But I Really Want the Car!

Life as an expat in Kenya has thrown me some curveballs, some challenges, but also some benefits.

One of the more obvious benefits is that, as many of you know, we have staff at home.  We pay them ostensibly to make our lives easier, but perhaps their main function is to serve as blog material.

In the week leading up to Ryan’s and my going away for several weeks, Enoc — he of the unforgettable aroma and the unfortunate habit of driving the car into a drainage hole — got really creative in his attempts to get me to leave him the car key.

The first attempt was on Wednesday morning, after we had dropped Ryan off at work and while we were on our way to puppy training for Sadie the Incorrigible.  Enoc allowed as how he didn’t think it was fair to Sadie to miss her completely ineffective and useless puppy training (not necessarily his words) in my absence, so that he was — quite magnanimously — willing to continue to take her to class each Wednesday morning.

I knew what he was getting at, but decided that rather than confront the issue head-on and tell him that there was no way, not even if Hell froze over while pigs were flying, that we would leave him the car for a month while we were gallivanting around the globe and unavailable to deal with any of the innumerable potential problems, I would limit the scope of my response to the way he framed the issue.

So I told him, truthfully, that puppy training class was suspended for the next couple of weeks due to an agricultural fair on the kennel club’s grounds and that by then it would be only an additional couple of weeks till Sadie could resume pulling my arms out of their sockets straining on her leash to chase hapless quivering little mop dogs whilst pretending to learn how to become an obedient dog with a deep reservoir of self-control.    I thanked him for his selfless offer to undertake her training, but assured him that an additional couple of weeks off could not possibly hamper the lightning-fast development of Sadie the Wunderhunde.

Enoc’s next attempt came the very next day, again after dropping Ryan off at the office.  This time he was taking me to Kiswahili class.  During the ride to the office, Ryan and I discussed the need to arrange for David, our usual taxi driver, to take us to the airport the next night.  Moments after Ryan got out of the car and I settled into the front passenger seat, Enoc said he didn’t feel right letting us take a taxi to the airport when he felt it was within his job description to take us.  I saw this coming, so had my response ready, which was that the flight was at nearly midnight Friday night and that, therefore, we didn’t have to be at the airport till nearly 10:00 at night and that fell so far outside his normal working hours that there was no way we could impose on him, especially on a weekend night.  That wasn’t the response Enoc anticipated and, lacking a rebuttal, he dropped the topic.

The next day, Enoc made an appeal to my compassion.  Time was running out — we were leaving that night — and his excuses were running thin.  So rather than make up some reason for how his having the car for a month in our absence was to our benefit, he came clean that he wanted it for his benefit.  October is supposed to be a rainy month in Kenya — I haven’t checked the weather, so I have no idea if the much anticipated and needed rains have come or not.  Enoc pointed out that if he had to ride his bike to the grocery store, it would be difficult for him.  I told him to take the car right then to the store to load up on all the non-perishable grocery items the staff would need for the next month, and then I said it would surely not rain heavily every day, so he’d be able to ride his bike on days with clement weather.  And further, if it rained heavily every single hour of every single day, the roads (which are really not stellar under the best circumstances) would be unusable even for a car.

But he was right to take that approach because it did make me waver.  I wouldn’t want to ride a bike to the grocery store in pouring rain, so I felt bad that he might have to do just that.  But I remembered where to find sympathy and stuck to my guns and locked up the car key before we got in the taxi to go to the airport.