Hi all! It’s been a long time since my last blog and just wanted to let you all know I’m still alive over here. Didn’t really feel like writing a traditional blog entry or regaling you with any poignant and serious stories so I’ve made a top ten list of sorts which I hope you’ll find entertaining:
Ten ways to know you’re in Peace Corps Kenya:
1. Upon finding a bug in your coffee/cereal/fruit you pick it out and keep eating.
2. You have become really good at waiting for people and consider them on-time if they’re 30 or less minutes late.
3. You will respond to any variation of your first or last name (Liz, Linds, Lynn etcetera) as well as ‘mazungu’ (white person) madam, sir (yes, even as a woman), wewe (you in Swahili), mama, sister, miss, white person, lady, msichana (‘girl’ in Swahili) bella (like chaobella) and American.
4. You are really, really good at turning people down when theyask you to:
a. give them money, candy, the loaf of bread you’re carrying or your bicycle
b. buy them shoes, clothes, a soda or a plane ticket to America
c. Procure for them a visa, green card, a spouse in the US or money for their school fees/organization/children/etcetera.
d. Marry them and take them back to the US with you
5. You’ve had a conversation while taking a poo with a 6 or 8-legged creature living in your choo (outdoor bathroom). You’ve also named this creature.
6. Ignoring children while they sit on your couch and stare at you while you study, cook, clean or read is a bi-weekly activity.
7. You strategically place heavy objects (shoes work well) and scraps of paper around the house as cockroach killing weapons.
8. You regularly text your friends about your bowel movements.
9. Multiplying by 85 is a daily activity as you try and explain to people how much things is the US cost (the exchange rate is about 85 shillings to the dollar) and how much that plane ticket to the US is gonna set them back (it’s a couple years salary for the average Kenyan)
10. You’ve realized that even when you’re both speaking English, you’re still speaking 2 totally different languages:
· ‘spinach’ isn’t actually spinach, it’s any green leafy vegetable matter
· ‘chicken’ can be any part of the chicken
· ‘help me with’ actually means ‘give me’
· ‘friend’ means lover
· ‘I think we’ll see each other again’ is a pick-up line
· ‘doctor’ is anyone who works in a clinic, even the cleaning staff and the receptionist
· A ‘child’ is anyone under the age of 25
· ‘American’ means money
· ‘25, unmarried, no children’ means ‘defective’
· ‘road work’ is jogging
· In response to men asking you out:
o ‘no’ means yes, you’re just playing hard to get
o ‘yes’ the first time means ‘I’m easy’ and they’ll leave you alone unless they’re into slutty girls
o ‘yes’ the second time means ‘I really like you’
o ‘I have a boyfriend/husband’ means okay but we’ll have to be really sneaky
o ‘I am a US government employee and I am not allowed to date host country nationals or give them my phone number’ confuses the hell out of them (it’s also complete bullshit, I might add)
· ‘You look smart’ means you look attractive
· ‘you’re looking so fat!’ means you’re looking good
· ‘guest of honor’ at an event means you’re supposed to donate the most to the cause
Well, that’s all for this week folks. The culture differences make for some funny moments and I’m really going to try and start writing them down for you all. I guess I can include one more quick story because I wrote it in an e-mail to my mom and forgot how entertaining it was until just then.
To preface this story I should tell you, if you don’t already know, that I live in 2 rooms of a family’s house. The father of the house pretty much leaves me alone unless he needs to ask or tell me something, but the mother of the house… well she’s kind ofspecial. Though I’ve told her a million times that she needs to slow down when she speaks Swahili to me and not incorporate luyha words because I don’t speak luyha (the local dialect which is in NO similar to Swahili) she insists on speaking at the same rate she does to native speakers and after a few weeks of this I gave up trying to talk to her in Swahili. As a consequence, though I’m actually pretty good, she thinks I don’t speak Swahili at all and continually tells people this which, as you can imagine, annoys me to no end. On top of that she has this unrelenting need to introduce everyone to me. It’s subsided a little since the first couple weeks when she was literally bringing people into my living room at all hours of the day and night to meet me. I think it stems partly from her belief that because I never come and hang out with the family in their part of the house, I must be really bored all the time. I’ve explained to her that I like spending time by myself, that I’m not just sitting there staring at a wall, I’m studying or reading or working on a project, but the concept of ‘alone time’ doesn’t really exist here. Anyway, this story is a product of all of those things…
8:30am couple weeks ago she (the house mama) walks into my living room with some guy and tells me she has a present for me. Literally says “I brought you a present,” and I’m annoyed because it’s 8:30 am and I’m getting ready for work and half-dressed and now there’s this 20 something Kenyan guy standing in my living room and I have no idea who he is or why he’s in my living room at 8:30am and the house mama has this huge grin on her face like she’s brought me a pony with glitter in its mane or something. So I look at her and say “I don’t understand.” Because, let’s face it, when someone walks in and says they brought you a present and that present is another human being, who you’ve never met… well that’s a little odd for everyone involved… unless it’s a bachelorette party and then the intent is fairly well implied… Anyway, the house mama tells me that this is so-and-so and he’s a student like me and I can teach him and he can teach me Swahili. She’s brought me a friggen friend or a mate and by the ridiculous grin on her face, I think she thinks she’s brought the later of the two. Super.
I should interject here and say that it’s not that I hate people (well okay, for those of you that know me well, it’s a little bit about the fact that I hate people…) or don’t want to make friends with the Kenyans, it’s just that by the time I get home at the end of the day I’ve been dealing with culture issues all day and the last thing I want to do is have to do that in my own house. They don’t understand that I completely alter my personality in public, or that it’s exhausting to greet the 500 kids on the way to town that want to say hi to the white lady, or that at least a dozen people ask me to buy them things or give them money every time I’m in town, or that I have to haggle with shop owners and vendors every time I buy something because they see my white skin and automatically double the price of things. By the time I get home I’m tired of being culturally appropriate, all I want to do is sit on my couch in shorts and a tank-top (neither of which I can wear outside my house), put on some shitty American music, and read a book or study for the MCAT alone and in blissful peace.
Anyway, back to the story. I’m standing there not appropriately dressed for male company, still perturbed and confused as to why 8:30am on a Tuesday morning seemed like the best time to have so-and-so over, but I figure I better try to make some sort of conversation so I ask what and where he’s studying. Turns out he’s in his first year of undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering at the local college. So he’s not even 20-something, he’s like 18 and in a completely unrelated field of study. The only thing that mechanical engineering has in common with biological sciences is an overlap in math, which was my least favorite subject. That and the fact that the average student in either field is usually pretty dorky. After 4 or 5 more awkward minutes in which I explain that there is actually very few things I can teach a mechanical engineering student but that he’s welcome to come hang out at some time that isn’t single digit morning hours, they finally leave and, much to the credit of so-and-so, he has yet to come back. Best present ever; the kind that knows it’s unwanted and returns itself to the store. J
Alright, well that’s it for this week folks. As always hope you’re all doing well. Miss you and love you and counting down the days (literally, there’s a chart on my wall) until I will be home to see all your bright and smiling faces again.
