No stress

Yesterday was a testament to just how different my personality becomes when I am here. I think I am not the only American, and certainly not the only Bostonian, who spends the majority of her days battling stress and action and high blood pressure like it's my job. We want things done RIGHT, the FIRST time, and if it doesn't go our way...we yell, we fume, we swear. Just think of how you feel driving on the Mass Pike at rush hour, and I'm sure you'll see my point. We absolutely thrive on the rage, and I am right there with you.

But here, life moves slower. Even in crazy busy Nairobi, I am told I walk too fast, talk too fast, and pay too much attention to what time it is. So I am trying to work on that, because seriously, what IS the point of getting a headache over every little thing? I'll probably add 10 years to my life if I can just take a deep breath and let the stress dissipate.

So, here is the story, and I think any therapist would be very proud of me!

We drove to Meru, as mentioned in my last post, to drop Toti's cousin Diana off at her boarding school. Meru is a large town at the base of Mt. Kenya, which is north of Nairobi about 4 hours away. It's a very beautiful area, especially now because the long rainy season has made everything so lush and green.

I already know to take time estimations here with a grain of salt, because you never know what you will encounter on the roads. The "4 hour" drive was actually closer to 6 hours. Getting out of Nairobi was difficult because a fuel shortage has left almost every gas station completely dry. You have to drive around forever to find a functioning gas pump. This also means that every car in the universe is going to the same station for fuel, so the lines are tremendous and the traffic to get around the lines means EVERYONE is stuck, not just people needing fuel. I know gas prices in the US are high right now, but can you even IMAGINE Americans trying to handle this situation? I'm picturing screaming, fist fights, and the occasional murder.

The heavy rains may make the Mt. Kenya area more beautiful, but they have made the roads worse. Much, much, muuuuuuch worse. Construction to build a super highway connecting Nairobi and Meru has left enormous, gaping holes for miles, which of course filled up with rain water and overflowed, creating havoc. So once out of Nairobi, we then had to navigate around potholes and construction equipment, through "rivers", and avoid hitting people walking casually across the highway because the sidewalks were basically lakes.

We finally made it to Diana's school, after another almost futile search for gas in a town called Embu, and I got to observe the process of dropping kids off at a Kenyan boarding school. We waited to pay her school fees, waited to visit with the headmaster, waited to talk to her teachers, waited to review her progress report, waited to check her luggage with the dorm mama, then went to buy the things she was missing, and finally the process was complete. We hugged her goodbye, promised to visit next month, and she happily went off with her friends while we piled back into the car.

It was hot and I'm still jet-lagged, so I managed to sleep for much of the ride back. Each time I did wake up, we had stopped to purchase something at one of the many road-side markets. First it was a huge bunch of at least 50 green bananas, still on the stalk. Then some cassava. Then a big bag of rice. I understand that food is much cheaper at these places outside Nairobi, but at this point I was exhausted, overheated, and just wanted to get back home. There was nothing I could do about it though, so I just mentally shrugged and tried to sleep more. When I next woke up, we had stopped to actually eat some food, rather than just purchase foodstuffs, and I was so excited to stretch my legs and have a good meal because we'd barely eaten for 8 hours. Well, what the boys wanted (and I fully agreed to) was nyama choma (roasted meat), but the thing about Kenyan restaurants is that menus are really just for decoration. You eat what they have, and they usually don't have what you're looking for. I'm used to this by now, and at this point I was so hungry I would've happily eaten anything, but we were on a search for nyama choma, and there was none, so we continued on our way still hungry.

Now here's the clincher. Even after all these setbacks and delays and whatnot, I was in a surprisingly good mood. We were 2 hours out of Nairobi when, of all the rotten luck, we hit an enormous pothole and punctured our tire. This is par for the course when driving in Kenya, so we just hopped out and spent the next 40 minutes putting on the spare because, of course, our toolkit was missing an essential part of the jack and the screws were on so tight we had to jump on the lever to loosen them. Oh, and did I mention it was pitch black by now? I tried to help by using the flashlight on my phone to let the boys see what they were doing. We finally got the spare on and were back on the road when, after another hour of driving in the dark with poor headlights, in the pouring rain, with a completely fogged up windshield (no A/C), we hit another huge pothole and punctured the spare! So, in the cold rain I held the flashlight again as Kip removed the spare and Toti went off on a motorbike with the busted tire in his lap. Another hour+ later, we finally got back on the road, completely soaked through and freezing to death because we had to keep the windows open to de-fog the windshield.

Talk about a nightmare. But through all of it, I kept smiling. And on the plus side, when we got home the water heater for the shower had been fixed and we got to take hot showers. Oh, and there was leftover matzo ball soup from the night before. :) Score!