1. The way people talk nice and slowly, with lots of intonation, like when they say "sure" and it sounds like "shoe-ah". They say Mm, when they agree with you, or "uh-uh" to indicate "Yes"... and always ask "how are you?" many times and reply with "fine, fine." The mi of languages is also confusing... Kiswahili and Luhya are spoken by the locals, and everyone over 10 and under 60 has a good basic grasp of English and many sentences (particularly shouting matches) are punctuated by English words and phrases.
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| I sat through this meeting with Rose (on the far left) and tried so hard to understand what they were saying but after almost an hour all I got were some stares and "How are You?''s from passersby. |
2. No matter how often you shower or wash your face, you are guaranteed to wipe the sweat off your forehead and be left with a very brown hand from the collection of dust and dirt that has gathered. Boda boda rides are the worst as you constantly pass trucks and vans and get caught up in a whirlwind of dirt. It's kind of gruesomely satisfying allowing yourself to get that filthy though and have nothing you can do about it, especially when there's often no running water.
3. As an agrarian culture with hardworking farmers, the food is all meant to keep people alive and working hard for as long as possible, every meal is laden with filling carbs and is treated to be the last! Mountains of cornmeal mash (ugali) or rice are accompanied by fried flat bread (chapati) or double stacked white bread stuck together with butter. This is sometimes served with a spinach like vegetable (scuma), or cabbage and carrots (delicious!) but rarely with other fruits and veggies. Luckily Alicia and I tend to eat only veggies at night and I have been starting my day with an avocado that I eat like a bowl of cereal and a couple tomatoes... it's so fresh and delicious!
4. The sky by day is fascinating, filled with gorgeous tumultuous clouds, especially when it is about to rain and the air is sticky and still. However there is NOTHING quite like the sky at night. The other night when I slept at Rose's out in the countryside I was being shown to the outhouse by her daughter and I had my headlamp on to light the way. But as we walked out from under the cover of the trees I literally gasped with shock and startled the daughter badly. I quickly said, "no, no it's okay," and shut off my light and just gazed up above at the astounding number of twinkling lights. There was no moon that I could see yet, it was still early, but the sheer number of stars made it bright enough to see the silhouettes of the landscape and fields around us. I stood there with my mouth open, gazing around, admiring the colors of the stars, the sparkle and great expanse of sky above us. The daughter was a bit confused by my actions and I tried to explain but she just smiled and shook her head at the naïve "mzungu".
5. The kids and toddlers are very wary of me, being a rare white person in their town. Many people have only seen a mzungu once or twice, and an old lady came up and touched my arm the other day and then laughed so hard I nearly jumped out of my skin... the lady standing nearby translated and said this woman had never before touched a white person's skin! Anyway, the kids are all a bit scared of us, which is difficult to understand and hard to handle, especially when they treat us as objects of interest to follow around town and yell at. But the babies are so cute, and usually not nearly as frightened. I guess they haven't learned to be, which is good, and I try so hard to make them smile. It's really hard though!! The rare moments are just precious.
Ok, that's all for now... I have a lot more to share about what I did this week, it was very busy! I'm going to Kakamega tomorrow though and will try to write some more after that.
Lots of love!
Maia
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