along the jetties, his hand resting comfortably on the
rod, he seemed at ease.
Between assignments I began to drive from the
chaos of Nairobi, where I lived, to the fertile, undu-
lating hills that surround central Kenya’s Ragati and
Mathioya waterways. The slow-flowing Ragati River
drifts through protected indigenous forest, where a
network of paths, used by humans, leopards, ele-
phants, and buffalo, cuts through lush vegetation. The
Mathioya rushes through the heartland of Kenyan tea
production, near the slopes of the Aberdare Moun-
tains and the receding glacial peaks of Mount Kenya.
Both rivers are home to populations of furtive brown
and rainbow trout maintained through the stockingrhythmic casting, seemed an antidote to the pain
of photographing suffering, as I’d done so often in
recent years. I hadn’t cast a fishing line since the
age of 10 or so, when I used bait and lures to fish
the Atlantic waters that surrounded the places I
lived as a child, first along the coast of New Jersey
and later in Massachusetts. My mother’s boyfriend
at the time taught me the basics. He was a large,
avuncular man who’d been an interrogator in the
U.S. Army Special Forces, an experience that left
him with his own scars. As he affixed lures to his
line, he explained that he could handle little more
than fishing and taking photographs, the latter his
chosen profession after leaving the military. At dusk
AUGUST 2019 35