9 - Africa!

 

     Wesley got a big scare on the afternoon outing. He saw the end of a woman's toe in the corner of his vision when driving, (The woman was sitting behind him, one level up) and I thought he was going to dive out of the moving jeep. He later told us black mamba's, when ran over, sometimes wrap around the axle and get into the open jeep

 and by then it would be very mad.  If that happened, it could take out a lot of people. A story was told of a black mamba getting into a truck load of 57 farm workers. It killed them all. One was recently found at Rafiki. Doug and others managed to kill it with a high pressure hose.

     A group of Masai warriors came to our camp that night, in their full dress costumes, and talked and danced for us. They pulled Barbara up to dance with them. These warriors were very tall, and part of their dance involved jumping very high. Barbara did well, but she could not jump as high as these warriors. Good thing. They might have taken her home with them if she could have jumped high enough.

 

     We flew back to Nairobi. When we stepped off the plane, our regular driver was waiting. I proudly introduced him to the five new women, my five new "wives," and told him I had spent all my cows.

     Back at Rafiki, we had e-mails waiting. Our kids, Corey and Kinley,
 were on pins and needles, and wanted to know as soon as we were off Safari.

     I had befriended our guards, and regularly sat around and talked to them at the gate, before they started their nightly rounds. The women missionaries, they said, offended them because they never came out and visited them like I did. I told them it was a cultural thing.  In America, a  lone woman just does not normally go out in the dark and sit around with a group of strange men. They laughed at that.

     One asked me if there were people like him in America. "Yes, many." "Well, how did they get there?" I explained to them they would not like to get there the way they did. I told the whole story, and I had to start way back.

     Well, it was way after dark, and we all knew they should be patrolling now, but I had one more story to tell, and they listened eagerly. Suddenly, right in the middle of my story, I realized they were no longer listening to me. They were staring off down the road toward the middle of the camp. I stared also, but could hear or see nothing. Fully three minutes later, I began to hear footsteps coming up the path. I looked around at the guys, but they were just gone. Every one of them had melted off into the darkness, with nary a sound. Turned out, Doug, their boss, was coming. They must have heard him when he came out his door. I think we have also lost our "night hearing."

     Our Rafiki, we found out, was the only one of the ten that had not been broken into. Neutralize the guards, then rob everyone. In addition to the high rock wall, which the others did not have, there was a security service that could be called, if there was time. It consisted of a truck load of big men with big sticks. Gun use was rare. Usually, only the military and the police had guns. Yeen Lan said she could have gotten guns for the guards, and could have had broken glass embedded on top of  the wall, as most rock compounds in Nairobi had. But she felt guns and glass was just in violation of what we were about.

     She did allow plants to be planted inside the wall, with long sharp spikes on top. Jumping off the wall inside into the dark could be a very painful experience. The houses were virtually burgler proof, complete with panic buttons.

     The rock wall was possible because Rafiki sat in the middle of a rock quarry. Workers used very heavy, long pieces of rebar, sharpened on the end, to drill blasting holes into the rock. Men punching holes in the rocks could last at that about four years before being totally broken down. Life expectancy was in the 40's. It totally amazed our kids that a man as old as me, probably the oldest person they knew, could still run. Even play Basketball.

     Police often use instant justice. If they pretty well had a robbery pinned on someone, a bullet in the head greatly speeded up the wheels of justice.

     I got to noticing during the afternoon play period that most of the kid's soccer balls and basketballs they were playing with were partially deflated. I dug around at school until I found a pump and inflation needle, and headed out into the masses of kids. I started pumping up balls, and the more I pumped up, the more balls they were showing up with. I think they were running to the houses and digging them out from everywhere. At long last, completely exhausted, I pumped the last pump on the last ball. Within minutes, they started showing up for a re-pump. Then I realized. Many of the trees in the compound were thorn trees, and almost every ball had a hole in it.

     Barbara found three bottles of bubbles in an old chest in our guest house, and She took them out to where the kids were. I've just got to tell this story in Barbara's own words -

     "Oh my goodness! I was more popular than a rock star! It really was fun but somewhat taxing. I got my reward when a little girl named Susan laughed at the bubbles. It made my heart soar. Susan's mother was killed by her father when she was in her mother's arms. She had been at Rafiki just more than a year now, and she had not smiled once that first year. To see her beautiful face light up was such a treasure!" CONTINUED

* Bottom left photo is a tea farm