Overwhelming hunger and the Idd festivities

The end of Ramadan is a time of great celebration and...can you guess? Eating! It is a painful experience, however, to await the cannons signifying end of Ramadan on Thursday night and to realize, in the end, the sheer futility of the hours you've been straining your ears. Since Idd (which is Eid spelled the Swahili way) only comes when the new moon has been spotted, it can happen either of two nights. In the US, Somalia and most of the Middle East Idd was on Friday. In Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya, the moon failed to appear. So...it was another day of sitting through lectures while fasting, and another day of horrendous deficits of attention (it is during lectures that I miss cheese and bagels and chinese food and mexican food and sushi the most. Accordingly, I don't listen too well.).
Friday afternoon was the hardest to fast through. My mouth was dry and all I could do was slouch on the couch in a comatose manner, barely speaking to my family. To make matters worse, Jamie Oliver is apparently pretty popular in the Middle East, and the Dubai TV station we watch plays his cooking show at 5:00 on weekdays. We break fast at around 6:15. It is bad, bad planning and after watching it I feel even more unhinged by hunger and thirst. "So much cholesterol," remarks my host mother, Sharifa, every time Jamie Oliver uses cheese in his dishes. Sometimes I just want to fall off the couch when she says this. I can't think of a meal I've eaten since I've been here that did not contain at least one fried thing. Most of the time oil makes up roughly half of the food mass laid out on any given table. And vegetables? Rare. And usually swimming in Blue Band, the margarine they use here.
As soon as the call to prayer started, the cannons at Fort Jesus rang out across the city. In the clearing in front of the house, children danced. Someone cranked up a boom box and played music loudly. It continued all night. For the first time in a month I ate normally, with no thought of storing enough caloric energy to get me through the next day.
Halfway through the next meal, my mom looked up from her shurba (chicken stew) "Tomorrow is Idd and we will eat. Then we will fast for the next six days."
I barely managed to keep my mouth closed; my lower jaw wanted so badly to hit the table, and maybe even the floor. Sharifa said that it would be fine if I wanted Shabani (the servant) to make breakfast and lunch for me. I didn't have to fast. But after some thought about how awkward that would be, I said I'd fast with them. So...I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. I'll have to relearn normal eating patterns.

Friday night, apart from being the last night of Ramadan, was also my sister's 21st birthday. We call her Fatma Shorty because she is very short. My cousin, who lives with us, is Fatma Tall. She is 15 but seems much older. Although they don't really celebrate birthdays here, she wanted to buy a new headscarf and some cosmetics for herself, so that evening we headed to the center of Old Town. During Ramadan, since people are cooking, working or sleeping all day, shops stay open far into the night and everyone wanders around socializing and buying clothes. It was the last night of Ramadan, so it was much like last minute Christmas shopping. All the people who hadn't gotten Idd clothes for their kids yet were crowded into the narrow streets, threading their way between street vendors and cars trying in vain to move forward.
I was with Fatma Short, Fatma Tall and their friend, Fatma. All three wore black buibuis and headscarves, and although each one had a different sparkly design on it, they were incredibly hard to follow. Fatma Short and Fatma the friend were wearing ninjas; when I asked about it they told me not to tell Sharifa. "Girls wear ninjas to go on secret dates," they told me. "We're not allowed to wear them out." And indeed, they got a lot of attention on the streets; hiding everything but your eyes if you are a teen is apparently a very flirty move.
While we were out, I bought a shirt for 450 shillings; the shopkeeper tried to charge me 600 but I said no and the Fatmas shouted "450! 450!" at him until he gave in. "Yeye ni ndugu yetu!" they shouted at him (she's our sibling!). Then I treated them all to ice cream for Fatma's birthday, with the added bonus that Fatma Tall and I got to watch the other two struggle to eat popsicles under their ninjas. It was pretty funny.
When we got home, the Fatmas had me try on a succession of outfits until I found one I could wear for Idd. Fatma Tall straightened my hair and I put Vaseline all over my arms and hands so that the henna I'd gotten earlier in the evening would darken overnight. After settling on an outfit, we girl-talked for a while and Fatma Shorty laughed at me. She couldn't believe I'd never had a boyfriend; she's had 4, but don't tell her mother. All except the most recent are secrets. The most recent, who is from Tanzania but works in Holland right now, has promised to come within the month and ask for her hand in marriage. She chats with him on MSN on her phone all day and they call each other at least once a day. My mother has invited me to the wedding, which they hope will be next July or August. I said I'd try to make it.
The next morning after breakfast, Fatma Tall put my hair up, lined my eyes with kohl and gave me lip gloss to wear. A succession of kids dressed in their shiny new Idd clothes and toting shiny new handbags marched through the house to Sharifa, seated on the couch in the living room. She gave them small change and they sat down and talked for a while, eating the snack pastries on the table and drinking juice. Then they moved on to visit the next relatives. I went next door and sat with my aunt and uncle and Thano, who is another student from our group and who is now my cousin, since they are his host parents. After a while Fatma Tall and Salma, her 13-year-old sister, took me around to meet all the relatives.
Over the course of the day, I met about 1000 relatives, drank more juice than I've ever drunk in my life and ate cake until I was on the verge of exploding. I also made 350 shillings, which the Fatmas laughed at me for. Little kids get money on Idd; people my age are mainly expected to stay home and greet visitors.
And what, you may ask, do the little kids do with all the loose change they end up with? The answer lies in the sketchy park on Makadara road. They fence it off and bring in rides and camels and horses and sound systems for a week. It's the Makadara fair, and during Idd it's the place to see and be seen. Salma and I were about to go to Makadara that evening ("hold onto your bag tightly," my mom told me.) when Sharifa's cell phone rang. "It's for you," she said, handing the phone to me. Thano and our cousin Ali were on the other end, wondering if I wanted to drive around Mombasa in a rented car for a few hours.
It turned out to be a bizarre night. Ali turned up the bass and blasted a variety of American and Swahili hip-hop mix cds, and we cruised through town past all the festivities. Makadara was crowded and screams and loud horns emerged from inside; the ice cream shops along the road were brightly lit and full and it took forever to get down one street with all the cars and people trying to move around. We ended up at an On-The-Run at a gas station outside of the city (you don't know how bizarre it is seeing an American chain gas station store like that here) and bought hot dogs, then ate them on the beach in Nyali. Then we drove around for a couple of hours, just seeing the city at night.
This entry is longer than it was supposed to be, and I managed to fit in about a third of what I wanted to talk about. My lunch break is almost over now and I have to go back for the third lecture of the day. Hopefully soon I will be able to write again, and when I do I need to write about:
Finally getting to Makadara
Weddings
My Swahili name
and various other things. But now I have to ford through rivers of rainwater mixed with various unappetizing things on my way back; the small rains season has officially started and I'm considering buying a canoe to ease transportation for the next two weeks.

back in Mombasa and other pertinent tidbits

We got back to Mombasa late Tuesday night, after a sad goodbye to Lamu and a horribly delayed flight out. I miss Lamu a lot and I'm currently trying to figure out how to go back there for my independent study project, which will hopefully be on children's songs in swahili culture. Also, sorry about the atrocious capitalization in this post. the shift key only works about half the time, but hey, internet is way cheaper here than it is on Lamu. it's also faster, since my host sister is studying IT in college and she told me where the best internet cafe is.

During our last week on Lamu, we had a men's panel and a women's panel discussion. the men's panel was before the women's so that, as our academic director told us, the men could say things and then the women could tell us the truth about them. And he's obviously done this many times before, because it was so true. The men made comments like, "only the woman has to be a virgin at marriage because it is the man's role to be the discoverer. The woman is the recipient." so who, we inquired, do the men sleep with, if all the Muslim girls are virgins? "Kikuyus," they told us. "And Bajunis." (Bajuni is the Swahili name for Somali immigrants) There was an older, formidable man whom everyone referred to as "chairman" who shut them all down; "The Quran says that both the man and the woman must be virgins at marriage," he said. None of the other men on the panel had a response.

There were various other notable comments over the course of the panel; "You wouldn't want a secondhand car, right? You want a new one. So you want to marry a virgin" and "Men are like frogs. they have to kiss many frogs before they find the right one." We all came out of the panel somewhat disgusted by the general attitude towards women that these men had. If that was the lot of women in this society, we wanted none of it.

The women's panel, however, was completely and totally different. The women were animated and lively and laughed all the time. Instead of justifying everything with the Quran, they explained polygamy in a more rational way; "No woman likes it," they said, "but sometimes it's necessary." If a woman is barren, the husband still wants children, so he can keep her as his wife and marry another one. If a man is a merchant and spends half of the year in another port on the Indian Ocean, he can take a wife in both his home and the other port so that he has family in each place. There was another good reason which I don't remember, which totally undercuts my story...but the thing the women stressed is that above all the man must be able to support each of his wives equally, economically, socially and biologically. It was obvious that while the men had not questioned many of these things, the women had--they had logical answers and explanations using modern society rather than the teachings of the Quran. And while there are still blatant injustices in the system, I think we all came out of the panel with the resolve to listen and try to understand more and judge less. The women on the panel were well-educated and strong, and it was very good to see that.

I also realized how lucky I am to be a woman studying here. As women students, we get to see the women's society, which is more hidden than the men's and, in my opinion, far more interesting. Spending time with our tutors in Lamu, we got access to a strong community of women who basically run their families, although in theory the man is the head of household. The man, in Swahili culture, has very little access to his own house. He provides economically, but traditionally when he comes home he either greets visitors on the benches outside of every house or goes to his bedroom. The house is the woman's territory, and she controls everything going on within it. Of course, traditions like that aren't always upheld; men and women eat together and watch TV together now, and houses are arranged to allow for more common space. Still, the general power structures in the household are upheld. Thus, while the guys in our group were wandering around Lamu meeting many, many different people each day with their tutors and breaking fast on the seafront, the girls were sitting in the kitchen in front of the jiko (charcoal stove) and talking to their tutors about anything and everything, learning about polygamy and secret dating and abortions and scandals and, of course, cooking. So take your pick...but I think we got the more interesting side of things.

There's so much more I could, and should, say about Lamu. Due to time constraints and independent study project proposals, however, I think I'm going to have to leave it here.

Tropical paradise much?

Alrighty then.  I'll start from the day we left Kaloleni; there's so much more to tell about my time there but I'm not going to go back and write it all.  Internet is expensive on Lamu (although, paradoxically, it's faster than internet in Mombasa) and there's too much else to write about.

We were supposed to be at the school at 6 AM (12 in the morning swahili time, since swahili time starts at sunrise and goes until sunset.).  But the problem with swahili time is that it is a bit like Suozzo time, but even more laid back.  I was up at 5:15 and packed by 5:45, but Gladys, my host mom, still had to finish making me breakfast, which was spaghetti and chai.  Then she had to get me a bottle of mnazi, which is palm wine made very cheaply and very regularly in the village.  It not being a Muslim village, there are pretty big problems with alcoholism there.  The problems aren't helped by the fact that a wine-bottle-sized portion of mnazi will cost you 30 KSH, which is less than 50 cents.  Mnazi is a pretty big part of life in the village when there are men around, but the women in my compound didn't really drink and the men are all away working, so I didn't get a chance to try it and most of the other students did.  My mama decided to send me off with a bottle so I could try it; once she'd bought it from the next door neighbor she had me try it to see if I liked it.  Coming on top of the large portion of plain pasta (I didn't have the heart to not finish it, it being my last meal and all) and two cups of excellent chai at 6 in the morning, it was...interesting.  So I said I liked it and stuck it in my backpack, panicking because we were running so late.  I finally persuaded the family to move towards the road and we passed by the shopkeeper who I'd talked with every day on the way to and from school.  He gave me two bracelets and a necklace and kissed my hand, which I really didn't know how to react to.  I thanked him profusely and we continued on our way.  Gladys and I got up the hill at about 5 to 7, just as the vans were pulling out to look for the latecomers.  They stuck my stuff into a van and, with a hug and a promise to come back and visit, I got in and we left Gladys waving goodbye in front of the school.  The sun was coming out from behind the clouds as we drove down the hill on the rocky dirt road, and the whole lanscape lit up green and lush, with smoke rising from the little thatch-roofed houses spotting the fields.

When I opened my backpack, I discovered that the mnazi had leaked and everything in the front pocket was wet.  My backpack smelled like alcoholic coconut, with a hint of sulfur, and my ipod was covered.  This led to the rechristening of my ipod "MnaziPod."  MnaziPod has somewhat recovered from the experience, but the screen is striped somewhat like a barcode and the battery life is about half of what it was.  But it still plays music, so it's all good.

Our next stop on our trip was Tsavo National Park.  The vans we rode in, we soon discovered, had pop-up tops, and once we got to Tsavo the driver popped them up.  I'm fairly sure you're not supposed to stick your head out the top while the van is moving, but we all did and I had bruises all over my arms to prove it.  Trying to cling to the side of a van on a bumpy dirt road isn't the safest thing in the world.

I have lots of pictures of animals I never thought I'd see up close; giraffes (twiga) and lions (simba) and elephants (tembo) and rhinos (viboko) and buffalo (nyati) and zebras (punda milia=striped donkey, not to be confused with punda malaya, which means donkey whore).  We had lunch at a gorgeous, fancy restaurant at the top of a mountain.  We were somewhat impressed by the food, but the bathrooms were the real hit with the group.  I flushed twice just to prove that I didn't have to squat over a hole in the ground anymore.

That evening as we crossed a set of railroad tracks next to a line of broken-down stone houses, the program director, Athman, called from the front, "if you don't like this, we can go somewhere else."  I started to get suspicious, both from the smile on his face and from the fact that someone had heard we'd been staying in tents.  We had no idea where we were going.  And they were, indeed, tents, we saw as we pulled up.  Huge tents.  We got out of the car and porters rushed to carry our backpacks; we reached the lounge area and a woman held out a tray of warm washcloths to wash the red dust off of our faces.  As we collapsed on the couches overlooking the pool, another woman walked around with long-stemmed cups of passionfruit juice with pink sugar lining the rim.  The tents had balconies and enormous beds and hot water and lights and just about everything we hadn't had for a week.  It was a game of contrasts.  It was the nicest hotel I'd ever stayed in, with an amazing gourmet European dinner and a huge breakfast and a massage tent and a bar and a warm pool and a view of the river where all of the animals in that area come to drink.  We'd just come from a week in a rural village, most of us without electricity, using outhouses and taking baths in tubs, where you had to make sure not to rub the walls if you were still wet from your bath because the mud plaster would smear off in clumps.  And though it was extremely comfortable, I couldn't help being extremely conscious of how extraneous and contrived this all was.

After another game drive on the other side of the park the next day, we headed on to Malindi for three days.  Malindi is a beautiful town with a gorgeous beach, but the tourists...ack!  They're all Italian, so I could understand the shopkeepers who shouted "Ciao!  Come stai?" at us as we walked past.  But they were terrible.  They walk around in tiny shorts and bikinis as though the town is a beachfront resort designed for their tanning purposes, while women in buibuis and ninjas walk past and men in prayer robes and kofias head to the mosque.  And because we were tourists too, there for so little time, we were automatically lumped in with the Europeans.  When they nodded and smiled at us on the street, we looked down and tried not to make eye contact.  Clothes that would be normal in the States look scandalous and disrespectful to us now.  It's strange.  But really, when I stood on the roof of our hostel in the evening, I could hear five mosques broadcasting nightly prayers.  The contrast is stunning; the beach a block away, a mosque right across the street.  It was a discordant clashing of cultures for us, but Malindi exists as it is now because of that tourism.  And we certainly had amazing luck with food, as we ate feasts at our program director's friend's house two of the nights and found a simple but filling meal that cost 1200 KSH for 12 of us on the third night.  That's about $1.50 each.  

After Malindi, we flew to Lamu, where we are now.  Lamu is an island off the coast, near the Somalia border.  There are no cars on the island, and the inhabitants are considered to speak the most accurate Kiswahili in Kenya.  In most places the Kiswahili is heavily influenced by the local Bantu dialects, but here everyone learns Kiswahili from the time they're born.  The streets are incredibly thin, and the main form of transport for building materials and anything else that needs to be carried is donkeys.  There is at least one mosque in every neighborhood, so deciding to fast here was very easy; everyone is doing it.  Lamu is basically a tropical paradise.  Pretty much.  Or as close as anything that's not sickeningly resort-like can come to it.  It's not weird to walk up to people and start asking them questions, which is good because for Kiswahili lessons we occasionally have to do that.  We each have a Swahili tutor who we see every day.  Mine is named Hadijah Mani.  She lives right near our house and has two kids: Athman is 7 and Mohammed is 2.  Athman is always playing with friends outside, but I hang out with Mohammed a lot.  He calls me Jambo, no matter how many times I tell him my name is Andrea.  He likes to throw things at me; the worst so far was a half-eaten guava, which was slimy.  Usually it's just plastic blocks.

My tutor is always cooking food to break fast with.  Usually it's deep-fried potatoes with hot sauce in between, and sometimes it's bajia- they're a little like tiny falafel, but they're made with cow peas (I don't know what those are, but they don't look like chickpeas).  Yesterday I got to fry sambusas, which are what they call samosas.  And the best thing about it is that I get to take home some of whatever she's making.  We talk about my day in Kiswahili and I ask a lot of questions about her life.  I'm getting really good at asking questions because people are so willing to answer them here.  She always sends me home right before it's time to break fast (fast closes at about 4:15 AM and opens at 6:15 PM).  The house we're staying in, Milimani house, is also our school building; we have class in the dining room, living room and the front office.  The front office is where the director and assistant director go to break fast with Fupes and Omari, who take care of the building.  I usually break fast with them and we drink tamarind juice and eat viazi and bajia and sambusa and these little rosewater-donut-ey things that are amazing.  Also we eat dates.  Immediately afterwards we go upstairs to the dining room for dinner, which means that by the end my stomach, which has shrunk over the course of the day, is painfully full regardless of how little I've eaten.

Oh, and I got a cell phone.  I really like it.  I text people from across the room because people in Milimani house are the only people whose numbers I know.

It's time to head back home and then to my tutor's house, but feel free to drop me emails...I may or may not write back, but I'll read them.