Nairobi is wintery cold and grey. Somehow everything is coming apart at the seams even more than usual. Yesterday was a Day of Many Rants. So things which make us laugh, uproariously, are all the more welcomed.
Since the grenade attacks and heightened security level, security guards check for bombs in Nairobi. But its not the systematic approach I remember from IRA threat days in UK. Male guards check men, and have the electronic scanner toys. Female guards check women, and just look in your handbag. It's not clear whether the electronic scanner should beep (showing it has a working battery, but might have found something malevolent), or be silent (suggesting it hasn't). Both are accepted, in an accepting way. Guards check cars going into prime targets or underground carparks. They have the swish mirrors on sticks, and check that you haven't attached a bomb to the undercarriage. And they systematically check the boot. Not the contents of the boot. I've seen them let in pickup trucks full of scrap iron. They've let me in with the suspicious contents of a cello case and a trombone case, unchecked. What they check, rigorously, is the tiny hidden flap, where in well ordered boots people keep the accident kit.
It suggests a certain logic and order to the world. If you had a bomb in there, you'd keep it nicely packed away, tidily. Like a dolls house. But it so frustrates me. 'If you're going to look, do it properly.'
Yesterday a guard gesticulated through the window: 'I want to look in the claff box.'
Three of us in the car, none of us understood at all. Two minutes later, still didn't get it. Claff box?
He meant the glove compartment. We opened, he checked.
Two hours later when we left the shopping mall, we giggled watching incoming motorists scratching their heads too. Dumbfounded. 'Claff box?' And the extra two minutes delay for each car clogged the traffic, gridlock in each direction for ten minutes. In the drive home someone only had to call 'Claff box' for the rest of us to giggle, uncontrollably. Oh the power of language teachers, rejoice!
Since the grenade attacks and heightened security level, security guards check for bombs in Nairobi. But its not the systematic approach I remember from IRA threat days in UK. Male guards check men, and have the electronic scanner toys. Female guards check women, and just look in your handbag. It's not clear whether the electronic scanner should beep (showing it has a working battery, but might have found something malevolent), or be silent (suggesting it hasn't). Both are accepted, in an accepting way. Guards check cars going into prime targets or underground carparks. They have the swish mirrors on sticks, and check that you haven't attached a bomb to the undercarriage. And they systematically check the boot. Not the contents of the boot. I've seen them let in pickup trucks full of scrap iron. They've let me in with the suspicious contents of a cello case and a trombone case, unchecked. What they check, rigorously, is the tiny hidden flap, where in well ordered boots people keep the accident kit.
It suggests a certain logic and order to the world. If you had a bomb in there, you'd keep it nicely packed away, tidily. Like a dolls house. But it so frustrates me. 'If you're going to look, do it properly.'
Yesterday a guard gesticulated through the window: 'I want to look in the claff box.'
Three of us in the car, none of us understood at all. Two minutes later, still didn't get it. Claff box?
He meant the glove compartment. We opened, he checked.
Two hours later when we left the shopping mall, we giggled watching incoming motorists scratching their heads too. Dumbfounded. 'Claff box?' And the extra two minutes delay for each car clogged the traffic, gridlock in each direction for ten minutes. In the drive home someone only had to call 'Claff box' for the rest of us to giggle, uncontrollably. Oh the power of language teachers, rejoice!
Living in Israel I know so well the power of finding the humour in a very strassful situation. And the greater the stress factor, of course the funnier it is. Keep safe and well xxx.
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