Midnight oil

I had the most surreal experience last night – something straight out of an African comedy. It started off innocently enough. I've always been something of a night owl so at about midnight, after I'd finished for the day – I lurched off to the latrine, torch in hand, hoping not to meet any mambas bent on revenge for the recent loss of one of their number.

In a remote rural location, with very little noise pollution, sound carries a long way. As I stepped out of the latrine I heard what sounded like a major domestic dispute going on just up the road. I thought I heard a woman screaming and a guy shouting. It sounded like;

“Why don't you just kill me now?”

 It was certainly not the typical night noise. Shining my rapidly dimming torch as far up the road as I could didn't reveal an obvious explanation for the disturbance. I must confess I didn't go as close to the boundaries of our place with my torch as I might have done – it seemed a sensible step as it had just rained, my torch wasn't very bright and frogs seem to like the area around the latrines. (Frogs are just below mambas in the food chain).

As I turned to go back to my house a figure stumbled up to the fence – obviously drunk.

“Terry, it's me, your plumber” he shouted.

Somewhat taken aback I was at a loss for words. After a very confusing conversation, (as my Luo isn't very good, our plumber's English isn't brilliant and he was drunk), it turned out that he had run out of petrol and abandoned his car some way up the road. Brandishing a small plastic container he asked if I could give him one or two litres of petrol. It seemed a reasonable request, (and saying no might have encouraged him to more noisy remonstrations). The only problem was that I didn't have the key to the petrol store. Easy solution to this though – just fetch one of the night guards.

Who ended up being very elusive. Being a night guard isn't the nicest job in the world, (even if you are a very dedicated night guard), Our guys are nice people but I'm not over impressed with their ideas of patrolling or vigilance. To be fair to them we do have a fairly large property to patrol, but it also provides lots of places to 'rest' in. After looking for them for about five minutes, (with an even dimmer torch now), I decided to call one of them on his mobile. I guess it would have been more in keeping with the whole security thing to have walkie talkies but the phone worked fine. Two minutes later all three guards miraculously appeared.

Our friend the plumber had, by now, walked round to the main gate and was busy rattling his jerry can through the bars.

“Terry, it's me your plumber”, he shouted, “just let me have a little fuel”

Between us we managed to quieten him down and one of the guards went to get the fuel. We then had a conference about what to do next. Leonard, (the 'head' of the guard unit tonight), sensibly suggested that someone should go with the plumber to make sure he didn't set anything on fire with the petrol and make us culpable for any associated damages. He volunteered to go himself and toddled off into the night, carrying the fuel and following behind our drunk friend.

Twenty minutes later a car horn sounded a couple of times. I went back out to the gate to see Leonard talking to the plumber from our side of the gate. The plumber thanked us profusely, (and quite loudly), for our kindness, obviously surprised to have got a good result in his search for fuel. Between us we managed to persuade him that he should get off home. He disappeared up the road in a more or less straight line, applying a few more revs than really seemed necessary at that time of night. As we haven't heard news of any car wrecks we assume that he made it home.