Better Late than Never

Even though it's a Tuesday evening, Friday afternoons are better late than never. Well, it depends. For me, sometimes they are characterised by a frantic rush to get essential business done before the weekend, and sometimes they are spent calling up cocoa-based confectionary companies in order to offer well researched opinions on their product offerings.

However, for these past couple of weeks, I have spent my Friday afternoons at a cement manufacturing plant. Now, no matter how modern a cement plant is, one can't help ingesting a certain amount of the powdery stuff. And cement, as we know, when mixed with certain proportions of sand and water becomes concrete: a hard material, brittle, but tough under compression, which is the quality that makes its use in construction both prized and ubiquitous.

A glorious rain-washed Nairobi evening. Pollution and dust scrubbed from the air. I am driving home in high spirits, belting out a "number" that's playing on the radio and singing along in the comfort that no-one is listening to me and no-one knows (or will ever know) what song it was. Free wind blowing through my hair, it's been a good day at the cement plant, cement dust ingestion notwithstanding, and I'm heading home. There's only light traffic, an on-coming matatu, a couple of saloon cars, not much else.

Timing.

When the matatu just begins to pass me, I turn and look at it. It's a key moment in the song and right as my mouth is wide open in glorious chorus, the matatu's wheel hits a "Kenya Conference International Class 3" pothole. * [footnote 1]

It just so happens that the pothole is full of a particularly rich mixture, this being the Limuru Road after all, of sand and rain water.

An open car window, mouth wide open in song, face turned to scan the matatu, a pothole full of mud, and a stomach full of cement powder. I know what you are thinking. And I am truly sorry to disappoint those amongst you who are almost rubbing your hands with delight. All I am going to say is that that puddle ended up in my lap, and I won't be a statue of myself after all.

Which is a pity really, as there are two birds ** [footnote 2] that have decided to perch on the wire that crosses my pathway from workspace to coffee. Although they are a sweet couple and sing beautiful songs to each other that only just border on the irritating, I know, I just know, that they are in fact waiting to litter my head. Which is almost obligatory, but certainly not statutory, for edificies of people sculpted out of concrete.

* [Footnote 1] Bibendum Nomenclaturum: this is the kind of pothole that is found on an important road, or artery, that leads to international conference venues. The class number denotes the unique Kenyan technique of filling in a pothole to last only exactly the number of days that a meeting will last. 3 is generally the minimum number, which also ties in the number of days it takes one to get used to the pothole being filled up and therefore forgetting its precise positioning. "Conference" and "International" denote that the pothole is worth filling, because these are important meetings attended by important people to discuss important things. Like the recently concluded meeting about the urgent need for investment in core infrastructure projects in Kenya.

** [Footnote 2] I think, but I am not sure, that the birds are of the Hirundo Abyssinica Unitatis variety: "streaked underparts; rufous on rump and head. Song: a pleasing tinny rronh rrenh reenh rroonh reenh, ascending or descending; usually introduced by some thin squeaky or buzzy notes".

Actually, I disagree with the song bit. I found it to be more of a....well....a "cheeep cheeep cheeep" sort of thing followed by a bit of an extended "chirrrrrrrrp". But there you go. I probably have the wrong bird type anyway, and all the rest on page 24 and 26 look very very similar to me.

25th November, 2003