Lazy Sunday
It has been awhile since I’ve seen the internet, or at least it feels that way. Kroll came to visit me in my village last week, and as we speak he is probably trudging up Mt. Kilimanjaro shooting his way towards his goal of 3,000 photos by the end of the trip.
It was nice to have a visitor from home to show off my mysterious African world to. Before I came here I used to read websites and emails from Peace Corps volunteers, and they always sounded so quaint and yet somehow contrived because I had no concept of what African/Central American/East Timorese village life looked and felt like. Sometimes I go back and read my blog posts and wonder if everyone back home feels that way about my dispatches. I hope a lot more of you come visit me, because not even the world’s greatest writers (and definitely not the world’s best guidebooks, not even ones written by Antti Helin--sorry bud) can capture what it’s really like for 80% of the population here. Safaris and mountain treks and beach time in Mombasa are a world that most Kenyans will never know.
Well, at the risk of revealing how retarded I was when I got here, I think I am finally starting get what people mean when they describe stuff happening in developing countries – the corruption, rural socioeconomics and old mamas smiling at you with mouths full of rotting teeth. When I heard about the chickens being killed in Central Asia to stop the spread of bird flu, my first thought was not,“Awww, all those poor innocent chickens being killed,” which is what I would have thought six months ago, but rather, “That’s going to devastate most of the people there who depend on farming for a living.”
When I heard about the earthquake in Pakistan, I imagined it happening in my village and it was suddenly easy to picture not only the devastation to an impoverished population but also the logistical nightmare of getting aid to places where there’s no basic infrastructure as we know it in the U.S. If an earthquake hit my village I know people in remote parts wouldn’t see aid for days, if ever. I complain that I live in the bush but I actually live in the “big” town, where there’s a couple of roads, some shops, schools and a hospital, and some have electricity and occasional running water.
(Quick shout out to PCVs in other countries: Anna “ if another person asks me for money to open a VCT/pay for electricity/buy a water tank/start a school/pay their kid’s tuition/fly to America, I swear you will hear me cursing them all the way from Togo. And Ron “ when I finally get my hands on a big, bloody prime rib I will surely shed tears of joy, especially if there’s a platter of cheese or sushi next to it.)
Seeing how Kroll reacted to certain situations made me realize how I’ve adapted to a lot of things that used to drive me crazy. Like fishtailing on muddy roads in a dilapidated matatu packed with 36 people and four chickens (capacity: 15). Or trying to get a straight answer out of a Kenyan.
“Do you think it will rain today?” I asked.
“I do not know that it cannot,” said our tour guide.
I just assumed he meant “no,” but Kroll said, “Um, does that mean yes or no?”
Which, to be honest, was what I was thinking, too. I’ve just fallen out of the habit of asking for a clarification, and just guess instead. I don’t think we ever got an answer that we understood, but in the end it didn’t rain.
6:12pm. It has also been awhile since I spent an entire day at home. My third hen started laying, but the neighbor’s hen has started sitting on my hen’s hex. Which means every morning it’s a race to retrieve my egg before that feathery bandita makes herself comfortable on my breakfast omelette. Ah, the rural life.
If you’ve ever wondered what really happens to the clothes you donate to the Salvation Army, I have the answer: They end up in Africa. When I first arrived I kept wondering why Kenyan men were wearing sweatshirts with sorority letters or slogans like “99% bitch,” or how a three-year-old orphan in a remote village got a shirt that said, “Shedd Aquarium Chicago.” Every open-air market has vendors selling secondhand clothing -- from America. It’s pretty cool being able to find fashions that you recognize-- from 1995. The only bummer is that it’s hard to find women’s pants because most women here wear skirts. So I own a couple pairs of pants that are snug in the hips and a few inches too long.
Today I ran into one of the fundis (literally, a person who makes things; in this case he makes furniture for the girls’ school where I live), a kid of maybe 21. He was wearing a purple t-shirt that said in a font for the blind, “I’M WEARING MY BIRTHDAY SUIT.”
“Ah, nice shirt,” I said. He nodded with his ubiquitous grin.
“You know what a birthday suit is?” I asked.
He nodded, still grinning. Which in Kenya doesn’t mean “yes,” but rather, “I don’t understand your weird accent but I’m going to pretend I know what you’re talking about.”
My guess is that this shy kid who makes desks for high school girls doesn’t know what a birthday suit is. But I could be wrong.
It was nice to have a visitor from home to show off my mysterious African world to. Before I came here I used to read websites and emails from Peace Corps volunteers, and they always sounded so quaint and yet somehow contrived because I had no concept of what African/Central American/East Timorese village life looked and felt like. Sometimes I go back and read my blog posts and wonder if everyone back home feels that way about my dispatches. I hope a lot more of you come visit me, because not even the world’s greatest writers (and definitely not the world’s best guidebooks, not even ones written by Antti Helin--sorry bud) can capture what it’s really like for 80% of the population here. Safaris and mountain treks and beach time in Mombasa are a world that most Kenyans will never know.
Well, at the risk of revealing how retarded I was when I got here, I think I am finally starting get what people mean when they describe stuff happening in developing countries – the corruption, rural socioeconomics and old mamas smiling at you with mouths full of rotting teeth. When I heard about the chickens being killed in Central Asia to stop the spread of bird flu, my first thought was not,“Awww, all those poor innocent chickens being killed,” which is what I would have thought six months ago, but rather, “That’s going to devastate most of the people there who depend on farming for a living.”
When I heard about the earthquake in Pakistan, I imagined it happening in my village and it was suddenly easy to picture not only the devastation to an impoverished population but also the logistical nightmare of getting aid to places where there’s no basic infrastructure as we know it in the U.S. If an earthquake hit my village I know people in remote parts wouldn’t see aid for days, if ever. I complain that I live in the bush but I actually live in the “big” town, where there’s a couple of roads, some shops, schools and a hospital, and some have electricity and occasional running water.
(Quick shout out to PCVs in other countries: Anna “ if another person asks me for money to open a VCT/pay for electricity/buy a water tank/start a school/pay their kid’s tuition/fly to America, I swear you will hear me cursing them all the way from Togo. And Ron “ when I finally get my hands on a big, bloody prime rib I will surely shed tears of joy, especially if there’s a platter of cheese or sushi next to it.)
Seeing how Kroll reacted to certain situations made me realize how I’ve adapted to a lot of things that used to drive me crazy. Like fishtailing on muddy roads in a dilapidated matatu packed with 36 people and four chickens (capacity: 15). Or trying to get a straight answer out of a Kenyan.
“Do you think it will rain today?” I asked.
“I do not know that it cannot,” said our tour guide.
I just assumed he meant “no,” but Kroll said, “Um, does that mean yes or no?”
Which, to be honest, was what I was thinking, too. I’ve just fallen out of the habit of asking for a clarification, and just guess instead. I don’t think we ever got an answer that we understood, but in the end it didn’t rain.
6:12pm. It has also been awhile since I spent an entire day at home. My third hen started laying, but the neighbor’s hen has started sitting on my hen’s hex. Which means every morning it’s a race to retrieve my egg before that feathery bandita makes herself comfortable on my breakfast omelette. Ah, the rural life.
If you’ve ever wondered what really happens to the clothes you donate to the Salvation Army, I have the answer: They end up in Africa. When I first arrived I kept wondering why Kenyan men were wearing sweatshirts with sorority letters or slogans like “99% bitch,” or how a three-year-old orphan in a remote village got a shirt that said, “Shedd Aquarium Chicago.” Every open-air market has vendors selling secondhand clothing -- from America. It’s pretty cool being able to find fashions that you recognize-- from 1995. The only bummer is that it’s hard to find women’s pants because most women here wear skirts. So I own a couple pairs of pants that are snug in the hips and a few inches too long.
Today I ran into one of the fundis (literally, a person who makes things; in this case he makes furniture for the girls’ school where I live), a kid of maybe 21. He was wearing a purple t-shirt that said in a font for the blind, “I’M WEARING MY BIRTHDAY SUIT.”
“Ah, nice shirt,” I said. He nodded with his ubiquitous grin.
“You know what a birthday suit is?” I asked.
He nodded, still grinning. Which in Kenya doesn’t mean “yes,” but rather, “I don’t understand your weird accent but I’m going to pretend I know what you’re talking about.”
My guess is that this shy kid who makes desks for high school girls doesn’t know what a birthday suit is. But I could be wrong.
posted by Justina at 10:54 PM
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