After lunch I spent two hours on the beach. Got all sorts of sandy, the grains still sticking to my back hours later. A local and I made friends. A drum maker and teacher who talked on and on until I stuck out my hand and wished him a good day (after all, I had come to the beach to be alone.) I walked the length of the shore, watching the water turn wave to foam. Its funny what the memory does. I think of "sea foam green," the name I assigned to a crayon for Crayola's "new color naming contest" as a child. I loved that gigantic rainbow box and spent hours carefully naming the new blank wrapper-ed colors in one of the twelve smaller boxes in the larger container. You can imagine my disappointment when I saw the newly named box months later and cringed at "dog tongue pink." My entries were so much more creative! Those crayons were immeasurably important to me. I think of the small joys I still experience, and how much harder they are to name now. Then Tyehimba plays a harmonica riff and I think, "there's one." 
After Tyehimba's lecture on how music influences poetry, I am interested in the conversation that brings to light the fact that, as Nana says, "Africa is not a small town." Often the whole continent is referred to in one sweeping statement, good or bad. Binyavanga talks about how there are over 100 tribes in Kenya alone. How to a Kenyan, Ghana can seem as exotic and foreign as, say, Cuba. I am beginning to develop an idea of cultural differences within the continent through meeting folks here. The dialect, mannerisms, values. Of course, it is vague, but some fuzzy map is forming in my mind. Masese speaks of his music and reminds us over and over that he is really only speaking to his community in Kiisi, which is one of many. He cannot speak for the music of Kenya, even, as a whole.
So yes, not a small town, indeed.
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