What time is it?

I came home to Nairobi over the weekend to the kind of weather that can really foul up your mood. It rains like hell for a couple of hours each afternoon, and most of the night. The streets turn into rivers, and it's times like these that having my red-state beast of a car - an ancient but still running LandCruiser - pays off. Yesterday, as I drove around two minibuses that were stuck in knee-high pits of water, I felt like I was fording a river like in the old Oregon Trail computer game, only this time I made it across.

It might be the mild seasonal affect disorder or the mountain of work that piled up in my two weeks out of the office, but it's been a long week. It started with the mildly frustrating trip back from Cape Town that began about 5 a.m. on Sunday, when I had to be at the airport. On the Johannesburg-Nairobi flight, I sat next to an elderly woman who was very sweet, except it was only her second time in an airplane. Every 30 minutes or so, she asked me what time it was "where we are." It took me a while before I realized she was waiting for the plane to cross over from South Africa's time zone into Kenya's, which is one hour ahead. I started to explain to her that it doesn't really work that way, that those lines on time-zone maps aren't painted on the actual earth and she could set her watch forward whenever she pleased. But then I shut up.

With a few minutes until landing, the South African Airways flight attendants did the usual deal where they hand out immigration forms to fill out and show when you land. The lady next to me decided she wasn't going to fill hers out; she'd just show up with the blank form and her passport and someone would help her. Knowing how pissy the Nairobi airport immigration people got with me when I used the unofficial abbreviation "NBI" in scribbling my address once, I offered to fill out the form for her. I don't usually even look at people on planes; for me, this was a major offer.

I was about halfway through when one of the flight attendants came by and told me to put back the tray table that I was writing on. "But I'm just helping out this woman." He didn't care. "You know," I said, "I've flown before, and believe me - I'll put the table up in like 30 seconds, as soon as I finish." He didn't go for it. I wrote her address and the date with the paper on the armrest, and I could feel a vein in my forehead bulging.

The rest of the week I've been busy covering the Darfur peace talks by phone from Nairobi. Monday night about 10, I was in my office in town finishing up my story and interviewing one of the rebel negotiators over a crackly phone line. Suddenly the power went out - naturally - and for about 10 minutes the only light on the entire street was the bright white of my computer screen. I was there in the pitch dark, deadline looming, straining to make out what that Darfur rebel was saying, and typing onto a keyboard I couldn't see. After 10 days in South Africa, I felt I was finally back in Africa.

I'll post again in the next day or so with more on my trip to South Africa. And if you're interested, the Darfur negotiations are to expire at midnight Thursday in Nigeria - in about 15 minutes. The story could change by morning, but here's how it was played for Thursday night's deadline:

- Mediators push warring parties in Darfur closer to a peace deal (Knight Ridder)

- Sudan, Darfur rebels presented with new peace deal (Reuters)

Update: The talks unraveled early Monday, with two of the three rebel factions refusing to sign the deal. A third said it was still thinking about it.