Saturday, August 6, 2016

7-One Egg, Lallo

Spotted Deer
by Phil Haffley

After three days of tiger hunting, I had to take a morning off.  At some point while I slept, someone had snuck in and taken our laundry to be washed.  (Actually I learned from Phil that he had set the laundry outside our door.)  When it was returned to us, it had been washed in muddy river water and ironed.  The service did help us stretch our clothes to a full three weeks.

Every waking moment seemed to be taken up with travel, eating, or exhaustion.  Even when I took time off, I was fog-headed.  It showed in my handwriting.  What I need to do is limit my sojourns as a chronicler to one excursion per day.

I could stay at the lodges and take photographs of landscapes and the special people who work at these places.  They do seem to be content with their lives.  There are stories to write at those lodges—and some poetry.

For example, for each midmorning breakfast Lallo, the man in charge, asked me how I wanted my eggs prepared and how many.  No matter how I wanted them prepared, I always asked for one egg.  I would receive two or three eggs and then accused him of not being able to count to one.  But for my last breakfast, I received just one egg—and his arm to escort me to the parking lot where our bus waited.  I think Lallo was just trying to put some weight on these old bones.


Spotted Deer
by Phil Haffley

Spotted Deer
by Phil Haffley

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