There are some things in Kenya that I seem to have adopted. For example, saying ‘some few’ for just about anything. I have ‘some few’ minutes of credit on my phone. I ate ‘some few’ mangoes today (in reality its more like ‘some many!’), there are ‘some few’ children patting the hairs on my arm. There is also the tendency to talk with a lot more inflection. It is the Kenyan way to swing their sentences so that they will come to the last word, pause before speaking, and nod their head like they want you to say that word with them. Yup, sometimes I catch myself doing that. Also, I have found myself wearing jeans and a sweater during the early mornings. And I’m not covering up simply for cultural reasonings, but because I am legitimately cold –and its 70degrees! I also say ‘vege-tables,’ ‘moe-squite-o’s,’ and ju’iece (for juice).
But for all of the things I have adopted, there are more things I don’t think I will ever get used to. For example: hot milk with cereal, killer dogs that guard the compound at night, roosters with abnormal circadian rhythms, or guards with machine guns. The ice-cream here tastes more like whip cream, people prefer “tomato sauce” to ketchup (tomato sauce being this really watery neon orange/red version of ketchup), and arriving one hour late is perfectly acceptable here in Kenya. No one throws trash in a receptacle, personal-space is a foreign word, and if you don’t like chai then there is something wrong with you.
There are some things in Kenya that I don't think I will ever know –like why do mutates make four lanes of traffic out of two, why every sidewalk only last for a total of 2meters before ending it a significant hole, and why Kenyans only put in enough fuel to get them to work in the morning? Well, life is a mystery, I guess that’s what makes it exciting.
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