Another Dry Season, Another Rant

The Miracle of Washcloths. Dry season has finally arrived, two months late. (Even the weather is on Kenyan time.) But dry season means dust, and dust means I have to work harder to stay clean. The bath I used to take every three or four days now happens almost daily. And involves a washcloth. The standard splashing just doesn’t get things clean anymore. African dust clings fast. Washcloths are essential for people like me who are disturbed when their own face turns their pillowcase brown after three days. Ew.

Other essential hygiene habits for dry season: Daily hair brushing (to remove dust), daily q-tipping of ears (to remove dust), weekly cleaning and polishing of shoes (to remove dust), and weekly laundry (to remove dust).

Actually I don’t know why they’re called wet season and dry season. They should be called cold season and dusty season.

I Got A Cat! I wasn’t planning to. My friend mentioned that he had two kittens that he couldn’t keep, and he was planning to drown them in the river that weekend. I told him that if that was going to be their fate, then I would take them. I’d recently seen a mouse running around my house anyway.

Well, two weeks later, I still didn’t have any kittens, so I assumed that they had been taken for an impromptu swimming lesson and failed. It turns out, of course, that my friend and the kittens were just on Kenyan time. The next day he brought one over. I was afraid to ask what happened to the other one. (I later found out he had given it to his brother...whew!)

So I named her Fatso. She has a fat tummy, probably from worms. I’m still trying to think of another name because I’m not entirely happy with Fatso. It’s fitting, but not perfectly fitting. Amber suggested naming her AIDS. To reduce stigma, she said. What better way to show my friends and neighbors that AIDS is not a death sentence?

“Yes, I just got AIDS last month. And I’m very happy. In fact, I think I can live a long time with AIDS.”

International Women’s Day Is March 8. My co-worker Carren and I are doing a workshop at a local girls’ high school to get the students interested and involved in girls’ empowerment activities. Today was the first day, and it was relatively successful, considering that I haven’t taught high school kids in almost a year, and we were addressing 600 girls at once, most of whom couldn’t understand an American accent. It’s interesting to realize that sometimes English still needs to be translated into English, and humbling to realize that I really should learn to teach in Kiswahili.

This year’s IWD theme is “Ending Impunity for Violence Against Women and Girls.” I think it should also include ending impunity for violence against people who advocate ending violence against women and girls. Empowering women and girls to speak out for respect and equal rights is still not very popular in some crowds.

As much as I would love to see high school girls engaged in loud, outspoken protests and high-profile activism, the reality of getting these girls involved in a culturally-appropriate IWD is a lot more practical, and a lot less dramatic. Every community plans its own events for IWD; we will probably have the usual suspects: guest speakers who talk way too long, skits and poetry readings. Our workshop teaches basic skills like communication, self-esteem and assertiveness through interactive games and exercises. Today they played Fox Across the River, drew pictures of themselves in the career they want to have in ten years, and pondered the possibility of being sidelined by pregnancy. And they loved the fact that it didn’t resemble trigonometry class in any way.

Note to self: Six hundred high school girls is a lot. Bring more crayons.

http://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/iwd/index.html

Hee Hee Hee Anus Hee Hee Hee. I asked Nicholas to start teaching me more Kiswahili proverbs. I think they are an extremely powerful form of communication in Kenya, and they usually make more sense to me than regular conversation. After almost two years here, I still don’t understand what people are talking about, even when I understand what they’re saying. Here’s an example:

I was checking out of a hotel and asked one of the staff where I should leave the key. I was coming out of my room, and he was mopping the hallway floor.

“Is it okay if I leave the key in the door?” I asked.

“Ingia ndani,” he said.

This literally means “enter inside.” The problem is that, with my not-so-finely-tuned interpretation skills, I decided that it could have three possible meanings: 1. Go back into the room, 2. Put the key inside the room, or 3. Leave the key in the door.

I learned, after much gesturing and pointing, that he was saying it was okay to leave the key in the door. It seemed to me that he should have said, “Wacha kifungu kwa kifuli.” Leave the key in the lock. Or, less specifically, but still clear, “Weka kwa mlango.” Put it in the door. But I think Kenyans have a much keener ability to infer from context than I do.

Anyway, I learned what is quite possibly the most useful proverb to date, which I’m told politicians regularly recite at political rallies:

Nyani haoni kundule, huliona la mwenzake.

A monkey cannot see his own anus, only that of others. In other words, people are hypocrites. The fact that politicians recite this proverb is absurdly and hilariously ironic.

Of course my favorite part of the whole thing is the word anus. Hee hee hee. I’m 12 years old again and I know the word for anus in Kiswahili.

More fun with proverbs:

Fahali wawili hawakai zizi moja. Two bulls cannot stay in the same yard.

Wapandapo ngazi watu wawili hawashikani mikono. When two people climb a ladder they do not hold hands.

Wapiganapo fahali wawili nyazi huumia. When two bulls are fighting, it is the grass that gets hurt.

Pilipili usioila iyakuwashia nini? How does chili burn you if you have not eaten any? (In other words, mind your own business.)