Another Ngurunit time post...

16 June 2017

I just finished cooking dinner to the accompanying music of U2.  Songs of Innocence album.  I went to the concert for that in Chicago in 2015 with my friend Janice.  It was amazing.  Beyond words.  This year U2 is in the midst of a 30 year anniversary tour of Joshua Tree.  I went to the concert 30 years ago, again in Chicago, when I was in University at UW Madison.  When this latest tour was announced, I so tried to sort out how to go to it.  I simply could not get the dates and places to meld with my summer schedule of having Loiweti home and my fall schedule of taking both kids to Wisconsin for school starting up again in September.  I resigned myself to missing this U2 event.  Last week the universe moved and suddenly I was made aware of a new set of concert dates added for the Midwest.  One of these dates was September 8^th in Minneapolis!  Wow.  I will be in New Richmond at the time, a short distance away from the venue, so now I have tickets to the Joshua Tree 30^th anniversary tour!  Crazy and fun world. 

A world away from USA in Northern Kenya, at the moment I am sitting out under the amazing stars of Ngurunit.  I am gazing at the constellation of Scorpio as it is appearing over the horizon.  I had never known this constellation before coming to Kenya.  It is my star sign but in the Northern Hemisphere of Wisconsin, it is basically too close to the horizon the wrong time of year in order to see it.  Here it rises high and visible in the early evening between May and September.  It is so distinctive and really does look exactly like a scorpion, unlike so many other constellations which are harder to correlate the stars into the picture of what it is supposed to be.  I certainly have been reminded the last few days of what a scorpion looks like and what it can do.  The first day we arrived, Bruin dog was stung by one chasing another dog in the scrub brush by the fence.  We didn’t actually see it but the symptoms were clear.  Poor dog was in extreme pain.  We could see the sting on the top of the left front foot and he wouldn’t let us touch it at all.  I instantly gave him an antihistamine and pain killer.  He didn’t want me to leave him.  If I did, he would come hopping after me on three legs.  So I sat with him on his bed for a couple hours.  The medicine seemed to do its work and he slept through the night.  In the morning, he was walking fine.  I was so relieved.  A few years ago little Mouse got stung and she almost died.  I hadn’t a clue then what medicine to give so only had hope and prayers.  She spent the night retching and retching.  I was so worried.  But she pulled through to my great relief and recovered with a little help in the morning from hydrocortisone shot from the local clinic which I learned helps a lot.  Scorpions are many here in Ngurunit and lots of people get stung.  I have been lucky so far.  Especially last night.  I had put my exercise mat outside and after a bit of stretching, was lying on my back watching the stars with a dog curled up on each side of me.  They both suddenly jumped up and went running off into the dark chasing something.  I turned on my flashlight to see where they had run off to and to my great horror, there was a scorpion on the mat right next to where my bare feet had been a moment before.  Amazing none of us were stung!  I jumped up, grabbed the dogs, locked them in the house to keep them safe as I grabbed a heavy shoe and went to take out the scorpion that was still sitting on the mat where I had left it!  Yikes!  My son had been oblivious through all the excitement as he was listening to music on his noise canceling earphones on a cot across the yard a bit.  I will definitely be using a cot from now on too.  He hadn’t heard all my shouting for help so was surprised when I showed him the dead scorpion as I took it to throw in a place where the stinger, even dead, could cause no harm.  Not sure if it could, but always better to be safe than sorry….