Even More Suspicious behavior ( or slinking around like a homeless biker)

As you know, there are constant international conferences in the complex where I work. 

This week it was " Sustainable Tourism in Africa's National Parks". Lots of tents, buses idling to take participants to their hotels 5-10 minutes walk away.  Lots of dancing traditional dancers making noise,  TV coverage and other fun stuff. 

On Tuesday I show up and they have given the parking lot where i park my bike to the trinket and exotic clothing hawkers (each i imagine pays a hefty fee).    So I decide to park in the VIP internal car parking lot.  The security guy lets me in but then another security guy comes running over saying " excuse me boss........"  I shrug my shoulders and start whining that I rent 300meters  (3000ft ) of office space and I cant find a place.................   I stop that and slink like a homeless guy out of the parking lot and lock my bike in no man's land behind the shoe shine guys.  the trials of a stealth bike commuter.

Winter? Fall? Spring?

When a foreigners asks  "what season is it? ", I don't know what to say  . Today it looks like fall to a European, doesn't it?

Living here it makes more sense to talk about the rainy seasons and the dry seasons, the cold season and hot season, although they don't quite go together. We are in transition from cold to hot, and dry to short rainy season. So is this the end of winter? But we don't plant the big crop until the end of the hot season when the big rains come.

Anyway I thought , wow, looks like fall season when I was growing up in eastern Washington state, USA.   So I stopped for a picture.  This is Thomas, son of a friend.  He is hot shot footballer but I can drop him on a bicycle!

We had a dust settling rain so the tracks on the mountain were perfect. Friday at work these massive clouds spilled over mount meru. Unfortunately the rain didn't reach town, but it made the upper roads perfect.

Bookstore

This is the bookstore I use. It is owned and run by Massawe.

I stop every few weeks or so and we joke a bit and then get down to business. I tell him that I dont have any money and his prices are so high that I will have to go get a bank loan. He smiles and starts looking over what he has, then pulls out 2 or 3 and says these you will like. I take one or two. He has about a 90 % success rate on his choices. He is one of those merchants who make your life easier.

Not so suspicious today

I have mentioned before where I work, and the building our offices is in, and the security and officialdom stuff associated with our building in previous posts.

Everyone going into the building goes through metal and bomb detectors like at the airport.  Visitors are grilled, passports held, pockets emptied, etc.

EXCEPT some VIPs they open a little gate and they go around the machine.  I noticed that the Director of PRIDE, AICC, top judges at UN ICTR all fall in this category.  So I was wondering if i should apply, as we have almost as much office space as Pride.

Then today, I happened to fall in step with the Directory of PRIDE as he got out of his black Range Rover and I from where I hide my bicycle.  We talked and walked into the security area, and the security jumped up and opened the little gate for us to by pass the machine.  then we talked about it.  He was wearing a suit and me not even a tie and carrying a dirty pannier.

I wonder if tomorrow I will be VIP?

In case you missed this one............

To the first three people who can identify this crap in the road you will receive a free brake tune up in my workshop.