March 24

Your letter dated 2/29 arrived today. It feels like I'm in a very strange time warp, with everything all jumbled up. A man came up to the house selling cards. He knew a sucker when he saw one; I bought some. Last weekend was a good letter-writing weekend, so I was all out of cards. I can never get rid of stationery at home, like I can here. An interesting saying I found on a kanga is "Mdudu ya sikio hapendi something", which is "Earbugs don't like crowds." I'm still working on the meaning of that.

The rainy season has definitely started with rain every day last week, somewhere, anyway. It seems like it often rains in one part of town, but not the other. Yesterday was very overcast all day, after showers in the morning, so it was cool. If the sun comes out, the humidity is so high, that it feels like 100°. The construction workers are still trying to resurface the road near our house, but I think they lost the race.

We did hear some reports that people were short of food, due to drought out in the country, but no one has be able to verify that, when they spoke to their family. We got some nice bananas at the market on Saturday...short, fat, yellow ones, bursting out of their skins, with a real fruity taste, strange for a banana. The kind we have at home seem tasteless, compared to these.

I received Dave Barry's Travel Guide today and have read it. There's more time here for that sort of thing, especially since when I went to the Post Office to pick up this mystery parcel, Mary and John were mailing two boxes, which was an even bigger production, so I read the first ten chapters by the time they were finished, in addition to assisting them with wrapping and taping, which all must be done after the customs inspectors verify that no contraband is being shipped away. It is a mystery to us, what they are looking for... dust, mosquitoes, goat doodoo (some parts of the book struck home).

The bank statement was interesting. Without the one from January, I can't keep very good track of what is going on, except to be relieved that I am still in the black. I guess July is soon enough to sort it out. Cultural Lesson #43 In addition to the slogans on all the ladies' wraps, there are slogans painted on all the buses, like "God programs safaris" and "Supreme Queen". My favorite is "Mobile Ghetto", and I hope the guy that ordered that has a sense of humor.

The rain stopped after Sunday. Everything is really green now. Last week, it was all brown, like Fort Worth in August. Unfortunately, without the clouds, it's still really hot and humid. The big puddles in the road are filled with thick, slimy, red mud. The highway construction people are plugging along. It's really strange how every 50 feet of road is at a different stage. Some (one or two) are completely done, some are graded, some are leveled off, and some are not touched at all. The suspense is getting to me. It can't possibly work.

The big headline in the paper today was about how someone blew up a toilet in City Hall in Nairobi. Devastating! I'll send you a copy later. Here is a very bad picture of a wildebeest (from a moving train). Slight better looking in person.

Your letter came today and I just mailed a letter, I think. This is going to be too confusing. The snow sounds wonderful right now. No rain with lots of sun again today, after such dismal weather on Sunday, that I didn't think the sun would shine for a month.

If you don't come, then I can write lots of cultural lessons for you. Uh oh, I can't find my list right now. The housekeeper has been cleaning again, and when she rearranges things...Oh, all is not lost, I just found it. An early lesson is what to do when your car breaks down. What you do is break some leafy branches off trees and stick them on the car, and, also, lay some out on the road like hazard markers, since you leave your car standing right in the middle, where it happens to stop. Besides just being a marker of something unusual, I wonder if there isn't some philosophical commentary here. Maybe once it breaks down, the driver feels like the chances of it moving again are slim and it becomes "planted" in a way. One truck sat in the road for two weeks, during which time its wheels and axle disappeared, but they eventually reappeared, and it moved on. Maybe the chances of rooting are lower than they used to be. Along the road, in a couple of places, there are carcasses of automobiles that have been stripped down to the frame. In Arabia, they also had deserted wrecks. Here they are not as common, but more stripped, down to the only piece which can't be carried off.

Another difference between here and home...there are cats that live on the hospital wards, I think to keep the mice and rats away. I only see one or two on the men's side, but there must be a half a dozon on the women's ward, including a lot of kittens, that race around and play under the beds. They've never let me get close enough to pet them, though. I guess they must go outside to the bathroom. Although the wards are on the third floor. Another mystery to solve.

I haven't heard from you in two days, at least. I guess you must be working. I hope you didn't decide not to come on account of my letter. I didn't want to make it sound terrible. Especially for a short stay, there are so many neat things to see that the hassles are pretty insignificant, and there was only one man that died of cerebral malaria during ward rounds on Friday. (Just kidding). Although it does seem that the problem will get worse with the rains. Yesterday, there were clouds all morning. No rain at home, but lots at the hospital. Saturday is the time for it to rain, if it has to. Time is passing fast now, so I am taking a lot of pictures. I take my camera on walks on the beach and am meeting a lot of the neightbors by giving them pictures. Just call me Matthew Brady.

I hope your knee is all well. My right knee is bad, too. It aches a little if I climb a lot of stairs, and creaks a lot. Grandma told me that everyone in the family has bad knees. I guess if it ever swells up, I will worry about it. Talking about walks, the electricity went off last night, so I walked down the beach. The tide was out and the moon is almost full, so it is good for walking. The power was off all day today, so after we had lettuce salad and fruit salad for supper, I walked up to the service station on the highway to get some more candles. It was 6 km round trip, a pretty long walk. I saw my first snake. It looked black, not very mean, and was running away, and the dog let it go. I saw some fireflies. There are only a few, but they are nice. The power came back, a few minutes after I got home.

We had a guard dog, sort of a German Shepherd, named Hexie (Witch in German) that I took on my walks.

The notable event yesterday was dessert, which was apple pie. John had shown the cook the bottle of cinnamon in the drawer last week, so he could add some. But when we got the pie, it had green leafy stuff in it. We think maybe it was thyme.

Indiana Jones existance. Right. When you are in the middle of living it, it's not near as much fun as it looks in the movie.

Notable event of last week. This is a little gross. I was up in the ward drawing blood samples for a project and making blood smears. They have to lay out to dry for a few minutes (or maybe fifteen, depending on the humidity). I left a few to dry, while I tried to find a place to get blood from a lady that was hard to stick. When I came back to finish fixing them, most of the blood was gone off the slide, because the flies had come and sucked it up!

Saturday, it rained a lot and turned the road near the hospital back to mud. John thinks it looks like chocolate mousse. After it is churned by the cars, it is the slimiest-looking mud I have ever seen, really glossy. I think it looks like fudge, after it's been beaten, before you pour it into the pan. Do we have a food fixation, or what? The roads near the house are all dried out. They are not even corduroy roads, they are eggcrate roads.

Here are some picture of huts at the hut museum.
(Pictures at this website are lots better than mine.)