Day of rest

And so to the seventh day. In the interests of longevity and personal effectiveness I have been trying to observe the Sabbath in the way that it was intended – as a day of rest. It is very difficult, partly because of years of a nose to the grindstone must be busy approach to life and partly because it’s difficult to switch off the ‘immortality mentality’. This basically means that I agree with all the good things that one can do to preserve health and sanity but they apply to other people not me. It is often called burning the candle at both ends. Young people are notorious for it. I have this sneaking feeling that I am running out of middle in my own candle. I must confess to feeling more rested than I usually do and if I can manage to build some exercise into my normal daily routine I might even convince myself that I could develop a healthy lifestyle.

It is slightly odd trying to take a more biblical approach to Sunday in our particular bit of Kenya. The dominant church in our area is the Seventh Day Adventist Church. They start counting on a different day to most of the churches I’ve come across as their Sabbath day is Saturday. Consequently Oyugis, (our nearest town), is pretty close to shut down on Saturday. It’s difficult to get public transport along our road, as the taxi drivers and piki piki riders, (motorbike taxis), attend church. Life revs up again for Sunday, (very literally in our case this weekend).

The roads in much of Africa are notoriously poor. Dusty, full of potholes and bumpy in the dry season. Treacherously slippery and flooded in the rainy season. In Kenya one of the solutions to this problem is to effectively plane the surface of the road with a large vehicle carrying what looks like a huge snow plough. It’s a very effective way of getting the road surface smoother but doesn’t really provide a long term solution to the basic problem that the road is just a dirt track. Because of the Saturday Sabbath it wasn’t working yesterday but was very busy along the stretch of the road outside our place this afternoon. It sounded like a tank revving up and down outside and had the loudest reversing warning alarm I have ever heard. From our point of view it should mean that traveling time to Oyugis will be halved for about the next month or so as the road surface will actually be navigable. It will also make walking along the side of the road a less hazardous occupation. As the quality of the road gets worse all of the drivers using it tend to hurtle along the footpaths at the side of the road rather than driving on the main carriage way. Now that the road had been ‘fixed’ the Oyugis to Kendu Bay rally will at least be contested where it should be – along the road.