That Friday Feeling

There is a moment in the completely implausible, yet somehow intriguing horror flick the Mist, when you think "it's going to be ok after all". To give you the plot if you haven't seen it, a group of people have barricaded themselves in a supermarket to escape a multi-headed snake thing which appeared shortly after a mist descended on the whole town. Chaos ensues as people firstly disagree as to whether or not this snake thing exists; then do believe it exists after all seeing some tentacles but disagree as to how dangerous it is; then agree it's dangerous after they hear it kill the group of people who concluded it wasn't dangerous and decided to wonder out for a fateful stroll, but disagree how to handle the situation. Before long some wacko women has formed a doomsday cult preaching salvation through worship of the snake thing, which more specifically means human sacrifices with victims selected by the aforementioned loon with compliance enforced by her nazi police force armed with the supermarket's cooking knives. By this point as a viewer you wonder (a) why am I still watching this film and (b) how much worse can it get? Which is just when our film's protagonist decides it is time to leave this chaos, and escapes to a car with a group of like minded people, about 2/3 of which survive the snake thing, and they drive off not into the sunset, but rather into the mist. "It's going to be alright after all" you think. And then their car runs out of fuel....

Now why am I telling you all this? Well, firstly to avoid sounding like a broken record and starting this weekend's post with those words "The week wasn't easy" yet again. And secondly because on Friday I had the same feeling. "It's going to be alright after all". And then it wasn't.

As you can imagine the start to the week wasn't the easiest after illness. It inevitably got worse as the rust bucket broke down yet again, making it another matatu week. Given how many things I had to do across town, this actually resulted in me barely being at the house to oversee works as I took the matatu just about everywhere else but the house. 

Roll on Thursday.  A side-project I'm working on (and will talk about another time) began to take off and I got the car back. This felt like the leaving the supermarket moment in the Mist. It continued into Friday, when I was out buying materials for the first half of the day, enjoying non-matatu life. The car was being temperamental, but it was going forwards and backwards ok. Let's not be picky, what more can you ask for from a car? I got back to the house and for the first time in the whole week, I took a proper, relaxed and complete look at the works. Sure I'd been looking at the house all week (when I was around), but more at things like "how straight is are the window frames", "are the kitchen cabinets arranged correctly" and "are all the lights correctly wired to the right switches". In other words, details. On Friday afternoon, I took a step back and just looked around in general. It looked good. Ceiling up, walls plastered, skeleton kitchen cabinets on the wall, glass going in the windows and plumbing working. For the first time the end was in sight. Not close, but in sight.

Kitchen cabinets in place

Glass going in the windows

Ceilings all up

What progress looks like:

Signs of progress; from this starting point...

Through this chaos....

To here

Then I got in the car to go home. And it wouldn't start. Not even a chug; just completely dead. And my heart sank.

It's hard for anyone who's not been to somewhere like Kenya to understand just how frustrating being car-less here is. In Europe I'm a huge advocate of alternative means of transport. I've never owned a car in my life; I walk, cycle or take public transport pretty much everywhere and always have done. But here, doing what I'm trying to do, being car-less equates to trying to play football (soccer) with your shoelaces tied together.

On the 1 hour, 17km trip home which spanned the normal three means of transport (boda boda, matatu and walking) and during which I carried by bags of shopping (the type you only buy when a car is available), I  grudgingly gave in. It's back to hiring a car, even if there is no way I can afford it. At some point you have to say "enough is enough".

As for the film the Mist, if you haven't seen it and want to then stop reading <here>.  But in short, it gets worse. After the car breaks down, there's a rumbling sound like the snake thing. Knowing there is no escape from this monster, our protagonist takes a gun out of the glove box only to find there are four bullets for the five people in the car. He decides he'll kill the others (including his daughter) and face death through the monster himself. Having shot the other four he gets out of the car and holds his hands in the air, ready to face his destiny. Only for a US Army tank to appear through the mist. With the realisation of what the sound was, and what he's done, he falls to his knees.

Let's just hope that things here don't follow the same downwards spiral!