With commentary by yours truly, too!

Kwa heri = goodbye in Kiswahili

Aside from a final dinner out with Harmon and Sylvester (to The Old Man & The Sea) and rifling through get-rid-of “stuff” (clothes and…?), my time in Malindi, and by extension, the Galana bridge project, is coming to a close.

I took some video this week that I’ll share when I get back to Nairobi and can use YaYa Centre’s computer lab, the fastest internet I’ve found (~25k/sec). It’s a bit of fooling around with the bridge team and some parting words.

I went to the ocean today, had a drink with Harmon, talked about the next step in life, religion, girls, movies, New York, WSO, BTG, and so on. The usual. Sylvester will join us for a great dinner tonight.

I’ll miss Harmon and Sylvester’s fellowship the most when I leave Kenya. The Fellowship. The Fellowship of the Bridge as we came to call it.

There are a few other members of the fellowship, but at it’s core, it’s us three: the three that built Zemo Camp, that crash at the cottage in Malindi, that sweat and laugh and bend steel and mix cement 3 out of 4 weeks a month, for almost a year now.

It has been a great pleasure. The memories I’ve built on this project will never leave my brain or my heart. Unless my brain or my heart leaves me. But that’s another matter.

I am headed back to Nairobi for my final stretch of Kenya Livin’ tomorrow!

The bridge site in October 2008

Bombi Primary School

Lost

Toy plane

Toy truck

Bedroom in Malindi

I was reminded of this little PS trick that makes things look miniature and gave it a shot on some shots. Eh?

Hope yours is wonderfully blessed!

An incredible sunset welcomed me home

Even the mailbox missed me

I missed these guys for sure

And them (and this) too

Small, cute, fat, colorful soapstone animals

Live blog from the London Heathrow airport. Can you believe this is my first w-ifi in seven months? It’s so fast! That picture uploaded in a SNAP! What a dream the rest of the world lives in…Or maybe Africa is the dream!

Me and Sylvester

Yesterday I bid temporary farewell to one the most favorite people I have ever met in my life, Sylvester Ouko. His joy in life and work is contagious and inspiring.

He has been a Kenyan guide, a storyteller, a Swahili instructor, an “I’m writing down what he just said” quote machine (he used helter skelter to seriously, appropriately describe something, and that’s how it ended up as the title for my movie), a back-of-the-truck on Kenyan “roads” companion, a roommate, and above all, a friend.

Practically nightly at Zemo Camp, Harmon and I would go back to our tent after a long day of work and evening of laughing through dinner with Ouko and we would reflect on what a blessing he is, how we couldn’t do what we were doing without him.

Ouko, hard at work

I interviewed him once already to get his life story on “tape” (digital recording – I’ll take a look at editing some of this to share once I am home for the holidays). The truth is, we all repeatedly agree that he could be a worldwide personality, an international superstar, bigger than Oprah Winfrey (or Winfrey Oprah as he says). Just ask him to tell a story or address a topic and he’ll have you rolling with laughter in no time.

We’ve built up many inside jokes over the past 7 months, which often come up over the repeated circumstances we face while building the bridge.

The latest joke is to repeat “Kula, Bwana!” anytime we are eating, or anytime something that would be funny to eat comes around. It basically means, “Eat, dude!” which is a nightly call from Harmon to make him eat 3rd and 4th helpings of the food prepared for us. It’s a surefire way to make him smile, which in turn makes everyone else smile.

I look forward to getting back to work after the holidays, and much of that has to do with getting to be able to work alongside Sylvester again.

Ouko cracking up the Cement Guys

Me, Katana, Umburu, and Reuben (not a sandwich)

Today I bid farewell to Zemo Camp, the self-named camp at Galana where we stay while working on the bridge. Why Zemo? Because it’zemo (joke works better out loud). Happily, the name has caught on with some of the workers, none of which are in that photo above.

I’ll miss some things about it. It’s a heavenly place to go after work to chill, take a shower, read, check email, strum guitar, etc. We’ve had many great dinners, stories, Swahili lessons, and jokes from staying at Zemo.

What I certainly won’t miss will be trying to sleep there. If it’s not the stifling heat and incessant sweating wherever your body exists, it’s the random birds, frogs, hyenas, hippos, insects, and so on croaking, crooning, cawing, and crying all night. Loudly.

For a few months there was this rare Beeping Owl-Frog that sounded like someone was enabling or disabling a car alarm every 0.8 seconds. Imagine a high-pitched dart of pain that pierces your ear drums to the point of causing spontaneous, unintelligible, expletive-laden sighing to fellow attempting sleepers.

If there’s ever sleep at Zemo, it’s interrupted, on average, 139 times per night by your own puddles of sweat or the aforementioned noises. That is until around 4:12 a.m., which is when every bird in East Africa comes to call out to each other at the top of their lungs to let you know you almost made it.

The sun starts peeking out around 5:50 a.m. ”Waking up” (a.k.a. – simply getting out of bed after having lain there for 9 hours) with the sun is a relief. You can put the boring, loud, sweaty night behind you and check baseball scores and Twitter.

So farewell, Zemo Camp! I will see you again next year. Until then, I leave you with my new little friend, Snotty String Sucker:

The bridge continues…

I put up some Galana Bridge pictures over at the Galana Blog.

Also…

Guy uses basketball jersey to patch up pants.