Kenya
This camp continues to amaze me and make me appreciate daily life every day. I was telling my dad that its hard to be stressed in a place where the light plays off of the yellow bark acacias every evening and our class room is a giant open-air wooden structure. We do have cause to be stressed right now as we have had the busiest week and a bit of our semester yet. I must say I am wiped out, but it’s been great. I have totally enjoyed the learning we have been doing about this area. Its fun to see what’s different here in Kenya in terms of the area we are located in, the culture of the area, the subtle differences in the way people behave here and so on. In Kenya life is a bit more business-like. People are more on time and things happen more according to schedule which on one hand is nice and on the other hand is a bit of a bummer. Breakfast actually happens at 7:30 not at 7:36 or 7:40 or 7:48, but actually at 7:30:00. It seems that this general attitude permeates through the culture at least where we are.
This attitude is interesting because Tanzania was a mandate not a colony, and a mandate decrees that the country in governance must benefit the native people (as opposed to a colony where you can come in and do whatever you want), and because of these requirements the British didn’t really settle Tanzania. They didn’t take the time to establish themselves or set up infrastructure or promote their language. This means that today Tanzania doesn’t have very good facilities and infrastructure and their percent of population living below the poverty line is higher, but that their culture is more intact and their language is officially Swahili and their whole attitude is less “western”. In Kenya (a colony of the British govt) the British settled in for a longer stay and with that came infrastructure, the English language, and a “western attitude”. Here in Kenya things happen on time and people aren’t as skilled at just being. Its interesting because I spent the last two months learning how to be and relax and know that things weren’t going to happen when they said they would on paper. Now that I am flexible in that way, it's hard to be flexible to a new system that is on time and more business-like. Funny that works.
Halloween
I really didn’t know you could have a Halloween party in Kenya but I guess when there is a concentration of 28 young Americans and a wonderful pseudo mom (Molly our Student Affairs Manager here in Kenya) you can do anything. We had a full out Halloween party with jack-o-lantern carving, and bobbing for apples, and everyone had a costume and we even performed fun dances for each other and the had a dance party. I was really quite stunned and had a total blast!
Kimana market
We live outside (about a ten min drive) of Kimana a small town that is more established than Rhotia and has small shops and a market every Tuesday. We went to the market last Tuesday. What a world full of color. The Maasai here in Kenya are more colorful in the things they wear, the jewelry they make and they way they present themselves and interact. The Maasai are the main tribe here in Kimana and it really makes a huge difference in the culture of this area. In the market there are always three Maasai mamas following you out dangling beaded jewelry in your face and saying “200 only 200, very cheap……….”. On some occasions it’s enough to drive a person crazy, but on others it can be fun and interesting to interact with them and look at their jewelry and learn how to say no in affective ways. I had a wonderful time looking at clothing that was selling for 100 KSH an item (the equivalent to $1.35), picking out bead colors so that we can learn to make bracelets from the mamas, buying a pair of bright blue shoes, and admiring the hilarious array of Obama t-shirts and yellow satin ruffley skirts.
Amboseli
When we left for Amboseli we were supposed to have a traveling lecture through different parts of the park by stopping places and standing out of the hatches of the land rovers and having our professor give his lecture, but it was pouring down rain. It’s interesting how either the heavy absence of rain or the overwhelming deluge of it is always a factor of life in East Africa. So instead we sat in our cars peering out of our cloudy windows and received our lecture over the walky-talky system in the land rovers. It was thoroughly entertaining. By the end of our lecture the rain had started to taper off and so we by the afternoon we were able to game drive out of the park standing out of the hatches. Amboseli is a very small park that is basically a dry season source of water for many animals, elephants especially. As it is the beginning of the wet season the animals are moving out of the park so there is less to see, but there were still tons of elephants everywhere. We watched a young male who was in musth (ready to mate), and was very aggressive towards one larger male in particular. The younger male kept instigating fights with the older male and getting beaten. He was obviously frustrated, so when we tried to drive away he came charging at us trumpeting and shaking his head making his ears flap. After we got away, we drove through the swampy grass lands and were blessed with the most spectacular cloud show I have even seen… the golden light, the puffy cotton candy clouds, the stringy soft clouds, and sky reflecting off of the water in the swamps, the green green grass, the birds soaring and calling above our heads. I have rarely felt so wrapped up in each aspect of the world. And just to put the cherry on the ice cream we got to see a cheetah as Mt. Kili was poking out of the clouds and the sun was setting.
Sending my love,
Sara
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