The Great White African Gorilla

From the moment we first walked into the work site everyone was enamoured with Eric.  At first it was his beard.  There were questions upon questions about his beard and more than one person reached out to touch it just to know what it was like.  Beautiful was the word most commonly used to describe it.  I had no idea Kenyans loved beards so much!

This lasted for a while but by the second or third day they had forgotten the beard and instead were amazed at his strength.  Eric consistently carried some of the biggest rocks and he worked as long and as hard as anyone else there.  But on the forth day he did the impossible.  

Our main job as a team was to move the rocks that the men were breaking from the river bed up to the actual weir site.  By day two or three we had pretty much depleted the main stash and they were now working on breaking rocks that took a lot more 'convincing'.  Breaking rocks in Kenya means you get a giant sledge hammer and a group of guys and basically just start pounding away.  Needless to say I can't fathom how they kept going for five days.

When the men first moved to the harder rocks they spent about an hour working on one huge rock in the middle of the river bed.  They pounded on it with all their might and they all took turns but none of them could get even a hint of a crack let alone get a piece to break off.

By the forth day of carrying rocks Eric decided he should try out the breaking instead and helped them finish a number of pieces before heading off to find more.  The rock he chose was the one they had worked on for an hour with no luck.  Despite many warnings and certainly some questioning looks he started in on it and amazingly had a nice crack forming within minutes.  Twenty minutes later he'd broken off a huge chunk and put down the sledge off for a break.  The men all sat down for a break and started talking in KiSwahili and eventually broke into laughter while staring at Eric.

"What?"  he said.

Eventually it came out that they had decided he must be stronger than any man in Africa as he had broken the rock that none of them could.  His response was that he must be strong like an African Gorilla.  And so was born The Great White African Gorilla.  Hairy and strong…yup it suits him.