A reminder for some and maybe new info for others: you can enlarge any of the photos by clicking on it, click the “back” arrow to return. If you want to feel better about how your own day is going, a click on the photo of Julius and me standing in the road should do the trick.

Well, there were 2.5 winners to last entry’s love fest, smarty pants quiz.

What do Ecalogue X (10), part of a series of poems by Virgil, a first century B.C. poet (and Dante’s guide), The Prioress’ Tale by Chaucer, one of the lesser known paintings by the 16th century Baroque painter, Carravagio, and a song from Deep Purple’s 1990 album, Masters and Slaves, all have in common?

Here’s winner #1’s response

M Gleeson

Ferrari full o’ chips?

Apr 26
The phrase “Love Conquers All” is in each.

Megan Gleeson, M.Ed.

Megan even had the added joy of pointing out her former teacher’s misspelling of Caravaggio in the full text of her response. As you can see, a true smarty pants. Megan will be receiving this beauty for her efforts.

And in a generous gesture by the awards committee, to complete Megan’s dream prize, the car will be filled with this wonderful assortment of Kettle chips

What do you say to that, Megan?

And the second full fledged winner is my own sister- in-law, Patti.

Who sent this on April 26
Lots of “love conquers all”!…
hope that’s close!
Hope you are well! We’re going to go cheer the Pads on this weekend while they take on the STINKING DODGERS…
Giants are doing much, much better too!!!
xoxo
Patti

Patti will be headed to future Padre’s games in this sporty model,

passing out these, the best chips in the world

to everyone lucky enough to be seated near her and Bob.

The .5 winner is Jim Micheletti, who in a somewhat slothful but terrifically intuitive and insightful approach sent this in on April 10:

I can’t recall the question, but he answer is love. Always love…

Peace and Love,

Jim Micheletti & Family

I wanted to enclose a photo of Jim, but he is, I think, doing time in a teacher’s jail somewhere in the Sierras for believing and acting on the subversive belief that students in AP English classes should be engaged in reading literature and writing their young hearts out rather than simply preparing for the AP exam. His .5 of a Ferrari and a half bag of chips will be awaiting him upon his release.

So, well done to all the contestants, and to all of us who were reminded where the real juice is.

Last Wednesday I was headed into Nairobi. Because it is expensive for me to get there, I try to fill up the day. Masa, the driver, showed up at a quarter to eight. It had been raining hard the last couple of days, and the five kilometers of dusty, suspension busting, molar loosening bull ride road, had, let’s say, softened. Masa and I and a
young local woman who was onboard after giving us the universal Kenyan appeal, the roadside arm bent 60 degrees at the elbow, palm upturned and rotated slightly laterally, part plaintive plea, part humanitarian decree,

“you’ve got room, we’re all in this together, have a heart brother,
transport is very expensive, you know I’d help you, c’mon mzungu,”

were making our sloppy way toward the main road.

Four kilometers later, a Daystar bus was angled across most of the road, settled in like a wooly mammoth in a tar pit. Heaving and groaning, but stuck hard.

There was maybe enough room to go around and be just a little bit in the ditch to the left. We crept by but got a lot in the ditch. I got out to push and see if we couldn’t right the listing ship.

The steps downward look like this.

Step 1 - you try not to get your shoes too muddy

Step 2 - you try not to get too wet once it starts raining again

Step 3 - you try not to get mud “all over” your pants

Step 4 - you try not to slip and drown in the morass

Julius, a regular worker on the property and his friend came along. He pitched right in, and his friend, too, after a while. Over the next fifty minutes or so, we got soaked through, made about fifty meters progress, but couldn’t get the left side of the car out of the ditch. No matter what.

A group of guys came by, including the bus driver who caused all of this hullabaloo, and told Julius in Kiswahili they would help, but wanted money to do it. He passed the info on to me. There was about as much chance of that happening as my pulling a spoon out of my pocket and eating a pound of the mud inside my shoe. I gave them a different
universal gesture, and, umbrella-ed, they moved on. We pushed and yanked and wedged and generally had a fine time without at all improving our position. After completely giving over to being swimming-pool wet, and covered in mud, my spirits improved, and I settled into the experience. The normally unflappable Masa, (right Gabe?) when he occasionally poked his head out the driver’s side window would only say, “This is tay ree bool. This is tay ree bool.”

The mercenaries cruised up again and, full of nobility and purpose, announced they were here to rescue us. Evidently the sight of a drowned, mud covered rat of a mzungu slogging and grunting in the mud for an hour pricked their seared consciences, and they pitched in–sort of–for free. They positioned themselves in spots where they could stay relatively clean while Julius and his friend and I hunkered down in the ditch like swamp creatures. But, rescue us they did, and we got Masa’s beloved Toyota mid-road again, and we were off.

I was sitting in the pile of mud I had brought in with me, enjoying the slimy, granulated goodness under me like a toddler with an extra full diaper.

I had meetings scheduled with our lawyer, an engineer, our architect, a guy troubleshooting a sticky problem for us, and Sister Mary, the head of Nyumbani, since Fr. D’Agostino’s sad and sudden passing last November. We couldn’t go back and change. The road was blocked. So we drove to Nairobi, heater blasting and feeling like we had just busted out of jail. We stopped at a kind of gas station in Mlulongo. I got out and Masa asked if there was someplace we could get cleaned up.

No, just the bathroom.

I found a five gallon bucket and took it with me to Gehenna. There was a spigot there. I took off each piece of clothing in turn and washed it in the bucket. My clothes weren’t muddy, they were mud. The bucket silted up like an old dam. We filled it and refilled it. I took off my shoes stuck them under the spigot and washed them inside and out. I was standing there barefoot, with very little on when a busload of Kenyan businessmen came pouring in to use the urinals. I kept at it and they seemed quietly convinced that nothing was out of bounds in mzungu behavior. Julius and I poured our strength into the wringing out, and I flapped each article madly, then put it back on wet, but considerably cleaner.

Exhibit A

The extra beautiful part of this particular scene was that even though the bathroom was in the top five disgusting places I have been in Kenya (I’ll spare you those details), I felt I should tip the guy we asked to compensate for our further desecration of it. After we were done, you could have planted corn in the rich layer of topsoil on that bathroom floor, but there wasn’t the time. I palmed him a “hundred” shilling note (a little over a buck), folded and muddy. I found out a couple of days later it was a thousand shilling note, and so now Masa gets his car washed there for free.

I missed the appointment with the lawyer, but made all the others, warming in increments as the day wore on. My big break came across the street from the Terminal Hotel, where Masa was parked. The sun came out and these big industrial vents, where I stood for half an hour barefoot, my shoes and socks laid out on the curb, blow dried me–all except for the socks, which were a complete loss. I squished my way sockless through the rest of the meetings.

We got back late, after nine o’clock, and as it hadn’t rained anymore that day in Lukenya, were confident we could navigate the 5 kilometers. I was…very tired. At almost the same spot, about 1 kilometer from the Nairobi/Mombassa Road, monolithic in the dark, was another Daystar bus, stuck as a duck, a goofy, unrepentant grin on its grill. Masa had to back up the 1k to the main road where we were supposed to wait for the bus to be moved, or for the earth to open up and swallow us, which seemed both more likely and desirable. I was headed to the back of the car to open the trunk lid so I could slam my head in it, when we caught a break. A neighbor, whose wife was also stranded here had driven his other car down to just the other side of the stuck bus. We slogged our torch lit way to his car and so I was delivered to my door at about 10:30 pm, almost dry.

The End

Posted on May 15th, 2007 by david
Filed under: David's Journal