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It had middle-brown leather chairs and GPS with a plasma wde screen displaying its messages in impeccable Japanese characters...

On arrival I found Anne hidden in a dark far edge of her palace. She first had lost quite some money painfully saved by showering cold and sitting in the dark in her High-End B&B during power cuts rather than starting her extensive boiler park and her smooth High-End 5 KVA diesel generator, and invested in a fraudulent company of two Dutch boys in their twenties, who had enthusiastically briefed her about their plans to easily become millionaires in a few years by selling solar water heaters, at least that is what I found out after she invested, and I met the guys. Anne had told me they sold solar panel systems. Anyway, they promptly went bust on debts Anne told they told they hadn't told Anne about, and were on the internet under another name even before they had apologized for the loss of Anne's money. Their new company is of course not liable to pay her back. The otherwise sympathetic compound dog Paris had assumed the ambition to take over Anne's role as general head of the compound (incited by the fizzing content of his un-chopped balls I guess). His success must have been considerable for he was sent back to where he had been selected: animal care. Anne's best household staff turned out to be also the best thief and got kicked out. Then a shady Dutch baby elephant charity hired Dano (for a contract sum already lost in the cost of the intensive correspondence) to make a video featuring no matter which baby elephants, fit to cheat their backing churches and big town 5th flat story nature lovers into more donations. Unfortunately they could not supply transport, but Anne and Dano were ready to use their own supadupa Toyota Landcruiser diesel with middle-brown leather chairs and GPS with a plasma wide screen displaying its messages in impeccable Japanese characters [password protected], Dano featuring as driver-cameraman-director. That tire burst exactly where the dirt road was dug a bit down, so the road side walls were steep, high and rocky. Everybody survived. Anne did not break anything but her airbag had bruised her all over. She had not been playing golf since.
All in all the classical start of my Nairobi visits. I pulled her out of that cold moist fungi dark place deep in her basement to walk with me on the golf course carrying only her pitching wedge and a ball in case she would start to feel the urge to hit a shot. She almost beat me and played two pars. Three days later she wore again her overpriced ("Marlies Dekkers") bra "for the confident business woman", used all clubs again, driving only 20 yards shorter than me and beat me on 9 holes playing 4 over, teeing off, to allow for uninterrupted conversation, with me from the men's tees. Anne's golf course conversation - when she feels well, that is - is always highly instructive: it feels like dealing with stressed pink-red coloured loudly yapping terrier constantly hanging down in the tips of your trouser-legs - somebody else's terrier that is ... - but she makes you duly realize how many errors you make in swing, rule application and etiquette. My stroke handicap is now getting down to 18, but Anne does not get tired making me realize that my huge general error rate surely will keep requiring long term permanent accompaniment and instruction of an experienced golfer  -  which I am fortunate to have! As a golden crown on my efforts, shortly before my return to Kampala Anne told me this time I had been "less useful to her then at previous visits", so I proudly concluded that in one week I had solidly put her back on the road. [and she was right about me too, Index Of Nairobi Pages].

But let us go back to the start of my visit. I always leave some items in Nairobi. Golf shoes, a plastic water bottle containing excess tees, a T-shirt and a silly hat, for sale and recommended in Royal's pro shop to enhance my acceptance in the local golfer's community, a fleece-pullover, and a pair of sandals. But they had all disappeared.  After some half hearted attempts I found the bottle with tees neatly put behind a panel in a store, next to a heap of big empty cardboard boxes, neatly stacked, from big to small, to fit in each other. I got a suspicion and lifted the boxes one by one out of each other. Yes, the silly hat was deep down in the one but last. Now I got sure, a hopeful clue, Anne's staff must have used its brains! Immediately I kindly requested a staff to lead me to Dano's shoe cupboard. But no golf shoes. After a moment of dejection staff slowly breathed in and said we might try Mr. Dano's cupboard of spare shoes. Yes. My golf shoes. Then without having been asked anything, she led me through the labyrinth of corridors to a totally empty room were I never ever slept, opened the only one of the many drawers holding an item...my T-shirt! Fleece and slippers, you will now no doubt ask yourself, I myself had left at Lydia's and I later found them there.

Left in red: My partner, one of the eldest playing members of Royal Nairobi, strolls to his ball after playing, on the 18th, his routine tee shot: consistently 129 yds. 3 ft. 6 inch. Middle: My partner arrives at his ball for his second shot. He does not consider a safe short drive to cross the pond with his second shot, he told me. He even expects to hit his tee shot a few meters longer after having recovered from a small shoulder injury. He is looking forward to that because it will save him the climb down to the edge of the pond.  Left and Right: recently some course palms assumed a menacing posture. 

Ian badly had the upper hand with Anne

My Kampala friend Ian frequented Anne's High End B&B as well and beat me (narrow margin, narrow margin) on the golf course, moreover I stopped drinking (for 3 months, a decision to test the effect on incident frequency, taken at the cardiologist, my official pretext for visiting Nairobi), so in the restaurant he badly had the upper hand with Anne, who totally had forgotten it had been ME who had pulled her, bruises and all, out of the chilly basement of her unaffordable premises and led her back to Marlies-Dekkers-&-single-digit-golf-score lines in three days ... And will she ever appreciate how many hours I sweated at photoshopping her face on this totally charming picture? But I am used to it and will suffer in silence! The last few days were to recover from all stress in Lydia's cozy small house, inhabited by kids Nathan&Jessica, 2 guests and young Alsatian Koco with charmingly driveling and quite firm play bite (Nathan, 8, a quarter of Koco's size, crying to school, Jessica, 10 and a third of Koco's size retaliated with a SOLID direct right on the dog's beautiful nose, he sure got the message). For this move I had a pretext as well: Lydia, while getting rich as a head of project design for power plants "oh.. today I have to go to Kigali, let us meet in restaurant Ambiance at eight tonight?", sings jazz. We plan a glittering career as a desperately poor jazz duo, first on her veranda, then in Nairobi, then in the rest of the world. We already know 5 songs!

Jessica's school friend, elegantly dressed with solid shoe ware in fitting colour, puts up a whirling show on the veranda, accompanied by a family guest-spectator on violin (right), parents laughing their heads off. Lydia 2nd from left, the future world league diva of jazz

Jessica herself made a SOLID attempt to outdo the show of her school friend. Panting heavily, she pulls a heavy thick carpet on stage. "What is that?", mammie asks. "That's where I have to die".

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