Sampson had made the contact when he brought the house down presenting at a science education conference at the Unizulu Science Centre in KZN. I was feeling the return to altitude β Nairobi is m above sea level, m less than Addis but still high enough to have me labouring to breathe.
Combined with still feeling knocked out by our second lot of typhoid meds in 2 months, I was scared that I might struggle to cope weeks alone here. Purity Muli pictured below between Daniel Ndungu and Caleb Mwangi doing her Masters in natural pesticides, was also assigned to keep an eye on us.
Before stressed Sampson flew out the following day, I made him a rice omelette to keep him going on the coach to Plymouth and tried to cut his hair into something a bit more respectable. It ended up rather New Romantic, reminiscent of Martin Fry circa Zola and I enjoyed chicken soup and The Crown , reassuringly sedate and dull and delightful. I was hoping that being still for a while and ceasing the typhoid meds would alleviate the hot flushes I was now having all night and all through the day.
Each morning, Zola and I would walk around the campus, in a loop around gorgeous green fields of crop experiments, before knuckling down to school, determined to finish the term before Ruby arrived. We were also entertained by the monkeys scampering all around. I adapted to single parenthood by cooking a huge supper pot once every three days e.
We were getting into a nice rhythm, rewarding days of hard work with his keyboard playing or an episode of The Crown with us two cosy on the bed and the cat on my tummy. PJ was being uncharacteristically needy, coming to sit on my head early every morning before snuggling down inside my sleeping bag for an extra doze.
