Email from my daughter

She's assigned in West Africa.

. . .

I'm currently typing with my left hand swathed in dashing looking bandages--on one long bike trip through the bush recently I got lost and took a spill off my bike. Which sounds sad until you learn that the only clean piece of fabric I had in my bag to use as a bandage was a pair of underware (bearing in mind I am living in a conservative Mulsim country).

So there I am, continuing to cycle through the bush with a pair of bright blue underware wrapped around one hand, still throughly lost. All the [people] I asked directions of looked somewhat concerned. Finally one of them pointed me down a road he claimed led to my village.

"But there's some water there."

I scoffed, "That's okay. I can go." Water. Ha.

Except instead of the ankle-deep stream I was expecting, it was waist deep. And I had a bag full of books strapped to my bike. And only one hand.

A comedy of errors followed, that only grew more poetic as I finally inched over to the opposite bank, wich turned out to be very steep, and made of slick clay. A great deal of scrabbling and windmilling took place.

Eventually I did find my village, but I arrived with a damp stack of books, bloody underware around my hand, and my dripping wet (white) pants having turned basically transparent on contact with the water. In my, repeat, conservative, Muslim village.

I am an excellant diplomat.

On the other hand, I may finally have worked out why my villagers always get vaguely concerned when they see me going off by myself. Clearly they know my track record, and mistrust it entirely.