The Kimotong Distribution

Our trip to Isoke and Kimotong was both incredible and a disaster. We left early on Wednesday morning (7:30) but were held up by two hours of car repairs in town (our radiator pipe wasn’t working and we had screwed up the welding on the hood for the hundredth time. George and I bought breakfast: 5 goat samosas, 5 fried breads and 10 huge chapattis from a guy in the market. It was 20 SPs which was expensive but turned out to be totally worth it considering that it was our breakfast, lunch and dinner for two days. We also brought a case of Rwenzori since we were pretty sure there wouldn’t be clean water for us to drink in Kimotong.
The back of the car was filled with five huge cartons of nets, wrapped up in braided sacking. They were immense and heavy (110-150 pounds each), and this in addition to our luggage and the spare tire, which we ultimately lashed to the roof, made our car very very low to the ground-a bad way to start out on roads this bad. As it turned out, the spare tire was the best thing we packed, because about 20 ft from the Keyala army checkpoint, our back left tire exploded. Considering that it was just a flat tire, it took a hell of a long time to fix-about an hour, even with the help of one of the soldiers who came over to see if we were ok. We put big stones in front of the tires and underneath the axel but even then the car kept rolling off the jack and onto Jerome, at one point completely landing on his shoulder. It was a tense hour to say the least, but I was amazed at how helpful people here are. I guess its more important, since there is no Triple A or roadside assistance or police cars routinely patrolling, but this soldier helped with absolutely everything, for the paltry price of a bottle of water. We tried to pawn some of the samosas on him but he wouldn’t take them (goat samosas, in case you were wondering, are bizarre). It was during this ill fated stop that we noticed another worrisome development-our gas tank, so recently welded in Nimule, was literally pouring fuel all over the ground. We drank massive amounts of water in an attempt to get the water bottles to put under the leaks, but there were so many that we couldn’t actually do it. By the time we actually got the tire changed and the burst one loaded back up onto the roof, Jerome was exhausted and we were demoralized. I made some Gatorade and gave Jerome some, as well as a samosa, which perked him up a bit.
At an ominously named village called Camp 15 we picked up a gun toting purple shirted fellow who didn’t speak English and was extremely friendly with the soldiers we passed. And we passed a lot. On the turn off up to Kimotong, literally an entire army of SPLA were lining the road-some of the smiling and waving, some staring stonily at us. I was still hearing little children screaming in the bushes. It was all a bit unsettling, though I think that was due primarily to the fact that we were predisposed to be afraid.
When we got there we had a quick meeting with Peter Lamong, the guy running the distribution. He can’t use his legs and so has these crutches which grip his arms, but he is immensely strong and engaged (!). He conscripted some really strong guys to help us unload the nets into the storage room-though perhaps conscripted is the wrong word. Everyone was completely and utterly willing to help with the distribution and no one was asking to be paid.
After unloading the nets, we waited around for another fast meeting with Peter. As it turns out, the crazy drunk guy is legitimately mentally handicapped and much better when sober, so he was significantly less scary this time. This was a definite plus. We agreed to meet in Kimotong the next day at 9:30 am to have a meeting with the chiefs of the eight different bomas receiving nets, and to go over education material and demonstration procedures, etc. Then, with significant relief, we got back into the car and headed off towards Isoke. The car was still leaking an ocean of diesel which we were attempting to catch in some water bottles and basins (we even invented this fantastic funnel to stick it back into the car). We gave two women with children a ride, as well as our friend from Camp 15 with the AK-47, so the car was pretty crowded-Neesha, the ladies and the AK-47 guys were crammed in the backseat, I was in the trunk with the baggage, George and Jerome were up front, and for about ten minutes, a guy was riding on our roof (until he got hit by a tree-unfortunate but we told him not to do it in the first place so my sympathy is limited). After we dropped them all off at the junction, the ride got a lot less interesting. It became really beautiful and started to cloud over as we approached the mountain basin where the village was located. Half the sky was a dark, dusky grey with the rain visibly seeping down towards the hills, and the other half was the brilliant white of the sun behind clouds. Of course the second we reached Isoke, the sky opened up so by the time we got to the Sister’s place, torrents of water were cascading onto the ground. Already being considerably wet and muddy from the drive, when I saw Sister Pasquena come out onto the porch with a smile on her face and her arms open, I thought very little of leaping out of the car to run and hug her. Unfortunately for me (and to the great amusement of Neesha, George and Jerome), I underestimated the power of mud over flip flops, and the second my foot touched the ground, my arms started windmilling like crazy and I face planted right into the mud. George told me later it looked like I just threw myself out of the car and onto the ground. I lay there in shock for a good two minutes staring at Sister Pasquena who looked horror struck. When I finally stood up, I was laughing hysterically and completely brown from head to toe. Sister Pasquena told me I was a real African now, with real African color, and then she handed me a towel and sent me off to the showers (the second I tried to rinse off in the rain, the rain stopped. Of course.) By the time I got back from the shower, dripping wet in my towel and with no change of clothing, Jerome, Neesha and George were standing on the porch, about to go have some tea. I grabbed some clothes from my backpack and went to go change in a spare room (only to find that the only bra I packed was covered in mud and therefore unwearable-consequently I spent the rest of the trip in the same huge button down buzz off shirt.)
Over tea, the sisters told us that they actually didn’t have room for us (Emmanual, who had been suppose to tell them we were coming, had not-surprise, surprise) so we would be staying next door at the brother’s. This wasn’t so bad because we were invited to all meals at the sisters, which is easily the best part. Plus at the brothers, we each got our own room. We drove over there and saw the rooms and hung out for about two hours waiting for dinner time. George attempted to take a shower and discovered the fatal flaw of the brothers compound-the one working shower was about four feet off the ground and didn’t shower, so much as drip with ferocity. And even that was if you were lucky-when I went to my shower, all the drips had been used up and I stood hunched under the nozzle for a good three minutes and got about an inch of my skin wet.
We went over for dinner at the sisters and I finally got to see Sister Helen which made me so happy. We had potatoes and pasta and bread and cassava (which is one of my new favorite foods by the way-the perfect starch. I think it periodically might be called a sweet potatoe here but I’m not 100% sure about that one). After dinner, I helped wash up with one of the sisters whose name I forget (though, I feel excused from this, as she spent the whole trip calling me Becky. So I’m going to call her sister Ann). I was washing these dishes by hand and marveling at how skilled the women in Sudan were to be able to get pots and pans clean with only their fingers and soap, when Sister Ann came over and exclaimed in horror “Where is the sponge!?” thus disabusing me of that notion. Neesha wanted to walk back to the brothers while I was still scrubbing away and Sister Ann refused to let her until I was done because she was afraid I would fall again (she saw the nose dive too) which I found hilarious and Neesha found kind of annoying. Emmanual was there though, so she chatted with him. He was in this ridiculously large coat which he says he got when he served in the Swiss Army (yeah, right) and which makes him look even more absurd than he normally does. Like a q-tip wrapped up in a down coat.
Anyway back at the brothers, I went on a trek to find the latrine, which was an utter failure. First, I got about knee deep into this wooded brush and started thinking about how big the snakes that lived there must have been, when my headlamp died. Then a dog started circling me, and I, remembering the lesson I finally learned about rabies, tried to run away, taking very large steps to present less of a target to both the dog’s teeth, and the snakes. Finally I found what might have been a latrine (or may have been someone’s house), said screw it, peed on it, and did the bizarre high step run back to the brothers compound. Clearly I left my dignity at the sisters compound, but thank god it was dark (no headlamp) so hopefully no one saw. (Though I have discovered the questionable asset of having my skin glow at night, so you can see me from miles away-good when you are standing in the middle of a road, bad when you are trying to pee and your ass lights up the sky like the moon).
I didn’t get much sleep because I got my malaria pill stuck in my throat and spent the whole night half hiccupping, half choking. Next morning, the alarm that George had ever so helpfully provided me went off at six thirty-cosmic, if you were wondering-and I turned it off. It went off every eight minutes until six forty five, when it switched to the other alarm George had set-blaring, high pitched ringing-and I got up. I was the only one. I hammered on everyone else’s door and they all got up. It takes about two hours to get from Isoke to Kimotong on a good day, and today wasn’t going to be a good day considering that we had had the equivilant of a flash flood for hours the night before. We knew the roads were going to be close to impassable. Unfortunately, we had to spend a lot of time getting a new spare tire and finding a way of getting gas, since the full tank that should have done it for the whole trip was sprinkled in a line from Torit to Kimotong to Isoke. All of this negotiating and obtaining took roughly until ten thirty, when we finally got on the road, with the understanding that Emmanual would buy us a jerry can of fuel and leave it for us with the priest at Camp 15. We got maybe half a mile down the road and had to stop again, because the brakes were cutting into the back left wheel. It took another two hours to fix this, during which people crowded around and Emmanual’s brother helped us fix the tire. Neesha and I weren’t particularly helpful, just because George was so eager and Jerome was so stressed, but the bottle caps I’ve been collecting did come in handy as make-shift washers so I felt somewhat useful. I tried to chat with some of the kids but they were very shy and would smile at me until I smiled back, and then run away. The only upside of this whole thing is that by the time we get back, I’ll understand a lot more about engines, how to fix a car and how to change a tire.
We finally got on the road at noon, and of course the roads were flooded and potted out. Despite that we made pretty good time. We passed boys bathing in the river (I didn’t avert my eyes in time and saw….rather more than I ever wanted to see of the boys of Isoke) and women who receeded into the grass as our car barreled forward, standing there like sentries. We got to Kimotong at close to two. There were tons of women there who were all grouped under trees and overhangs, brightly colored cloth draped over their shoulders, covering tufted skirts that were short and swishy-like cheerleader skirts. They were adorned in a lot of jewelry-sticks through ears and noses, bracelets on their biceps and wrists, white and black beads around their necks and white earings and pins stuck in their hair and on their lips and noses. They were beautiful, but defiantly exotic. Driving into the midst of them, I felt like I was entering a National Geographic article. You think that things like this are so removed, so diluted by modernity, and then you walk into a rural Sudanese village, and there you are, smack dab in the middle of a discovery channel documentary about African subsistence farmers. Its ridiculous. Those bare breasts and bellies that educated so many young men about female anatomy (and lust) back in the 50s and 60s are still on display, and, for all their exposure, still exotic. Every single woman had a baby strapped onto her back, or a belly swollen with pregnancy, every single one was colorful and smiling and curious, and every single one stood up as we drove into Kimotong and started to laugh and wave and yell. We apologized to Peter Lamong for being so late and explained that our Pajero is reaching the end of its rope, and he said it was ok, but that a lot of women had left for the gardens because they lived so far away and needed to tend to them. Even reduced however, the grouping was well over 250 women, and considering we were distributing 500 nets, that was a pretty good turn out. Per usual, as soon as we pulled into Kimotong, the skies opened up and it started to pour rain, so all the women retreated to the shade of the buildings, and the chiefs, who had been meeting in the hollow of a dry river bed, moved their chairs to the covered area of the main square. It was just a large, open, cement building, with an aluminum roof covering the large gathering place in the middle. Jerome dispeared, under the pretense of finding a chicken to cook, and George, Neesha and I were ushered to three plastic chairs at the front of the meeting hall (displacing three chiefs, which made us very uncomfortable and the chiefs delightedly happy). I was, incidentally, sitting next to the man who had asked if I could marry his son the last time we were there, but he didn’t bring it up this time and instead chatted to us about how happy he was that we were there to help with distribution. The women filed in and sat crowded and cross legged on the floor behind the circle of chiefs. Each chief had a different staff, carved, or short, or embossed in metal, or hooked like a cane or pronged like a pitchfork. It was really interesting seeing the variety of everything-the staffs, the chiefs themselves, the women, the children, the outfits. Peter Lamong stood up, his arms gripped tight around his crutches, and began to talk. A tall man in a Katanga shirt stood up and translated into a couple of different languages for the benfit of everyone there. After giving a quick speech, he introduced us and made us each get up to say something to the assemebled people. The audience that had previously been restless and rippling with whispers, broke into loud talking the second George stood up, and it was a moment or two before it calmed down. He introduced himself and talked a little bit about the nets and how they were here to help the women not get malaria. I was next. Peter Lamong asked me to mention that I went to school, so that it would be a lesson about how school was important for girls, so I got up and talked a little about how going to school had made it possible for me to help them by getting the nets. Neesha talked a little as well, and then we went to a lecture on education. Considering how thrown together this entire effort was, the education lecture went ok, but it was clear that our approach was not the best way to reach the women. To begin with, all 250 of them were crammed in one room, so the “ask and answer” approach recommended by Malaria Consortium was not really practical, and since it was pouring rain, breaking into groups wasn’t about to happen either. George read the bullet points from the Malaria Consortium flipchart, and the women didn’t really pay attention, because the information was considerable and a bit heavy. I stood up after him and just gave them the three main points that we wanted them to remember-which since they were stressed and short, I think probably got through a lot better. (Always sleep under your net, dry it in the shade after washing it, and sew up holes) Then we got straight to distribution, because I really didn’t want to waste these women’s time anymore than we already had.
The town had set up four large poles to help with the practical demonstration of how to hang up the nets, and George and the crazy drunk guy (sober this time, and named Carpir) carried over a bale of nets and opened it up to get us a demonstration net. Unfortunately, some fool decided that the best way to tie up the nets securely was to secure them with flat metal wire. This made opening them really hard. We finally got one open, and four guys stepped forward to hold the corners since the poles were much to far apart and the translator told them to make sure it was tucked in under the mat you were sleeping on. Then, four of us (George, Neesha, the translator and myself) crawled in under the net and lay down on the dirt to demonstrate that the whole family needed to sleep under it. This was probably more hilarious than informative, and the women seemed to find it hysterical but at least it kept them engaged. Plus Jerome, who had reappeared, having actually procured a chicken to cook for us, had a field day taking pictures of us looking like fools on the ground. (soon to come).
After that, the women assembled in a line in front of us and we started to distribute the nets. The women looked like a multicolored beaded necklace, or a patchwork quilt, or a tye-dyed tee shirt. The colors of their outfits were so varied and incredible, and being surrounded by them was probably one of the most incredibly visually stunning experiences of this entire trip. Just the mere lack of Western style clothing or Katanga cloth was worth noting-this was a real rural area (“the bush” according to everyone in Torit) and the women we were seeing were a side of Sudan that is rarely ever seen.
The distribution itself turned out to be pretty tame. The chiefs were there en masse, so they put out any disagreements, and even though a fair amount of drunk men came up and asked us for “just one” net for their pregnant/sick/sick and pregnant wife, we were able to distribute the nets to the people on the list without much trouble. One drunk young soldier didn’t let go of my hand until Joseph (Peter Lamong’s brother who is based in Kapoeta) came and yelled at him, and Carpir carried each of the batches of nets single handedly on his back (I was convinced he was going to be crushed or strain something) and had a ball handing the nets to the women so we let him have at it. A tall (and incredibly handsome) man was in charge of reading out the names. It turns out that he was also named Peter Lamong, but he was the brother of Lopepi Lamong-the Olympic track runner for the US. We got to meet his other brothers and his father, which was pretty incredible, considering that in about a week and a half, his son, who grew up in this rural and removed village, is going to be on international television, running for one of the most powerful nations in the entire world and representing this tiny slice of African life. Neesha and I nicknamed Peter “Mr. Sexy” so we wouldn’t get him confused with the other Peter Lamong and hung around him like moonstruck teenagers. Pathetic.
Jerome meanwhile, had cooked us two chickens for lunch. I thought he was kidding when he talked about it, but he wasn’t and it was delicious. He made it in a stew so that we could sop up the broth with our (now quite stale) chapatti. It was a bit too salty for me (Neesha was in heaven) but so good and with plenty of white meat. Plus the chickens only cost six pounds (for two!) which is such a departure from the 25 pounds each we paid in Torit.
Throughout this entire process our car was leaking diesel like a sieve but we had graduated from water bottles to huge basins, so we were catching it all. More parts of our hood broke (the welding that helps keep it closed when you are driving) so we tied it closed with a rope. We also ran out of brake fluid entirely and our brake pads were shot to hell.
Half the nets were distributed-the other half were kept in the storeroom that was so secure that no one even had the key, and in order to get in you had to pick the lock-the other half to be distributed the next day, and we had some brief meetings with Peter Lamong, the dad of Lopepi (Lopez to you track fans in the US) and Joseph Lamong. Finally we got on the road. They had wanted us to transport a lady who was literally 12 months pregnant to Torit for a doctors appointment and we had said no, because there was no way in hell we were letting a pregnant woman into a car with no brakes (especially since with our luck, she would have given birth during a particularly brutal pothole). We shouldn’t have even been in it (particularly since most of the seatbelts have stopped working-I was not kidding when I said this car was a death trap). It was about 5:30 when we left, and we were dreaming about the possibility of making it back to Torit in time for dinner. As we had no brakes, we had to improvise in terms of driving-relying more on steering to avoid bumps and people than on braking. Unfortunately for us, the day that our car couldn’t stop was the day every single herd of animals in the Kimotong area decided to walk en masse on the street. Thank god our horn worked, or we would still be paying the damage fees. As we drove back towards Camp 15, we saw women with the nets balanced on their heads, which was so gratifying. After all the bureaucracy involved in the organization, procurement and transport of these nets, it was so easy to hand them out, and such a relief to see them in the hands of people who could finally use them. It unfortunately drove home the idea that bureaucracy is evil and kills people and that help shouldn’t be so tangled in red tape, but that’s another story.
We spent most of the drive to Camp 15 swerving and still hitting potholes. Jerome was driving really slow (building up momentum was the last thing we wanted to do) and he was doing a really good job, but because of it we were losing diesel like crazy. We finally reached Camp 15 (which had a beautiful market, if an awful name) and drove up the main road trying to find someone who spoke enough English, Swahili or Arabic for us to communicate. We were directed up the street to the Father’s compound, and drove through a bunch of completely empty land before finally turning into the bush and forging our own path. We had to park on a hill in order to stop the car, and we put the basins under the car to catch the falling diesel and then we walked off to find the Father. In the compound, we met a tall, skinny Australian guy who was camping there and Neesha and George dashed off to the latrine while someone found the Father who showed up, looking totally confused as to who we were. His name was Father Alfred. Emmanual, as it turned out, had not showed up with fuel for us. This was a BIG problem, because we were running on empty. Father Alfred took us to a mechanic that he knew. Apparently there is a diesel shortage right now and everyone is waiting for the next shipment. But this incredible man in an olive green tee shirt sold us his reserve stash of diesel for 80 SP (an deal, especially considering he gave us more than 20 liters) and also told us how to make a substitute brake fluid out of detergent and water. We opened the radiator cap and poured more water in, thanked both Father Alfred and the mechanic very profusely, and were back on the road. Our brakes were still not working (I think only one wheel could actually stop) but we were at least making good time. About 20 km away from Camp 15 we passed Emmanual, Moses and two other guys going in the other direction. Apparently Emmanual doesn’t know how to brake any better than we do, because he leapt from the car so quickly that he forgot to put it in park and it rolled back into our bumper with a really loud crash. He had our diesel (of course) so we loaded up two more jerry cans worth (in addition to the one we bought in Camp 15) and got back on the road. We were feeling pretty good because we had tons of diesel and it seemed like we would get home before 8. Oh how wrong we were. Because here is the kicker. We have fixed this car at least 20 plus times since we got it a bit more than a month ago. We have fixed: the windows, the doors, the backlights, the brakes, the gas tank, the hood, the oil filter, the fuel filter, the radiator pipe, the radiator itself, the tires, the battery, the seatbelts and the suspension belt all at least once and some more than once. When we left Camp 15, we had prepared for the eventuality of running out of gas, brake fluid and water for the radiator. We had everything we would need to deal with each of these three problems enough to get back to Torit. And yet.
15 km from Torit, just past the soldier’s barracks, and in sight of the two radio towers that hedge the town in on the north and south ends, we hit a bump, no harder than any of the bumps we had hit before, and the car just stopped. No shuddering to a halt, no gentle stall. One second we were moving, and the next second we weren’t. Jerome managed to steer us off to the side of the road and we all unpiled from the car. It was pitch dark, so George strapped on the headlamp and Jerome flashed his lighter and they untied the hood and opened it. Smoke and steam billowed out of it. Not a good sign. The engine had overheated. Ok fine. So we dug around in the trunk and got out some water and poured it into the radiator which was completely empty. Then we sat in the car for ten minutes, in the dark, waiting for the engine to cool down. Of course now, the one time we needed it to rain, rain was no where in sight-in fact the clouds cleared and we had a beautiful view of the stars and the heat lightening that jumped from cloud to cloud. George and Jerome scared Neesha out of her wits by talking about how we were where leopards like to hang out, so she stayed in the car mostly. After ten minutes, the car was still smoking, but we tried to turn it on. No go. The battery spit at us but refused to turn on. We checked the radiator again. It was still low. Just then, we saw a car approaching. This was encouraging, so we got ready to wave them down.
As it turns out, the stretch of road between Torit and Keyala is where cars go to die. This car was very slow approaching and making a horrible rasping noise. 100 ft from us, it sputtered and died. That’s Africa for you. Jerome and George walked over to them to see if they had water. Jerome explained to George that he was lighting up a cigarette so that the people in the car would know he wasn’t a robber, because robbers don’t smoke before they attack you. They in turn lit cigarettes up themselves, to show that they weren’t robbers. George (and later, when he told me about it, me) were skeptical of this theory, probably because it seemed ridiculous, but they didn’t get attacked so you know, if it works. They got a jerry can full of water, and in turn gave the guy a screw driver (it was a cattle truck, with cattle in it, which pretty much sucks). We poured the water in, thanked the guy, got in the car and drove off. We got maybe another 9 km, so close we could hear the music pounding from the bar, when the car stopped again. And there was no saving it this time. We peeked under the car and saw that not only was diesel pouring out of the back, but water was pouring out of the front. The entire jerry can of water we had poured in had gone straight to the ground. It seemed our radiator was broken as well. Our cell phones were barely in range and the people we called were either asleep or had their phones off (there is no voicemail in Sudan) so we did the only thing we could do. Since Neesha was afraid to walk in the dark, and Jerome didn’t want to leave the car alone, Neesha and I settled down in the car to wait and Jerome and George set off to town. By this time it was eleven thirty. Neesha and I chatted for a while and some trucks went by (so we put on the emergency hazard lights to tell them to pass by, that we were ok, because Jerome didn’t want us to talk to anyone. One guy did stop-the guy from the cattle truck, but we told him we were fine and he drove off-we found out later that he gave Jerome and George a ride to town on the cattle truck which George was delighted about). Neesha and I ultimately fell asleep, and didn’t wake up again until one in the morning, when headlights blared in my face and I woke up to find Jerome tinkering with the engine and a white land cruiser parked next to our car.
It turned out that poor George and Jerome had walked over six miles to town in the dark, being hungry and exhausted, only to find that every place in town was closed. So from there they walked to the compound, another solid mile, and banged on doors until they found Father Vuni’s, got the keys to his car, and his driver Eager (who is both mechanic/driver and tailor-he was the one making clothing in Isoke and he is a darling) and drove back to where the car was. They poured more water into it but it still wouldn’t start, so we used the rope that was holding the hood shut, tied it to the bumper of Fr. Vuni’s car, and were towed, at about 1 km per hour, back to the compound. It took an hour. Jerome was so exhausted that he kept falling asleep behind the steering wheel, which wasn’t particularly dangerous as we were strapped to another car, but resulted in us almost driving off the road. We were finally in sight on the compound and thinking longingly of our beds when the last big fiasco of the night happened. As we pulled up to the gate, literally as our car was about to cross over the threshold, the rope snapped.
Neesha hopped in the drivers seat to steer, I got out of the car barefoot since I couldn’t find my shoes and Jerome, George and I pushed the car 200 ft into the compound. We were having a hell of a time with it and couldn’t figure out why until finally we realized: Neesha had her foot on the brake. Had our brakes been working, pushing it would have been next to impossible, but because they were so broken, it was still possible, just fucking hard. Especially barefoot (go me! Strengthening up my feet! I’ll be real African soon.) Finally, we stopped the car and said “To hell with it” and stopped the car where it was (smack dab in the middle of the compound) and went to bed. Well, most of us went to bed. George’s net had fallen down so I helped him put it back together, and then we filled up our water bottles, and then we went to bed. But not to sleep (I’ve turned into an insomniac).
To make the entire thing even worse, the next morning, when we told Father Vuni the story, he was horrified. As it turns out, that is one of the most dangerous stretches of road, particularly by soldier barracks because they are mean drunks. He was completely aghast that Jerome and George had a. walked through it by themselves and b. (more importantly) left Neesha and I in a dead car by the side of the road there. He told us we were really lucky, and we felt pretty uneasy. We also found out that the road to Juba that we have been driving for this whole trip is actually not de-mined at all. So we’ve cheated death, according to George, at least three times on trips to Juba. We discovered this because they were de-mining it as George, Jerome and Eager drove to pick up Ed.