Allan and I had planned to go to a slam dunk contest and 3-on-3 basketball tournament that Grace's brother, Allan's cousin, Elijah, was going to be in. However when I got back from my run and he woke up, Roger informed us that all of us were going to head up to Angela's (Allan's younger sister) school for a concert thing that she was going to be singing at. It was a couple miles over there, but we walked because none of us brought any money with us and the matatus didn't go there very directly because it was across the creek, so we were able to take a more direct route. Still, it was a long walk. Just a couple blocks from the house, we came to a group of bike taxis that I had passed on my run that morning. Two of them had taken off running with me that morning and one, named Manuel, actually ran with me for 15 or 20 minutes before dropping off. I had really enjoyed having him with me; with the exception of the swarms of kids in Nairobi I'd been running alone since I got to Kenya, and he was a great guy to with, one of those that just seems pretty happy about life and about running along with a foreigner. Manuel was back with his bike cronies so I made sure to specifically say hi to him as we went past. I don't know if I'll see him again, but those are the kind of small relationships that I want to foster as much as I can while I'm here, making personal connections with people wherever I can.
When we got to the school we said hi to a couple of people Roger knew – he used to teach here so he knew quite a few people – and some of Allan's friends before finding and greeting Angela. Allan and I got vouchers for lunch and headed in to grab a meal of rice, potatoes, and Fanta. The first open spot we sat down at happened to be across from a middle-aged white lady and a younger one. It was a mother and a daughter from Alberta, and the mother and her husband had actually moved to Eldoret about 10 years ago after coming on a missions trip and falling in love with the place. They had adopted five Kenyan foster kids, who were now ranging in age from about 5th grade to college age. She said you couldn't get her back to Alberta for anything, and that they planned on living here for the rest of their lives. This was the first white person I'd met that lived permanently in Kenya, and I think it more firmly planted the seed in the back of my mind that it was a reasonable idea for me to consider living here at some point.
The performance turned out to be something of an end-of-term recital with pieces that all grades had been practicing. Most of them were poetry or verse spoken in unison by a whole class, and let me say that once you've heard about one and a half of those they really don't sound any different. Moreover, Allan was getting texts through this time that Elijah was doing really well in the slam dunk contest and had actually moved on to the final round. We sat through the rest of the show, including Angela singing in a choir that was understandably one of the better acts, considering it was nursery through high school and she was in the high school choir. We slipped out as the adults begin to talk about the value of education and how hard the kids had worked, as did a decent number of other parents. One of Allan's cousins (Martin?) was coming to pick us up and took us down to the court where the slam dunk contest was going on. I didn't realize how much of a full on event it was, and the area around the court was packed. They had moved on from the slam dunk contest to a 3-on-3 tournament, which appeared to be the bigger attraction. Allan searched around until he found Elijah, who he brought over to introduce to me. We talked for a while, mostly them talking in Swahili, and Elijah explained that the winner of this tournament would earn a trip to a national tournament in Nairobi, with the winner of that tournament earning a trip to an all-Africa tournament, the winner of which would be entered in the NBA draft I believe. Elijah took through the crowd to where him and his buddies were hanging out right next to the court at half-court, a much better place to watch from than the outside of the circle we had been at before. Elijah struck me, like Allan, as a pretty well-connected and generally popular guy.
Behind was a stage where they were blaring music and a pretty entertaining MC was providing color commentary for the whole event, mostly in Swahili. As people were warming up for games, they would have different acts on the stage, mostly people out of the crowd dancing to the loud music that was almost always blaring. Overall it was a very festive atmosphere, with a lot of high schoolers showing up that were getting out of school. Sometimes there's school on Saturdays here but I think it's mostly just at the high school level and I don't think they usually go a full day. Anyway, I was turned toward the basketball court with Allan when the voice of the MC caught my attention because for the first time all day he was speaking very deliberate English. "Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones please come to the stage. Mr. Jones." Even after I heard him it took me a couple seconds before I realized from the people around me that he was talking to me. Apparently in surveying the crowd for the next break to keep the crowd entertained he decided that getting the white boy to come on stage would be great entertainment. I was reluctant, considering I was in a new place with the only person I knew being my cousin-in-law I had met 4 days earlier. Allan told me if I didn't want to go up there I definitely didn't have to, but all of sudden I realized this was the kind of opportunity that doesn't come around too often and that regardless of what happened up there I was pretty sure it would be a good story. Plus, I'm all about having fun with people, especially on this trip. I didn't really think about it until afterward, but this was another chance to connect with a whole bunch of Kenyans and at least give them a picture of an American who wanted to have fun and wasn't worried if he looked like a fool in the process. That thought process now looks prophetic.
The crowd had been fairly loud egging me to go to the stage, and the volume increased in excited cheers as I turned toward the stage. The crowd parted for me with a couple of slaps on the back and a lot of hoots and hollers. When I got on stage they directed me toward the back of the stage, waiting for a moment before starting the music for me to start dancing to. The stage was shaped so that there was something of a runway out toward the crowd, and when the music started I put on my aviators that I had tucked into my shirt and strutted out that way with as much sass as my uncultured, uncoordinated hips could muster. The crowd loved it, and the cheering only increased as I started jumping around and waving my arms in what I figured to be some semblance of dancing. The crowd was roaring with laughter when they cut off the music after maybe 10 or 15 seconds. I did my best Napoleon Dynamite impression of stopping awkwardly with the music and then turning to run full speed to the back of the stage. The problem was I was wearing my flip-flops, and between the dust I had collected on them from the long walk to Angela's school and the sweat I had generated from the heat of the day and my vigorous dance routine, they provided not traction whatsoever as I turned to scramble to my spot at the back of the stage, and I went down in a heap, losing my glasses in the process, to which the crowd roared all the more. I think the MC could see he had a real unique gem of a crowd pleaser, so he came over to do a quick Q & A with me for the crowd's benefit. After some basic questions he asked whether I liked Kenya, to which I shouted that I loved Kenya, getting another approving cheer from the crowd. After that he launched into a string of rapid fire Swahili, with a couple other languages mixed in I found out later, as he got done I put my arm around him and I said I completely agreed, to which the crowd cheered again. He asked me about what kind of music I liked and what I wanted to dance to and I told him, and mostly the crowd, that I wanted them to put on some African music so I could show everybody what I'd learned since I'd been here. They threw on some upbeat dance music and I headed out to the front of the stage again, this time without flip-flops or glasses, to the enthusiastic approval of the crowd. I danced around for what seemed like ages but I would actually guess at maybe two minutes. The thing is, two minutes is enough to just about exhaust my limited repertoire of pseudo dance moves. The crowd loved it though, and I was really enjoying it myself, because here being an awkward American was exactly the thing that was being celebrated, not covered up. They gave me a hat and bandana with the Sprite symbol, the sponsor of the event, and I made my way back through the crowd through an even more intense barrage of high-fives, handshakes, and backslaps.
Looking back on it I think the whole thing went about as well as it possibly could have. I was glad that if I saw anyone who had been there on the street I would no longer just be an out of place American, but I would be an out of place American that had flailed around like a crazy person on stage. I hoped I would be more approachable, at least to those people, now because if I was willing to get up on stage and dance around I would be happy to talk to somebody on the street. I was excited that maybe after this I could make connections with a lot of people, even just running around town, if they recognized me from this. There was a small kid who actually grabbed my hat and took off with it as I was heading through the crowd, but he was caught by the crowd before he was out of sight and forced to give the hat back. He proceeded to bug me about giving him the hat for the next 10 minutes or so, to which I refused, partly because that hat represents a pretty funny memory for me now, and partly because he'd already tried to take it so I didn't want to just give it to him. Plus, it's not like a pair of shoes or food where it would really make too much of a difference for him if I did give it to him. After the tournament was over a couple of popular local singers put on a small concert, which everybody was pretty in to. When I looked around there were probably at least 300 people there, so it was a decent crowd. They were all rappers, which I don't really listen to, but it was still pretty good music and I enjoyed it. At one point Allan told me to make sure I didn't have anything valuable in my pockets and give him anything I of value I did have. Later he explained that he had seen a notorious pick pocketer roaming through the crowd, and that naturally I would be a prime target.
Allan wanted to take me clubbing that night, to which I agreed. As I said before I'm really not into the whole clubbing thing, but I wanted to hang out with Allan and it would be a chance to meet some of his friends. As the evening went on I wondered if we were even going to go. We sat around watching stand up comedy on his computer past 11:00, and finally headed out for the club around midnight like that had been the plan all along, which it probably had been. Yet another occasion of something happening 2-3 hours after I assumed it would happen. Grace's friend Rita was in Eldoret so she joined us, and I only half joking asked her where the heck she lived because I'd seen her in Nairobi, Kisumu, and now Eldoret. She said she lived in Kisumu, but wasn't too liberal with the details of the trip she took to Nairobi and why she was in Eldoret. When we got to the club Allan introduced us to a couple people and then apparently started making the rounds around the whole club to say hi to people and left me with a couple of his friends. I mostly just stood there awkwardly and absent-mindedly swayed back and forth a little bit in a decidedly half-hearted attempt to join in the dancing. A kid came up to me and said he had seen me on stage that afternoon and was had said to himself and the time that he needed to meet this guy. His name was Ronnie, and he was an extremely talkative 17-year-old that I think would have been annoying if I had anybody else I wanted to talk to or if it wasn't so entertaining just talking about what he thought of America and Kenya. Allan definitely didn't seem to want anything to do with him when he came by, but I was happy to just stand there and talk. He told me that, although the age for getting into clubs and bars is 18, no one checks at all and he doesn't have any problem getting in. Now that I thought about it, none of us had been asked to show IDs either. He did most of the talking, sharing his entertaining thoughts on American clubs, movies, and women. The impression I got was that he has a pretty utopian view of the US, who saw America as a glamorous place where everyone lives like kings. Ronnie tried to persuade to go "woman hunting" with him, but I really didn't have any desire to do any woman hunting, and if I did I probably wouldn't do it with a 17-year-old. One of Allan's friends that I recognized from Thursday and earlier in the day pulled me out to start dancing a couple times, which I actually enjoyed because we just kind of dance around in a circle doing goofy moves which I liked because no one cared whether it looked stupid, everyone seemed to me to be genuinely interested in hanging out and having a good time. I spent a good portion of the night watching an Argentina vs. Uruguay soccer game, which was fine with me. Toward the end of the night, and by that I mean around 4 am, Allan brought me over to a group of girls and one said she wanted to dance with me, which was fine with me, as long as she wasn't looking for a decent dancer. She was really nice, and although I still think she was pretty appalled at my lack of any dance skill, I suspect she liked just dancing with an American and trying to show him how to dance. I don't think I can salsa now, but I'm closer than I was at the beginning of the night. After a while of dancing we sat down and talked for a while about America and Kenya and traveling. Although it had been a fairly entertaining night, I was still somewhat relieved when Allan said he and Rita were ready to go. I barely made it home awake before collapsing into bed at about 5:00.
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