Blog

Hello, hellooo, hellooooo,

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I’ve been under water for the last three or four days. Not in the wet sense,  Benjamin in The Graduate party escape, but auditorily. My left ear stopped working pretty much and I was going with it, then it flowered over to my right ear. Not a complete sound out, but like wearing a mediocre pair of noise reduction headphones in flight. There are things I like about it. Driving is a much more pleasant experience. Being unable to hear the rattle and crash of the systematic disemboweling of the pickup makes it possible to imagine it’s not happening. Talking on the phone is now completely intuitive, instead of only ninety percent like before.  Anyway, Dr. Hussein, the gentlest man, gave me some medicine which I put in my ears nightly, and so far, thankfully, there has been no change.

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We’re at it again with the mortar and the stones, and Al’s Birthday Mixer is purring like a Daimler V-12 (or maybe that’s the ear thing again). But if you had been here the last two days, you could have taken these pictures and posted them right here.

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Some old friends were back on the job. Murafu here finishing the concreting of the posts.

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Others were gathering, soaking,

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and distributing the stones for tomorrow’s work.

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Like setting corner stones nice and straight.

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Murafu was in the doghouse because he had come without his mason’s tools, so he had to take this broken trowel to be welded at lunch time.

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A kirai full of mortar.

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The walls were getting higher, so we pulled out the scaffolding that Opiyo made just before I came home.

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This is what the laser level saw this morning early.

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If you click and look closely, you can see the red laser beam caught in Gilbert’s surveyor’s measuring pole. We use this to set the level of each course of stones.

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Someone lacking in other skills was recruited to hold the tripod steady. It was really windy this morning.

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So more corner stones were set.

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The workers got smaller.

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Ali’s Birthday Mixer was cranking out big batches of cake mix.

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And, wonder of wonders, the walls went up straight this time.

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Just at the end of the day, part of the lumber I ordered to make the forms for the ring beam was delivered. I’ll pick up the rest tomorrow in Kitengela.

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Here’s what we got:

638′ – 6 by 1  – I ordered 1000′

285′ – 3 by 2

250′ – 2 by 1

40 gum poles (young eucalyptus trees) – I ordered 65

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What we didn’t get:

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8 by 1 – 250′

3″ nails – 25 kilograms

4″ nails – 5 kilograms

builder’s string – 2 rolls

the rest of the 6 by 1’s

the rest of the gum poles

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The wood, apart from the gum poles and some of the 1 by 8’s is gravalia, cheap and pretty good, and a 1 by 3 is really a 1 by 3. Much bigger and heavier (read: wetter, usually) than the scaled down US lumber.

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Total cost 35,980 ks…@ 79 Kenya shillings per dollar = $455.44

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Among all the bad economic news, here’s a little bright spot. The exchange rate at this time last year was 61 shillings per dollar. Your money, at least here. is going a lot farther. Even the skyrocketing prices of many things can’t keep up with this increase.

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I thought that with Brittan Stockert (Brit, or if that’s too cumbersome, B) arriving here, it would be a good time to look back at the others who took temporary leave of their senses and came out. The first, in chronological order, is Gabe. Gabriel Porter, and my Godson, among other things. Most of my photos of Gabe were lost in one of the laptop thefts, so I had to scrape together what I could find here and even resorted to some pictures of his dad and brother to fill out the modest photo-folio.

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Here’s his brother, Augustine, and his dad, Gregory. We were hiking in Big Sur, up to Skinner Ridge this day.

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Greg, Mr. Porter, and Chris, Mr. Lorenc, trying to track down the dark chocolate.

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It seems as though they let just about anybody join in the hike that day.

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Here, finally, is the man himself. Gabriel Porter. Geb, to all here who soon loved him, and still miss him, with Wilson, his cohort in the removal of much bad acacia.

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Pappa bear, momma bear, baby bear.

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Gabe, where, like most of us, he left something of his heart.

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Monte’s up next, fiollowed by Migdalia and Janine, and we’ll wrap it up with Pat’s fairly recent visit.

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Until then,  go ahead and yell whatever you want, whatever’s gnawing at you, at the top of your lungs. No one here can hear you anyway.

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Quietly yours,

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David