Tuesday...

Tuesday mornings aren’t supposed to start like this…

I answer my buzzing Blackberry just before 7 a.m., I immediately recognize the voice of the Samwel the fundi, only he wasn’t in Ilkiloret.
Me: Hello.
Fundi: Jessica?
Me: Samwel. Where are you?
Fundi: I’m in Ngong. I came this morning. My mother died.
Me: Oh Samwel. I’m so sorry.
Fundi: I want to travel home for burial.
Me: Of course. How long will you be gone?
Fundi: Ummmm, five days.
Me: Okay. Has construction stopped?
Fundi: Yes.
Me: Where are the other fundi’s?
Fundi: In Ilkiloret. You need to go pay them.
Me: No, they need to come to Ngong and I’ll pay them when they arrive.
Fundi: You send a piki piki?
Me: No, they can come by public means.
Fundi: I already tell a pikipiki to go pick them.

I’ll admit at this point I got a little pissed… the difference in cost is significant.

Anyway I climbed out of bed and got ready to go to Ngong and meet the fundi. Njenga came and picked me at 8:15 a.m. I met Samwel at the Touch of Spice Café, which is in a corridor full of small shops in the center of Ngong.

The corridor of shops where I spend the majority of my time when in Ngong.


Fast Net Cyber, The Touch of Spice Café and Stella’s massage place are my hangouts and they all happen to be in the same corridor, which is very convenient.

Dennis and his sister Doris run Fast Net Cyber. They have become good friends. Dennis got a generator when I was here last year, now Fast Net is known as the best place to go for internet services in Ngong! All the foreigners come here and eat at Touch of Spice Cafe!

The owner is really sweet woman whose name I've never known. I just call her mom, and that seems to work for her too!

Stella runs a massage business, has an MPesa, and sells jewelry, fancy pots and pans, natural products and today I discovered she sells fabric for a Rwandan refugee who lives in Kenya. I met her last year when I tried using her funny massage machine. The machine didn't impress me, but Stella did. I stop in and we have tea once and while. She also watches my bag when I need to use the public toilet.

There is also a bookshop and juice shop, a lawyer’s office, an office supply store, a tailor, a hair salon, another cyber and a public toilet! Dennis, who owns Fast Net was at one of the tables at Touch of Spice Café so I joined him while I waited for the Samwel. He ended up translating a bit for me, as Samwel doesn’t always get what I’m saying. I paid Samwel and we figured out we would begin working again on Monday the 14th. I told him to have both the roofing team and the masons ready to go on Monday; we’d take them down with the last load of materials. We should actually be on schedule because they can get done in about 10 days (or so says Samwel). Grace and I can take a vehicle to the site on Wednesday and then she takes the roofing fundi’s back to Ngong – they should be done by then. It helps to have a plan, even if nothing goes as planned.

Elijah the piki driver who had gone to pick up the fundi got a puncture on the way back from Ilkiloret so I had to wait for him in Ngong until 2 p.m. I spent the time at Fast Net working on assignments for my students for tomorrow. I would have finished them yesterday but I have to take one of the Wezesha kids to the doctor.

It started raining around lunch time so I went to Touch of Spice Café to grab some lunch while I waited for Elijah who had originally told me he’d be back by 1 p.m. There was no room to sit in the restaurant, so I asked the waitress if she could bring my food to Stella’s, and she said sure. So I ate lunch at Stella’s desk. Then I went to buy Stella toilet paper as I used the last of hers earlier in the day.

I didn’t realize that I had forgotten to pay for lunch until I was doing my expense report for the day. It unfortunately isn’t the first time I’ve left without paying. Grace and I eat there often and once we each had thought the other had paid. That time the waitress went to Fast Net and got my number from Dennis. Small world! I will stop by and pay on my way to Ilkiloret tomorrow! I feel so bad!

After lunch I went to wait for Elijah, when he didn’t show, I went and found Njenga and asked to use his phone…mine was out of charge. Elijah was in Kimuga; it had been raining there so they had stopped. Again another 20 minute wait. So I went to Dottie’s to get out of the rain. Dottie, better known as Mama Trina, is the woman who lives just up the hill from me and has a music/phone charging/hair extensions/pedicure shop in Ngong. She has huge speakers outside her door that blast the music she has playing in her shop.

Dottie,plying her pedicure trade!

I went to see Dottie, to have somewhere to be inside as the weather was kind of a slow drizzle. I already have perfectly manicured toes a la Dottie! She has a glass-enclosed case with mostly cassettes and a few CDs in it. People were leaning on the glass and had broken it on more than one occasion so Dottie had taken things into her own hands and nailed nails in a board along the edge of the case so they stuck out enough to deter people from leaning on the glass.

Dottie's security system! Elbows beware!

At 2pm I called Elijah and he had just arrived in Ngong so I went to the stage and paid him and paid the fundi his wages. Then went to the supermarket and bought some groceries for Rebeka and then Njenga took me home. By the time I finished picking green groceries on my street is was nearly 2:45, but I was home.

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on assignments for my students, which I will have to print tomorrow morning as I wasn’t going to brave the rain again.

It’s 9:15 p.m. now and it’s raining again, if this keeps up my trip to Ilkiloret may not happen. I guess I’ll wait to see what the weather’s like and what the first phone call brings…