December 19, 2008

i’m safe
i’m sound
i’m settled

one-way ticket
Well, I’ve successfully used my first one-way ticket.

Day 1, in Nairobi, my luggage never showed up on the conveyor belt. Everyone from my entire flight had already gone. So I asked the attendant about my bags. And somehow they appeared from the back. Then the two attendants sort of stood there awkwardly looking at me like, waiting… So I gave them some Kenyan Shillings. Not sure if that was the right thing to do or not.

Let the cultural blunders begin!

a baraka
Of course, my first e-mail from Kenya would include Barak Obama, who is now apparently the most famous Kenya ever to have walked the planet. I was only in-country six days before a Kenyan brought him up.

My taxi driver, Alex, was asking me about the babies at New Life Home Trust (www.newlifehometrust.org). “How many are there?”

“Fifty-five,” I say, “at this home. But we have 170 in total right now.”

“Where have the parents gone?”

“Some of the moms have died. And some of them have run off and abandoned the baby because maybe they can’t afford to care for them or something...”

“That’s not right,” Alex says. “I believe a baby is a blessing – a baraka.” He emphasizes the word baraka and looks at me.

“Yes,” I laugh. “A baraka.” And off we go into a mini-political discussion.

I imagine every road will lead there for a while and just when I was grateful to escape the American political scene...here it is. People on the streets are even sporting t-shirts with
Baraka’s face.

neocolonialist
I feel like a neocolonialist and I didn’t intend to be, but I think I’ll enjoy it while I can. I’m living a life of privilege these first two months in Africa. A friend of mine who works as a US foreign diplomat asked me to house and dog sit for her while she’s in the States for two months. Free rent.

So I’m living in a banana-tree, monkey-lush paradise with a chocolate brown lab named Yogi to look after. (Though, admittedly, the dog annoys the heck out of me most of the time, he’s the only real downside to the housing situation. We’ll have to learn to make peace with each other.)

I have house help 5 days a week (my friend wanted to keep her national staff employed while she was gone to help them financially). So George speaks French and cleans the house, does laundry, ironing, dishes, etc. Peter looks after the yard and the dog. Wondering what’s left for me to do? Honestly, not much.

I am blessed.

the morning off-road
Lately, the morning commute has included traffic jams. I hate jams, my driver says, exhaling loudly. Then, at the first opportunity, he turns the steering wheel and drives off the road. And we’re not in a 4x4. So we’re basically trekking through a dry riverbed, bottoming out, scraping, dragging, tilting sideways. I’ve been debating whether or not I should take a sedative before we head out in the morning (just kidding).

My internal dialogue?

Oh, God, please don’t let us tip over.
Can a car this size even tip over?
What if we get stuck?
Do I have the right shoes on today?
I need an Aleve.
I have a headache and the day hasn’t even begun…

On good days, my commute to New Life Home Trust takes 30 minutes on paved roads. On bad days, 40 – 60 minutes, including off-roading.
I’m in the office 5 days a week.

reunion
It’s been a fun reunion to see all the old, familiar faces at New Life Home Trust. It’s gone something like this:

Janelle, hi!
Janette - how are you?
Janay, you’re back!
How was the States?

It’s been fun. And I know only one baby out of the whole crew. They’ve all grown up, gotten adopted, or transferred to another home.

baby Janay
Baby Janay got adopted by Kenyan parents! This is good, according to my co-worker Kyeni, because she was not a nice girl. She was biting the other children, and was generally, quite unhappy.

Apparently, baby Janay turned into quite a little terror.

ode to my airport entourage
A zillion people took me to the airport. OK, not a zillion, thirteen. Thirteen people in three cars. An entourage. I've never had an entourage before. It was amazing! I could get used to this. The guys carried my bags. I didn't lift a little, polished finger. We laughed, we walked, we talked. My entourage made time pass. They took me all the way to the luggage screening. Then it became a spectator sport. Me – a monkey in the zoo. A glass wall separated us, so they pressed their faces against the glass, smiling, waving, mouthing incomprehensible words. I was removing shoes, liquids, and laptops into trays for TSA screening when Thomas and Al began to re-enact that scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where she's in her office and he's outside her window walking like a duck, getting shorter and shorter until he disappears and smashes into an old lady for a purse-bashing.

my entourage brought
joy&levity
to the parting –
what a blessing
are you, peeps!

asante sana.
(thank you, so much.)

jazzercise
At LAX there was a lady doing jazzercise right in the middle of the sit-and-wait & avoid-eye-contact-with-people area. This of course, made me want to quickly make eye contact with someone so that we could share a knowing laugh. The jazzerciser jumped and bopped. She did side bends, arm reaches. And no one in the entire area even batted an eye. I know, because I batted an eye and kept searching for a laugh, but no one noticed.

The surreal world of travel already begun…