoke. Ice cream in horns. Having tried, he grabbed my hand from delight. And was the first in Kenya escalator, in a Novokhonomky building in the center. The escalator turned into a local attraction, it was supposed to be celebrated to each young Nairobi dandy – walk around the surroundings and ride on the escalator, maybe even invite a girl there. A large shield with instructions, cautions and restrictions were made to the escalator: not to unfold against movement, it works only on the rise, it is forbidden to carryats, not responsible for pregnant women. We waited for our turn, jumped up on the ribbon, clung to the handrail of the dead grip, survived.
Closer to the evening surprise came out. I decided: to walk so walk – put a slightly reporting on a grant and scatter on a large hotel in the center. We settled, Richard was given the key from its number. On the fifth floor. I prepared Richard to travel on the elevator. Told what feels in the stomach. And then I woke up the son of the architect, and I, without keeping, began to draw a bulk section of the building pierced by an elevator mine. In the cabin, we entered the fuluggrance.
Richard asked not to discuss the elevator with others if someone enters: "And then you will think that I only yesterday from Bush". He found out that by pressing the "two" or "three" button, you will not attend the fifth floor. Then I sent it to an independent flight and was shaking from excitement outside, like a restless parent
At first, Richard was struck by the background music and highlighting the floor numbers, but then the stomach bucked into the heels, and he was not up to the melody to love to love you baby performed by the mantebian orchestra. Zheleneev, he grabbed me, and seemed to be a little bit and his harden. Fifth floor, I pulled out the chipping richard outward. A minute later he glanced at me by furtively: "Good-oh about". Again. We ride up and down.
Richard asked not to discuss the elevator with others if someone enters: "And then you will think that I only yesterday from Bush". He found out that by pressing the "two" or "three" button, you will not attend the fifth floor. Then I sent it to an independent flight and was shaking from excitement outside, like a restless parent. I took a tired, but happy Richard to him in the room, poured the first hot bath in my life and left to bless you, singing on my native Kipsygi. An hour later I went to spend it. He looked out the window on the road and shouted the advice to drivers who passed five floors below: "Careful! Do not drive fast! Truck skip!»" Like Antelope GNU, "he said, showing cars. "This is because there is no buffaloes in Nairobi," I replied. When I only led him to the room and showed a view from the window, he had a head from height. And now he was even slightly leaving outside, although he adhering to loyalty to the wall with his right hand. "Well, Richard that was the most interesting today?"I asked. "Perhaps the bookstore, and how ice cream is put in the horns". "Not lift?"I was surprised. "No, not an elevator".
Strange affair. The view of Richard was a conspiratorist. "Want, I will open one secret?" Of course! "I’ve ever traveled to the elevator, but I didn’t understand it," Richard admitted. The very first time Richard, as it turned out, was in Nairobi a little earlier in the same year at a completely Cafkian case. He wanted to change the name to his child. Richard, as a modern man, sent his wife with fights to make a few miles from their mountain village in an unknown district village hospital, so as not to give birth at home.
While Richard rushed there for 90 miles from the reserve, the child had already managed to appear. From the very beginning, Richard (and perhaps even his wife – here the story is silent) I was going to call him Jesse – in honor of Jesse Jackson. But upon arrival, it was discovered that the doctor did not wait for his father and hurried to fill the birth certificate. As a result, he (apparently, not asked the opinion of the mother about the name for her child) recorded the baby as Hilary (although now I have a suspicion that, perhaps, the doctor just clarified the mother and this particular name she wanted). The testimony was already decorated on Hilary, and Richard, who expressed his timid discontent for the insecurity of his own discontent, the doctor threatened the police. I had to go to the capital to the capital and her defold bureaucracy and incompetence in the hope of changing the name (hopes, of course, did not justify – Hilary is called so to this day and no one, apparently, does not mind go against the system and call the child with each other Jesse).
About the upcoming expedition recognized the hotel administrator, where Richard was quartered. He fell to Richard a big sympathy and could afford a generous gesture in relation to the employee of such status (whether someone from the staff at the place of Richard could seem that the administrator starts favorites). He organized Richard’s room in Nairobi hotel, owned by a family that owned the tourist camp. Richard got to Nairobi and on the instructions that his administrator supplied, found a hotel. Safelyelus was enough of sensitivity and warnance to guess: Richard in the city will need help, but he is ashamed to contact her.
An hour later I went to spend it. He looked out the window on the road and shouted the advice to drivers who passed five floors below: "Careful! Do not drive fast! Truck skip!»" Like Antelope GNU, "he said, showing cars
Administrator of the Nairobi hotel, waiting for Richard in advance, met him and tactfully explained that the hotel was at the disposal of the entire room, including the bathroom, and the most wonderful – dinner and breakfast are included in the price, so you don’t have to pay Richard for them.
"And then he led me into a small room without windows. At first I thought it was the number, but it turned out that no. The door closed, then everything was bored, the stomach sucks so that I decided that Nairobi I had already done. And this man did not even notice anything. Then the door opens, and there everything is completely different! Generally! I quickly took and replaced everything: no people, there are no chairs, the administrator’s rack somewhere, and instead a long track and a lot of doors. I did not understand how it happened, and now I know – there was this your elevator ".
Richard placed in the room. Curtains were already settled, touching their Richard did not even think, so he did not guessed that the first floor was left far away. He rinsed in the sink (the bath, he judged, too huge, such a break of the water to wash one person no one will spend, this is, apparently, so that the cows have to bathe), shuffled in bed, hesitated and nervous, responding to a thought of a caring administrator (Phone Richard saw in pictures, so I knew how to keep the phone).
Everything was fabulously until Richard was hungry. He climbed the entire corridor in search of dining. Unsuccessfully. He was suspicious that it was for sure to turn the entire floor in the dining room, the same room in which the stomach turns over, but he did not know where to find the same door, and how to make it open, and how to make a dining room. He was paid to the corridors, hesitate to ask someone, and returned to the room, hungry and annoyed. To midnight added a new reason for anxiety – how to get out in the morning, not to mention to get breakfast.
At dawn, Richard rose – with a harvested plan. Having gathered things, he wandered down the corridor before the first guest appeared, leaving the room with a traffic bag. Having added to him, Richard soon found himself in the elevator. In his stomach, everything turned over, but Richard tried not to give the mind, and now the floor is turned into a lobby. Exhaling with relief, forgetting for a while about hunger, because the main thing was now to get out, he said goodbye to the administrator and escaped.
"To know me then, that’s all this is your elevator. The food, probably, was good in such a big chic hotel. And I was told that you can eat as you want ". In the evening we went and bought in the ice cream in the hope of soften the pain of memories.
