This update is dedicated to Lowell Tunstall. Thanks for donating the bike Lowell, it has provided opportunities for many adventures, and even brought me closer to God. Sorry for abusing it so much.
As legs were pumping, I could feel my heart racing, although my lungs were attempting to convince my stomach to give them some extra room to breath but my stomach was already in an overworked state, running on mostly stomach acid and a cup of coffee, feeling rather sick of the idea and it didn’t help when I followed Andy into the white smoke from a pile of plastic burning next to the road, which caused me to gag, creating an angry uproar from my argumentative organs whilst my eyes began to burn from the smoke just as my lungs began to legislate for a redistribution of energy resources due to the increase of strain from lack of oxygen based on increases in pollutants and altitude for my back ached from carrying my laptop, which felt more like a cinderblock in the backpack, but my brain called for radio silence, which was immediately filibustered by my lungs when a Matatu cut us off and then proceeded to accelerate, blowing a black cloud of smoke in it’s wake causing my intellect to ponder the fact that, under the circumstances, just driving and taking up smoking may have actually increased my life expectancy although I quickly refocused after dodging a few more Matatus making my legs decide to keep going and completely ignore any corrupt calls from anything except the nervous central communication system as I dodged an another pedestrian before I finally arrived at work coincidently out of breath as many of you may be if you just read this extremely long sentence out loud.*
We pulled up to the compound, and the friendly old Kenyan man, Francis**, opened the large green gate for us.
I walked to Ted’s office, “Morning *wheeze* Ted *wheeze*”,
“So you biked with Andy today, huh?”
“Uh huh *wheeze* Do you want me to finish transcribing the rest of the interviews?”
“Yes, how far did you get yesterday?”
“I’m at the boring one with the doctor saying things that would take me 20 years of medical training to understand.”
After an exciting day at work***, Andy and I suited back up to bike home. Considering that the journey to work was mostly uphill, it meant that the trip home was almost exclusively downhill. During that time of day, the traffic was almost always backed up all the way down Ngong, one of the main roads heading into the city.
On one particular morning, I left for work like any other day, except for the fact that Andy was going to a FARM conference. I was anticipating getting to work because we were finishing some last touches on the film we shot on the island a few months earlier. I made it up the first steep hill, and began to work my way up the long ascent.
A truck began to drive next to me, at first, something about the way it was driving so close made me feel uneasy, but then I saw that it had the perfect handholds running along the side of it. A little voice in my head practically yelled, “Come on! Just grab on, it’s right there. You’ve got this...”, so I held out my arm and grabbed the truck. As soon as I corrected the initial imbalance, I looked up and saw a very full matatu stop ahead. One matatu in particular began to pull out so it could cut in directly after the truck passed. I overestimated the gap between the truck and the matatu, and before I could let go of the truck and escape, it was too late.
An instant before impact, the image of my head going under the truck and being squashed like a rotten tomato beneath a sledgehammer passed through my mind. Then my handlebar hit the matatu and I was flipped sideways off the bike. I was skidding forward, on my backpack, as I hit the ground. I watched my bike go under the back tires of truck and then my left hand, which pinned my arm to the ground for a second. I screamed out in anticipation although I didn’t feel any pain. Then rolled over, grabbing my left hand, to see the truck slow down for a second to see what happened, then accelerate away before he could get in trouble. I stood up, only to discover that my left shoe was not on my foot. I took a second to wiggle my left hand, expecting that it would be pulverized, but it looked and felt undamaged.
I walked back towards the matatu. The driver was staring at me with blank eyes; his gaze followed me almost mechanically, like a dead machine. I found my shoe beside the matatu. It must have been caught on the bumper when I flipped off the bike, which I saw lying in a heap a few feet away on the ground. I put my shoe on, propped up the bike, and tried to roll it past the stop. It wouldn’t budge, and I saw that the front wheel had become an object worthy of the artistry of Dr Seuss.
With a slight groan I picked up the bike, carried it to the side of the road, and stared back at the matatu driver whose glare had not changed or moved. I checked myself over again before calling Andy; I was scraped up in a few places, sore, very shaken, but nothing felt broken or severely damaged. Andy was in the middle of hurriedly packing to get out the door when I called. I probably could have thought a little harder about which words I used, but I was still pretty shocked.
“Hey Andy, you know how we held on to a truck that one time? Well I just got hit by one... actually it was more like run over... but I’m OK! Really I feel ok... I’m not so sure about the bike though.”
It was a bit of a shock for Andy. He asked if I needed to go to the hospital, but I told him not to worry about it. I just wanted to inform him of the situation. I called Ted to ask for a ride since I was closer to work than home. He told me that Liisa was on her way to pick me up.
Meanwhile, a Kenyan woman approached me. She had seen what happened and asked me if I needed any ice. I told her that I was fine, but thanked her for the offer. Before that point, I hadn’t realized that no one else had actually checked to see if I was injured or not. A few people were staring at me, but the woman was the first to actually approach me and ask about my condition. The woman walked away, but after a minute or so, another came with a plastic bag. She told me that her friend had sent her with a bag of ice for me. I glanced at the brownish ice with small flecks of something black in it. I looked at my elbow which was scraped the worst since it had hit the pavement first. I decided to not add infection to injury, and politely declined her offer.
Soon after, Lesa called my cell phone, with the sound of a frantic mother in her voice. I assured her that I was ok and that Liisa was coming to take care of me. The image of what happened kept cycling in my head, even as Liisa picked me up and took me back to get disinfected and bandaged up. Her calm demeanor was good for me since I was completely wired.
“When you go to heaven and look back at this event, I wonder how many angels it took to save you.” She reflected. I half stumbled over my response, which I was only coming to realize myself.
“I have no idea! I’m still getting over the fact that I’m still alive! I will just have to tell people that I have been saved by God... at least twice now.”
“You must be full of adrenaline right now.” A factual statement that I answered as though it was the question, “Are you glad to be alive right now?”
“Yes... yes I am.”
In reflection of my situation, I felt completely helpless in light of my life being so easily taken away, but also slightly invincible because I had been saved from serious injury. I have realized since then that it was my pride which caused my downfall.
Lesa picked me up to take me to her rehearsal of “The King and I” at Rosslyn Academy. After many questions from my friends, I told the story behind why their director looked very much on edge and why I looked like I had been run over by a truck. After rehearsal began, Becca and Hannah**** came by to ask me how I was feeling, but then my adrenaline wore off and I drifted into a fatigued slumber. The next few days, I literally felt like I had been run over by a truck. The funny part is that the only part of my body that wasn’t sore was my left hand.
A day later, I used Andy’s bike and set out on my usual commute with a new sense of care and gratitude for being able to make the journey again. One day, the whole Brown family and I were driving back from another rehearsal. At the bottom of the hill was a Kenyan man’s body, facedown, with a bent and twisted bike next to him. Surrounding his head was a morbid halo of gelatin looking blood and brain matter. The thought, “that could have been me”, instantaneously crossed my mind.
I was intelligent enough to refrain from hold onto any more trucks after the accident, but my adventures on the Nairobi roads were not over yet. It was in my last few months in Nairobi that I biked during rainy season. Arriving at work wet and muddy is a fun experience, but not as memorable as a couple of the times we headed home through the worst of the downpour. On one occasion, the traffic was especially bad because of the rain, but Andy and I were speeding past through the middle lane. At one point the cars were cramming so closely that I hit one car’s side mirror, and then over-corrected and hit another car’s mirror on the other side. I hadn’t broken any glass, so I kept on pedaling.
A week before heading to Sudan, I was at the office late to finish some tasks. It began to thunderstorm pretty heavily, and I watched the road in the compound become a mud puddle. I said, “this is going to be awesome!”, to myself and packed up my things. As I pedaled through flooded roads and got completely covered in mud, I realized that my future children would probably not understand why I love to go bike through inclement weather. I was going to be one of “those” dads.
I never had as much fun biking home as that though. At times, I would pedal down and my foot would become submerged in water. The thunder and lightening would energize me and add another aspect of surprise to the grand experience. I pushed past cars stuck in flooded areas and was drenched by a few more determined drivers as they passed me. I let out a war-cry, earning more surprised stares from the few pedestrians, while sliding down the hill which had practically become a river. The guards at our gate waved and gave me the kind of smiles that only Kenyans know how to give to a crazy Mzungu.
I stopped by Becca’s house to drop off the dvd. Her mother opened the door and smiled.
“You must be looking for Becca.”
“Yes. I have a dvd for her.”
“Just a second. I’ll get her.”
Becca came to the door and stared at me as though I was the swamp monster emerging from the marsh, which considering my appearance probably wasn’t too far from the truth.
* * * * *
A time I must recall is when I stayed later at the office to make up for the time I lost the day before with my bike accident. I was at my desk, and the guys from the IS Hangar started getting home. Ryan Williams, an AIM Air mechanic, came upstairs to visit me in my office. He asked how I was doing and I responded with my routine, “I’m alive, but I feel like I got run over by a truck”, which we both laughed about. Then, he told me that they had prayed for me. At the time, it didn’t mean as much to me as it does now. A month after I returned to the states, on August 1st, 2009, Ryan was in an airplane accident. Almost a week later, on August 7th, I found out that, as it was put in the e-mail I received, “[he] succumbed to his injuries and went home to his Lord and Savior.” I was reminded of the sacrifice good men often pay for the sake of the gospel.
*This extremely long sentence is in tribute to A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.
**I accidently called Francis the wrong name, Franklin, for probably half of my time in Nairobi. It is probably a result of my desire to be some kind of Film Noir detective who say, “Thanks Frank”, to his office security guard every day. Unfortunately, Francis was too kind to correct my mistake.
***This is only partially sarcasm. Although transcribing and logging footage was not very exciting, everything else (editing, writing, brainstorming*, and many other “ing” verbs) at work was quite enjoyable.
*Thought showers, mind clouding, etc. I believe this is my first footnote of a footnote.
****Becca was my boss’ boss’ boss’ daughter and next door neighbor. Hannah is Andy’s cousin and helped welcome me as the “Honorary Brown Family Member”, with the rest of the Brown clan. They are two of my closest friends from Nairobi.
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