A Prince and a Pauper

Lately I've been following a blog named "Tales of Wild Boomba". This gal is fabulous, her posts are highly entertaining. In her latest ‘tale’ she writes a tribute to her loveable Uncle Marvin and his behavior in the account of her wedding. Uncle Marvin brought to mind the quirky relatives in my family tree; my favorite [tongue in cheek] is my aunt’s husband, Prince Richard (PR). Unbeknownst to him I call him that, because he's got a regal air about himself, similar to that displayed by monarchs. He believes he is in charge of the world, but is insulated from reality by walls of his own self importance, not unlike the cold stone walls of Buckingham Palace barricading the royals from the masses.

He and my aunt are missionaries and have had opportunities to live in various countries around the world over the years. One of these faraway places was Nairobi, Kenya. Now one of my personal goals has been to visit the three A's [Africa, Australia and Alaska], but I never really thought there’d be an opportunity to bring any of these visits to fruition. That is until PR sent me an e-mail stating that British Airways was having a sale on their airfare, they were lonely for family, so we were to come and visit. And of course my sister and I bought tickets, got inoculated, went shopping for items auntie and PR couldn't get in Africa, packed huge duffle bags with $100's of dollars worth of food & clothing, and then my sister and I flew off to the dark continent.

We were there for three weeks, and what an experience it was! PR and auntie took us in to the bush to visit with African citizens, tour several game reserves, we flew up to Marsabit on a DC-3 [highest elevation in the world that elephants live...how they got there no one knows], visited the Rift Valley Hospital and were invited into several of the nurses' homes, toured Karen Kenya where 'Out of Africa' was filmed, visited open air Maasai markets, flew out to the Keekorock Lodge on the Maasai Mara for a week, and the list goes on and on. We had a jam packed itinerary; we were out and about every waking moment!

What you need to keep tucked in the back of your mind is that where ever we went I always paid the bill. Whether it was for lunch, dinner, groceries, or even entrance fees to a game park, I paid. I didn't have a lot of money [and my sister had far less at that time], but knowing that they were missionaries I would always offer to pay, and without missing a beat PR always let me. My thought was that it was the least I could do, because they probably didn’t have two dimes to rub together. PR kept a little mini notebook in his jacket pocket and would jot down all the money he would spend, and later I found out it was so we would be able to “true up” who owed what to whom. Of course when w went over the list near the end of the visit I gave him money to cover the odds and ends I hadn’t already paid for.

Unfortunately my generous attitude was squelched on the last day of our visit when I realized it wasn’t that PR didn’t have money to pay [even for his own part of the costs incurred], it was that he was extremely tight with sharing his money. You see I handed him $200 to cover anything my sister or I might have forgotten to pay for, he went over to a built in desk, opened a secret compartment and added the two C-notes to a 3" or so diameter roll of 100 dollar bills. I know they were all 100’s, because he unrolled it and proudly showed it to me. There were thousands there [I estimate around 15 to 20 thousand]. He explained to me that this was their emergency fund should they need to buy something, go on vacation, fly back to the US or even escape the country in the instance of some political upheaval. I was dumbfounded that all the while he had cried poverty and he had a bank roll right in his living room. I didn’t say a word; I simply finished packing and focused on leaving.

Needless to say I was glad to get home, so much so that when we walked through customs and out of the airport into the parking garage, I got down on my hands and knees to kiss the pavement [true fact], and would have had my father not dragged me up to keep me from putting my mouth on that gum and oil coated surface. There is no country in the world like the USA, I am thankful for it, I am grateful to God for it, I am very proud to be an American!

So, all was a memory until a few months down the road when mom and dad received a phone call from Kenya. It seems that there was a $100 per person charge for the DC-3 plane ride up to Marsabit that he had forgotten to add to the tally [that mini notebook I mentioned] and was asking that I send him $200 to reimburse him for my sister’s and my fare. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t applied that $200 I had given him, and wondered how could he overlook the fact that in that tally sheet I had paid for myself, my sister, my aunt and him every time! The word that came to mind was…well I can’t put it into words. Quite disgusted I sent him $200 just to have it all over and done with. Dad thought I did the right thing; he always helped you to rise above the circumstances and not get mired down with any bitterness.

Three years later, my aunt and PR left Kenya and moved to Peru for a three year assignment.
When he and auntie went off to Peru they sold their home in the States and invested it, thinking that it would appreciate much more than a piece of real estate would in that amount of time. And so they went off leaving their son in charge of their accounts during their absence in hope of returning to a much bigger nest egg. Unfortunately when they returned home they found that cousin “Biff” hadn’t been as good a steward as his dad had hoped, because he had spent every last dime that was in the accounts. I honestly felt very bad for their misfortune [and do to this day], but I couldn’t help think back to how unyielding PR was to part with his money and thought that although he held onto it tightly, he ended up losing it. Kind of like everything in life, the more you put a choke hold onto something, the more likely it is that it will slip away out of your grasp

CD