The Blender and the Brick Fairy

From the first time I met my driver, Robert, he was fascinated by my electronics. To be honest, I think Robert fell for my electronics first, then decided he liked me second.

He is endlessly fascinated with the sheer range of electronic equipment Americans carry on their person or have access to. The fact that I have two cell phones AND a Blackberry made him whistle through his teeth. My two computers (personal and company) seem like an absurd amount of excess to him. When he saw the iPod, well, that just about did him in.

I tried to hide most of these things for the first few months I was here because I had no desire to be ostentatious about it nor did I have any desire to be robbed.

Nevertheless, Robert is with me every single day and, eventually, he saw the goods. Luckily, he is one of the most honest people I know and I trust him completely so hiding things didn't really make sense anymore. Plus, like most people who are the proud owners of Blackberry phones, I am as obsessed with mine as most other people are with theirs. When Robert saw me use it to get online directions when we were lost, he was stunned.

"THAT is a computer too? THAT is the internet? How can that be?" (Mind you, they have a version of a Blackberry here too but it never works and is more for show than for actual use)

I handed over my Blackberry and let him test it out. I told him he couldn't make any calls because of the roaming charges but getting online was OK.

Nowadays, my Blackberry is Robert's second most favorite thing in the world...after the Bible, of course. If we are in an area that has coverage, I let him go online and use it when I am in meetings. He is most fascinated by the GPS component, however, and has become the "direction guru" of all of his friends. He looks up locations and then text messages his friends on his own phone telling them where they are and where they should be going. I suppose this is a version of stalking but, hey, it gives him something to do rather than sit in the hot car and read the Bible all day long. (I am also not so naive to think he isn't doing a little side business with his little "Robert's Personal MapQuest Service" deal but it doesn't cost me anything so I don't mind).

Robert also has a bit of an endearing lisp and has never mastered the word "Blackberry" so it is now officially known as "Madame Boss's Brick Fairy." I like that much better, to be honest.

Besides my electronics, the other thing Robert has come to cherish about me is my obsession with food. The fact that I go out to lunch almost daily and then always bring him a small dish to try out has become a huge hit. We tend to like the same things (with the exception of Mexican food...which he finds completely bizarre and disgusting) so I just put in a double order when I am at a restaurant. It is usually less than $5 and he is trying to support a family of six on his salary so I figure feeding him is the least I can do. Plus, he is now my favorite restaurant critic and we debate various dishes daily. We disagree on the Chinese restaurant and the Indian restaurant but we find good qualities in both.

His all-time favorite, however, is the bacon pizza from the grocery store in the shopping mall. It is good, although I prefer a thinner crust, but I buy him three slices of bacon pizza at least twice a week. They are so used to me behind the counter these days that they always reserve three slices from the freshest pie for me to pick up between 1-2pm, when I get us lunch.

The other wonderful thing about the grocery store is that they have these huge machines that make super-fresh juice everyday. Since I am not a particular fan of fruit, I mostly avoided that station until one day about two months ago when I decided to test the watermelon juice (an approved fruit) and bought Robert a cup of the mango juice.

I might as well have given him manna from heaven. He was ecstatic.

"So fresh!!! So good!! So healthy for you!!" he exclaimed.

When I got back in the car later, I found him crying.

"What's wrong, Robert, is everything OK?" I asked, alarmed.

"You are so kind to me. My former boss wouldn't even buy me a bottle of water. And you buy me bacon pizza and juice. I love you," he told me.

Honestly, I was a bit embarrassed and told him that I loved him too but it was really not THAT big of a deal...bacon pizza and juice...

So, every morning for the past two months, he brings me my new favorite Ugandan staple, a piece of fried flatbread with an egg and vegetables wrapped inside, called, amusingly, a "Rolex" (from 'rolled eggs'), and I buy him a juice.

Because Robert has the tendency to get obsessed with things, I quickly learned that he was saving his money to bring his children and his neighbors to the store on his day off to buy them this juice. It costs 1000 Shillings for one small cup (about $.50) but that is a lot in Uganda if you don't have much money and you are paying for up to ten people.

So I suggested to Robert that he invest in a blender.

He admitted to having always wanted a blender but, at about $50, it was just way out of his price range. When we did the math together, however, he realized that he would definitely be saving money in buying a blender rather than visiting the grocery store every weekend so he started saving.

I gave him a small wallet and he has been steadily adding coins to it over the past few weeks and, on Monday, he had managed to save about $30. I had to go to the local South African version of Walmart on Monday night to buy some new dishes and happened to notice that the blenders were on sale for $40.

Fuck it, I thought, and I bought Robert a blender. I made him give me the $30 in change he had saved because he had been so diligent about it but it was only $10 on my part and I knew it would make him happy.

He was thrilled but, as I mentioned, Robert is a bit obsessive so this week has been interesting.

On Tuesday morning he showed up with a fresh watermelon juice for me that was delicious. He tried (like all Ugandans keep trying, not matter how much I insist that I HATE bananas) to foist of some smoothie concoction on me on Wednesday that had bananas in it that I turned down.

By Wednesday night, he had blended ice cream and carrots together. Yesterday, when I went to the health food store to get my vitamins, he asked if I could pick up some of the "man powder" that males in the U.S. take to get more muscular. He wanted to put it in the blender with the ice cream/carrot mixture.

"Robert, you don't need that stuff. You need to work out regularly while taking that or else all it does is make you crap all the time. Trust me, you DON'T need it."

(Well, he snuck in and bought it anyway so I can imagine his whole family is going to be having an 'explosive' weekend).

Today, though, he appeared with his strangest concoction yet. When I got in the car this morning I caught a whiff of something odd but then dismissed it.

We had a half-day since I am leaving for Tanzania tomorrow morning and need to catch up on some chores so I had him bring me home at 3PM. He asked to accompany me to my apartment to give me a "special gift" and then he pulled out this Tupperware container of some odd brown liquid with little white pellets floating in it.

"Try it!" he encouraged.

Mentally turning my gag reflex off, I took a sip. Oddly, it was tasty enough but I just couldn't figure out what sort of fruit this could possibly be....

"Not fruit," he told me, "chicken feet."

I nearly threw up on the spot.

"Robert! Why are you putting chicken feet in the blender?!" I asked.

He smiled slyly. He had discovered the 'mega pulse' button and, after killing and roasting a chicken last night, he couldn't figure out to do with the feet and the remaining rice so...

He made pureed chicken feet soup in the blender.

I thanked him profusely and even accepted the container of chicken feet soup to be nice. When he left, I immediately threw it out, feeling a little guilty but knowing there was no way in hell I would be having THAT for dinner.

He called me after he got home to tell me that he and Rebecca (his wife) were planning on making a pig soup in the blender tonight and asked me if I wanted some tomorrow on my drive to the airport.

I quickly thought, "Hmmm, pureed pig pecker soup at 8am? No, I think I'll pass."

I hope he gets this whole blender thing out of his system soon though. We were charting much tamer waters with the Brick Fairy.