While driving to troy...

While driving to Troy, New York the other day, (I went to meet with a representative of the
Troy Book Makers to discuss my novel, The Firing of Stephen Ledberg, copyright, an adventure about an investigative journalist's search for his real parents. A search which takes Stephen from middle America - Wichita, Kansas to the center of Africa, a tiny town on the west side of Lake Victoria and Home again. Stephen does not meet in Africa anyone like David Anderson, but he does encounter a Jewish hotel owner who is terrified of what may happen to him now that the leading political party has adopted Uhuru na kazi for its rallying cry. But this is really getting away from my thoughts about David.) I recalled, as I drove to Troy the hours I spent in David Anderson's office while working for him in Nairobi, Kenya. Each time a visitor would come into the office David would greet him or her, look into the visitor's face and as soon as that person began to speak David would glance down at the top of his desk or begin to doodle with a pen or pencil. The visitor would stop talking. David would glance up and the person would begin speaking again and as soon as he did David would look at the top of his desk. i wondered what it all meant. Was David using some sort of psychological warfare? Was he trying to see how much the person cared about what they were saying? So one day i said, You know it is disconcerting to your visitors every time you glance down at your desk while they are speaking. I know, he said. I can' t help it. If I look at them while they are speaking I become entirely engrossed in their faces and I can't hear what they are saying. So you see, I really have no choice.

i believe, upon reflection, it was David's honesty which opened me to be allowed to write... the truth.