Me, Kees van Vianen and his business

My friend Kees van Vianen gave me a room in a house he is renting.  Kees has a shipyard. I live in the house with two brothers of his wife who work at the shipyard. Kees lives hundred meters down the road, at 1205 m, so 25 meters lower.

While jogging, I can take a short cut to Kees, and drink 2 litres of water there suffering all kinds of jokes concerning my physical state. Lately, I got running company by a younger mzungu, Kees' new colleague, more than 30% lighter than me and more than 20% faster even though I broke my personal local track records since I ran while seeing his back quickly become tinier.
Since in the company of Kees they always speak Kiswahili, my English is a useful exercise to my house mates. Meanwhile I use dinner time to check whether I correctly digested my book's Kiswahili teachings of the day.

Photo My pickup is parked safely within the fenced compound of Kees.

This photo pleases me particularly because my pickup's nice color blending with Kees' Land Cruisers makes visible my cherished involuntary financial partnership with his esteemed business: Kees used the remainder of the money I deposited at his account for my dow yard payments, $3500, in own company.

Photo: Sometimes my pickup is even used to transport Kees van Vianen's Company workers, to their comfort, they say, because of my bed on its platform

Photo: My good friend and financial representative Kees in his natural habitat. The Adobe Photoshop red oxide painted steel plate in front of his head is meant to secure his privacy.

The part (roughly) at this side of the ladder is still hoped later to become my dhow. But for that to happen Kees has to sell this ship first.

Life in my house

My housemates Gerald and Victor work at the yard. On Friday night, however, they go to town for a dance. The next morning, I usually find charming girls doing some ironing and if I am lucky they even make a nice meal for which I am invited. Sunday morning, when I am up early, I can see them going to church in their best dresses:
 

Photo: Early Sunday morning: my housemates go to church >

I feared they would not like my food, but my al dente cross cultural Italian-Kiswahili sato (tilapia) fish pasta (I found oregano and rozemary! no basil, but later on I found that too, fresh!) went down quite well (with me too).

Set this unique dish as your desktop background by right-clicking on the picture and choose "Set as background"! As far as contributing to the household, there is no resort to arithmetics, as I am used to experience with my friends, expecially the Dutch ones, who surely would appoint a treasurer assigned with mathematically correct Pareto-optimal payment and consumption schedules on the basis of double bookkeeping. For me, here it boils down to acquiring some intuition as to when I should give Victor some money for shopping. That is not too difficult: right after I have payed (usually $30), I will have rice with an entire fish on my plate. Then comes the period of half of a fish, then maize (ugali, polenta) with a few bits of pork. After two days of maize with scrambled egg it of course does not matter whether or not I doubt if the brothers also funded their $30. My life is already cheap enough. So that is the moment I give Victor another $30 and we return to feasting.
Eating in East Africa is with the unaided right hand only. The house owner has even put a small porcelain sink with tap in a of corner the eating room for pre and after dinner hand washing. As a primitive western barbarian, not raised to eat properly, I usually end up with two dirty hands, so I save myself using a fork or spoon in my left. 

Those guys are absolutely gold. The youngest drinks nor borrows from me. The oldest is does both. I gave him a limit of $ 50, though he as yet is unaware of that, exclusive of the gas burner he bought from me for his Dar as Salaam family and still has to pay. Before he goes with it he should pay, but I fear I will get a request to take it before paying. The oldest consistently empties my beer crate before I had a decent sip. Also, as soon as I have bought a fresh crate of beer, we somehow get a lot of visiting friends. I cannot bring my cooler to my room or lock it, because we all use it, so that would be rude. So, I secretly relaunched a 12 V camping cooler from my hardware store on a decoration spot transformer which fortunately I had decided not to throw away with its decoration spots during my Great Clearing in Jinja (see move out of the 2 Friends boys quarters Jinja). This secretive immoral an absolutely un-African action to secure private property is, of course, absolutely immoral, but I have noticed all Africans hide their possesions like that. The camp fridge now contains my beer and even my white wine, in which, after having finished my beer he - contrary to my hope - though the drink was not known to him, started to take interest . And exponentially so. Gerald told me not to tell his sister and her housemates that he borrows from me and has the girlfriend Mary, who finally won the saturday night contests from the others. She is cheerful and likes to drink, so a good company for Gerald. Victor girlfriend search ended with a very charming and honest school girl. However the previous girlfriend kept insisting she did not mind sharing with the next one. Victor is to polite to refuse. She keeps coming.