Samuel the Guard (Escary)

This is the compound where I live in Kisumu, Kenya. The Ruprahs live in the main house and I rent their same house in the back. Samuel is the supervisor of the guards who secure the purple gate in the background. In Kiswahili, the word for guard is "escary," pronounced es-scar-re. Samuel only lets people into the compound who belong here. The gate is usually chained and padlocked. In addition to being the guard, Samuel also keeps the yard clean. You can see in his hand a homemade broom. He has tied pieces of leafy branches to a stick and he uses this to sweep up leaves (see the pile of brown leaves) and seeds that drop from the trees onto the cement.

The tree growing in the foreground on the left is a Papaya tree. It's too young to bear fruit, but in a year or two, the tree will be 15 or 20 feet tall. Big, green Papayas will grow in bunches under the top grouping of leaves. The bark forms a beautiful honeycomb pattern when the trees grow up. In Kenya, they call a Papaya a Popo, pronunced po-po.