From Silicon Valley to Swaziland - Rick & Wendy Walleigh (motivational books for men .TXT) 📗
- Author: Rick & Wendy Walleigh
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The warden’s house was spacious with lots of beds for the eight of us. Wendy and I got lucky and slept in the master bedroom. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, the house came with comforts. The caretaker was our cook, and he had a stove that ran on bottled gas. The diesel generator ran when we needed light. There was even a hot water heater that consisted of two recycled steel drums with a fire pit underneath. When we wanted to take a hot shower, we just asked the caretaker to build a fire.
The major attraction of the house was a porch with viewing deck above, which faced a waterhole. We looked forward to seeing the game in close proximity, but based on experience, we knew that came with potential downsides. We asked the caretaker if it was necessary to close all the windows at night to keep out baboons. He said baboons weren’t a problem but not to go out after 11:00 p.m. because that’s when lions often came to the watering hole. Every night, we were all safely locked inside the house well before 11:00 p.m.
After settling into our rooms and having a nice “sundowner” gin and tonic on the viewing deck, we all sat down to dinner on the front porch. Only one couple knew everyone in the group. The rest of us felt like we were part of a group that had been assembled for some auspicious (or suspicious) activity that was about to unfold. It was like the opening scene in one of those movies where someone in the group gets murdered in the middle of the night and the rest of the group is trapped and can’t leave.
As we ate and drank, the mood lightened up, and we became fascinated by the geckos climbing on the brick wall next to the dining table. Five geckos were congregating around the lightbulb, which naturally was attracting large moths and other insects. The geckos were like a group of teenage males out for a Friday night adventure. They were hanging out together but competing at the same time. We became fascinated as they would carefully stalk the moths so as to not scare them off and then pounce when they got just close enough. The competitive stakes were high because the gecko that captured each moth got to eat it all. All of the geckos were incredibly fast, but there was one who outshone the rest and got to eat a lot more moths. Another was very clever and was able to catch a cricket. As the alcohol flowed, we became more and more engaged and entertained by the details of the digestion as well as the capture. The geckos invariably caught the moths by the tail and then proceeded to devour them like a snake swallowing a pig. The moths continued to wriggle around and flap their wings as if to escape, but none ever did. Once they were caught by the geckos, the end was inevitable.
The waterhole adjacent to the house did not disappoint. During the day, various animals wandered up to have a drink or a splash and then wandered away. We saw impala, waterbucks, and warthogs. But the real action was at night. In addition to the smaller game, a family of elephants visited both nights; and on Saturday night, we were visited by a herd of fifty buffalo.
Elephants and buffalo weren’t our only night visitors. During dinner, one of our fellow guests used the bathroom off our bedroom. Shortly after emerging, he stated that there was a “monster in our bathroom sink.” I went in to check and everyone on the veranda heard when I yelled out a two-word expletive. In the sink was what appeared to be a very sturdy spider more than six inches in diameter. Upon further observation, it might have been an insect since it seemed to walk on only six legs. But then there were the two additional forelimbs that ended in menacing pincers, certainly for grasping and conveying prey to its mouth. It could have easily been a model for those movie creatures that come from outer space to take over the world. Thank goodness the light was on.
I didn’t know if this creature was poisonous or would bite, but I didn’t want to find out. Before doing anything, I had to get a picture, but then I planned to smash it with my heavy shoe. I was shocked when one of the women in our party intervened. She knew that it couldn’t stay in the sink, but she didn’t want it killed. Being braver than I, she managed to trap the creature in a covered plastic bowl and deposited it outside at a safe distance from the house. I showed the picture to the rest of our party, but Wendy didn’t want to have nightmares (who knows, it might have had a mate lurking nearby) so she didn’t even look at the photo until several days later back in Nairobi.
The next day, we discovered that the other bathroom had more but less threatening visitors, tiny frogs hiding in the corners and crevices of the sink, tub, and toilet. The poor fellow, who had discovered the creature in our sink the night before, also discovered the first frogs. He was doing his business when apparently a frog leaped out at him as he flushed the toilet. We don’t know who was more frightened. Upon more careful inspection, approximately twelve tiny frogs were discovered. From then on, most of the women were a little nervous about sitting down.
A Quick Visit to the United States
And Going Home to Nairobi
In June, our daughter, Diana, graduated from Ross University Medical School, an event not to be missed. The ceremony was held in Lincoln Center in New York City. Wendy left Nairobi earlier than I because she wanted to visit friends in California and my mother in Washington DC. I flew straight to New York. Wendy had numerous travel problems with weather and mismanaged luggage by a now-merged airline (whose nickname was north-worst), but after a last-minute $100 round-trip taxi ride from Manhattan to Newark to pick up luggage, we were all safely in New York with our clothes.
The graduation ceremony was wonderful! Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center is an elegant and prestigious venue for a graduation, and the graduates looked so impressive in their caps and gowns. Following the ceremony, we took lots of pictures with Lincoln Center providing many great backgrounds. Then we headed for a late lunch with friends and family at a nearby restaurant, the first of a number of celebrations over the next two days. On Saturday, we had the main party. It was a late afternoon cocktail reception. We had commandeered the bar area of an uptown restaurant, which was packed with relatives and friends, some who had known Diana for twenty-five years and some who had known Wendy for nearly forty. It was wonderful to share the occasion, and everyone who came was greeted by Sallie Mae, Diana’s recently acquired and appropriately named five-foot-high stuffed animal giraffe.
For those who didn’t already know, we recounted the story behind Sallie Mae. It started during a family visit to New York when Diana was eight years old. One of the sights we saw was the famous FAO Schwartz toy store with its collection of unique and amazing toys. Among the especially attention-grabbing items was an eight-foot-high toy giraffe, priced at about $2,500. Diana had asked me to buy it for her. I told her that I would buy it for her when she graduated from medical school since Diana already knew she wanted to be a doctor. My answer got me off the hook at the time, but I really meant it. I never forgot my promise and neither did Diana.
Some months before graduation, Diana let me know that she remembered my commitment but that she was releasing me from it because she wouldn’t have enough room in an apartment, and it would be an excessive amount of money to spend. However, I still wanted to remember the commitment with a symbolic gesture. I searched online for various types of toy giraffes. I looked at many small toys at varying prices, and then I found the one I had to have. It was a five-foot-high stuffed animal with a cute face and a reasonable price, shipping included! Several days later, Diana got back to her apartment just as the UPS delivery man arrived with a large box. Diana was frequently accepting packages for her neighbor, so she assumed this was just another. She was very surprised when the UPS man said it was addressed to her. She muscled the box inside and opened it carefully. When she opened it up, she smiled widely and felt a lump grow in her throat. She immediately called me to say thank you because without reading the card, she knew where it had come from. Then she began to think of names. She finally settled on Sallie Mae to represent the government loans that had helped to pay for her medical school tuition.
After my very short trip to the United States, I arrived back in Nairobi. It was very strange to be on vacation in the United States and go back to Nairobi to live. The Nairobi weather was very different from what we had left just two weeks earlier. It had gotten overcast, gray and cool (less than 70 degrees F). The locals called this cold and had been warning us that it would come in July. Occasionally it got “really cold” (almost down to 60 degrees F). It was amusing to see the locals bundled up in their heavy parkas and wool hats.
As I jumped back into my daily routine starting with walking to work, some things were very familiar, such as inhaling the smoke of open trash fires and the sooty exhaust from diesel trucks, which probably combined to equal the harmful effects of smoking a pack a day. Other things seemed new as I saw them in more depth, such as the terrain over which I walked to work every day. In some places, I walked on real, raised, concrete sidewalks. In other areas, the sidewalks were at street level but protected with steel posts that prevented cars from running over pedestrians. Some places once had sidewalks but were now covered with intermittent concrete and broken rubble over bare dirt. Along some roads, broad dirt shoulders substituted for sidewalks, but matatus cruised onto these recklessly to disgorge their passengers and zip away. In some places, the dirt shoulders were below the road surface and only wide enough for a narrow footpath with a deep drainage ditch on the other side. Along other roads, the only choice was walking on the roadway, facing traffic as we were taught as children (except that in Kenya, it meant walking on the right instead of the left). Usually this was safe, except when drivers made extra lanes to pass cars they didn’t feel were going fast enough. Even this was usually safe because you could see the cars speeding toward you and squeeze to the edge of the road as they passed. Unfortunately, that didn’t cover every situation, as we learned one morning when we walked out our apartment gate, turned right to face the traffic, and were nearly hit from behind by a matatu speeding down the wrong side of the road. He didn’t want to wait in the line of
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