Five Things
Over the last few days I've watched a lot of digirati get "tagged" with a meme to reveal five things that people didn't know about them. I wondered whether it would filter down to me and lo and behold! Erik tagged me (thinking I don't check his blog without realizing that courtesy of Netvibes I'm on every new post he makes within minutes).
So, five things about me people probably don't know?
1. I've never lived for a meaningful stretch in the country of my legal passport, Uganda. It was not long after I was born that my parents, at the heels of the madman Idi Amin, fled for Kenya. We migrated from Kenya to the United States and then back again, where Nairobi became my home and the Africa that I know. We visited Uganda once a year, after the mid-1980s civil war ended.
2. My wife and I met1 in a Taco Johns fast food restaurant. She was in a hooded sweatshirt and old jeans. I told my friend Susan "S-diggity" at work that I was going to "wife her" two weeks later. 17 months later we exchanged vows in an old church in rural South Dakota.
3. In 11th grade I nearly died after going through a window by the side of my house. I yelled "Mommy!" and my mother, recovering from an operation of her own, came running and switched into nurse mode2, barking orders to my brother and our live-in guest. She couldn't drive so we went up to the neighbor's house - a Norwegian family working with Norwegian Church Aid. They were in the middle of dinner with guests and after taking one look at me rushed me to the hospital. The gash on my neck nearly reached my carotid artery, which would have killed me. I didn't lose enough blood to warrant a transfusion, which in 1990s Nairobi would have probably resulted in an HIV death sentence as well. Needless to say I've been partial to Norwegians since then.
4. I've always hated touching cotton for as long as I remember. When I have to I purse my lips or use a tool like tweazers.
5. I still have my first copy of The Lord of the Rings. On my 12th birthday my mother took me to downtown Nairobi, near Biashara street and I made a difficult choice between a caligraphy set and my own copy of The Lord of the Rings. It was the only book I brought with me to the US when I came as an 18 year old, for college. It moved with me from dorm to dorm each fall and summer, it also got packed up when I moved to Costa Mesa, then La Mirada, Whittier, and Buena Park. I spent a long time in limbo because I flew back to California a lot when I'd first come to South Dakota. But when I packed it in a box to drive it to the Dakotas, I knew I actually lived here.
Now it's my turn to tag some people: Aaron, Dervala, Barbara, Miriam, and Dave. Since my wife reads a lot of blogs I'll tag one more author of a blog I see her on all the time - Cathy.
1She remembers a brief exchange a little before that but we didn't really "meet."
2My mother was a trained nurse.
8:51:53 PM 
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