scarification

Something very strange has been happening to me over the last few days. I’ve been walking into things and tripping over my own feet at a rate that is threatening to deplete my medical supplies. Seriously, the day before I left for our trip (not a pun) I fell flat on my face in broad daylight leaving an ugly abrasion on my left shoulder and eliciting the predictable “sorry, yeah” and “take time” from the many onlookers. That same day I stubbed my toe so hard it lifted up the nail and let out a torrent of blood. The following day I walked into something shin-height that felt like it took a bit out of my leg, and then received a gash on my upper thigh (same leg) on a clumsy descent from our tro tro. Perhaps my other leg was feeling left out of the carnage because the day after that my left foot slipped through a sewer grate and I fell in up to my knee, lodging my leg in the concrete and leaving bruises and cuts on either side of my knee and ankle. I’m starting to feel like Africa is beating me up a bit, and I’ve been nothing but nice to her! I don’t know if I have my head in the clouds or up my ass, but I’m starting to get such a reputation as a klutz that when someone else trips over something, they are “pulling a Kim.” Actually, my preferred theory is that in some cosmic balancing act, all this bad luck can only be forecasting good things ahead. The other thought is that in the land of facial scaring and body modification and am unwittingly going through some initiation rite. I actually have a scar on my right wrist from a particularly nasty mosquito bite I got in Kenya 10 years ago, and I look at it often with wistful nostalgia. So, I think I’ll just look at all of this as nature’s way of making absolutely certain that I never forget Africa.