Thanksgiving and Busted Riveters

Thanksgiving
So Thanksgiving was pretty sweet. We drove to Kisumu and spent mid-morning/lunch and early afternoon and ate an excellent thanksgiving meal with a number of other "whites" who lived in Kisumu. the owners of the house, Swansons I believe, had known my parents (or at least went to the same church when I was younger) so I was recognized by a couple people. Recognized as in "you're Dave Jolly's kid?", apparently I look like him or something :-). And yes, even in thanksgiving in Kenya, we still had Turkey! I was actually rather surprised, but I guess you can buy turkey anywhere now-a-days around thanksgiving. Enough people want it, someone will bring it and make a couple bucks.

Gecko Sleep Death
That night I also killed a Gecko in my house. Didn't know that was possible. Those little guys are hard to catch! I must have caught him off guard as I just stepped on him when I entered my house (all lights were off and it was dark). Didn't even know what happened until I turned the lights on (after closing the curtains so as ti minimize how many bugs fly in as soon as the light turns on). Then I saw a gecko spleen on the floor next to exploded gecko. icky is a term I would use to describe squished gecko. That's right. Icky.

Riveters of Doom
The next couple days of work where spent in the Workshop where I was trying to be of service. Helped with a number of things, but the main one was putting up sheet metal on the Trailer. -Picture here- so you know what I'm talking about. In the process of measuring, drilling, riveting the dang riveter gave way. Granted, this riveter was on it's last legs and was 5+ years old (German made) so it had done well. But we only got 2 sheet metal plates up and still had one more. And that one more now only had 1/10 of the rivets in it, all on 1 row on the bottom. We tried to fix it by welding the riveter back together, but that didn't work. Just re-broke. So we tried to duct-tape the sheet metal to the Trailer so we could use the Trailer but apparently that didn't work to well either. It's too bumpy that the duck-tape gave way like melting butter. So 6 large clamps later, it was good to go for a trip. We got a new riveter from town on Tuesday (Initially broke prior Sat.) Unfortunately it already had a crack in the Riveter which wasn't noticed when it was purchased. So to prevent it from breaking we used a clamp on the Riveter to "hold it together" and got the sheet metal on and was good to go. Course, later that day I tried to rivet something else and it broke like a plastic toy. But not where the clamp was, as the clamp was keeping it from breaking at that point. Instead the handle broke. That's right, I broke a cast steel Handle. Awesome grip, booyah!! or it was just cheaply and horribly made... hmmm, I like the awesome grip story better...

Other notable events that week include but aren't limited to:
- Helped graze the cows (meaning I stood under a tree/shade until some cows strayed and chased them back into the area where they were supposed to be grazing)
- Saw what is called a "Sausage Tree". Apparently the fruit ferments on the tree, isn't really edible, but it makes elephants drunk, and thus they like it. Unfortunately no elephants where I am.
- There is a lot of illegal lumber harvesting everywhere in Africa. They chop trees, burn them and sell the charcoal. I saw a group of them today and one was bathing in the river. Nothing like a charcoal covered naken man to make my day!
- Oh, and 10/28, 2 weeks after I left home, was the first night where I actually stopped and looked up into the night sky. Thought that was odd that it took me 2 weeks to remember to look up. I was just walking to my house for bed, stopped, and thought "oh yah, stars, different sky, I should look". silly me.

and thus concludes some events around Thanksgiving time (11/22 - 11/28)