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.
1 comment:
Hi Andrea, I love hearing about your adventures and the visualization that your words convey. I am glad you are safe and happy. What an adventure! Kathleen
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