Mud

Every afternoon here in Maseno it rains torrentially. Sometimes it also rains in the evenings, during the night, and in the early morning. The days are ALWAYS beautiful and sunny, but you do not want to get caught out in that rain.

The roads here are more often paved than in Tanzania but we live on a stretch off the main road that certainly isn't. Usually by the middle of the day the road gets nice and dry, but you've always got to watch out for the mud around the edges.

Two days ago as I was walking the mile into town to try and use the e-mail at the post office (which of course did not work, despite the fact that it kept ticking down my time on the prepaid card I was using). I was trying to stick close to the sides because there are bikes carrying people and heavy loads all over that really need the dryer stretches and won't think twice about mowing you down. The mud was fairly dry, so I wasn't too worried.

Well, aparently the light colored stuff isn't as dry. I took one step and was engulfed in mud halfway up to my knee on my right leg. I yelped and tried to pulled it out, but my shoe stayed put. I just stood there and stared at the watery hole which had completely consumed my shoe. It was nowhere in sight.

Now, I of course immediately started trying to do some damage control as far as looking like a complete helpless white idiot. No locals lose their shoes in the mud, after all. I stood there casually sipping water from my bottle, trying to figure out what I should do. Would they let me into the post office with no shoes on? Of course, it's Kenya, but a white person with no shoes would cause even more attention than normal. I really wanted to just walk away as quickly as I could to get away from the scene and limit my embarrassment, but these are my only shoes at this point, so that just wasn't an option. I ruled out digging it out with my hands, and decided to walk back to the seminary and make one of the young male seminarians (who are always more than happy to be of my service...and ask me what I look for in a man, if I would ever have a wedding in Africa, if my parents would be upset if I dated a black man - you get the picture) dig it out. You are never as embarrassed when you have a person with you.

Just as I turned around to start walking away from the scene of my idiocy, a woman walked up to me and said that she needed to help me. I told her it was ok, but she insisted. She went and found a huge stick and rooted around for a while until she pulled out something brown and runny that you never would have accused of being a shoe. She handed the stick to me with with my dripping shoe dangling from the end, and accompanied me all the way back up the road on what I will forever refer to as my walk of shame.

Now, the area I live in is interesting because it is a high population density rural area. There is hardly a town to be seen and everyone farms, but every inch of land is planted on and since people don't own too many inches, they are all living on top of each other. There are people everywhere all the time. You could never find a place to be alone if you tried. This is why it is no problem for me to walk around by myself, because if anyone tried to harm me, there would be 15 other people within close range to rescue me.

So I walked back up the road with person after person having a great big belly lauch at the mzungu carrying her shoe on a stick in front of her with mud halfway up to her knee. It was the entertainment of the day. A man with a crippled leg was struggling on in front of me and he kept turning around and saying "pole, pole" which is what you say to someone who is hurt or having a hard time. I should have been politely saying it to him, but my situation was so ridiculous that I was worse off than the crippled man.

The lady who assisted me turned out to be quite the blessing. Her name was Mary and her brother is a grounds keeper at the seminary. She came right out and told me after she had said her name that she was HIV positive and had been walking back from the hospital where she'd been having her monthly checkup at the CCC. I had no idea why she felt the need to tell me this, someone she didn't know, but it seemed that she really did want me to know it for some reason, and we had a very nice comfortable talk about the CCC and St Philips's Seminary and her brother Naman the whole way back. She sits and sells fruit across the street from the seminary gate, so now whenever I walk past, she gives me this knowing smile and we both start laughing.

When I reached the seminary gate, I braced myself for all of the laughter that was going to be had at my expense in the coming moments and for all the teasing I expected to endure for my misfortune for the rest of my stay here. I was quite shocked then when one of the security guards came RUNNING up to me with a completely panicked look on my face demanding to know what had happened. The guy was ready to carry me back to my dorm like I was mortally wounded rather than muddy. When I got over to where the students sit and relax in front of our dormitory, instead of the knee slapping laughter I was expecting from them, they practically tried to carry me off to the shower and get me cleaned up and I had to take my shoes away from them to go clean them up mysef. So it turns out that I got to laugh at myself much more than everyone else ever did because they were so concerned for their little pet mzungu. They can and do tease me about lots of other things, but it's nice to know that if I come upon any misfortune, there are plenty of people around more than ready to rescue me.