Here's the view of my front door. I was not thrilled to see this neighbor as I've heard they're pretty ornery, but this one is laid-back and keeps pretty much to himself.
And this road begins across the street from my house and just meanders for a while. It was so peaceful the day I decided to explore it.
Time is finally starting to move a little faster than the sluggish pace it’s been going, and I’m very relieved. Having spent an entire day at the annual meeting (see previous post), the other four days in the office were pretty easy to fill. I have been using some office time to go over the Kiswahili texts PC gave us to try to improve my vocab and understanding of the mechanics. What I really need is practice with people in the community, but even when I make the effort to initiate in Kiswahili, I still get English back. I could probably make more of an effort, though.
I’m still trying to research all of this coffee stuff to get it straight in my own head. I’ve been to three of the eight factories and seen all the equipment, but we’ve just finished the processing season so the most act
ual coffee I’ve seen is the bags of it waiting to go to the millers. The next steps for me are to go to the miller to see that process, to go see the auction in Nairobi in action, and to talk to a few contacts I’ve made about buyers and shipping. I enjoy being able to do things at my own pace and discretion, but it would be nice if I was receiving a little more direction from the management. I’m also working on some spreadsheets that I want to train the office staff to use. The management committee—all men around my dad’s age—are interested in learning basic computer skills as well, since they don’t even know how to turn one on. I guess I’ll be doing some teaching!
I’m grateful every day that I decided to bring my laptop, as my supervisor told me someone was “looking into getting one in Nairobi for me to use.” He told me this at the end of my first week, which I spend reading the newspaper and watching people work because I didn’t have anything else to do. Knowing the pace of progress here, I offered to just start bringing my laptop while we were waiting for that one. I bought a modem in Nairobi that just plugs into the laptop and dials up and uses pre-purchased credit. My supervisor offered to pay for the credit so I could use it for work, which is awesome. I’m happy to have my iTunes while I work, so it’s been good so far!
I spend a lot of time thinking about myself here. That may seem odd, given my job is to find ways to help my community and my business partner and generally be of service. But it’s sort of necessary to integrate into the culture here. It takes a lot of thinking about my own culture, and culture vs. personality, and interpersonal relationships to get settled here. PC did its best, for eight weeks of training, to start us thinking about these things, and now that I’m on my own, the thoughts never seem to stop.
For example, I am a pretty independent person. I am happy
to do things by myself. When I worked for Oakwood, I spend about 75% of my day alone and that was one of the things I enjoyed about the job. While I’m not antisocial, I’m content whether there are other people around or not. And occasionally, I need to be by myself. Here, I have plenty of time to be by myself. Any time I’m at my house I’m alone. At the co-op, I have my own office at the end of the row, so although I leave my door open and people pop in to say hello, I am usually by myself there as well. Walking through town is a solitary venture because I am usually coming from or going to my house. My supervisor at the co-op is a man with similar preferences for solitude, so if we
happen to be together, it’s very much like being alone. Some days I eat lunch with a co-worker. We always go to the same café to eat, so even in this short time it’s become routine, but we don’t have a lot to say to each other, so it’s generally pretty silent at our table. This is all very atypical for Kenya. This culture is extremely social and communal. While I’m not unhappy doing things by myself, I think that the people in town pity me when they see me by myself. And although they’ll call “Howareyou!?” across the street at me, none are daring enough to approach me to do anything about it.
In addition to the co-worker I eat lunch with, there are three other women at my co-op. The first weekend I was in town the one I eat with and another each invited me over for lunch, so I went with the first on Sat
urday and the other on Sunday. The one I visited on Sunday is close to my age and also lives alone. She moved to town when she took this job, so the rest of her family is not around. I was excited to have such an accessible potential friend, and excited that she introduced me to some of her friends as well. However, that was it on the friend front. On that Monday when I got to work it was as if we were just meeting for the first time, and has been every since. I’m not sure if I unknowingly did something to offend her, or if she just invited me over because she felt obligated, or what. I just know that I don’t have the energy, between all the other things I’m trying to handle, to work that out right now. The other women at the co-op have children and husbands and households to take care of in addition to their working a full-time job (incl
uding Saturday hours at the office), so they’re not readily available for friend-creating activities. As far as other mzungus, PC warned us that it’s much more fulfilling to find friends in the community than to rely on other PC Volunteers for socializing; I couldn’t even do that if I wanted to as the closest volunteer is over an hour matatu ride away. So it is up to me to take the initiative and strike out on my own to recruit friends.
Which I will do, but not yet. Having moved to new places enough times in the past to start to see trends, I know that I have to feel comfortable in my environment before I can be bold enough to socialize. I need to create a comfort zone before I can push myself to break out of it. And I can feel the progress; I’m getting there. One activity I enjoy doing by myself is sh
opping, but here shopping is very different and I have a limited disposable income. One of the things I have loved since I got to Kenya, though, is all of the second-hand t-shirts from America that are sold in the markets. Kenyans buy and wear these shirts, and I can only assume they have no clue what the shirts are advertising or commemorating or the places they have come from. I’ve seen everything from high school senior shirts (Class of ’05) to Hooters, to CATS London, to family reunions, to community sports teams to Race for the Cure Iowa shirts. My goal has been to find some really random ones to buy for myself when the ones I brought wear out. Today, for the first time, I stopped at a market stall to look through the selection. See, progress!
Even though this is turning into a very long post, I will mention my weekend, because it was good. On Saturday, three other volunteers and I met up at a current volunteer’s site. This volunteer has a full gas stove/oven combo, so the plan was to hang out and bake cookies. We got there mid-afternoon and spent a while catching up and discussing our sites. Everyone except the volunteer whose house we were at was in my training group, so we’re still feeling new to everything. We broke out the trusty PC Kenya cookbook and found a chocolate chip cookie recipe. Since there were five of us craving this comfort food, we doubled the recipe and did a little ingredient alteration to match what we had on hand, then got the first batch into the oven. About six dozen later we (and by we I mean I, as the others were lounging outside by the time the first batch finished baking) had plates heaping with good old homemade cookies. They were
phenomenal! Here is one of the volunteers with the finished product:
After we gorged ourselves on about half of them, our host got dinner going. He made bowtie pasta with red sauce. In the red sauce, he put tomato paste, tomatoes, onions, garlic, a chili pepper, green peppers, zucchini, some spices, and red wine. I am definitely inspired to start putting a little effort into my cooking. Even with all this fresh produce available (and cheap!), I’ve been sticking to the basics. This week I’m motivated to spend a little more time in the kitchen. I may even get the rest of my furniture this week, which will make it easier to use the kitchen because I’ll have a place to store things and a work surface, both of which I lack at the moment. But back to Saturday: I haven’t eaten so much in one day in a while, but between the cookies and the pasta, we had a feast and it was awesome. I also got to see the stars (only the second time to see a full night sky since I got to Kenya) and they blew me away.
By the time I make it to Friday, I will have been at site for an entire month. Definitely not one I’d want to have to repeat, but completely worth the experience. Miss you all!
Love me
1 comment:
Leah, loved the post and all the info. Sounds like you're settling in and get used to the environment/conditions. Glad you're sounding a little more content.
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