It’s my own fault.  Zanzibar was supposed to be a whole week of rest in the middle of a frantic travel schedule.  Originally we planned to go back and visit some of our favorite places in Kenya.  For a number of reasons that I will describe later we changed our plans before our tickets were finalize.  Unfortunately, our friend Nick didn’t get the news and made a Friday morning appointment in Nairobi thinking we’d all be there.  So now we’ve changed plans again.  We seem to be doomed to spend no more than two hours in any place.

    But, we are glad to see our friend Nick’s house and to visit other friends and places that we knew so well twenty years ago.

    Last night after writing around sunset, our friend William, a Masai who moved from Arusha about two weeks ago did surgery on my feet with a four inch knife.  I wonder who was the last mzungu tourist to get stabbed by a Masai blade.  I wasn’t exaggerating yesterday when I gave the number of 40 sea urchin spines.  Twenty-six were in my left foot and fourteen were in the right.  It was so dark then at sunset that he could barely see so we took out the remainder this morning.

    A few years ago my frined Nick lived in a less secure house in Nairobi, in the neighborhood of his friend (whose mother was visiting for the first time from America).  In the middle of that night Nick was awakened by the sound of his dog being hacked to death by machetes.  Nick could see the burglars looking through his house to the other side, called the security company and then without knowing if someone was guarding the other exit, he escaped out of it into the night wearing nothing and carrying only his cell phone.  Twenty men with machetes were literally hacking through the wall.  When they saw him a number of them chased him.  Nick knew that they would torture him until he revealed the location of his treasure and then kill him.  Nick always was quick.  This time he was especially fast.  He jumped off a small cliff, dropped his cell phone inadvertently and found a hiding place in the woods wondering if his pursuers would find him.

    Meanwhile the security company arrived at Nick’s house, saw the twenty men there with knives and reasoned that the situation was too tough and left to go and find the police.

    Nick’s friend and neighbor heard everything and knew what was happening but couldn’t leave the house to help him.  So they kept calling him on the cell phone which made a loud ringing noise in the brush a few yards from Nick’s hiding place.  Nick was too cautious to feel like he could go and turn it off.

    After the police arrived, Nick finally came out of hiding, scratched and bleeding, went to his friend’s house and met his friend’s mother on her first night in Kenya.  So this was not an inconsequential fact for me as we planned our journey.  Would you rather spend the week on a beautiful, untouched beach in Zanzibar with friendly local inhabitants or go to big-city Nairobi where the security situation keeps persistently deteriorating?

    We got ticketed on an early flight when we arrived at the airport.  The lady at the counter said it was boarding right now.  Rather than go back into town for lunch we hurried up and are now waiting for a plane that still hasn’t arrived.  Nick has a direct flight to Nairobi so we just hope that we make it and he does too.