I don’t have internet at home. Its like death. The two highlights of my day are getting to work because I get to check my email and getting off work because I get to check facebook at the café around the corner from where I live. My employer has blocked facebook from her internets. It makes me so sad and desperate, I find myself checking the incesssant facebook email-updates that I had filtered to trash in my gmail account a long time ago. I check them for any sign of life - any sign that the faceworld misses me as much as I miss it. Alas, it seems that facelife goes on without me.
At least I have a full-length mirror. This is a luxury I have gone without for the last 10 months. I had forgotten how much fun it is to dress up and dance with beyonce in the mirror. In my CT apartment I had the heels, wig, mirror and youtube. In NYC I had the heels (had to ditch my wig), the youtube but no mirror. Now I have no heels, no wig, no youtube but I have the mirror. I think I am fine with just the mirror though.
I live slap-bang in the middle of expat city. There are all kinds of expats here, you can see them in the morning with their laptop-'concealing' laptop backpacks. I am one of them. I am sitting in a café just around the corner from where I live - amidst all kinds of suites, probably from the embassies around here... or the NGO industry.
I can only remember one time I felt so foreign - that was in Argentina a few years ago. I know less Swahili than Spanish… and as my Washington Heights Neighbours would attest, I don’t know a lot of Spanish at all. I know "Jambo!" (hello!) and I try to use it often. Also, I try and say "Asante Sana" (Thank you very much) whenever possible. I have yet to use "Karibu" (you are welcome) and "Sawa" . I can tell that somehow my own language and Swahili are related, but that doesn’t really help me understand things that people say. I have been told that my name sounds like Kisii which is a language from somewhere in the west of Kenya.
I have been trying to watch Kenyan TV. I don’t understand a lot of it. There is an advert for something called "Maasai Service". It features a tall beautiful-looking Maasai man draped in a pink cloth standing on one leg with a staff in his right hand and a small radio held to his ear in his left hand. There is singing in the background. What does it mean? I don’t know. But I think I like it. I also watched an episode of "Spider" last night - it is a Nollywood soapie. There is nothing more fun than a Nollywood soapie.
I had been depressed the other day because I thought that Kenyan eggs (to be clear, eggs from Kenyan chickens) and Kenyan bread taste really weird and un-nice. My first meal in this land was an egg sandwich I made from supplies bought at a convenience shop around the corner. I went to a real supermarket today, and bought fresh stuff. It turns out the eggs were actually just going bad (one was green when I cracked it yesterday) and the bread was low quality. I made myself some toast using better bread today and I was very happy with it. I am gong to have an egg sandwich tomorrow morning with the eggs I bought at the Uchumi supermarket - I expect that I will be pleased with the whole thing. I also got some Koo baked beans, and Nederberg Lyric (my summer white wine). These are two things that made life livable while I was in Cape Town. I am so excited, I think I will wait for a special occasion. I forgot to get Tusker - Baada ya Kazi. I have always wanted to taste this beer - all the cool Kenyan kids at UCT seemed to have a Tukser T-shirt (do they hand it out with SA study permits? I don’t know).
Today when I asked my boss and my boss's boss whether its ok to drink tap water, they laughed then they said no - I should boil it. I felt ashamed to admit that I had had two whole glasses yesterday and they were delicious. Im still ok though, and I have drugs at the ready.
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