It’s My Birthday and I’ll Cry if I Want To or Chicken Dinner Special Birthday Surprise

Feb 12th 2009 – Actually yesterday was my birthday and I didn’t cry, but I did wake up after some vague, pleasant dream thinking ‘oh great, I’m still in Kenya’ and being slightly depressed. I actually meant to write this on my birthday but got wrapped up in a birthday surprise Safari Scramble. Some pics of this and more at http://picasaweb.google.com/MaiersInAfrica. Today is Susy’s birthday and she is really, really, really old.

We are still trying to work out the final details for leaving Mbita for awhile. Our plan is to head to Kisumu and then Mombasa by train. After a few days there most of us head to Tanzania for a little while. Ashley and Travis will head home after their visit to TZ (they head back a month before we do), Joyce and I will probably be back in the Mbita / Homa Bay area at least for part of the time. Morgan and Nick still sort of up in the air. Timing and transport are still being worked on and will probably be worked on until it actually takes place. It seems here plans are always tentative until they actually happen.

The day was actually somewhat productive. I worked with our Polytechnic manager for a while developing forms for the financial aspect of the school. We’ll have to wait and see how well and accurately they get used. I’m hoping to get a little time with John before we take off to review and help fill out some of the info. This might have to wait until Joyce and I return later, probably in April.

Joyce helped with some other Polytechnic typing – the employment agreements for the teachers and manager. Only about 6 weeks have been spent getting the samples from the Homa Bay Diocese. John has been working for almost 2 months already.

Morgan spent some time with the Dressmaking and Tailoring students helping them make some book bags for the kids.

So, pretty good activity compared to most days around here.

Breakfast and lunch were pretty much the usual and is growing very tedious to me and I find myself not eating a lot. As I’ve mentioned I’ve dropped some wait, definitely some muscle, which I didn’t have much to spare, along with fat. I can almost put my hands around my thighs now. Looking forward to having some people back home try to fatten me up a little. Everyone else has also lost weight except possibly Nick.

In the afternoon things took a turn for the better when I was presented with an invitation to a special birthday Safari Scramble. It was set for late afternoon and said to be ready for anything. So after making sure that I got my work done with John (the polytechnic manager) I started getting ready. I didn’t know much other than to be prepared and at the mongoose hole (that’s a story already told) at 4:45 pm. I had some time so I read for a while and thought of what I might need. Since I had no clues about the Safari Scramble, since this was a first of its kind to take place, I had to go with my gut. I ended up with just a few essentials – my Swiss Army knife, Burt’s Bees lip balm, my wallet, a tube of Neosporin in case of cuts or scrapes (I call this the wonder drug and find many uses for it), 2 pairs of reading glasses, a pen and pad, my Chacos rather than my flip, a head lamp, and a Obama sticker on my shirt. I tried to bring my trusting flat magnifying glass that I’ve been training for Survivor with, but it was nowhere to be found.

Turned out to be a challenge course set up using a GPS to find my way around and various tasked to complete at each waypoint. After a brief training by Travis on the use of his GPS I was off to the first location – Father Charles’ garden. Here I had to get a flame using my magnifying glass that magically appeared in 10 minutes. I was granted an additional 5 minutes for climbing to the top of the old windmill and singing Happy Birthday to myself. I knew my chances of success were slim as it was later in the day so the sun was not that hot and it is rare in my practicing that I ever got a flame this fast. I failed, even with the extra 5 minutes. The consequence was having to have Chicken Dinner’s favorite drink, a Ginacca. I was a little cocky and used much more than the required ½ shot of gin in my first attempt. I had so much that I had to squirt a little of it out after I swished it before I could swallow. Even though I had a very oversized shot, Morgan with mortified with me and could not believe that I would desecrate the supreme Ginacca protocol by spitting some of it out. She said she’d be totally ashamed to have to even report this to the almightly Ginacca creator Chicken Dinner and insisted I have another one to redeem myself.

The rest of the event went up and down from there, but I feel like I had a respectable outing considering my aging body and the fact that Ginaccas were required after most of the tasks regardless if I passed or failed. The second event require that I pick up, or do my best to pick up, a child, a chicken, a dragonfly and a cow. The child was the easiest of the four, even though my first child, Byron, was said to be a baby, not a child and I had to pick up a different one. The chicken was probably the toughest, but with Eli’s help on 3 of the 4 items, I succeeded quite well and got to have a Ginacca as a reward.

A couple more waypoints, a couple of samosas and a trivia challenge got us to our final destination, a bar in mid town Mbita. This place serves Obama beer for 200 shillings a pitcher. My task here was to get a family portrait with as many Obama relatives as possible before the rest of the family could finish the first pitcher of Obama. I got a photo with 9 relatives. Not a hard task since this is Luo country and they will all claim to be related to Obama, especially if you find them drinking in a bar. Since this was not the top level of achievement of 10 or more Obama relatives, I had a to pay penance for the grand prize with another Ginacca and a mug of Obama beer. This beer sucks by the way and is served warm. After several Ginaccas there was no way I was going to be able to down a mug of it and not have it come back up sometime later that night. Fortunately I had a ‘Ask Elly’ token to us and played it so Elly could drink the beer for me.

After the second pitcher we headed across the stage area to a hotel (restaurant) recommended by Mavine, one of the kids, as having good food, particularly chicken. The chicken was out but the fish and meat (cow) was good. After a relaxing meal and a bit of time passing I knew I’d be okay for the night and didn’t have to worry about seeing my supper or Ginaccas rise out of me.

We headed home using the public motorbikes, well worth the 50 shilling a person, to get back to the parish compound. After a little reading I fell off to a nice sound sleep. But only for a few hours and then was wide awake sometime in the middle of the night for who knows how long.

It was a nice birthday day.

Reported as I think it happened,
Paul