The thing I hate about blogs is that it’s all so very self-centered. Who really gives a crap what I had for dinner on Monday or who I saw on Tuesday? And this Twitter thing really frightens me. Still, there’s something wonderful about being able to share an experience from around the world. The rains have been so heavy the past few weeks. I have a picture of our yard, flooded, ironically where we dry clothes. This and so many other things are really so African it’s wonderful and worth sharing.
This week I’ve mostly been trying to organize and pack up a year of my life. (Someone is herding goats up our road again. Where they’re going, nobody knows. It’s funny because there’s not much grass here and it’s all residential). The fun part has been stopping into Amani and helping Anna to organize gift boxes for all the kids. This coming Saturday each kid will get a decorated shoebox with gifts inside. It’s a huge job and Anna is the only volunteer working on the project so I decided to come in and help her. We always feel like we’re gonna pass out after a few years being locked up in a incredibly disorganized claustrophobic storage room with not much air supply. The kids have been really cute peeking in the windows. The boxes are fun to tailor to each kid though. The younger boys all get tiny toy cars, stuffed animals and tennis balls, and everyone gets paper, stickers and markers or colored pencils. The older boys get baseball caps, toiletries and stationery sets for school. I think the boxes for the four girls are the best though. They get bracelets, dolls, a girly shirt, fancy soap and drawing materials. Just imagine having ninety brothers and not being able to celebrate you’re a girl, however sexist people might think those gifts are. Believe me, if you lived with all those smelly boys, you’d want some pink in your life.
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Last week I went to Mombasa, Kenya and learned a new phrase in Swahili: “peke yangu” or “by myself.” There’s also “peke yako,” by yourself, which was thrown quite popularly in my direction. I think it was a bit weird for people to see a woman traveling on her own, especially a white one. “You are not meeting anyone here miss? Can I take you to the club?” Needless to say, by the second day I made up a boyfriend. “Girl where is your boyfriend?” “Oh he’s sleeping, he doesn’t feel good.” “Girl why is he sleeping so much?” “Uh…blaheasjkdsk see you later.” The bus ride was ok- extremely hot, dusty and sweaty. It only took one hour to get to the border, where I had to stop and buy a Kenyan visa for twenty bucks. The Kenya officials were nice enough. I thought it was really funny that they had posters about sexual harassment in the workplace, since I can’t think of too many places here where it doesn’t exist. It’s just part of life.
Mombasa city was fine. The city itself is a small island, although it’s the most congested island I’ve ever been too (not counting Manhattan). There are so many cars and petrol stations. Kenya is definitely more expensive than Tanzania, which was somewhat unfortunate. I stayed in an Indian-run hotel with air conditioning (wtf?) and a television and I actually ordered food up to my room. Anyways, I kept getting lost walking around and since Mombasa is seventy-five percent Muslim, I sort of stuck out just a bit. Since the tourist areas are all on the beach, I was really the only foreigner around. A disturbing part of the city was all the warning signs about child trafficking and sexual exploitation. Apparently just north of Mombasa there is a growing problem of child sex workers. I don’t think anything in the world is more heartbreaking or tragic. It was definitely a view into the reality of Mombasa, realizing the frequency in which trafficking takes place. I did end up going to the market to buy spices and Kenyan coffee beans. I visited Fort Jesus (an old fort the Portugese built where slaves used to stay), and walked through old town Mombasa, which is sort of like Zanzibar except it feels a bit more gritty and a bit more real.
For the rest of the time, I decided to stay in a nice hotel outside of Mombasa on the beach since the city was too intense on my own. I was one of the only guests who spoke Swahili so it was fun to talk with the staff and it felt really comfortable being on my own. There were ups and downs though. Ups being swimming in the beautiful ocean, which was so warm it was almost hot, and the camels dotting the beach beside the wood carvers and women selling silks and khangas. The downs being the beach boys looking to be my holiday prostitute, and the ancient blubbery white men mostly from England accompanied by high-class call girls. This was strange considering how freaking obvious it was these perv-balls were paying these women to be with them. The hotel was really beautiful though and relaxing. In general, Kenya feels like a different world. There is still the poverty of Tanzania, but it is accompanied by disturbing political arrest. The week I was there, the new Constitution had just been drafted, though I doubt problems are over. From what I saw, it seems notably separated by tribes. Whenever I brought up the president, Kibaki, the first thing anyone said about him was that he’s Kikuyu (“Out of Africa” anyone?). The weird part about all of this is that there’s a much larger wealthy class and a bigger divide between the two. This made me think about Tanzania and fear that the wealthy class will grow and just create more problems.
Anyhow, I was happy to come back to Tanz. A strange man with a mustache from Arusha sat next to me on the way back and told me how he was coming to Moshi to drink milk from a camel’s “teet” for a week because it’s very good for “you know, the constipation.” It was like sitting next to Borat, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, although no, sir, I do now want to visit the camels with you.
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My stomach is starting to flip and my pupils are getting all wiggly and bowled over with thoughts and questions and uncertainties. This always seems to happen whenever I have to pack up a life I’ve made for myself and leave. I suppose that’s what your twenties are for. I’ve felt a little crazy this week saying goodbye to such amazing people. I keep having to remind myself why I’m leaving and that I have no money to stay and that even if I had taken the job I applied for in Arusha, I would have to say no to grad school in the fall since the organization will only take someone for a year. Still, I’m slowly starting to feel like I’m always leaving. There’s been California, Ohio, London, New York and Tanzania. If you count three-month stays then there’s been Wyoming, Mexico and Washington as well. Most of the time when I think about this I feel confident and thankful. I’ve been fortunate enough to live in several places and lead different lives. But maybe underneath it all I’m running from something I can’t define. Oh! That’s an Ani DiFranco song. Haha. I think the line is “living for something I can’t even define.” I don’t feel exactly like that, but sometimes I wish I could be happy staying in one place for longer than a few years. It would definitely be easier. Of course easy is not equal to happy.
Then again, maybe restlessness is underrated. The freedom of leaving your created comfort zone for something different is quite a beautiful circumstance. I do feel sort of strange about going back to California, where particularly compared to here, there is really no collective community welcoming a stranger back. I will be happy to see people, but I know my thoughts will constantly come back to here in a way they never have before. I was in Kenya for four days and I missed Tanzania. The longest I’ve ever been away from the kids is two weeks.
There’s a wonderful story about the Baobab tree, which is now my favorite tree on earth besides those drippy upside down trees across the south. I want to get married under a giant tree adorned in candle lit lanterns. As for the Baobab, it’s somewhat fierce and uninviting although it manages, somehow, to survive in very arid places, standing alone in its own strong yet delicate silhouette. In the story that was told to me while I was here, the Baobab is constantly trying to find the perfect soil to dig its roots into to call home. It wanders aimlessly always looking for the optimal home, until at last the wind blows it over so that its roots point towards the sky and it becomes stuck in that position. So in some ways, the damn tree was so picky and indecisive, it didn’t get to choose the perfect home. But at the same time, the tree never gave up searching for a beautiful home and eventually surrendered its roots to the sky. I guess in many ways, without sounding completely out there, that’s how I feel. My roots are always on the move; afraid to get too comfortable or to feel too stuck. Maybe I like to wander, but in the end, without sounding too cheesy, the same sky is always above me to make me feel at home.
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