Fourth party was off the hook, and despite our shenanigans I somehow didn't end up in jail. Fireworks are readily available in Nairobi because there's a large Indian population that has at least one holiday per year that they celebrate with fireworks (apparently there's another one where they throw paint at each other). So Saturday morning, after a quick brunch, Aaron and I hit up the fireworks shop in the local Indian market (Diamond Plaza), and it was like kids at Christmas, while Aaron's wife patiently waited.

We went pretty moderate - sparklers for everyone, some spinning cherry bomb type things, plenty of bottle rockets, some stationary rocket launchers, some small useless firecrackers that didn't hardly work, and the massive shower fountain thing, for our grand finale.

Of course, after the first bottle rocket, while it was still light out, the groundskeeper was warning me that the cops might come, etc.. So I hid the bottle rockets from Aaron for a while and we stuck to the occasional firework that didn't shoot loudly into the sky. Of course, 3 or 4 beers/hours later was a different story, the party was in full swing and we started lighting things up.

I had the brilliant idea to float fireworks out on paper plates into the middle of the pool - kind of a Cape Canaveral launch pad, if you will, and everyone enjoyed that effect. Pretty soon we were nearing the end of our stash, and we set up the grand finale - the massive shower fountain thing, and about 4 stationary rocket launchers on either side. Matt and Aaron and Brandon and I and a couple kids from the neighbor's apartments all got our lighters ready and did a fairly decent job of lighting everything at once, so all of a sudden the sky was ablaze with loud exploding rocket shells, and the massive shower fountain thing was flaming a good 15 feet into the air, in all its sparkly glory.

Which is when Matt had the awesome idea that someone should jump through it (it was sitting on the edge of the pool, thus jumping through it meant a necessary dive into the pool).

What followed was an extremely brief, heated debate about who was best qualified for this task, which turned out to be myself, given that it was my apartment and I could change clothes and whatnot. So I handed Matt my hat, emptied my pockets into the hat, and then without much thought ran and jumped through the flaming sparkly glory. The crowd was on the other side of the pool from us, so they pretty much didn't see anything until my body came flying head-first through the flames and into the (freezing cold) water.

Next year we're going to really have to up the ante. (Although, it later surfaced that Chad's boss lit off some fireworks - in particular the Osama Bin Laden rocket, which Aaron and I had been closely eyeing - at their own celebration, and had a couple dozen uniformed cops show up at their party, but no one was arrested in the end.)

(tomorrow: recap of Jonny's visit and our Mara self-drive. sans pictures, still haven't uploaded a single one this year)

I clearly derive far too much enjoyment out of writing party-invite emails:

My fellow Frisbeetarians, Countrymen, et. al. -

(please note you can read the important parts of this invitation in fast-forward by simply reading only the bold parts.)

Please note that we far-flung Americans will be celebrating our liberation from our erstwhile tyrannical British overlords, this Saturday in my modest back yard. It has a pool so if you'd like to bring boxes of tea to dump in there, that would be very patriotic of you.

There will be fire and various bitings provided (really, can you have a party in Kenya without bitings? it would seem a bit pilloch). Please BYO preferred type of meat for grilling, along with any sides and/or drinks you might care to contribute/consume. No July 4th should pass without fireworks - I'm not saying we'll be setting them off, but if they're there, and there's open flame nearby, you know...we will see where things go...see what happens...

Festivities to commence around 5pm-ish. I'm at Urban Earth Apartments on Brookside Drive off Lower Kabete (Westlands), as you come up the hill (from Lower Kabete) towards the left-hand turn, its a grey steel / red wood gate on the right, just before the street on the left. Crude map attached. Parking inside for the early comers - I am in Apartment 6 but as stated we'll be in the yard. 0735444730 for questions.

Cheers,

Knowles (aka bandana, oven mitt, etc.)

p.s. please forward on to anyone I may have missed.

I was driving with my children to my wife's funeral where I was to preach the sermon. As we came into one small town there strode down in front of us a truck that came to stop before a red light. It was the biggest truck I ever saw in my life, and the sun was shining on it at just the right angle that took its shadow and spread it across the snow on the field beside it.

As the shadow covered that field, I said, "Look children at that truck, and look at its shadow. If you had to be run over, which would you rather be run over by? Would you rather be run over by the truck or by the shadow?"

My youngest child said, "The shadow couldn't hurt anybody."

"That's right," I continued, "and death is a truck, but the shadow is all that ever touches the Christian. The truck ran over the Lord Jesus. Only the shadow is gone over mother." - Donald Grey Barnhouse

It is now time to talk about the bad day.

The best worst day of my life (so far, I think) happened in college. I remember it pretty clearly. In fact, most of the stories I remember pretty clearly happened in college. I don't remember a lot before that very clearly, for various reasons, but that's a story for another time, or perhaps not.

It was the second half of my junior year and I was rooming with both Dave and Steve (brothers) and one other guy that I won't get into just yet. He wasn't around much anyway. Dave was my year, Steve was 2 years behind us. Dave dated all kinds of cute girls, I wasn't dating anyone at the moment (though that would soon change for the worse), and Steve was dating this girl who I think was a sophomore at the time. Her name was Carrie.

Carrie was awesome, which was only enhanced by the fact that her family lived on a boat, which I think is cool and would totally consider doing myself someday. Why invest in real estate when you can make the world your oyster? So yeah, Carrie had that I-grew-up-around-the-ocean coolness that I think is hard for people to recognize for what it is unless they know it for themselves. Plus, she was just a really nice person (Steve later married her, smart boy that he was).

I only ever flunked one test in college, it was my second Accounting 201 test. I studied just like normal but my brain must have been turned off that day. I remember taking it, like any other test, and thinking I probably did fine, like any other test. I remember getting it back, too. The teacher looked at me kind of odd. I looked at it and the first thing I did was check the name because I didn't believe it was mine. I had literally flunked the test (I got A's on every other test in that class, and the rat fink of a man STILL wouldn't give me a re-take on that section).

So that set me up to just have a really nasty day. I was dead set on it. There I was, angrily riding my BMX bike way too fast to my job (background investigations for high security positions, pretty sweet job for a college kid, but landing that is another story for another time), and next thing I know I'm in mid air, the bike somewhere back behind and below me. My return to Terra firma netted me exactly one torn-up left hand, one ruined pear of jeans, and one knee bleeding through a fresh hole in said pair of jeans.

So I show up at work all angry and bloody and fuming. I wash myself off, tape up with what's left in the shabby first aid kit, and spend the afternoon scowling at my workstation. I didn't touch a case file that day, which was probably for the best as I'm fairly certain I would have made some stranger's life that much worse, in my foul mood.

Later that evening I'm back in Map cafeteria having dinner. I always ate in Map, I hated Hicks because it was out of the way, and all the Greeks ate there. Plus Map always had more girls, which made the food taste better, somehow. Anyway, I'm in Map and I'm pissed off at the world and sitting there by myself entertaining thoughts about setting things on fire. I had noted on my way in that they had Rice Krispies treats on the dessert table and had a distinct pause to appreciate the fact that at least something had gone right in my day of days.

So I finish my less-than-mediocre dinner, and I sulk over to the dessert table.

Somewhere, fate chuckled.

They're gone - cleaned out. The lunch lady is packing up the remains of cookies and whatnot.

"Where...are...the...Rice Krispies treats...?"

"All gone!"

"What...about...in...the...back...?"

"Nope! None!" she was happy to tell me.

I storm back to my tray and sit down and stare blankly across the cafeteria waiting for lightning to strike me right through the roof. Then Carrie walks up and just sits across from me with her tray and doesn't say anything (I think maybe she wisely perceived a problem). She just smiles at me in that "What's up?" kinda way, so I launch right into my tirade about the Worst Day Ever. I give her all the terrible details, complete with a show-and-tell of my bloody stump of a hand, and then wrap it up with the topper - no Rice Krispies treats. TOP. THAT.

Carrie sits there the whole time without saying a word, and then she just gets up and leaves. She left her tray there so I figured she must have forgot something. I wasn't really expecting her to say anything in return, I was just happy to have someone to unload on. I sat there feeling only slightly better. It dawned on me at that point that I didn't want to go anywhere or talk to anyone for the rest of the day for fear of things getting worse.

And then, the next thing I know, Carrie comes back holding a bowl, and she's stirring something in it.

She sits down, nonchalantly slides said bowl across the table, and I look at it.

Its freshly microwaved Rice Krispies, butter, and marshmallows, shining up into my face from that bowl in all its warm, gooey glory, and it was the best thing I had ever tasted. (I previously had no idea you could do that. In retrospect it seems pretty simple but on that day it was nothing short of a mystery of the universe, unravelled before my greedy eyes.)

We ate the rest of the meal in silence.

And that was pretty much my best worst day.

My alma mater runs an alumni update magazine type-thing that recently included a story on my work here in Africa, with a link to my blog, which may or may not have been a good idea. Let's call it a neutral one. I've just never felt very comfortable about promoting it in any fashion.

Anyway, if that's how you came to be reading this, you may be interested in my fairly recent post on what I'm doing here for work, or perhaps the full post that Rebecca pulled from my blog for use in her article.

If you're looking for anything else in particular, you have the search function up in the top left there, plus the post navigation in the side-bar on the right there, nicely organized by month. And you can always click on my profile up there in the left corner of sorts, and find my contact info, if you need anything else.

I haven't had much time to write as much as I wish I could, lately, but I'm trying to get back on it. Oh, and for anyone else, if you're interested in the article, it can be found here (pdf warning), on page 14.

It is now time to talk about the bananas.

When I was a kid, all the way up until I was 14 or maybe 15, I was pretty indifferent about bananas. Something happened, though, right around that age, that forever changed how bananas taste for me, and I have, since that day, hated bananas with a particular passion (only one other food shares that honor: eggs - but even those I eat occasionally in an omelet). This is the story of that something that happened.

My best friend Jacob had started going to a new church for youth group. His dad had been the pastor of the small church we had been going to up in Placerville, in the Sierra Nevada foothills - a solid hour from where we lived at the time. In a most untimely fashion, however, his dad had suffered a major heart attack and significant brain damage, and the church had eventually come apart during the course of his recovery.

So anyway, most of the families from the small church we came from were still floating around, trying to find new options, and Jacob's mom, trying to deal with the situation with his dad, had her hands full enough, and I'm sure was just glad that Jacob was interested in going to youth group in the first place, at any church for that matter. I'm not sure if she realized that the primary interest with it was social time with girls under the guise of church, and just didn't care, or if she didn't catch on at all, but the fact is, Jacob was going, and he talked about it with me.

So one time I had managed to stay overnight at his house and that happened to be an evening that there was youth group, so I got to tag along.

It just so happened that instead of normal youth group, it was game night, and the leaders had all these crazy games lined up for us. They split us into four teams, the red, blue, yellow, and green - I forget which one we were, but the teams were co-ed, maybe 20 or so kids each, and each team had a leader assigned to them. So we do the typical games - fruit loop on a toothpick passing, relay races with balloons between the legs, relay races with the wiffle-ball-bat-to-the-forehead-spinning, relay races with a bag of gross foods that you had to reach into and eat whatever you grabbed (I got prunes, thankfully not that bad). Things like that. The prunes wouldn't prove to be the last of the fruit I ate that night, however.

Points were being kept after each event and they were really building up the big huge secret surprise that each member of the winning team was going to get (last year's game night the prize apparently had been free tickets to Waterworld, a big water park in Sacramento). So everyone was super into it - hyper-high-school competitive. So much so that we practically forgot, at times, that our primary reason for being there was to impress girls.

Well, the scores are close coming into the final event - the banana eating contest. This contest was different, however, in that the whole team did not participate in this contest. Instead, the team chose whoever they thought could eat the most amount of bananas in the shortest amount of time, and then they cheered on their representative on stage as he/she competed against the other teams' representatives.

Somehow, despite my apprehensions, I was the clear choice of my team, comprised 19 or so people who I had never met before and Jacob. I should have realized something was up at that point, but they carried it off well - it all seemed really legit. Besides, this was important, awesome prizes were at stake. I could do this. And all the girls would watch me become the hero of their team.

So up I go on stage. They line the 4 of us up, each with a pile of a dozen or so bananas. But there's a last-minute catch. They bring out blindfolds and make sure we can't see anything, we have to peel and eat with our eyes covered. No biggie. I can do this. I can win this thing.

So they give us 2 minutes to start. They start up the loud music and the emcee is screaming crazy in the mic like its a horse race, all the teams are screaming like nuts for their person, and I'm ripping open bananas and shoving them into my mouth, swallowing without barely biting them in half. The bell rings at 2 minutes and they stop us to check the score. The first team has only 5 bananas, the second team 6 and a half, I have 6 and a half, and the last guy has 7, but its debatable due to part of a banana being left in one of the discarded peels. We stay blindfolded the whole time while the judges deliberate and declare that there must be a 3-way eat-off between the last 3 of us - one minute only.

So now its even more intense, louder music, more insanely screaming emcee, kids at a fever pitch, and finally the bell rings. More banana has gone down my throat than air in the last minute, I almost choke trying to swallow what I was able to cram into my mouth in the 5 second count-down to the bell. Team 2 has really upped the ante and is now at 9 and a half bananas, getting a full 3 down in one minute. But I held pace with them and was also at 9 and a half. Team 4 must have not been pacing himself, as he only got to 9 when the bell rang. This time - a 2 way tie. One more one-minute eat-off.

At this point I pretty much can't hear anything, its just a dull roar, me, and the agony of cramming bananas down my throat, which is starting to hurt a little. The bell rings. The emcee can't believe what he's seeing, we're now tied again, exactly at 12 bananas, both of us only able to get down 2.5 bananas this time. Judges confer, there unfortunately are not enough prizes to go around, so they ask both of us if we can go on, we both, still blindfolded, groan into the mic that we can, and we go into the final round of insane banana cramming.

It would be the final round because I ended it prematurely, as far as I know, there may have been many more rounds to follow it.

You see, at some point in that last minute, with my mouth full of banana and my hands covered in the sticky mash, I had a horrible, horrible thought. A thought too horrible to not instantly acknowledge, which meant ripping my blindfold off to see if my horrible thought was indeed true. And it was.

There was no one else on stage but me and the emcee.

There hadn't been anyone else on stage but me and the emcee, right from the start. The instant they blindfolded me, the other kids took off their blindfolds, put their bananas in my pile, and went and sat with their teams. The emcee, the music, the bell, the screaming, even the team 2 team member coming back up to agree to go on - all perfectly designed to keep me deluded and eating frantically. The whole thing was a pretty darn hilarious joke.

The only problem I had with it was that it was at my expense.

Kids at that age pretty much revolve around the central desire to be cool, to be accepted, to be popular and liked. A room full of a hundred kids laughing at what an idiot you are is pretty much the opposite of that - I stormed out of that place, never to come back again. I didn't talk to Jacob for a long time - our friendship kind of dwindled over the next couple years - for a lot of reasons, not any serious grudge on my part over the banana thing.

And I never again could stand the taste of bananas. For mostly physiological reasons, I think - I just burned out on them, kind of like I once did with Malibu Rum - but that's a story for another time.

I like to think that it was a lesson at an early age about what an incredibly stupid thing it is to make jokes at other kids expenses, especially as a youth leader, which served me well in my years as a youth leader. My general approach was to be self-depreciating, kind of communicate to the kids that "Hey, I'm not cool in this particular way, hahaha (laugh at me)!" I think maybe it helped them see that its OK to not be completely cool 100% of the time, because that's what they're trying so hard to be, and that's what they often think we, as youth leaders are, very cool young adults who bother to spend some time with them. Anyway, even if I never made a kid understand that, at least I never (hopefully) made the mistake of purposefully ostracizing a kid for the sake of humor.

[This is a "story time" post, a theme I used to try to write under regularly, but dropped off this year, along with everything else. You can tell because I try to start them with "It is now time to talk about..." and I try to remember to tag them, so that they all end up here, if you care to read the others.]

(Copy/pasted and slightly edited from a chat I had on gmail today because yeah, that's all I've got in me at the moment. I'm sick again, feeling completely drained, hopefully Jonny doesn't catch it. Also, disclaimer for Mom - everyone is fine now, except for me being sick.)

so jonny stayed up into the middle of the night last night doing whatever it is he does, and threw a last load of laundry in.

well, he goes to bed, and at like 4:45 or so, i'm not sleeping very well, and i start hearing someone calling my name from what sounds like outside. so i think i'm dreaming, but then i hear it a second and a third time. its jonny, screaming for me.

i jump up, wearing only my boxers, sprint down the hall towards the front, where he can only be if he's not in his room, which he's not, and find him in the laundry room.

the pipe that feeds the washing machine is completely broken off and water is everywhere, and he's trying to hold the pipe shut with his thumb but running out of energy. we can't shut it off, the part with the handle to do that snapped off too. if we take our thumb off it shoots water straight across the room at about 3 million KPH.

the water's about 2 inches deep at this point, fortunately the laundry room is sunken. i take over plugging and send jonny to get the guard and night groundskeeper. they show up to me in my underwear trying to balance on a small ledge so my feet won't touch the water, because while jonny was getting them i realize the washing machine is still plugged in.

so, i test the water with one foot, it doesn't shock me, so i yell at jonny to unplug the washer and yell at the guards to go turn the water off.

pretty soon they have it off but we're in 3 inches of water and its not draining fast. they tell me to call the super, who i do, and he dismisses me, says he'll call me in the morning. the guard / groundskeeper do a pretty good job of mopping the mess into the drain and then finally leave. by now its like 5:30am.

i try to sleep on the couch to make sure i can jump up if anything else happens, and am promptly woken up sometime after 6. the super tells me he'll get a plumber out, but it will take a while, as things in kenya always do blah blah blah.

i snooze on the couch for a couple more hours, then get started on fixing the internet, which is down, as it daily is, so that i can try to get my emails. then the day groundskeeper comes by.

he looks at it but his english isn't very good and from what i can tell he is telling me they are going to call a plumber now. "NOW?" i think - its already almost 10.

so i send the super a text along the lines of "dude can you confirm you've got a plumber coming? groundskeeper says they haven't called yet."

about 20 minutes later, its the super, and he's just shy of screaming at me about not trusting him, and he has it under control, and why would i question him.

he even has the idiocy to say its all "an issue that could have waited instead of me calling him in the middle of the night"

we get into this HUGE yelling match where nobody is listening to the other person, finally when i get a break in the convo i shout "LISTEN, I AM NOT GOING TO LET YOU YELL AT ME ANY LONGER ABOUT AN ISSUE THAT YOU ARE LEGALLY OBLIGATED TO SOLVE ON MY BEHALF, IMMEDIATELY. GOOD BYE."

click.

so about half an hour later i get this text message:

"Firstly my apology, intention was not to shout at or upset u. I felt we had already communicated and I assured you it would be sorted today. Plumber was notified I am waiting for him to get back to me. I felt sms showed lack of faith. be assured I am concerned. suggest we should meet in person in the near future to agree on how to handle these kind of situations. my apology once again for the shouting match, totally uncalled for."

(boo. yah.)

so i send a note back politely thanking him for doing what i pay him for.

plumber shows up before noon, turns out its an expat i've played softball with here.
they fix it in half an hour, jonny goes off to tag along with Shannon on a photo shoot in a school in Kibera, i shower and make the mistake of coming into the office.

the end.

Sundays are the best.

I should really get more work done on Saturdays, but lately I've woken up so tired that I get little done, and if anything its pressing, immediate matters (a months overdue haircut, refilling the drinking water bottles when there's none left, etc.). So the only bad part of Sunday is that I'm behind on work and I always tell myself that I'll get it done in the afternoon since I really took a day of rest on Saturday. So I feel a bit guilty when I end up on the couch sleeping or playing video games or something.

But besides that nagging in the back of my mind - Sundays are the best. Here's why:

1. I love the church I've found here. Its medium sized (for some reason I've only ever been in large and small sized, it feels like) and vibrant and it just feels real. The people are real about it, they're really joyful and it shows. Its very local, some of the songs are in Kiswahili (a fun way to learn), and I'm not the only Mzungu in the building, so I don't stick out like a sore thumb. Also, there's an 8 o'clock service that I usually try to force myself to get up for, because its just nice to have your whole day in front of you still when you get finished.

2. I miss a lot of foods, but one thing that has (almost) really stood up to the scrutiny is the brunch options. Brunch is the meal where they really pull the stops out - there's tons of great options for places to go, lots of them with nice outdoor gardens to relax in, and there's tons of great things to choose from, both on the food and drink side. My latest indulgence is these fried potato pancake type things called...I can't remember...but they're awesome. It starts with an F I think. What are they called? Hmm. Anyway, they're made up of shreded potato then fried in cakes and you have great topping choices like blue cheese and pear, bacon and cherry tomatoes, or lox and cream cheese. Oh man are they good. Its great to just chill with friends and talk about anything and everything.

3. My leather couch, which I sink into for the early afternoon hours, to zone out until daysleep finally comes, if the stars are aligned. I never sleep very long but its one of the best kinds of sleep. This reminds me that I need to get out the camera and document the new apartment for a photoessayic tour which I shall blog if I ever I get around to it.

4. The part I look forward to the most about is church, but it only edges out Ultimate by a nose, because Ultimate is where I'm really plugging in with my community right now (even guys from church go to it, so, yeah). Ultimate is where I've met most of my expat friends here in Nairobi, and its a great group of awesome people, and just a ton of fun. I haven't played Ultimate in any seriousness since intramurals in college, and I forgot how fun it is. Especially when you play it well, like these guys to - set positions, set plays, focus on technique. I'm even improving my forehand throws to the level of usually decent. We usually play 2 simultaneous games at once team size anywhere from 5-7, darks vs. whites, coed. The first game goes for 45 minutes or so with no one keeping score, and then we try to start a game to 5 or 7 at the same time that the other field is, so that we end about the same time, have a big water break, and then either the darks or the whites switch fields, so that you're playing a new team. That game usually goes for a bit until we play another game to 5 or 7, then a shorter water break for the die-hards and a long water break for those who need to rest, while the last game is started for whomever are the first 7 players of either color to get back on the line in the field.

That game goes until dark, and then we clean up and meander off to find food and do our Sunday night routine (mine: a shower, a skype call home, and dinner with an episode of Band of Brothers). Which reminds me, I need to show off my new TV when I photo-op the new apartment.

Ultimate has been a huge part of me feeling "settled" here in Nairobi - its where I've made most of my friends - the people who you have over for dinner, or meet out, or run into when you're out with others, or go on weekend trips with, even. I'm very thankful for it.

It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.” he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!”

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself. - Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place

Well. Today was interesting.

I went to Kibera, the biggest slum in all of Africa.

For a court date, where I was found guilty in a real live Kenyan court. Of driving with a break-light out, for which I was apprehended yesterday.

Here's the thing: in Africa, when it comes to dealing with law enforcement, there is the easy way, and there is the hard way. The easy way is to give them money and leave, and this is the one you are taught early on and are supposed to stick with. The hard way is refusing to pay their bribe, and forcing them to actually do their job.

When I was living in South Africa, I was new and didn't know much. The first time I got waved over for speeding, it took me a while to figure out "the process" - which is tantamount to lots of prolonged conversation about the difficulties of having to drive all the way to the station to process the international license and this that and the other thing, and then comes the part where you're supposed to give them money. I didn't catch that the first time and finally the "officer" uncomfortably said something along the lines of "Perhaps we can just sort this out here somehow?" Ooooh. Right. You want cash. OK. So I give him like 10 times as much as I should have, not knowing any better, and thinking I was making off like a fiend compared to fines in the US. After a while I got the hang of it and could handle the whole interaction in a couple of minutes with the right attitude, words, and small amount of cash ready to change hands.

You never really think of it as something wrong, so much as just the way you have to deal with things here. Its just the system of corruption that's been in place for who knows how long. And its everywhere - Kenya's no different. You complain about their greedy, extortionate ways as you drive off, you silently thank God you're not the matatu driver who's day they're really destroying, and you do the same thing the next time you run into the police. Here's some cash, leave me alone.

Because that's what everyone does. That's all everyone expects. Nobody ever asks them to actually do their job.

...

Yesterday morning I'm driving to our office on the other side of town from the one I usually work in (I'm in Westlands, the distant one is Karen). Of course, at one of the major intersections, instead of guiding traffic (there's exactly 4 intersections in Nairobi that I know of with working lights), they are strolling through the stopped traffic, looking for people to exploit.

"Oh crap," I thought as the officer passed me, "Brandon told me on Sunday that I had a break light out, and I haven't gotten it fixed yet."

Tap tap tap on the window. Yeah, I have a break light out. Pull the car over there on the other side of the road.

So I wait while he walks around the intersection hassling some more people, all the while holding my driver's license. Then he goes and talks to someone else he's pulled over for a bit. Then he gets on his cell phone to take a personal call. Then I go wave him down and tell him he's making me late for my meeting, which he pretends to care about for about 2 seconds before he goes to start hassling a bus they've pulled over. So I pull the "I want to talk to your supervisor" and he starts to pay attention to me and says we'll have to go to the station to write the ticket, and what a hassle that will be and so forth.

And stupidly, I finally had rash of furious resistance to this endless corruption, and I say "FINE, let's go." His jaw drops but I'm already getting into the car. So he too hops in my car and I drive him to the station while he's laughing away on the cell phone. He makes sure to get off in time to suggest it would be easier for me just to pay him, before we drive all the way there, and I don't even respond to him, I just drive the rest of the way with my jaw clenched. He asks me why I appear annoyed.

Of course, they haven't seen a mzungu in the station in who knows how long, so his supervisor is a bit off-put at the idea of actually writing a ticket, but they eventually do it, and I post my bail of 5000 schillings, with a court date set for 8am this (Thursday) morning.

...

The magistrate I'm sent to is in Kibera, as mentioned. Its one of the parts of Nairobi I've not been to yet because I'm not allowed to go there without WV security, who I had with me. It dawned on me in retrospect that I should have taken a camera, who knows when or why I'd be back there again anytime soon. Anyway, it was of course the same other-worldly feel that I've gotten in slums in other countries, but the sheer size of it was oppressive. There are no realistically accurate estimates for the number of people who live there, but its commonly accepted to be above a million.

We bounce through the stalls of chickens and bananas and sewing shops and family houses and as we dodge puddles I'm wondering what its like there when it rains (it will rain all afternoon in Nairobi today). We find our way to the courthouse - I'm supposed to be there at 8am but at 8:30 the building isn't even open yet. We stand outside with a hundred or so other people. I'm the only mzungu, again, and everyone's looking at me and talking about me and they all assume I don't know it. At 9, they open the gate, and everyone pours into the various court rooms, we find the traffic one.

We sit there, waiting for the judge to show up, for an hour and a half. The cops, the lawyers, the court admins, everyone's reading newspapers or chatting and I realize rather early on that this happens every single day. I work on emails on the blackberry, thinking about how much I'm not going to get done today, because I had to insist on pursuing justice, for a change.

They start reading names, and lo and behold - for once - the system actually worked, somehow my paperwork had made it from the police station to the courthouse in good order (funny how that happens when there's cash at stake). "David Charles" the court admin calls, he doesn't even try with my surname, which is actually my second middle name on the paper, they never even wrote my actual last name on the bail receipt from yesterday.

I walk up to the box, wait as they read my infraction in terse English, nod and mutter "sawa," and the judge announces my fine, and that's it. Some bills trade hands and I wait 10 minutes outside for a receipt.

We find our way back out of Kibera, and I spend the drive back to the office wondering whether or not its a better use of time / resources / etc. - for myself, for the organization, for the beneficiaries at the end of the day - to just pay the cop a few hundred schillings cash and be done with it on the spot.

I don't reach an answer.

Something spurred me to look something up on my blog yesterday and that made me realize how long its been since I last wrote - it hasn't been often since I started this thing that I actually missed a whole month, but I managed to do it again.

It has been straight crazy - non-stop - since I hit the ground here in January. I've worked in 5 countries so far (including here in Kenya), 2 of which - Rwanda and Malawi - were new additions to my passport. I've been working minimum 60 hour weeks just trying to keep up, and not doing a very good job of it. I've done a good job of forcing myself to take weekend breaks thanks to out-of-town trips and lots of fun with my (mostly) new friends here - Ultimate on Friday evening and Sunday afternoon/evening, softball on Saturdays, and the random BBQ, poker night, dinner out, dinner in, movie night, church on Sunday morning and looooong brunch after, what have you. (Whew, long sentence) I need to be writing about this stuff, but with the weekends full of all of that and the weeks chock full o work...my reading / writing time has plummeted.

So there's a whole slew of things in that last paragraph that I need to write about and maybe I'll actually try to get back on it this week (hah, yeah right). In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to take a spin back through the to-do list I made back before I last left the states:

- get a medical screening done for WV
check. only had one parasite - blastocytis, a pretty common one. probably got it in ghana or maybe tanz. had it all fall and didn't know it.

- see a travel clinic to update any of my immunizations
nope. i don't think i really needed to do this anyway, but don't worry mom, i promise i'll (try to) get around to doing it real soon.

- meet with my financial guy and sort all the 401k rollovers out
half-check. we met, i still haven't gotten any of the rollovers done. or my taxes! you get 2 extra months if you're out of the US but I'm fast burning through that.

- interview potential sub-letters for my place
half-check. had a couple people look at it but never got it rented. this was a major bummer but here i was way too busy to do much about it.

- host the NYE party at Lincoln center
check. i knew all of 3-4 people (Erin, Amber, other hosts) out of the 300 or so, most of my crew were at other events so it was mostly the other hosts' friends. i guess that's what you get for up and moving to Africa.

- schedule an appointment with the derma doc
not a chance. its fine though, hands are back to normal now that i'm back to the land of perpetual no-winter. its like the opposite of the start of Narnia.

- figure out how to transfer all my personal stuff from Outlook and OneNote to the home computer
check of super awesomeness. how i cleaned that bad boy out and actually backed up both those programs and all the user data locally is beyond me, but i made it happen, cappen.

- back up the home computer
dangerous no-check. it suffered some internal jostling on the way over and i've been having issues getting it running but the memory's still in decent shape so hopefully i have it up and running by friday and can spend my weekend doing my taxes. yay.

- get new headphones, an external hard drive, a projector to serve as my TV in Africa, and potentially a DSLR (woot)
check, no-check, check, check. got the newest shure SCL4 headphones and they're great, just like the e4c's were. didn't get the small external drive i wanted but i still have my 1.5tb here with me to backup everything. got the projector (albeit late, via a friend bringing it from the US, along with the headphones) - let me just say its the best consumer decision i've made in years, probably since i built the home computer. it is hours of endless movie awesomeness. oh and i used all my amex points from the accenture card to get the DSLR and some lenses, i've got about 8gb of pictures from the last 5 months waiting to be DL'd, edited, and flickr'd.

- find my old receipts and submit them for work expenses
check. no idea how i did it, but i got my monies.

- finish all the administration around leaving the company
same as above. i need to write about the feeling of walking out of that building for the last time. wasn't great - more like "did i just do that?"

- send some thank-you cards
no-check. i am a bad person.

- pay my parking ticket
no-check. THANKS MOM.

- find a new bank account that won't screw me on withdrawal charges in Africa
no-check. i still hate you BoA.

- figure out where I'm going to store my stuff
check! it now fits in a 5x10 instead of a 10x10. its sitting quietly in a unit across the river from the UWS. i'm hoping next time i get it all out i can find a way to reduce it to 5x5, i love reducing the amount of stuff i have. its the books that are an issue. they keep growing.

- start packing
check. holy cow was that a nightmarish last 72 hours of no-sleep insanity.

- find some jeans sample sales
nope. maybe in August when i'm back briefly?

- get a living will drafted
nope. arg.

- send my (late) holiday cards
the great thing about the cards i picked out for Christmas 08 (the first time i think i ever was going to try to send holiday cards, mainly with a "oh and btw i'm leaving the country letter" as the underlying motivation) is that they will work great for cards sent from Africa for this year's Christmas. its like i was planning ahead (maybe i'll even put an "oh hey i've been out of the country all year in case you were wondering" note).

- finish all the on-boarding paperwork for WV
nope. still haven't sent them my W2 or my personnel form. oh well.

- see Grand Torino
check. fun times with hol, man that was an unexpected ending.

- switch all the bills over to Dave's name
half-check. gas and electric yes, cable and internet no. need to shut off cable.

- figure out how to get out of my Sprint plan without having to pay
quarter-check. did it, but a few months late.

- eat slightly healthier and perhaps even get a few runs in
can't remember for the life of me. i think i was running. i know i was getting rides in with Kuz too.

Also, I have decided that I will be acquiring a pair of dogs once I get settled (so to speak) in Kenya. This makes me happy.
awwww man this one is a bummer. i saw all crap apartments, one of which would allow a small "house dog" (i don't think they had 2 rotties in mind). then i found the place i'm in now, which is super awesome, but no dogs. i'm going to keep an eye out for other places that might work in the meantime, but no dogs in the immediate future. given my work schedule right now its probably for the best. sigh.