A sad day in remeberance:

I didn’t even realize today was the anniversary untill a few hours into the morning. It was pretty under the radar here, but CNN sometimes is available and they were re-airing some of the live footage from the day. Pretty traumatic even after this long. I was able to watch some CNN by way of injury: That afternoon I was busy trying to fix my stupid kerosene stove, since it was not burning clean. I had trimmed and adjusted the wicks, and then let it burn super high for a few minutes to burn down the wicks and clear the soot. I took it apart with my hot pads and set about preparing breakfast.
Normally the metal bits of the stove cool off fairly quickly, unfortunately, as mine had been heated super hot, the outer baffle was still quite hot as I grabbed it bare handed to put the stove back together. As I yelp and run to dunk my hand under the coolest water I have, my house girl shows up at the door. I let here in and with pain interfering with my Swahili skills, I try to explain that I need to go get some ice. So I hop on my bike and ride, one handed, to Don and Monica’s since they have a freezer. On the way, my phone, which is in my pocket on the burned-hand side, rings. I slow down and reach my left hand into my right pocket and pull out my phone to talk while riding gimpy-handed: It was Steve. He had taken off in the morning, but didn’t get too far as his bike broke just out side of town. So we hung out and tried to be as cheerful as can be.
An added bit of poignance is that the Embassy in Dar was the target of terrorist bombing not to long ago, so it is definately on the minds of ex-pats here.