In the last 8 months that I have been here in Kenya I have noticed a few things:

Apparently all mzungu (white people) look alike. There is a new mzungu girl who has been living in Mumias for the past couple of months. One day at school while I was sitting at my desk this man comes up and introduces himself to me. So I tell him my name of course (which like all Kenyans, just cant seem to pronounce my name and calls me Christian or Christine). He then asks me if I remember him… no I don’t.  I’m sorry.  He says that I met him in the cyber café in town… which I never go to.  It then later came out that he was actually thinking that I am Lisa (the other mzungu woman).

Picking of the nose is completely normal and fine to do in public.  I can’t tell you how many times I have looked over at the man sitting next to me on a matatu and hes just picking his nose.  This has also happened while I talking to a fellow teacher, and as we are talking and having a good converstion, he is just digging away.

Its completely normal to ask a complete stranger to marry you.  I was sitting in the front seat of a matatu and this man just comes up and asks me if he “can help me with marriage”. 

There are some cows that are striped like a tiger

Kenyans have no concept of what a line is. I can not even begin to count the number of times that I have been standing in “a line” waiting to buy something when other people will just walk right up in front of me and say whatever it is they need. I mean a fellow teacher even did this as I was talking to them. They have no shame in cutting in a line. I am still dealing with the anger and frustration this causes me whenever it happens, but it slowly becoming something that I expect to happen anytime I am in a line, haha.

It is not unusual that when you first meet someone, you tell them what religion you are and ask theirs.  Lee and I were in town for our weekly lunch on Fridays.  As we are sitting in the crowded table packed hoteli, this man walks up to us and introduces himself, stating that he is a teacher at the local Muslim school. He then tells us that he used to be a Muslim but he is now a follower of Christ and is Christian, and that he changed religions because he doesn’t like what “those Muslims” do and their beliefs.  When he walked away lee and I just looked at each other speechless.  I still don’t know how to respond to people who say things like that.

Not only do men ask for me to take them home with me, but women do to. Right after the conversation that I described above, the server of the hoteli comes over and speaks directly to me (not Lee who is male) and asks which country I am from. Once she is informed that I am from America, she decided to ask if I would take her home with me…. Hmm that was a tough decision for me to make.

The public form of transportation, matatus ( which are 14 passengers vans but they tend to sqeeze around 20 or more people in) are typically pieces of crap. Lately the matatu conductors (tauts) have been putting the low number of 14 people in these vans because there have been a number of police checks along the road. At the checks the police have been checking to see if the passengers are wearing their seat belts. As I am riding on a matatu, the taut tells us to put on our seat belts. I look down to put mine on, yet there is no clasp on the belt. It is just the belt part. So my form of a seat belt became a knot.

Those are just a few of the things that I have noticed : )

The past month has quite honestly gone by very fast. And it has been enjoyable. Teaching chemistry still sucks though.  But there was this one particular chemistry class that was very entertaining. As I was walking to class, I was thinking that the lesson would be really boring for the students and that they would all just fall asleep like normal. The lesson was how magnets can be used to separate some mixtures. Little did I know that this would be one of the most enjoyable for the students. I told them how some substances are metallic and are attracted to metals.  I then showed them how iron can be separated by sulphur with a magnet. The look on their faces when they saw the iron move to the magnet was… just priceless. One of the girls asked me if it was witchcraft with a look of bewilderment of in her eyes. After I finished showing them, they all wanted to try it themselves, so the rest of the class was spent with them each trying the magnet themselves. I walked away from that class just stunned as to why they loved that experiment so much. But then I realized, most of them have probably never seen a magnet here. In America most people have magnets on their refrigerators and it is common for a kid to be able to play with one. But here, most people don’t have refrigerators, and without a refrigerator why need magnets?
I have really enjoyed teaching Life Skills this term. I have been teaching about HIV and AIDS and the past couple of weeks have been about condoms. I was able to get a bunch of free condoms from the hospital here so that each of the students can learn how to use a condom in class.  And all I have to say is, its just hilarious to see their reactions and facial expressions when they got to try it themselves on a model. One of my form 3 students thanked me after the class and said it will really help her in the future. Hearing that really helped me with discovering why I’m here. Even if I don’t make a huge difference while here, I at least know that a few girls now know how to protect themselves from HIV.

One of the past weekends, Danielle finally made it to my site. As always when with another volunteer, it was wonderful. We went to the big “walmart” store, got to enjoy some ice cream, other junk food and watched some movies in the evenings. I was especially happy that she was here to go to a dinner with me. The father of the catholic church invited me over for dinner, and it happened to be on the night that Danielle would be in town.  So we arrive at the house, and it was just the father and the 2 of us. Conversation was a bit slow at first and consisted of some awkward silences. But slowly things started to go smoothly. Then it was time for dinner. We all move to the dinner table to get the food, and the dishes were unveiled. It consisted of 3 things… the 3 things I think I despise most: some type of Meat (it brought back the memories of this past Christmas and the goat meat), tomatoes, and ugali. Danielle and I just looked at each other and smirked. I stupidly forgot to tell the father that we are vegetarian before the dinner, so I decided to suffer through and just try to swallow the food…. The ugali was especially hard for me to eat since there was nothing to cover up the taste and texture.  But besides the whole food issue, the dinner was quite nice and enjoyable.

I have discovered that I can also carry the bags on top of my head like many of the African mamas I see. I when I come back from market I carry the bag of food on my head (which actually is less painful).  I’m proud of this and just had to post it.

Well I hope you enjoyed reading my musings, love and miss you all