Final Week

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This is it, the final week in Gila Bend. All in all, I can say that it has been a good time, or perhaps I should say, good rest. We have done very little but relax, which included a lot or reading and walking for exercise. We started out our time here walking three miles a day, two rounds in the morning and one in the evening. Now we are doing four rounds. By rounds I mean times around the perimeter of the RV Park, which comprises 42 acres. In actuality, as measured by our truck, each round is 1.125 miles. This makes our three rounds equal 3.375 miles and four rounds equal 4.5 miles. We calculate that we have walked around 400 miles since we stopped for the Winter. I don’t know where that would have taken us in a straight line, but it would have been a “fer piece.”

There is nothing unusual in my reading. Everyone who knows me knows that I seldom sit down without a book in my hand, if I’m not on the computer or otherwise engaged. Since the beginning of January, I have read 25 books. Carolyn has read something like 18 books. I am a mystery reader and partial to James Patterson, among others. Carolyn has read a lot of Nicholas Sparks novels during this time.

This week, we decided that it was time to really clean our RV in preparation for our upcoming trip. We worked on the inside, getting rid of all the dust, and perhaps sand, that had accumulated during our stay in the desert. Then, it was time to tackle the outside. So yesterday was the day. The park has an area especially for washing one’s RV which is equipped with hose, brush, etc., but we were not interested in unhooking, moving and re-hooking the RV just for the wash. Instead, we did the “bucket and rag” routine on the ladder. It took us some four hours to complete the job, but now it shines like a jewel….well, almost. Anyway, it is much cleaner.

We were talking last night, that is Carolyn and I, about our time here as relaxing. The question came up as to what the word “relax” meant. Being the reader that I am, and word connoisseur, I was ready with the answer. The word “lax” comes from the Latin “laxus” meaning loose. The prefix “re,” of course, means “again” or to “go back.” So, we are getting loose. The word is also related to “slack” and “slacks” a type of pants. It is also the base of the word “laxative.” I’m sure you can figure that out.

Language is a funny thing, and you sure can get messed up with it. As many of you know, we spent a year in Costa Rica doing our best to learn the Spanish language. The teachers at the school refused to use English in the learning experience, so we were forced to get it or else. The classes were eight hours a day, five days a week, for twelve months. We tried to learn all the local idioms (called “modismos” in Spanish) so that we would not sound so much like a dictionary when we spoke.

One such expression in Costa Rica was, “El tiene mucha pipa“. “Pipa” is either a pipe one smokes or a green coconut. Literally translated it means “He has much pipe, or green coconut.” Which makes no sense at all. The expression meant, “he is very intelligent.” That is the way it is in most every language. We say, “It’s not my cup of tea,” which has nothing to do with cups or tea, but we know what it means.

I tried to learn all these little expressions to make the language flow and not seem so much a foreigner or tourist. The trouble was, we moved on from Costa Rica to Ecuador, South America. The occasion arose in conversation when the expression, “El tiene mucha pipa” seemed appropriate, so I used it. That is when I received a lot of strange looks on the faces of those to whom I was speaking. Astute as I am, I perceived that something was wrong. I asked, “Don’t you use that expression here?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t it mean that he is very intelligent?”
“Noooo,” I was told. “It means, ‘He has a big gut.’” So much for trying to appear “with it.”

I have spent a good part of my life studying language and particularly words and their meaning. There are some very interesting websites that have to do with word and phrase meaning that I think any of you reading this would find interesting. One special website is called The Word Detective, written by Evan Morris, who writes a newspaper column of the same name, read throughout the U.S., Mexico and Japan. Since 1995 he has been putting his column on the internet, a new one every month. You will find Evan Morris’ column here: http://word-detective.com. Give it a look. You will find Evan to be a very humorous writer.

I am still working on the project to install a second satellite-dish receiver in the bedroom. I am almost there. I have figured out how I am now going to do it. That is, how to run the cable into the RV, which is going to involve drilling holes and installing connectors. I have the parts, but not the screws to attach the outside connector. This means that I will have to make a trip to the local hardware store today and get on with the job. I have put it off too long, so I must get to it.

The picture above is the last you will see of yours truly in the desert of Arizona, at least for a time. I have included the “after” picture on the truck tire fire which I showed you last week.

So, that is it for now. We will be leaving next Friday for points North, West and East. We don’t know what the internet availability will be on the road, but we will try to keep you updated as best we can.

Excitement

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Two weeks from today, Friday, April 4, we will be pulling out of Gila Bend and back on the road. More about this in a few minutes. As you might be able to tell from the first photos above, we had a little excitement around here on Monday of this week. Well, the pictures won’t tell you it was Monday, but they do show the excitement.

There are a number of “workers” residing at the campground now that are doing construction work in the area. Some of them are driving very large, side-dump trucks which they park in the twenty acres at the back of the RV Park, which is in the line of sight from our camping spot. They usually get back from the job in mid-afternoon, about 3:00.

So, on Monday afternoon we happened to look out our window and saw a large cloud of black smoke rising upward from the desert. Our view was obstructed by another RV, so we pulled on our shoes, which we normally don’t wear in the trailer during hot weather, and went out to take a closer look. The first photo is what we saw. The right, rear tires (four of them) were blazing. The driver pulled his tractor away from the trailer and got on his cell phone.

The first to arrive on the scene was curious campers. After awhile (five or ten minutes) a Sheriff’s car arrived, then another. They stood around and watched the tires burn. After several more minutes a fire truck finally came roaring down the road. It took them a few minutes to get things setup, but they got the fire under control, as you can see by the second photo. The company carted off the useless trailer a few days later. Things back to normal.

On Thursday, in preparation for our coming road trip, we had to take the truck into Phoenix to get our 30,000 mile maintenance done. We have only about 26,000 miles on the truck, but close enough to have a good inspection before our trip. During the four hours it took to get this work accomplished, we walked to a near-by shopping area and spent time “window shopping.” We do very little actual shopping anymore, except for groceries and diesel fuel, which now is at $4.00 a gallon in this neck-of-the-woods.

After we picked up the truck, we went to Camping World to get some needed items for the RV and then to a very interesting eating place in Mesa (East of Phoenix) called Organ Stop Pizza. You see a photo of the outside of the restaurant above. Now here is a little bit of history on the place.

In 1972, the original Organ Stop Pizza restaurant premiered in Phoenix, Arizona at the corner of 7th Street and Missouri Avenue with a Wurlitzer pipe organ which was originally built for Grauman's Hollywood Egyptian Theater. This unique concept of a pizza parlor with a pipe organ was envisioned by William P. Brown, a Phoenix real estate developer whose enthusiasm for the theater pipe organ and its music led to the creation of this landmark attraction.

The phenomenal success of the Phoenix restaurant prompted plans to open another Organ Stop in Mesa. It opened in 1975 near the corner of Dobson and Southern Avenue with a Wurlitzer organ from the Denver Theater in Denver, Colorado. In the theater, the Denver instrument had 15 ranks, or sets of pipes. The instrument was totally rebuilt, and the decision was made to enlarge the organ to 23 ranks for its debut in the new Mesa Organ Stop.

The success and popularity of the new Organ Stop Pizza mirrored that of the Phoenix location. In 1984, Bill Brown decided to retire from the restaurant business. The Phoenix Organ Stop was sold to a real estate developer, who sold the pipe organ and demolished the building in favor of an office complex. Incidentally, that instrument was sold to a couple in Downers Grove, Illinois, for installation in their home! The Mesa Organ Stop was sold to longtime employee and manager Mike Everitt and his partner Brad Bishop. Under the new ownership, improvement of the pipe organ became a high priority. Over the course of the ensuing years, careful acquisition of rare pipework and percussions were made, culminating in what is now the largest Wurlitzer pipe organ in the world. With the change in ownership, the restaurant continued to gain in popularity. Inevitably plans were made to move into a facility twice the size of the original in order to accommodate the ever increasing number of patrons and ever-expanding organ. This new mega facility, located at the corner of Stapley Drive and Southern Avenue, was designed specifically to accommodate the expanding scope and size of the Organ Stop Wurlitzer. Construction of the new facility began in May of 1995 and the grand opening was Thanksgiving weekend of that same year.

In its new and improved location, Organ Stop Pizza and its “Mighty Wurlitzer” have come to be known as the biggest and best in the world as attested to by many of the world's finest theater organists and, more importantly, the hundreds of thousands of patrons who visit each year. There are continuing efforts to make additions and improvements to the organ, endeavoring to fine tune the instrument closer and closer to perfection.

The restaurant doesn’t open until 4:00 PM. We got there about 4:15 and the place was already crowed. You order and pay for your meal (pizza, salad, soup, drinks, etc.) and wait until your order is prepared. For us it took about 30 minutes, so in the meantime we found a table (which is shared by others) and waited for our order number to appear on the electronic board in the eating area which consisted of a down-stairs and an up-stairs balcony along the sides and rear. We chose the right side balcony close to the front.

The front area had a large circular stage out of which rose the Wurlitzer and the organist, on this night it was Lew Williams. The whole front wall, floor to ceiling, and a portion of each side wall, comprised the pipes, drums and bellows. The organ music starts at 4:30 and lasts throughout the eating hours, with a break now and then. The organist plays a variety of music and takes requests from the audience which are placed in a basket on the stage. You see a picture of the organ and Lew Williams above. The food was nothing special, but the music and atmosphere was nice and enjoyable. They even had a sing-a-long.

The trip for the day was a total of 207 miles, at four-bucks a gallon, not cheap. One has two choices: go or stay. We choose to go awhile, then stay a while. So, up coming is our going part. Before we reach Tennessee again, we will be stopping in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois (Chicago) and Indiana. Our trip will be about 4,000 miles and eleven new states. We plan to arrive back in Tennessee toward the end of May.

The rest of the year is already planned, but more about that another time.

Cotopaxi

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The story I am about to tell involves the mountain above, Cotopaxi, a stratovolcano, also called a composite volcano, a tall, conical shape composed of many layers of hardened lava and volcanic ash. These kinds of volcanoes are characterized by a steep profile and periodic, explosive eruptions. The lava that flows from them cools and hardens before spreading very far. Cotopaxi has a summit elevation of 19,388 feet. It has erupted 50 times since 1738. The 1877 eruption melted snow and ice on the summit, which produced mudflows that traveled 60 miles from the volcano. The most recent eruption of Cotopaxi ended in 1904. Reports of an eruption in 1942 have not been confirmed. Loosely translated from the Quechua, Cotopaxi means "Smooth Neck of the Moon"

At the time, around 1970, we lived in the town of Latacunga, at the base of this volcano. You can locate it on the map above, some 50 miles south of Quito. The city had a population at the time of about 20,000, and we were the only English speaking family in the city. We were home-schooling our daughter, Debbie, through the Calvert System out of Maryland. We taught her at home in the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades. I am not sure which school year it was, but her geography book stated that the world’s highest, active volcano was one in Hawaii. We knew better, because we lived at the foot of the world’s highest, active volcano. We wrote the school and told them their text book was wrong. The school wrote back, after some research, and acknowledged that we were correct. They said, “I guess we will have to take the Parsons family as the authority on volcanoes.”

Anyway, this is not the story. The whole story involves the area directly around the base of the mountain. The fact that we are now “camping” full-time is nothing new. We have camped quite a lot in our time, but then it was “tent-camping,” the old fashion way. At this particular time we decided to go camping around the mountain with some friends who lived in Quito. We were to search out a good area for the purpose, since we lived near by. We knew we would need a “four-wheel-drive” vehicle to accomplish this feat because the conditions around the mountain were primitive at best. Although our friends had a four-wheel-drive, we only had a Ford station wagon. So we borrowed a four-wheel-drive vehicle from other friends.

Carolyn and I took off around the mountain to search out a camping spot. Why do you suppose that the song, “She’ll be comin’ around the mountain when she comes“….has just hit my mind? I guess it is appropriate. But, as I was saying, we started out bumping over rough ground, fording streams (we crossed 14 streams in all), coming upon herds of wild horses (you see a picture of some of them above), and generally enjoying ourselves. We finally found a spot between the streams (similar to the streams you see above with the horses) that we thought would be perfect. We made our way back out of the wilderness, and no, we didn’t get lost.

We informed our friends that we had found the “ideal” spot, and we planned the date and time to go. We met at the entrance to the mountain area. It had recently rained and we knew the terrain would be muddy and slick. We also knew that we would need the four-wheel-drive. In those days, converting from two-wheel-drive was a manual operation on each wheel, no central button to push or lever to pull.

We made the driving adjustments and started off to locate our “spot.” We slipped, slide, bounced and forded the same 14 steams. We arrived at our site, setup our tents and prepared for a three-day camp experience in a beautiful, wild setting. As we were ending our preparations, it began to rain again. We had experienced rain before. No big deal. We huddled in one tent, the six of us. Our friends had a son near the same age as our daughter. We talked, tried games, then decided that we would have to cook and eat inside our tents. The rain was coming down hard. Dark had come and there was not much to do except get some sleep and hope for a better day tomorrow. We separated and went to bed. Actually, we went to “ground.”

It rained all night. Our tents began to leak. We tried to adjust the best we could, but there was not much sleeping going on that night. We were more wet than anything. The next morning, it was still raining. We fixed some breakfast, and wondered what we should do. We noticed that the streams were rising fast and beginning to encroach on our camp site. We decided it was best to get out of there while we still could. If we could!

We packed our wet tents. Loaded our vehicles and approached the stream. The water was rushing rapidly and still rising. We were not sure that we could successfully ford the streams since the water was now much higher. We made the decision and our friends started across first. They got midway of the stream, and the engine died. They were sitting in the stream, water half-way up the doors, and the engine was stalled. We were still on the bank looking on.

The carburetor was most likely wet. It needed to be dried. To do this, one would have to crawl out the window, get on the hood, step down on the bumper, lift the hood and dry the carburetor with a rag…….provided that said person didn’t fall in the rushing water. Our friends, let’s call them Bill and Marilyn, simply because that is their names, chose Bill for the honors.

We decided that Bill would tie a rope around his waist, toss the other end to me on the bank, and I would hold tension on him to keep him from falling in the stream. He crawled out the window and onto the hood. As soon as he attempted to place a foot on the bumper….down he went, into the water. My efforts at holding tension was worth nothing. So much for that idea.

Bill stood in the rushing water up to his waist, lifted the hood and dried the carburetor. He indicated to Marilyn to try the engine. Varooooom! It started. Bill closed the hood, turned his back on the car and started wading across the stream and motioned for Marilyn to drive across behind him. She did, and we followed in our car without incident. That was one stream. There were 13 more to come.

The going was tough at times and we were not always sure we would make it. There were times when I thought that we were going to turn over on some of the slick, angled paths that we had to traverse. But we made it through all in one piece. We were grateful for four-wheel-drive! It was only when we had gotten back to the main highway that I discovered that there was something wrong with the wheels of my “borrowed” vehicle. The four-wheel-drive element had not been working. I had been driving with only two-wheel drive. If I had known this during the trip, I would have been very afraid. If something had happened to us, they would still be looking for us in that wilderness. There was no one else around, and no one knew where we were going.

The things we don’t do when we are young! Until next time.

Preparation

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Winter is winding down and we are getting ready to make a move. We will be leaving Gila Bend on April 4th. Our current plans are to head Northwest. First to Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, then across the top of the country, making our way back to Tennessee. Better than a covered wagon, but not much faster. The trip will take two or three months, depending on when we need to be back in Tennessee for medical service. All is not fully decided as yet. By the time we cross the demarcation line between the “West” and the “Mid-West,” we will have spent some eight months out West.

Before we pull out we will need to get the truck’s 30 thousand mile maintenance and make sure the fifth-wheel is in top shape. We will also need to get a chip in our windshield repaired before it creates a “spider-web“ effect. Some weeks back a large truck threw a rock at us just before we got back to the campground from a trip to Phoenix.

Today we went to the Gila Bend gift shop to pick up a little memento of our time here. You see pictures above of the outside and inside of the store. We picked up an arrangement of cacti in a hollowed-out puma stone, something we can put in our bay-window. It won’t need much care. It’s a good thing it doesn’t, because we are not going to give it much. Cactus can pretty much take care of itself.

The Winter has been good to us here. We have enjoyed the site and the friends we have made. As you no doubt know, Winters are mild here. The biggest change is a cold front coming through that drops the temperature from the mid-80s to the mid-70s. There is also no rain. We had only one day of rain since we have been here, and that was very light. But, even a little rain makes things start to grow. I showed you pictures of the “greening” of the desert a few blogs back. Now, it is much greener with wild flowers and ragweed all about.

We are glad the weather has been so nice, but rain doesn’t bother us much. It seems that many events in our married life has included rain. When Carolyn and I were dating, back in the dark ages of the 1950s, rain produced some strange happenings. I was stationed at an Air Force Base in the area and met her at a church in her small rural community. The church was having a Valentine get-to-gather for the young people (we were young then, I swear) and somehow I was in charge of the music for the event. At least, I was in charge of the sheet music. After a practice session (Carolyn was the pianist), I went back to her house. Of course, it was raining. “Cats and dogs,” as the saying goes.

By the time I left her house, late in the evening, it was difficult to see in the dark, heavy rain. There are no street lights in the country and it was difficult to see where the road began and ended. Well, as Parsons’ luck would have it, I ran off the road and got stuck in a ditch right in front of her driveway. I tried to get the car un-stuck by the tried-and-true method of rocking, back and forth. All I could do was spin the tires. I needed some traction, I reasoned. I looked around in the rain for something that I could put under the rear tire for traction. I found nothing.

Being soaked to the skin, and you know it was cold since it was around Valentine’s Day, I decided to use the only dry thing that I had at hand…….the sheet music. I stuck every sheet of music I had under the rear wheel and gave it a try. The only thing I accomplished was a new way to shred sheet music. Defeated, I trudged back to Carolyn’s door, knowing that now everyone had gone to bed, and knocked. By the time Carolyn got to the door, I was one “drowned rat.’’ There was nothing to do but wait until morning to get help with the car, my dark-blue, 1950, four-door sedan.

Keep that car in mind for this next event. Yes, it was again raining, and had been for days. On this particular Sunday afternoon, dressed in our Sunday best, Carolyn and I were driving to a friend’s house. The rain was coming down hard, all the windows, naturally, were up and fog was forming on the inside of the windows. You know how it is. To reach our destination it was necessary to go under an elevated railroad track.

We approached the downward sloping section under the railroad, when suddenly we stopped with an impact as if we had run into a wall. Water sprayed up over the windshield and the car. The underpass was flooded, and we were in water almost up to the car windows. The car was setting at about a 40 degree angle. Hood practically under water. Now water was beginning to seep into the car. Water was up to my ankles before I realized that I still had my foot on the brake.

The water kept rising. We put our feet in the seat. The water kept rising. By the time the water flooded the front seat, Carolyn had leaped into the back seat to escape the water. Vehicles began to form behind us. Someone suggested a rope to put on the rear bumper to pull us out. Someone had a rope. Someone tied it to the bumper. Someone else attached it to a truck bumper and backed us out of the water.

We opened the car doors and the water rushed out of the car. We tried the ignition. Believe it or not, the car started. We thanked everyone who had helped, and because we were young, we just continued on our journey (of course, by a different route) to our friend’s house. When we arrived, everyone saw Carolyn in the back seat and me in the front. They wondered if we had had a spat. The car told the story of that event, by a water mark half-way up the doors, until the day it was no longer mine.

So if it rains on our continuing trip, I think we can handle it. I may, however, need to buy some sheet-music and get our rope ready. So, the moral is, if you can’t keep dry, just enjoy the rain. Maybe next time I will tell you about a time in the rain and the mountains of South America.

On Through Africa

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There was nothing noteworthy about the flight to Nigeria. When I arrived in Lagos, the capital city, it was almost dark. We twisted our way through the streets of Lagos, past numerous poor housing, to the Federal Palace Hotel. It was now dark. I was tired and eager for some welcomed rest. It was January, but the weather in Africa was hot.

I approached the check-in desk and gave them my name and indicated that I had a reservation. The clerk found my information, told me the cost for the entire stay, which amounted to something close to three hundred dollars. I offered my American Express card.

“Oh, we don’t take that,” he said.
“What? When I made my reservation I was told that you accept the American Express.”
“We used to,” he said, “but we had trouble with the local office getting paid, and we no longer accept the card.”

Great, I thought. Now what are we going to do? I had no more than one hundred dollars on me. It was late at night and no banks were open. We worked out a deal so they would allow me to stay the night if I would go to the bank the next morning to get money. But, how was I going to get Nigerian currency with nothing to offer for it? I had no more money and no traveler’s checks.

I was taken to my room on an upper floor by the bellman. “Our air-conditioning is not working, but I will bring a fan to your room,” he told me. Terrific, what else can go wrong.

The room was very warm so I opened the large windows close to the bed to let in a breeze, such as it was. While I waited for the bellman to return with a fan, I made a phone call back to Ohio, where we were then living, to ask Carolyn to make contact with the President of the company to see if he could wire me some money the next day. The President called later in the evening. I explained the situation, gave him the name of a bank in Lagos, and asked to receive $500. He said it would be done as soon as the bank opened.

The bellman returned with a large floor fan on a tall pedestal. Perhaps this will work. I got ready for bed, left the windows open, turned the fan directly on me and tried to get some sleep. In the middle of the night, the fan went off. No electricity. I tossed for most of the night in the heat, but finally dozed off to sleep. I was awakened by a terribly loud noise that sounded like music. I opened my eyes and it was just getting light. I listened. It sounded like a band playing near by. I got out of bed and looked out the window in the dim light of early morning. What I saw, beyond the wall surrounding the hotel, was a military band marching and playing with all their might. They were having a full-dress parade. The hotel was next door to a military base.

No more sleep was possible. I decided to clean-up, get dressed, have breakfast and find the bank. I use an electric razor, but there was no electricity. It was the days before re-chargeable razors, but being the smart traveler that I was, I also carried a safety razor. I turned on the faucet in the bathroom sink in preparation for shaving. No water came out. I tried the other faucet. Nothing.

OK! No electricity, no water. Just what one would expect from a luxury hotel. So just how was I expected to shave. Where would you expect to find water in a bathroom, if not in the sink? In the commode. Right? No, not in the bowl! In the tank. I took the lid off the tank, stoppered the sink, and with a paper cup, filled it from the commode tank. This, I reasoned, should be safe enough for washing and shaving.

After cleaning up, as best I could under the circumstances, I made my way to the lobby. I talked to the finance clerk and told him I would go to the bank and see about the money I needed. When I got to the bank, no wire had arrived. I checked again toward the end of the day. Still nothing had arrived. After the days business, I returned to the hotel fully aware that I would have some explaining to do. I tried to sneak past the finance clerk, but he saw me. I explained the situation and said, “Tomorrow for sure.” Another day of reprieve.

Every time I passed the hotel desk the finance clerk would ask, “You got the money yet?”
“Not yet,” I would say, “I’ll go check at the bank.”

This scenario played out for several days, and still the money did not arrive. I flew from Lagos to the northern city of Kaduna (You can find it on the map above.) for a day. The airline did accept my credit card. When I returned, still no money and I was scheduled to leave Nigeria after one more day.

I had talked to the President of the Nigerian Bank numerous times trying to get the money problem solved. The day before I was to leave I was back at the bank. I felt like I had become friends with the President. I was sitting in his office asking what could be done. I had to leave the country.

The President said, “I will lend you the money.” He reached into his pocket, opened his wallet and handed me $500 worth of Nigerian currency. Just like that!

“I will get my money back when the wire arrives,” he said. “If it doesn’t come, then you can send it to me when you get home.”

I returned to the hotel, settled my bill and prepared to leave Nigeria the next day headed for Nairobi, Kenya. Finally, I thought, my money problems were behind me. I was wrong!

In order to leave Nigeria it was necessary to declare the amount and type of currency one was carrying. As I presented this declaration to the official at the gate, when I was getting ready to board the plane, I was informed that I could not leave the country with the amount of Nigerian currency that I had.

“What am I suppose to do about that,” I inquired.
“You will have to have it exchanged into dollars,” I was told.
“And where do I have that done?”
“Go to the bank on the lower floor,” he said.

I left the line and hurried to find the bank. The bank was a small unit with one window. I went up to the clerk, showed him my fist-full of currency and asked to have it exchanged into dollars. The clerk just laughed.

“I don’t have any dollars,” he said. “I only get one hundred dollars for the entire day and it doesn’t last an hour.”
“Then how am I supposed to get this money changed?”

The clerk just shrugged his shoulders. I hurried back to the gate, explained the problem to the official and he shrugged. I offered him money. He shook his head. I offered more money. Finally, after $75 worth of local currency was offered, he took it. I got on the plane still with a fist-full of Nigerian currency and no dollars. “Bribe” is not a dirty word in many countries of the world.

After arriving at my hotel in Nairobi and checking in, they did accept my card, I still needed dollars. I went to the cashier window and was able to get dollars on my card. I also asked to exchange the Nigerian currency for Kenyan.

“We don’t accept Nigerian currency,” I was told. “You will have to go to a bank.”

I later went to a bank and got the same story. Nigerian currency not accepted. They suggested that I go to the U.S. Embassy. The Embassy office told me that they were not a bank, they didn’t exchange currency. I talked to the person in charge of the office. He was reluctant to exchange the money, but would, for a $50 fee. To whom the fee went, I couldn’t say, but I was free of the currency nobody wanted.

I won’t try to tell you today about the rest of my trip. On to South Africa, then proceeding to Brazil where I was supposed to visit the schools in Rio and Sao Paulo. I say “suppose to“, because I didn’t. Someone forgot to tell me that the schools were on holiday during that time. I had to spend two days in Rio before I could connect for a return flight home. All I could do was enjoy the city. Touch duty, but somebody has to do it.