Assignment #1 Plus

Sunday night

Assignment # 1
I have decided after much procrastination to tackle assignment number one. In reality, I am seeing and hearing so much that I think and talk about culture all the time. It doesn’t feel enough to try to summarize and write it down in one go.

Really I thought what Larissa wrote summarized the typical Canadian. I definitely share the qualities of being used to personal space, a germ-free envrio, and politeness (as in even when your dinner isn’t fine and the waiter asks you “how is everything?” you say “it’s fine.”). But as well, I have realized being here (where the first thing people see about me is my whiteness, which I think is related to Britishness) that I have a whole different culture as well.

When I tell people that my mum is Indian they say “Oh so that’s why you have that dark hair!” And my dad is Irish, and I was born in Ireland. So the fact that the Kenyan people love to tell stories (and they’re good at it too), and laugh and joke around – I can really appreciate. And maybe due to my own travels, or because my dad's connection with Latin American culture (who knows the reason) I learned to be warm, and to actually touch people, like, physically – which I am learning is not a universal sentiment!

Also it turns out that to be mixed is very Canadian. I guess this is part of what Larissa would call embracing diversity. Telling people about my parentage, and that my partner is a Slovak, and that my mum’s partner is Polish, always gets a reaction. And when they ask me about cultural practices in Toronto I find myself saying “Well, it depends on the community, like the Chinese people do this, and if you go to Little Italy, it’s like that…”

I suppose this whole blog will be about my culture, and other peoples’ cultures, because all I can do is observe and record what I learn. These are some of my musings so far:

The Rains

We are waiting for the rain.

In the last two years the rains haven’t come. Maybe a shower here and there, but not the full rains that Kenya depends on. So everything is dry and brown. The animals are dying, wildlife, and cattle. I have heard that cattle are dying by the hundreds. And that’s why we saw so many cows walking by the road on the way here. And the tribes in the north are fighting over land for grazing and farming. All because of the rains. Everyone is praying that they will come in July ("winter") although the long rains are in November and the short ones in April.

Laziness
A woman I met – who will remain anonymous, and not a Kenyan – told me that Kenyan’s are lazy, that they do the bare minimum. But they work hard all day, and they wait on her breakfast lunch and dinner.

People walk for miles in the hot sun, women carrying firewood, and men with their packages on their bicycles. They hand wash their (and OUR) clothes. If anything is the opposite of lazy it’s doing the bloody hand washing, trust me I know because I did it for three months in Cuba last year!

These proclamations have made me examine the meaning of the word lazy. What I think is that people have different priorities here. They’re not overweight, sitting on their asses, lazy. They know what is worth spending time on, and what only requires the minimum, in terms of importance for them.
Maybe other nations would be happier if they reprioritized.

Campfire Stories
Last night I sat at the fire with the team again. They share this space with me called “the village”. They are setting up tents and infrastructure for the marathon. They also work setting up high-end camps: with kitchen, full beds in tents, and chefs, and everything. Many of the gang have worked for years for different companies doing this. It is a big industry, in Africa, a legacy of when people used to visit in colonial times.

Anyway, it is very windy these days and so last night they were reminded of this story: A twister once came and touched down right on top of a luxury safari camp. Right on top of the tent in fact! The whole tent was lifted up by the wind and tumbled around in the air. The tent contained a four-poster bed, a desk, chair, wardrobe, suitcase, and the woman sleeping in the bed!!! They said it must have weighed at least 300 kilograms! The whirlwind lifted the whole kit and caboodle into the sky and tossed it round like clothes in a tumble dryer.

When it came down they went in and looked for the woman – where was she!? I asked, Was she alright? She was still in bed, reading, someone called out from around the fire and got a few laughs. But seriously, she was wrapped completely in the sheets, totally tied up inside, and had been protected by the bed frame. She was fine. Can you believe it?

They said she was so traumatized that when she came out of the tent, which was a complete wreck, she zipped it up behind her and the couple flew home the next day.
Did they sue? I asked. No. But then they had heard a story of someone who did get sued once by some Americans because they didn’t see any lions on their trip. How about that!

The Maasai Boys
Last night there were two new guys at the fire. Sitting off a little bit. They were younger than everybody else, and were wrapped in blankets as if they were freezing! I mean it was cool, but not that bad (coming from a Canadian, mind you). M and J, my new friends, told me they were from a town in the West that is 35 degrees Celsius at night and up to 50 during the day. They had never left their village. Once the team was there on a project and had hired locals to help with the building. They were impressed with these two lads, and got them to come along with the three new lorries that arrived yesterday, I think.

x

The guys went to bed early, and the people were chatting about how one of the guys said he hadn’t been in a car for years. It had even been their first time to Nairobi, and then up to the north and the mountains. The team good-naturedly joked about them, but I heard them saying – they are hard workers, and I REALIZED that they were saying this contrary to what someone had told them about rural folks.

The Maasai here are like the First Nations people in Canada, in that they are romanticized by outsiders like me, but discriminated against by many Kenyans for being rural and traditional.

J mentioned that one of the guys had been to school, and she knew this because his ears weren’t cut. So I asked what that meant. She explained to me that everyone goes to primary school usually, but often if you wanted to continue you couldn’t get your ears cut. Cutting and stretching the ears is a tradition that some tribesdo as an important rite of passage. However, the schools are run by missionaries, and don't allow the practice if you want to get an education. So those who want to have their bar mitzvah, Holy Communion, or however you want to look at it, have to drop out of school.

I couldn’t believe it. At the same time I could totally believe it, and I told them about the residential schools in Canada. How many First Nations children were forced to go to boarding schools where they weren’t allowed to speak their languages and when they finished school they couldn’t talk to their own parents, because they didn’t speak the same language.

They then told me about the different tribesmen that worked at Lewa and how they were really important and top guys, but still held onto their culture. Mateas told me that many rangers from all over Africa come to Lewa to learn tracking and other skills from these men because they are so skillful.

Around the Homestead

Well today I slept in. Jane came to my tent and we hung out, looking at pictures, and talking. She is an amazingly interesting woman, very artistic, and just open-minded and open-hearted.

Here are my cheeky little neighbours - who will steal the food right from under your nose if you're not careful, (and within an arms length of a big stick):

Those are my socks!

Although this monkey looks like she's checking herself out, she is actually staking the joint to see how she can get my lunch:I think am finally getting used to the sounds of my tent blowing in the wind. You cannot understand how much it sounds like someone or something skulking around either inside, or just outside.

My tent:

Life is so funny. Isn’t it amazing how we adapt so quickly.