We are up and gone around 9AM, instead of the 7AM that we had originally planned. Seems the last part of the tour was to eat at the Carnivore Restaurant, that I had already visited a few days ago. Lucky says it was included in the price of the tour. I know that he is given money from the tour company to pay for items along the way like gas, hotel, etc. He says he will refund the money of about $50US for each of us. So I tell him to just keep the money and spend it on his foundation projects. I think I just made a best friend.
The trip back is a very long one. It will take about 6 hours to get back to my downtown central Nairobi Hilton. Since the van is empty because I am the only passenger, Lucky has already made a bunk on the long couch type seat in the back and says its where I can take a nap along the way. Customer service at its best again. I did go back and got about 20 minute siesta halfway through our drive. We generally back tracked on the roads that took us out to this area of the country. Once you get out of Nairobi, there are only about 4 major highways in the entire country, the rest are rural torturous dirt/bumpy roadways.
With about an hour left in our drive Lucky ask me to look in the back seat pouch of the seat in front of me. I do so and there is a CD of his foundation, which I had asked for last night, and a plastic bag with a belt in it. I took it out and figured he had bought it for me as a souvenir. As I looked closer, it had my first and middle name beaded across the back with additional beaded American and Kenyan flags. I was a bit confused and asked him how did he know my size before he met me. He said he had sized me up the first day he met me. The nights I thought he was having dinner with his buddies, he had been back in his room making me this belt by hand. It had to take him hours to individually bead the belt. It really bought me almost to tears, actually it did, I'll admit it. I had already bought a beautiful card with an artist rendention of three Maasai tribe members at the gift shop this morning, I was going to give him a tip of $100US and $100US to give to his foundation. So Im glad I did that.
We made it through the Nairobi traffic, but not until Lucky reminded to lock and shut tight everything as we were approaching and passing throughout the slum area.
We drove up to our hotel security check point, and the security police did their job of looking underneath the hood and the body of the car again. "Have a nice day". I got out and handed Lucky his envelope and with that big smile and laugh gave me a big bear hug. We again promised to keep in touch. He must have opened the envelope when he got in the cab, because he bolted out and said that the money was too much. I told him a life experience that I had in the last 4 days was worth a million. He smiled and said okay and he was off.
I've meet a lot of people in my lifetime, but Lucky is one of those special people on the top of my list that I will never forget.
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