A Day in the Life

I’ve been here long enough that I should have done a post like this a lot earlier, but I’m on Kenya time now. So my average day starts around 5 am. I don’t have to wake up until 7 for school, but the compound that my house is in has three other houses. There are twenty Sudanese refugees living in the three bedroom house above mine, so there is somebody awake up there at pretty much every hour of the day. So anyway, around 5 a.m. one of the kids starts screaming or banging around, which sets off a domino effect of adults yelling at the kid, then other kids waking up and getting in on the screaming. I roll around and try to sleep a little more, even though experience tells me this will fail. The roosters that live on the street outside my house start crowing and by that point there’s no more delaying the inevitable. I get up and read or check my email or watch the morning news. I do not bathe, but more about that later. I greet the friendly family of cockroaches that live in my wardrobe as I get dressed. By a little after 7, my house help has breakfast out for me. Breakfast is white bread and jam, sometimes a banana, sometimes leftover chapati from the night before, and always tea. “Every time is tea time in Kenya”. It’s true, they’re not kidding. On the subject of tea, or chai as it is called in Kiswahili- it’s different from tea in the U.S. It’s always made with milk (always whole milk) and is spicier than tea in the US but it’s hard to explain.

I meet the five other girls that live in the Jamhuri neighborhood of Nairobi at a kiosk down the road from my house by 7:30. Within ten minutes or so my friend Emily is there. She’s supposed to be there at 7:30 just like the rest of us but never is. Then we set off for school. It’s about a 45 minute walk to African Nazarene University, where our classes are held. The first few minutes of the walk are enjoyable enough, but then we reach Ngong Road, which is the busy road we have to walk along for most of our journey. Kenyans haven’t though of sidewalks yet so we walk along the dirt paths on either side of the road with the other pedestrians. We get our daily recommended value of diesel exhaust within the first 12 steps or so. You know that one driver in the US that cuts everybody off and practically kills six different people and then gets irritated and acts like it’s everybody else’s fault? Yep, that’s every single driver in Nairobi. Just in case things get dull on the walk to school, there’s always the morning matatu accident or public brawl over matatu fare to keep things interesting.

We arrive at school and attend classes, which are typically interesting and engaging in a way nothing I’ve ever studied in the US has been. I think it helps that all the staff is Kenyan so we’re exposed to a biased but also insightful perspective of issues in East Africa and the developing world in general. At 10:30 there’s a tea break, of course, any time is tea time. Never forget that. Tea time is intended to last 15 minutes, so usually by 11 or 11:15 we’re back in class. Kenyan time is very lose and there’s really no point in ever scheduling something to happen at a specific time because it just doesn’t work that way here. Things begin once everybody is present and comfortable and has a belly full of tea. Lunch is at 12:45 (ish) and I usually order the delicious food that is catered right to school by the wife of one of our advisors, Simon. If not I go directly against the advice of program administrators and eat a 50 cent meal at a roadside food stand. I can’t even begin to speculate about how much nice new fauna is probably settling into my stomach.

After school gets done at 3:30 I usually go play soccer at the Jamhuri field or head over to the MSID office a few blocks away from Nazarene to study. The office features a nice library with some recent books but most of the literature is older than, well, me. Off-topic point: I am the youngest one on this trip and I get crap for it on a daily basis, which is fine. Anyway, by 6 or 6:30 I head home because I have to be in by dark, rules of my host mother and strongly suggested by the program anyway. Besides, there’s 6:00 tea to be had. Most days a friend or relative of my host family is over for tea, but the Kenyan tradition is to not fill me in at ALL regarding who’s in the house, so I make polite conversation with people I don’t know at all and usually just remain in the dark. The other morning, I was pouring my tea when I woman I’ve never seen before in my life walked out of one of the bedrooms, grabbed my by the hips, kissed me, and had some tea herself. I still have no idea who she was, but that sort of thing doesn’t even warrant consideration on my part anymore.

By about 8 most nights we eat dinner and watch a good deal of stupid TV. There are badly translated Spanish telenovelas, strange Nigerian movies, and Japanese dramas that I just don’t get. My personal favorite program here was Tusker Project Fame (season 3), which is like American Idol but so much better because it’s Kenyan and, at least at the beginning of the season, none of the contestants were remotely talented. My personal favorite performer, Alpha, won the season. Actually, the prizes for winning sort of intrigued me. Aside from a 5 million shilling cash prize (somewhere around $65000) and a recording contract, Alpha won health insurance and internet access for one year. I realize there’s a big push for universal health insurance in the US but the concept is practically nonexistent here. And internet is expensive and hard to come by. It seems to me these prizes actually have the capacity to really change the winner’s life.

After I can’t possibly watch any more television, it’s bathing time. This is a stressful part of my daily routine. Until a week ago, I came home from school brown every day because I was covered in dirt. Now I come home a darker shade of brown because I’m covered in mud. If there’s water for a shower, I’m thrilled. If there’s HOT water for a shower I practically start crying. If, however, it’s a normal day, my house help heats a few liters of water for me so I can bath out of a plastic tub. There exists a logistical issue regarding this kind of bathing. I have to conduct a sort of triage to assess what parts of my body most need cleaning on each particular day because the water will not be nearly clean enough to wash everywhere. The minute my hands go into the water it becomes cloudy. If it happens to be a hair washing day, I dunk my head in and the water is no longer transparent. You get the picture. I’m lucky that my house help likes me enough to warm the water though, a good number of other students get their bucket bath ice cold. I realized I’ve mentioned house help here a few times and there’s so much more to say about that topic that I’ll have to make it a separate post.

By the time that’s all done I’m exhausted so I do a little homework and go to bed. After I say goodnight to my cockroach friends, of course. I fall asleep to the sounds of the people in the house above me banging around some more.

That was long. If any of you actually read the whole thing, I’ll be impressed at your commitment. I welcome comments or praise but certainly not criticism.