In September, I was in Kenya, visiting an organization we are collaborating with on Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria. We were sitting around one evening with various staff and volunteers from this organization, and it was getting pretty late (around 10:30pm, pretty late in rural Kenya), when one of the volunteers--who happens to be fellow Canadian--realized that he had lost the keys to his house. So, the director of the organization, the volunteer, and myself, set off to the volunteer's house to see if we could figure out a way to get him inside. Various ideas were discussed, such as breaking down the door, breaking a window, using a stick to try and fish out the other set of keys locked inside, etc. Once we got there though, a quick tour around the outside told us that getting in through any of those methods wasn't going to work. However, as I looked at the wall of the house, and the gap between it and the roof, I decided that I might be able to squeeze through. First we had to remove the chicken wire which filled that gap meant to keep out bats, birds, rodents etc. Then remembering one of the generally useless factoids I carry around, I tried sticking my head through the gap first as a test. They say that since the head is the biggest bone in the human body, if you can get your head through something, you should be able to get the rest of your body through. My head barely fit through, so, trusting this, I got up on a stool, and started pushing my way in through the wall-roof gap. This was not easy, and the fit was pretty tight, and I scraped my chest and arms in several places as I proceeded. Until I got up to my hips. At this point you have to try and picture (since I have no photo of this fortunately), that I'm half-way in the house, head, arms and torso inside, hips resting on the top of the wall, and legs outside. Getting that far was possible because the upper half of your body curves, and I was able to do this to get underneath the downward sloping roof. But, hey, my legs don't bend backwards and I had this sudden moment of panic as I realized I might not be able to move forward any further, but might also not be able to move backward either. I was visualizing how everyone on the island would be talking about the one Canadian who had lost his keys, and the other Canadian who had got stuck in the wall of the house and how they had to tear the house apart to free him. As a desperate last attempt, I had the two on the outside tear more of the chicken wire away to my left, and then slowly I brought my left leg up to my side, and with some extreme stretching, I was able to get my left leg up and through to the inside. (All that stretching in Aikido actually pays off!). Once my leg was in, the rest was easy, and I swung inside in a few seconds, found the spare key, and passed it out to the director and volunteer waiting outside who opened the padlocked door. When the door opened, the director, a Kenyan, just looked at me and said,"I can't believe you just did that." Who knew my job skills would extend to break and enter?
Photo is of the space I squeezed through; you can see the chicken wire pulled back.
