Holiday baby boom

At Dean’s Hour on Thursday, the Dean asked what had happened on the long holiday… who was married (my classmate Paul), who had babies, five hands went up.  She said she was not going to ask who was ordained, because she’s always fighting the bishops who insist on ordaining people before they finish their course.  There was quite a civilized rant that followed that I won’t begin to cover here, and I agree with the Dean.  It made for interesting lunch conversation that day, believe you me.

But back to those who had had babies.  Well, it was their wives who had the babies.  And it should have been six hands.  My friend Rev. Samuel is from Mombasa, Kenya, and he arrived on campus Thursday.  He told me that while he was traveling, his wife called to say that she was going to the hospital to have the baby.  So he was returning to Mombasa to name the baby.

Mombasa is on the coast of the Indian Ocean, and it took Samuel 36 hours to get to UCU.  So he traveled 36 hours, learned that he was again a father, arrived at UCU, registered, unpacked, spent the night, ate breakfast on Friday, then left to return to Mombasa early in the morning to name the baby.  He said he’d be back early this week.  That’s 108 hours of riding on a bus in one week.  He said that he wished that he had money for airfare so as to not spend so much time on the bus.  I absolutely agree.  He may have been fishing for money, but I don’t have it.  I also wasn’t sure where he was going, and have found that playing (or being, as the case may be) dumb is a lot easier than saying no.