I realized that there were a lot of things that were slipping through the cracks in my blog entries as far as more subtle things I've noticed here, so I want to get a lot of those down so to make sure I don't forget about them. One thing that's been an interesting cultural difference is the difference in eye contact. People here rarely make eye contact and seem to me to deliberately avoid contact, both with people on the street and even with people they know, including family. I remember hearing it's rude to make eye contact with people older than you, but as I've been trying to do that I feel rude in not making eye contact. In general they seem pretty dismissive in a lot of conversations, which I attribute so far to the lack of eye contact and my lack of familiarity with the language, which makes everything they say in Swahili seem kind of mumbled to me. The amount I make eye contact has been a little bit of a problem in town with matatus, taxis, and vendors, because when I happen to catch someone's eye they assume I'm doing it deliberately, which often isn't the case. Taxis and matatus assume I want them to stop for me, and vendors assume I want to buy something from them. Something I've kept in mind with this though is that to some degree I think some of these differences can be attributed to being in a big city. For me the big city is Seattle, which is big, but not big like Nairobi (I think), and certainly not as crowded. People have seemed pretty pushy and impersonal when we're in town, but I don't think that's any different from what I would find in New York or Chicago. Related to the eye contact thing, the society seems to me to be pretty strongly stratified by age. I realized when I was playing soccer with the little kids the other day and running around with them that I haven't seen kids of different ages playing together. When Junior and his friends played soccer the younger kids sat and watched, and when we were starting a game with some of the younger kids, the even younger kids were kept out of the game until I pushed for them to be included. And when the game started, it seemed to me to be played surprisingly rough considering I was playing with kids I guessed to be 7-10. When I think back to my playground days though, we were playing tackle football when we were ten, and we usually never let the younger kids join in unless they could keep up, so I think those are just things that struck me because I've been away from that playground culture for long enough (I hope that doesn't mean I'm getting old or, pardon me for using the a-word, turning into an adult). Also I don't think I've seen any kids playing with the adults at all. The American ideal of a father and son playing catch in the backyard is not shared here. Some of the kids here have seemed overjoyed just to get attention from me, which I know isn't different from the States but is still entertaining (and sometimes annoying). At time they seem surprised that I'm willing to talk with them or answer their questions, which probably has as much or more to do with being white than being an adult. And when adults gather in the living room, Flo or Junior is often called to bring in tea or drinks. It seems to me they usually are somewhat submissive in talking with older people and usually don't talk with them as equals. The respect for the elderly seems to me to be closer to Chinese customs than to American ones, that meaning that there seems to me to be more emphasis on respect for the elderly than in the States. I've also been surprised with how clean they keep their homes. Every day starts with washing the dishes from the night before, then sweeping and mopping the whole ground floor, cleaning the coffee table and dinner table, then scrubbing and mopping the concrete outside in the front yard and sometimes doing laundry. In addition to this on Saturday an even more extensive cleaning ensued, that involved more laundry and completely cleaning out the front yard and sweeping the driveway. On one of my runs the other day, there was a man out sweeping and cleaning brush away from the gravel road around the estate, and was doing that for the entire hour run I was on. The houses here are very simple by American standards, but they keep them clean as a whistle. There is an interesting contradiction though between that and the filth of much of the city. Go outside the estate and there is trash everywhere and mounds of it in the ditch along the road. Often you see people burning trash or tires, apparently not caring about the pollution or terrible smell it creates. The best I can guess is that there is a strong loyalty to immediate community, but not as strong of loyalty and responsibility to the larger community. That's definitely speculative, but my observation is still that people take care of their own space very well but don't seem to have much regard for public space. Somewhat related, the current political state of Kenya deserve mention. Patrick or any of his family or anyone in the nation or their dog could probably be more accurate explaining this than me, but I'm the one at the computer so I'll take a stab at it and leave you to actually look this up or talk to someone who has actually followed Kenyan politics if you want a more accurate account. After a pretty significant period of political turmoil over the last couple years, Kenya enacted a new constitution last fall, so much of the implementation of that is taking place right now, which makes for some fascinating political news. One of the big items in the news is the appointment of the chief justice of the newly formed Supreme Court. I'm not sure if the rest of the court is in place yet, but I believe the Supreme Court has been formed since the new constitution has been enacted. Another big piece of news is that the director of the ministry of education (or something along those lines) is being pressured to step down after a scandal involving 40-some million dollars going missing from education funding has surfaced. From what I gather what makes this newsworthy is not the scandal itself – such scandals have been commonplace in the Kenyan government but what is significant is that there is now pressure for there to be some consequences for the corruption. Probably the biggest item that has been in the news is the controversy over whether members of Parliament will have to pay taxes. Before the new Constitution they never paid taxes despite the sizable salaries they received. The Kenyan equivalent of the IRS is now demanding the MP's (that's what Members of Parliament are referred to as) to pay their taxes, which the MP's are resisting. It has been interesting talking with people here about the state of Kenyan politics, and what seems most interesting to me is how in agreement people are and how much people follow what is happening, and yet how things that seem like such elementary political measures to me are still being fought for. The only way I can understand that something like the MP's paying taxes, which literally every person I've asked about strongly agrees with, hasn't happened is because the corruption in the Kenyan government goes straight to the top, so the wishes of the people clearly haven't been honored. A really funny comment I heard from a host of a morning radio show talking about the announcement from the Kenyan IRS equivalent that if the MP's have a problem with paying taxes they should take it to the Supreme Court went something like this: "If the MP's have a problem with paying taxes they can take the case to the Supreme Court. Don't you love that? It sounds so… first world! If you have a problem take it to the court!" I really laughed at that, but that is the state of things here. It seems to me like things are headed in the right direction, but again, it's all dependent on curbing the corruption in the government. It just seems befuddling to me that a nation of people who seem to be fairly knowledgeable about the politics and seem to be in agreement, at least on some basic issues, have not been able to get that out of their government. I am also still kind of in awe of everyone being bilingual here, and how smoothly they can switch between the two. They will even throw English words into their conversations of Swahili, and sometimes full sentences, then continue in Swahili. Even the kids I play with that are older than about 8 can speak pretty good English. Overall I feel somewhat inferior. I can only speak one language, the people here seem to work much harder, a lot of people I've talked to are more knowledgeable about politics than I am, and everyone seems to have a more awareness of the world as a whole than I do, which from what I can gather is typical of Americans. It seems to me that the biggest thing I have going for me is that I'm from the US, and the reason I can be more successful that a lot of the people here is just because of the opportunities I have as an American. I wonder if they would feel the same if they were introduced into American culture, but it has definitely given me a healthy dose of humility to wipe out any feeling I had conscious or sub-conscious that Americans are better than other people and that's why we have such a great country. I have actually found myself wondering what makes America what it is, why we have so much prosperity and so many opportunities and these people don't, when they seem so smart and resourceful and industrious and versatile. Along those lines, an interesting thing I've noticed is that for the first time in my life I'm ashamed of having bright new shoes. I usually try to keep my new running shoes clean as long as possible, but here I wanted them to get dirty so they didn't stick out quite so much from everyone around wearing worn out sandals and shoes with holes in them. Their phone service is also much different from ours. I don't understand the particulars of it, but the basic idea is that rather than having a set plan with the phone company for how many minutes you talk on the phone, you buy "air time" as you need it and load it onto your phone. There a little booths where you can buy air time plus you can get it at quite a few of the roadside stands, and they give you a little plastic card where you scratch off the back to reveal a PIN that you enter on your phone to load the minutes onto your phone. You can buy the minutes in increments from 50 schillings to 250 schillings, which is roughly equivalent to $0.55 - $2.75, so they're not that big of chunks. The funny thing about it to me, is if I wanted to get a phone for the time I was over here that would have been very doable. I just would have gone to one of the numerous stores downtown, picked out a phone for 1500 or 2000 schillings (for a cheap one, equivalent range $16-22) and then loaded air time on. I think there is more in the way of particulars with setting up a phone initially, but that's the basic idea for how they work. Same concept holds true for the Internet, or at least the modem Miriam has that I use. I buy my air time at the corner store here then enter the pin on the modem interface screen, and the air time is loaded onto the modem. Then I can activate the modem to begin using the air time and connect to the Internet.
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