I had my first contact lens mishap this morning. The left hand side lens dropped when I was attempting to wear it. It happened over the sink in the bathroom.
I was not given any instructions on how to act under such circumstances. So, I had to try and remember what used to happen when a former workmate dropped one of her lenses in the office.

The first step was to freeze in position. This ensured that I did not step on the delicate membrane. Next, I did a visual inspection over the sink and on the floor where it might have fallen. That yielded nothing. I inspected my body closely in case it stuck somewhere on its downward journey. Nothing. Next, I went on all fours and scrutinized the floor inch by inch. Still nothing.

To cut the long story short, my two-hour search did not turn up the contact lens. It must have fallen down the bathroom sink drain. I definitely saw it drop from the tip of my finger. Otherwise, I would now be on my way for a skull x-ray to determine whether it was sucked into my head!

For a moment there, you know I wished I were a dog? While on all fours, I just needed to have enhanced sniffing skills to find the lens. And, what is the big white globe they put over the bathroom light anyway? It just makes it too dim for you to find anything!

Now, I am back to wearing my good old spectacles. At least until I replace the lens. I have managed to prove to myself that I can just as easily cause the lenses to disappear as I do my specs and cell phones. Now that I think about it, many other things too! Is there a pattern here? Hmmmmmh!

I told you that I have terrible mental pictures of a contact lens drying up and breaking into many glass-like pieces inside my eye. I also mentioned I imagine that the lens might disappear behind the eyeball and get sucked into the brain. It seems like now all my worries have been consolidated into one nightmare. Dropping the lenses!

I finally accepted the fact that I am just as hopeless at keeping my spectacles as I am with mobile phones. I have lost count of the number of spectacles I have mysteriously caused to disappear. And I have been wearing glasses for about 2 years only! That aside, many honest people have led me to this conclusion: either my face was not designed for wearing glasses, or no glasses have been designed to suit my face. My bespectacled face always reminds me of my former high school deputy headmaster – a face I would rather forget. Incidentally, he did not wear glasses at all!
That is why I spent most of the mornings of the last two days struggling to learn how to wear my new contact lenses.

The contact lens wearing process requires that you open up your eye wide with the help of two fingers. Then, with the lens placed at the tip of another finger, you aim it at the centre of the eye and gently place it. Unfortunately, I tend to blink whenever I see the finger with the contact lens approach my eye. The blinking effectively ruins the gentle contact lens placement moment.

One of the options I tried is to move the finger into the eye quicker than it takes to instinctively blink. I finally succeeded after numerous eye-poking attempts. As I was bruising my fingertip against my eyeballs, I was also wondering how the Chinese manage to wear contact lenses. Those slits! Maybe it is because the optometrist who examined me was Oriental.

The good eye doctor did her best to tone down my fears about contact lenses. I have terrible mental pictures of a contact lens drying up and breaking into many glass-like pieces inside my eye. I also imagine that the lens might disappear behind the eyeball and get sucked into the brain. I would hate to have a contact lens as the only thing in my mind! At some point, she laughed and said that she would be glad to write a thesis on these freaky cases. I suspect she was serious though!

She also told me that if I cried I would have to do it with my eyes closed! She added that if it rained I was to avoid walking with my face turned upwards! These precautions would prevent the contact lenses from being washed away from the eyes. Of course she gave me useful tips on the care required to handle the delicate lenses.

This reminds me of some eye drops I used once. The drops were for removing redness in the eyes and had the same chemical composition as human tears. They probably hired people to cry into the tiny eye drop bottles before they discovered how to manufacture the human tears?

Every member of the congregation in the Nairobi church I attend usually receives a small newsletter from the ushers at the door. The four pages in this newsletter normally contain the day’s program, weekly and monthly activities, announcements and even job opportunities.
On the front page of the newsletter is always a small ‘food for thought’ story. I have taken the liberty of reproducing today’s story here:

Preacher

A preacher had succeeded in putting an elderly man to sleep by his summon. Preaching for a decision in the midst of his summon, he shouted, ‘Those who want to go to hell, stand up!’ The old man heard the ‘Stand up’ and did so.

He looked around, paused with a puzzled look on his face and said, ‘Preacher, I don’t know what we are voting on, but it looks like you and I are the only ones for it.’

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Check out this outrageous sign outside a church:

And this other one:

Check out this classic!

My conclusion? The guy who put up this sign might easily be the one who put up the other two.

Some days you just want somebody to hug you. Anyone. Yet there is no one.
You could ask someone for a hug you know?

The request will certainly come out with a lot of embarrassment. You might even end up with one of those unhappy extended hugging sessions that will take you the rest of the year to wriggle out of. You really don’t need that, do you?

On the other hand, you just might point yourself in the direction of a long and fulfilling relationship based on respect, admiration and mutual understanding – the rewards of emotional bravery and honesty.

A friend called Kabanga told me a story that I will repeat here. He owned a dog that had an unfortunate incident of its tail being run over by a motorbike. The tail eventually healed, but was left curiously deformed. The motorbike had broken the tail’s ’spine’. It was now bent at a right angle about a quarter way from its base. The new natural position for the dog’s tail was between its legs.

Kabanga claimed that his dog was very brave. It refused to let the tail hang between its legs forever. It devised a new natural position for it. When the dog was relaxed, its tail extended horizontally from the base and then dropped vertically to point at the ground; like a kitchen tap. It even learnt how to wag its tail for those elaborate happy dog moments. It would move the tail from side to side; like you do when you wave a tired goodbye. Kabanga described it as ‘car windscreen wiper style’.

This story was told to make me laugh. Yet, it remains one of the greatest ‘It is up to you’ stories I tell myself in a day like this. I have my ‘peculiar’ thing. Do you? I can choose to hide my crooked tail between my legs rather than shake it awkwardly in the presence of others.

You could ask someone for a hug you know?

But then sometimes, it is just good to treat yourself to chocolate or ice cream or cake.

You weight? Hey! You’ve watched it all week! Let it watch you today!

I was going through a list of reasons that today’s kids’ give for not doing their homework. One of the top excuses is, ‘The dog ate my homework’! It got me reminiscing about my primary school going days.
Back then, you could miss school because the cow ate your school uniform! Our village cows used to have peculiar eating disorders. Apart from eating clothes, a cow was fond of eating salt, soap, flour, vegetables and plastic bags. They loved sneaking into the kitchen. A rude cow would defecate generously on the floor and then deliberately make a crack in your plastic basin by stepping on it!

The explanation from the government veterinary officer was that the cows lacked calcium in their diet. The remedy was to buy a certain salty red brick that the cow would lick whenever it got the urge. The veterinary officer was an alcoholic, so no one took him seriously.

Our solution was to keep the kitchen door closed at all times. This kept away the cows, chicken, goats, dogs, cats and the occasional snake. Yes, our village snakes were fond of stealing raw chicken eggs!

The school uniform was the passport to an education. Every student had to wear it. The uniform was made from a beige or brown jeans-like material known as khaki. For the boys, the uniform set consisted of a pair of shorts and shirt that you had to tuck in at all times. The girls had a blouse, which they wore under a long plain dress. Only the collar and arms of the colored blouse were visible under the khaki dress.

For a strange reason, every student had only one set of uniform! The uniform was washed once a week. It was your responsibility to keep it ‘clean’ during the 5 school days. It was highly illegal to wear ‘home’ clothes in school. If something happened to your uniform, you either had to walk naked into school, or stay at home. Some students chose the latter and unfortunately, that was the end of their formal school education.

There were some common small accidents that involved the school uniform. Like slipping and falling, and then tumbling down a steep hill on a muddy day. Or falling into a shallow pit latrine. Or even setting yourself on fire while attempting a magic trick that involved kerosene and matchboxes. Not to forget, the cow eating your uniform.

Some accidents were easily rectified by washing the uniform. The only consequence was that you would have to wear the wet uniform to school for at least a day and a half! And that was during the hot season. Khaki took a long time to dry. Other accidents required extensive patching of the uniform.

I remember a case of one boy who was involved in a fight and his shirt was extensively damaged. After the highly entertaining and much cheered fight, only the collar of his shirt was left intact. The local tailor had to look for patches to fill in the rest of the shirt! The result was a multicolored shirt with a khaki collar.

It would have been easier for him to just get another shirt and stitch on the collar. But I’m not sure that would have been acceptable at school.

Are you wondering what happened when you forgot to wash your uniform over the weekend? You just needed to scrap off the layer of wax that accumulated on the collar with a penknife! ‘Coalmine’ was the funny name for that dark deposit!

We used to be tough then. You could have dismantled a village boy, put him through the office shredder and he would still be able to put himself back together, albeit messily. Look at me now! I even have trouble locating the button on a shredder!

My saddest moment when I go to my upcountry home in the unfortunate update of the people who have died since the last time I was there. It is especially heart breaking to hear about parents dying before they reach the age of 30. Such is our overwhelming reality as AIDS takes it toll.
Have you ever experienced a stampede at a funeral? I have. I tell you, it is one of the most comical, unfortunate, and devastating events I had seen in my young life.

It happened in my upcountry home, which is a coffee growing area. The landscape is dotted with tiny hills and the coffee plantations are usually planted in rows following the contours of the land. A typical household is located at the top of a single hill and there are coffee bushes descending half was down the valley.

My tribal customs dictate that we bury our departed in our farms. When a person dies, we ‘plant’ him or her in the garden! Of course the ceremony is handled with much more respect and dignity than you will find here. For that I apologize.

Anyway, the funeral I am referring to was taking place at a home that was right across the hill from my home. I happened to be observing the proceedings from a distance because I was scared of such events. I was later to claim that I stayed away deliberately because I had a strong premonition that something would go wrong!

The ceremony was well under way when suddenly all hell broke loose. The mourners took off in every direction. Most of them fled into the coffee plantation. From where I stood, I could see the green trees shaking violently from numerous collisions with the fleeing human beings. I could clearly hear the trees breaking as the mourners tore through a plantation that demands special care and attention fit for our local chief. I swear I heard a few bones breaking too!

The effect is similar to dropping dye into a clear glass of water. Picture the way the ink rapidly spreads and colors the whole glass in a short while? By the time many of the mourners cleared the one hundred or so meters of closely planted coffee bushes, they were in different stages of nudity. The coffee plantation, still recovering from shock, was now decorated with tatters of all colors and materials!

Well, it turned out to be a false alarm. The dead man had not come to life after all.

I am sure that you have heard a eulogist say that he wishes the dearly departed would come back from the dead to see how devastated the mourning crowd is. He or She would see the devastation alright!

I once happened to be acquaintances with an undertaker. He was in charge of the town morgue in my upcountry home. This is where all the dead were kept in preparation for burial.
His name was Ken.

Ken would close down his ‘office’ in the evenings and join us for some beers. He was one of those huge, untidy and friendly guys that shake your hand by pumping it up and down when you meet. You know the ones that also slap your back in hearty laughter at every opportunity?

To avoid the slapping, we would refrain from saying anything that would make Ken laugh. So, everyone kept quiet. Unfortunately, he always confused lightening with sunshine; so in the ensuing silence, he would tell his own jokes and proceed to laugh and thump your back just as you were about to sip your beer.

Ken had a load of cock and bull stories to tell about his ‘ordinary’ day. He would uncork the bottled up narratives for us each evening. He never had an attendant to talk to. You see, no one wanted to work at the mortuary after going through Ken’s ‘interview’.

One traumatized job seeker confided in us about the ‘interview’ experience. He was asked to demonstrate how he would move a body that had been under water for a long time. When he grabbed one of the bloated, ripe looking hands, it snapped at the elbow! He was left holding the gooey limb and watched in horror as the decomposed flesh began to disintegrate! The small pieces of rotten flesh splattered on the floor! Some of them landed on his shoes with a barely audible wet sound – similar to the one of thick saliva hitting a hard surface!

I remember Ken’s morbid stories about how he used to knock the corpses into shape – so that they could assume that peaceful pose that the dead have when they are laid out in the coffin. Ken informed us that people rarely die lying peaceful on their backs. He demonstrated to us all sorts of death poses and told us how he would straighten them out. Not very pleasant at all!

His favorite story was how he ingeniously dealt with a weird case of an unnecessarily tall fellow. This guy was so tall; he would neither fit in a coffin, nor in the hearse! Ken came up with the solution: He neatly broke the bone between the knee and the ankle on each leg and carefully folded them back into the coffin. Problem solved!

Such episodes were the main reason why we did not want Ken to pat our backs. We hated to have to wash our jackets every evening!

Just writing this story leaves me craving for a lemon to remove a bad taste in my mouth!

Here is a picture of a bus that swallows!

And here is cool picture of a hero on a rescue mission..

I guess he wanted to rescue the drowning guy whose head is hardly visible over the surface of the water. Can you see him on the left hand side?

I suppose now your day is not going as badly as you thought?

I am looking forward to visiting my upcountry home in a few days. Most Kenyans who live in the city have such homes. This is either where they were born, or where their family lineage originated.
I am especially excited at the thought of seeing my ageing grandmother. She is in her eighties now. Cucu as we all call her, always has good words of advice. I often find myself pondering over these gems until our next meeting.

Last time I met her, she told me about the things that give meaning to her in old life. God, work, family, and a positive attitude. She finds them in church, her small farm, herself and others. It really messed my image of the perfect sunset period for me – carved walking cane, rocking chair, big screen TV and a pretty young woman in a cute nurse’s uniform to fuss over me!

My granny loves her home. A week in the city will leave her wondering aloud about the happenings in her farm and to the people back in the village.

The city usually fascinates and intimidates the old people who live upcountry. All the electronic gadgets, the tall buildings and the many lights mesmerize them. His or her experiences in the city are narrated over and over again to anyone who cares to listen, or not.

A friend once told me about one such visit by his aunt. She was visiting the city for the first time in her life. When the auntie asked to be shown where the toilet was, she became very confused after realizing that it was inside the house. She was expecting an outdoor pit latrine similar to the one in her upcountry home.

After a long time in the loo, the auntie came out in serious frustration and declared that, ‘the relief had refused to come!’ Her seventy or so years in this world had not prepared her to a time when she would have to relieve herself in a toilet built inside a house!

The quick thinking of one young man saved the day. He discreetly arranged with the neighbor to allow the old lady to use the loo in her house. That way, the auntie had to walk out of the house and over to the house next door where she relieved herself. It worked!

When she went back to the village, she had an incredible story to tell about her nephew’s toilet. It was the size of a house! It was furnished and even had people to welcome you when you visit it!

Whenever I come back to Kenya, I usually try to catch up on what I have missed while I was away. My pursuit often ends up in me overfeeding on the local culinary delicacies. ‘Nyama choma’ ranks at the top. ‘Nyama choma’ is a well-done beef or goat meat roast, cooked over an open fire.
You can easily recognize a seasoned ‘nyama choma’ roasting specialist just by looking at his hands. They are usually coated with soot from the grill and have miniature fat depots in the crack between the fingers. The skin is hairless and looks rubberlike as a result of its close proximity to fire. Occasionally, he might have a bandage to cover a knife wound recently acquired in the line of duty. It is best not to observe these ‘desirable’ characteristics when the guy is cutting up your ‘nyama choma’ into small pieces for your eating pleasure!

Today, I want to try something different. What comes to mind is fish. I came to love fish when there used to be a food market next to the prestigious Serena Hotel in Nairobi. This informal market was conveniently named Serena B. Sadly Serena B does not exist any more.

There was one particular restaurant at Serena B that was famed for its fried fish. A former colleague introduced me to this particular restaurant. During my induction, he gave me some facts about what to expect. The first being that the fish is so big that it overflows the plate. The second fact was that the fish was very fresh; you could still see it flapping in its stew.

The fish was huge! Each meal portion consisted of half a fish. When placing your order, you would select either the ‘head’ or the ‘tail’ section. Me, I was a ‘tail’ lover. My former colleague was a ‘head’ guy. The fish was delivered at the table still sizzling. I guess this is what my colleague mistook for signs of life!

The fish was accompanied by the following foods:
- Ugali: a cake like dish made by stirring corn flour continuously in boiling water till it hardens.
- Surwa: a bowl of thin and innocent looking soup that could easily give your tongue third degree burns if you take anything bigger than a sip of the top layer.
- Wembe: a ‘yours-for-the-asking’ slice of ugali meant to fill up any spaces that might still be left in your stomach.

I will never forget the glee displayed by my former colleague as he expertly detached the fish eyes and gobbled them! According to him, this is the culmination of any fish eating experience worth talking about.

There is one fish eating technique that I learnt from Serena B that I am particularly proud of. Using our hands, we would carefully remove all the meat on the top side of the fish. On the count of three, we would quickly flip over the fish to expose the lower side. We would then proceed to extract the remaining meat. The resulting handiwork was a perfect ‘hair comb’ fish skeleton!

I have a selection of many other food markets for today’s lunch. However, nothing will beat those lunches at Serena B with my former colleague.

If I were Korean, right now I would be missing dog!