Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2011-41

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Dalton Deedrick´s account of a month is Africa continues
• Jean Sterling replies to a query in last week´s issue
• Lyle Meeres shares a short story he wrote
• Don Henderson sends a Thanksgiving story
• Sites are suggested by Bruce Galway, Carol Shoemaker, Catherine Nesbitt, Tom Williamson, and Tony Lewis

Dalton Deedrick continues with his diary account of

A MONTH IN AFRICA

March 12 - Sunday, so set about mailing a duplicated letter to friends, relatives, ex-volunteers, supply donors, etc. It was a beautiful blue-sky morning so a good walk outside the compound seemed in order. Came back to find Sister M.C. had brought over a nice meal of chicken, rice and vegetables. She also upbraided me for taking a solo walk around the countryside outside the school and hospital compound. It never occurred to me that a white-haired old coot sauntering along with a wristwatch and a camera in view would be a target for some otherwise idle young citizen. Next time I have a wanderlust, I´m expected to take one of the staff along for company.

Our address here is Kilimambogo. In Swahili, Kilima means "mountain", and "mbogo" means buffalo. By deduction, our little enclave then is "Buffalo Mountain", and sure enough, there is a sizeable hump a few miles away, forested, and by Sister M.C.´c account, infested with "boo-falo".

It is strange to be in a place where there is no one to talk to. The little A.M. radio picks up Nairobi, but the music is frightful, and the conversation mostly Swahili. Some fellows have brought out short- wave sets and get BBC, but I never thought of it. Sister M.C. says, "Maybe someone should buy a TV," and apparently Nairobi comes in here O.K. I have some vague misgivings about that. We´d watch it of course, but we´d be further isolated from the people we came to help.

March 13 - Monday. One has to cultivate an entirely new attitude if one is going to live near the equator - things just don´t flow along like they do elsewhere. I laboriously retyped my round-robin letter with prospects of mailing it tonight, but of course the photocopier was out of toner. Maybe tomorrow, or eventually!

Had a lull in patient flow, so toured the adjacent hospital. Mostly maternity patients, but in one room the nurses were changing the dressings on a man with badly burned buttocks. He was protesting loudly. The story was that he got into the local beer a bit too enthusiastically and sat or fell into the cooking fire. In another room, a little girl was recovering after having been bitten by a puff adder.

There´s a telephone in the sisters´ residence, and once in a while it works. The phone repair man says he will come and fix it, but he hints broadly that a little cash up front would expedite his coming out. The good sisters refuse to co-operate as a matter of principle, so the line stays dead. There doesn´t seem to be anything that isn´t out of order, or needs fixing on this side of the world.

Michael tallied up our day´s work last week in Mangu. We saw 58 patients and did 136 extractions. I don´t think I did 138 extractions in my last five years of practice in Canada. This is no game for near octogenarians!

March 14 - Tuesday. Packed and on the road by 8 a.m., with an extra nun to be dropped off somewhere. This day we go through Nairobi, on to Limuru, and up a goat trail to Karieta. The road followed the east rim of the Great Rift valley, spectacular by any standard, and enlivened by literally hundreds of bicycles, donkey carts, push carts, and head loads, all headed into the markets of the city.

I have mentally apologized for my earlier rude assessment of the little Peugeot. It bore us without complaint through the worst potholes and cart ruts imaginable, and deposited us at the tiny health centre unscathed.

Only 32 patients showed up, and the work was a joy, for not only was there a working sink, but the power stayed on all day for light. We are far from Kilimambogo, so here the crew stays for the night in the sisters´ residence. The lights stayed on through most of the supper, then it was out with the candles to read a month-old copy of "The Nation", a Nairobi paper rife with accounts of rape, robbery and mayhem throughout the country. Unfortunately, the accounts are mostly true.

This little health centre is nearly 7,000 feet high, and the nights are cold. We needed the extra blankets which were thoughtfully provided.

To be continued.

CORRESPONDENCE

Jean Sterling, commenting on her forecast longevity, writes: Yes, I am really into exercise. In my younger days I did triathlons and ran the NYC Marathon five times (I didn´t learn). Now swimming is my main form of exercise, and I swim several times a week.

On another subject she writes: Congratulations on Vancouver being on the list of green cities. The city in Iceland looked beautiful in the picture with all the brightly-painted houses.

Lyle Meeres sends a short story he wrote for "A Diction", a publication of Writers´ Ink in RedDeer. The story is reprinted here with Lyle´s permission:

I CAN´T DANCE

"You did remember that we´re going to Brad´s wedding this Saturday, didn´t you?" my wife asked.

"Sure," I lied.

"I hope you got your suit from the cleaners."

"Umm - no. Guess I can´t go, eh?" I mumbled hopefully.

"I guess you can guess again! I´m not going to my favourite cousin´s wedding without an escort."

"Maybe I can borrow you a Ford Escort...."

"Smartie! Make sure your brown sports jacket and those dark green pants are ready, and shine your shoes tonight. I gassed up the car on my way home from work..."

"Since this is his third marriage, isn´t it enough that we danced at this wedding twice already?" I asked, still wishing.

"You wish!" Mary replied.

We had been married long enough that that woman always knew exactly what was in my mind.

Being very intelligent, I guessed that this was an event I was predestined to attend. I knew what happened to Oedipus when he tried to defy the gods (he lost his woman and his eyes-so he couldn´t even see another female if he was looking), so I gave up gracelessly and whiningly-if I couldn´t enjoy my Saturday, I wasn´t sure there was a reason Mary should enjoy hers. Somehow this was all her fault.

After all, she had all these cousins. Actually, I had more cousins, but I can do a great job of ignoring mine. With twelve kids in my father´s family and thirteen in my mother´s, I could always argue that my cousins got lost in the crowd. Mary, on the other hand, kept track of her cousins because there were so few of them. Curse the luck!

I really liked Brad. He was a friendly fellow, and he told really bad jokes. The problem was that he was fool enough to LOVE dancing, so it would be the thing to do for hours. Since my toes on both feet end on the right with a big toe, and since the wicked witch of the west had cursed me to never have a sense of rhythm, I had always operated on the principle that if I danced badly enough a few times after we were married, Mary would sensibly come to the rational solution that, as a loving couple, we should give up dancing. It would be a conservation measure, too, designed to save some of her toes. Too bad about those she lost during our dating days....

I slept badly that night, dreaming no doubt of the dance of the sugar plum fairies, all unfamiliar relatives on my wife´s side, all inebriated on plum wine, all dressed up in tutus, and all stumbling better than my best efforts at dancing.

I awoke the next morning with a new hope. Maybe Mary didn´t have the service station check the oil when she gassed up, and the engine would burn up on our way to the Ukrainian Hall south of Edmonton. A crazy smile crossed my waking face. Mary frowned at me. "I was just thinking that the dance should be a gas," I said innocently.

"I told you I gassed up," Mary said, looking at me suspiciously. "And I had the oil checked."

When you are married to someone who knows you that well, there is only one reasonable thing to do. I drove. We made it to the hall.

"So here we are at the Ukrainian hell... uh, Hall," I said, tugging furiously at my green and brown tie. Those things were designed by some feminist as part of a plot to strangle all males who made it out of their cribs, I swear.

"Behave yourself. And leave your tie alone. There´s Brad...." and we were off.

The wedding itself wasn´t half bad, though I did think it was rather mean of the flower girl to stop the ring boy by yanking on his tie. (I wonder if she´s related to the original designer of ties?)

I took lots of photos, so I fit in like a relative. Little did they know that I was taking pictures of the other photographers taking pictures!

"Gary, take some pictures of Brad, you fool," my wife hissed. "And snug up your tie...."

Well, the dinner at least was a pleasure. I like food. There was lots of it at this wedding. Brad drove truck and his new bride´s family used his occupation as a guideline for dinner preparations: one truckload per guest. Maybe I could overeat and get sick just in time to escape the dance?

"Gary, leave that dessert there. You´ll make yourself sick."

Well, so much for Plan Z.

The speeches were terrible, but they were over agonizingly soon, and in no time those crazy people had the tables pushed back, out of the way.

I hadn´t seen any musicians yet, though, so I was beginning to feel more jovial. I turned to Mary to tell her we might as well go home.

"Oh, there´s the band, just coming in. Right on time...." she said.

I wondered if they ever took bribes to NOT play. I gave it up as unlikely. My fourteen dollars wouldn´t go far, and anyway, people who played music usually liked music-even if some of them played like they hadn´t ever heard the REAL thing.

In seconds, the band was playing the newlywed´s choice for a first dance together as a married couple, "I Could Have Danced All Night." I decided Brad´s bride must be a bad influence on him. After all, they were married now-he no longer HAD to dance with her. Brad and his bride walked through the flower-bedecked arch at the edge of the floor and danced around like they enjoyed it.

Shortly, by some agreed upon instinct, the herd agreed that the next dance was a bingo. No one ever said "Bingo," but the couple split up and each grabbed a new partner. Thank God I was slumped in a chair at the back of a big table. She´d never see me, and I just wasn´t Brad´s type.

You know how cats can always tell who hates cats so that they can walk straight to them and jump up on their laps?

Right. The bride found me. I nudged the relative of someone on my left, and he thought it was a great joke. Mary nudged me gently with a four-inch hatpin she had brought along for the purpose.

I couldn´t believe it. The bride was attractive enough. If there was Japanese in her blood, she could have had her feet bound instead of waiting until she was married to have me chop them off at the base of the toes.

"Sorry," I mumbled. And that was just because I bumped her as we headed for the dance floor. I really didn´t mean to walk her into the right hand side of that flower-bedecked arch that way. It never did look the same when those people set it upright.

I counted four times I kicked her shins and that was before the dance music got me going. She was an angel though. She just smiled and somehow got everyone to agree that another silent "Bingo" had been called.

I started to leave the jungle floor, but fell to my knees when someone tripped me. "You can dance with me," Mary said, meaningfully.

The rest of the night was like that. It was a conspiracy by the same people who designed ties. They never let me off that dance floor.

Something in my mind snapped. I began to enjoy it.

I recovered my senses much later, at home. After a couple of weeks, I began to feel quite normal.

"You did remember that this weekend is Ben´s wedding, didn´t you?" Mary asked...

Don Henderson forwards this very funny Thanksgiving tale:

UNBAKED YEAST ROLLS

We have a fox terrier by the name of Jasper. He came to us in the summer of 2001 from the fox terrier rescue program. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this type of adoption, imagine taking in a 10- year-old child about whom you know nothing and committing to doing your best to be a good parent.

Like a child, the dog came with his own idiosyncrasies. He will only sleep on the bed, on top of the covers, nuzzled as close to my face as he can get without actually performing a French kiss on me. Lest you think this is a bad case of "no discipline," I should tell you that Perry and I tried every means to break him of this habit, including locking him in a separate bedroom for several nights. The new door cost over $200. But I digress.

Five weeks ago we began remodelling our house. Although the cost of the project is downright obnoxious, it was 20 years overdue AND it got me out of cooking Thanksgiving for family, extended family, and a lot of friends that I like more than family most of the time.

I was assigned the task of preparing 124 of my famous yeast dinner rolls for the two Thanksgiving feasts we did attend.

I am still cursing the electrician for getting the new oven hooked up so quickly. It was the only appliance in the whole darn house that worked, thus the assignment.

I made the decision to cook the rolls on Wednesday evening to reheat Thursday a.m. Since the kitchen was freshly painted, you can imagine the odour. Not wanting the rolls to smell like Sherwin Williams #586, I put the rolls on baking sheets and set them in the living room to rise for a few hours. Perry and I decided to go out to eat, returning in about an hour. The rolls were ready to go in the oven.

It was 8:30 p.m. When I went to the living room to retrieve the pans, much to my shock, one whole pan of 12 rolls was empty. I called out to Jasper and my worst nightmare became a reality. He literally wobbled over to me. He looked like a combination of the Pillsbury doughboy and the Michelin Tire man wrapped up in fur. He groaned when he walked. I swear even his cheeks werebloated.

I ran to the phone and called our vet. After a few seconds of uproarious laughter, he told me the dog would probably be okay; however, I needed to give him Pepto-Bismol every two hours for the rest of the night. God only knows why I thought a dog would like Pepto-Bismol any more than my kids did when they were sick. Suffice it to say that by the time we went to bed the dog was black, white and pink. He was so bloated we had to lift him onto the bed for the night.

We arose at 7:30, and as we always do first thing, put the dog out to relieve himself. Well, the dog was as drunk as a sailor on his first leave. He was running into walls, falling flat on his butt, and most of the time when he was walking, his front half was going one direction and the other half was either dragging the grass or headed 90 degrees in another direction. He couldn´t lift his leg to pee, so he would just walk and pee at the same time. When he ran down the small incline in our back yard he couldn´t stop himself and nearly ended up running into the fence.

His pupils were dilated and he was as dizzy as a loon. I endured another few seconds of laughter from the vet (second call within 12 hours) before he explained that the yeast had fermented in his belly and that he was indeed drunk.

He assured me that, not unlike most binges we humans go through, it would wear off after about four or five hours, and to keep giving him Pepto-Bismol.

Afraid to leave him by himself in the house, Perry and I loaded him up and took him with us to my sister´s house for the first Thanksgiving meal of the day.

My sister lives outside of Muskogee on a ranch, (10 to 15 minute drive). Rolls firmly secured in the trunk (124 less 12) and drunk dog leaning from the back seat onto the console of the car between Perry and me, we took off.

Now I know you probably don´t believe that dogs burp, but believe me when I say that after eating a tray of risen unbaked yeast rolls, DOGS WILL BURP. These burps were pure Old Charter. They would have matched or beat any smell in a drunk tank at the police station. But that´s not the worst of it. Now he was beginning to fart and they smelled like baked rolls. God strike me dead if I am not telling the truth! We endured this for the entire trip to Karen´s, thankful she didn´t live any further away than she did.

Once Jasper was firmly placed in my sister´s garage with the door locked, we finally sat down to enjoy our first Thanksgiving meal of the day. The dog was the topic of conversation all morning long and everyone made trips to the garage to witness my drunken dog, each returning with a tale of Jasper´s latest endeavour to walk without running into something.

Of course, as the old adage goes, "what goes in must come out," and Jasper was no exception.Granted, if it had been me that had eaten 12 risen, unbaked yeast rolls, you might as well have put a concrete block up my behind, but alas a dog´s digestive system is quite different from yours or mine. I discovered this was a mixed blessing when we prepared to leave Karen´s house. Having discovered his "packages" on the garage floor, we loaded him up in the car so we could hose down the floor.

This was another naive decision on our part. The blast of water from the hose hit the poop on the floor and the poop on the floor withstood the blast from the hose. It was like Portland cement beginning to set up and cure.

We finally tried to remove it with a shovel. I (obviously no one else was going to offer their services) had to get on my hands and knees with a coarse brush to get the remnants off of the floor. And as if this wasn´t degrading enough, the darn dog in his drunken state had walked through the poop and left paw prints all over the garage floor that had to be brushed too.

Well, by this time the dog was sobering up nicely so we took him home and dropped him off before we left for our second Thanksgiving dinner at Perry´s sister´s house.

I am happy to report that as of today (Monday) the dog is back to normal both in size and temperament. He has had a bath and is no longer tricolor. None the worse for wear I presume. I am also happy to report that just this evening I found two risen unbaked yeast rolls hidden inside my closet door.

It appears he must have come to his senses after eating 10 of them, but decided hiding two of them for later would not be a bad idea. Now I´m doing research on the computer as to: "How to clean unbaked dough from the carpet."

And how was your day?

SUGGESTED SITES

Bruce Galway forwards this link to a video of a George Burns performance:

Carol Shoemaker forwards this appeal that you click daily on the site where advertisers/sponsors donate mammograms to underprivileged women. This is the same site I have been suggesting over the years that you click on to help provide food for the hungry, support veterans, encourage literacy, help the rainforest, and provide help for animals - all in the space of about a minute. Of course, if you are tempted by the many bargains advertised on each site, it will take longer. I have been clicking on all the sites for many years, the first time each day that I log onto the internet:

Catherine Nesbitt sends a link to a video of a great dance routine by Bob Hope and Jimmy Cagney:

Catherine also forwards the URL for an unusual father-and-daughter wedding dance:

Tom Williamson forwards the URL for clever and imaginative advertising on a Berlin building:

Tony Lewis suggests this site for a video of villagers constructing living bridges, some of which are centuries old:

Thousands of Americans have non-violently occupied Wall St. - an epicentre of global financial power and corruption. They are the latest ray of light in a new movement for social justice that is spreading like wildfire from Madrid to Jerusalem to 146 other cities and counting, but they need our help to succeed. If millions of us from across the world stand with them, we'll boost their resolve and show the media and leaders that the protests are part of a massive mainstream movement for change. Click to stand with the movement:

Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure - and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work:

To check out the features of the "freedictionary", which changes daily, go to