Of Locks and lights

Our hotel room in Mumias had such a unique system of locks - I just have to share it.

Outside view	Inside view

The door is padlocked and bolted from the inside at night, but locking the door from the outside when we leave in the morning is a very tight, two-handed process. It goes something like this:

- left arm goes through the little, square "window" you see in the picture on the left, and reaches up toward the sliding bolt (top of the left and right pictures).

 - left hand pushes the sliding bolt to the right and through the latch, and places the locking arm squarely over the eye hook. 

- right arm squeezes through the remaining space in the window, holding the padlock.

 - left hand slides the padlock through the eye hook (and thus also over the locking arm).

 - right hand clamps the lock shut.  

 - both arms withdraw and right hand tries to pull the little door closed (that door doesn't lock from the outside).  

Unlocking the door from the outside reverses the procedure, but adds the necessity of reaching up to the padlock and blindly unlocking it, removing the padlock, and trying to slide the bolt far enough to the left to open the door.

We just used the one lock to lock the door when we left for the day. There were 3 sliding bolts on the door to close when we were ready to shut down for the night, including one on the back of the little square door.

Because of  frequent power outages - and infrequent use of the hotel's generator - there was often a ghostly glow emanating from our room. Alicia and I would hunker down with our electronics under our mosquito nets (malaria is a serious problem in Western Kenya) for an hour or two of computer time, phone time, reading and conversing, booklights ever by our sides. Those booklights were lifesavers. We used them to help us see our computer/iPad keyboards, take our cold showers by, and even do our laundry.