We’ve been traveling in the back of the UNIMOG or bumping around in the Cruiser for more than a year now, which has given us plenty of time to think about ways to prevent clanging our heads together or against the sides of the automobile.
What we have here are the fruits of these many long car rides of meditation—Paddie Helmets. Many ideas have come and gone—including a rather solid one for a super-sized toe separator like you use for a pedicure, to thread between our necks—but this is the one that Kim and I finally moved on, in a moment of desperation, at a Nakumatt in Eldoret.
Paddie Helmets. Paddie, which rings of “Pattie,” our housemate and driver. Or Paddie, to suggest that wonderful product which makes up the larger part of said invention. Yes, maxi-pads.
Imagine the confusion of the supermarket staff when Kim and I burst in, in a giggle of a rush, and began taking up the packages of maxis and squeezing them against our heads or wedging them between our foreheads and the shelves, trying to find our best option. Or when we found, in a moment of glory, “tie pants”—which appear to be decorated slips of plastic folks tie around a baby’s cloth-swathed bottom—and tied them over our heads like shower caps. (Only KSH49!!!)
I can’t even begin to imagine what they were thinking, but we had a goal in mind, and it was these helmets. And later that night, Kim’s yearlong dream was realized. Jen even hit us over the heads with a book—quite hard, actually—so we could demonstrate how we didn’t notice one bit.
And as we bounced along through the desert, you can bet that Kim and I would have been quite smug, were we not conked out with our heads banging painlessly off the windows.
The finest moment in the Paddie Helmet’s short history? While we were still in Kenya, we pulled up to a police check. I was only half awake, but I’ve heard the story enough times to know it well. An officer greeted Pattie, then looked back at Kim and me and exclaimed, “What is THAT?” As we pulled away, he was showing his fellow officers a picture of us he’d taken on his phone.
Paddie Helmets. Patent pending.
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