Kenya Dictionary

Spent a few days in Kenya and started to note some of the linguistic differences. As always, most of my material comes from taxi drivers so the vocab skews toward the automotive.

In Kenya you get "knocked by a car" instead of "hit", especially when you "do not respect" the "zebra crossing" (pronounced Zeh-bra) when crossing the street. Even better you should use a pedestrian "fly over" instead of an overpass (both pretty straightforward words, I think). And as always, when you're leaving a parking lot, put on your "specs" and look for the giant sign that says "way out" which always reminds me of teenage stoners in the 90's saying "Far Out!".  It's time to go home to the place where you "stay", but don't live.

Not sure how much of this is British influence but I'm going to give credit to Kenya for the terms.

Ginger Lemon Honey Tea

Does this exist everywhere except the US?  This is the best concoction in the world and somebody has got to get on it. I drank so so many of these when I had the flu in India and am now downing them in Uganda just because I cannot think of a more delicious substance to put in my body.  Ginger Lemon Honey-- so simple yet so amazing.

A view from the inside

Sitting in the cafe in the Nairobi airport, a huge group of British teenagers on some sort of group trip came in and for maybe the first time, I was able to see them as some of the others people around saw them:

- These kids are going to order a tremendous amount of food with no regard for money (they did- they ordered and then constantly added to their orders and threw around cash in giant denominations)

- OH MY GOD THEY ARE SO LOUD. The decibels in that cafe pre- to post-teen invasion went up by at least an order of magnitude (pretty obvious I have no basic understanding of sound measurement...)

- Why are they so slovenly if they're so rich?  I'm positive that if you dug up a picture of me in the airport on my first trip to Africa I would have been wearing sweats and a hoodie. Only now do I realize that this is mind-boggling to others. If you can afford to look nice, why be a slob? I fight my inner slob-tendencies on every trip and was amused to notice that these teens were just like me a long time ago, totally oblivious. I still actively resent having to get dressed up to go to breakfast but it's a small concession considering the African ladies in the airport, even while toting around 3 kids, are in full matching outfits with 4 inch heels.

Servitude

I am just plain bad with cultures of servitude.  I'm not sure if I've written about this previously but it's something I am confronted with a lot.  My silly inner-American can just not handle being waited on "we're all equal!" "I'm the same as you!" "we are peers!".

You can probably trace the causes back to some combination of the history of slavery in the US; the American dream with it's emphasis on meritocracy, pulling-up-from-bootstraps, and all the similar socialization I've had my whole life; and a heaping dose of a general disdain for formality.

Anyway, this all comes together and makes me SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE when people approach me in a servile, obsequious fashion.  So yeah, former British colonies are hard.  While my upbringing taught me that everyone is the same, theirs taught them to respect class and place and role (vomit). I shouldn't be so judgmental-- each view is what it is, but it doesn't change the discord.

I would really like people to call me by my first name. I offer it, and then I try to insist, all the while in my head thinking "I'm breaking down barriers! Look at me the egalitarian!" when in reality, all I'm doing is making them uncomfortable. They don't want to call me by my first name. They are uncomfortable being overly familiar.

I see no need for a server to do anything for me other than take my order and bring the check. I (gasp) pour my own water from the bottle when I finish my glass. Again to me I'm being practical and reasonable, but to them I am doing their job. The sad eyes I got from the waiter when I refilled my own glass were heartbreaking.

I know, I need to get over it. There is no use trying to fool myself into thinking my efforts are appreciated; they are not. I am subverting nothing. All I am doing is making things awkward for everyone involved.

Hot Date with Kindle

I had a hot date with my Kindle the other night at the Hotel Restaurant and decided to up the romance by reading Khalil Gibran's The Prophet. So in the spirit of his poetic wisdom, I offer my contributions based on today:

On Playlists: she said "one shall never make a playlist for consumption in public spaces that is fewer than 4 songs long on repeat"

On Meeting Americans in Hotel Bars: she said "beware, sometimes said conversation partners are mildly racist and speak loudly"

On Turn Down Service: she said "let us not be fooled into thinking a person capable of renting a hotel room is incapable of turning the corner of her blanket down, but thanks for the chocolate"

On Tiny Short-Haul Flights: she said "let thou always be vegetarian"

On Exit Row Seating: she said "lucky are those who obtain these prized spots, let one not be an asshole by getting offended when the flight attendant confirms that you speak English, it's her job and is a totally reasonable question"

On Kenyatta Intl Airport: she said "architect be doomed"

Not quite as profound as Khalil...

F bombs

I'm back in Uganda and back chatting with taxi drivers. In this case, I was a little thrown off because in the same conversation my Taxi driver both seamlessly dropped an f-bomb and told me "oh, that totally sucks!". My initial reaction was to ask "wow, so you hang out with a lot of Americans, huh?"  It wasn't until that moment that I realized that people here don't really curse. That makes sense- cursing in your non-mother tongue is not easy-- I'm not awesome at spontaneous cursing in French or Arabic (okay, I got some good practice in Arabic)-- and perhaps marks the cherry on top of full fluency. But also, people are just way more polite here. So when I heard him swear, my instinct was "American influence". And I was right.

Apparently he served in Iraq.  I had forgotten that Uganda was among the "coalition of the willing" and this taxi driver was one of the 10,000 Ugandans deployed to Iraq (I did my homework when I got home). Crazy world.

Smile!

When traveling I am always super hesitant to take photographs of people. Maybe they think I'm stealing their soul, maybe they are undercover police who will destroy my camera, maybe they just got their picture taken by 50 other white people and I add to their growing resentment of these strange outsiders, maybe someday they sue me for posting it to a weird blog. Anyway, I typically do not take any photos of people (unless they're friends or performers).

Now I get a somewhat easy out because I generally don't take many pictures at all and mostly mooch off of other people that do...

But that doesn't mean people don't take pictures of me. In Ghana a whole group of dudes took a picture with me and my friends, presumably to use on a visa application. At pretty much every conference I attend, the organizers take pictures with me, sometimes so that they can bring the photo to a tailor and get by clothes copied. Yesterday two people I have never seen, in matching pink outfits, interrupted my business meeting in the lobby of my hotel to ask if they could take a picture with me. Maybe they mistook me for someone else? Today, there was a canoodling couple on the boardwalk by the lake who stopped their snuggling to ask if the could take a picture with me. "This is my girlfriend!" is the only explanation I got as the dude shoved us together and snapped three pictures.

I can't wait for one of these weird pictures to surface somewhere 20 years from now. For all I know I'm on the Burmese version of Perez Hilton.

QC

Whoa- major quality control issues on the blog. The nature of my blogging is that I'm either trying to rush to upload something with a precarious internet connection, or I've written something ages ago in one of the 40 docs named "blog" on my laptop desktop and then frantically upload them all in one swoop.  Anyway, no excuses (except those above). Public apology for my typos and weird formatting.

Taxi Mustapha

So remember how I love taxi drivers? And also how I love Arabs? (I know that’s a weird generalization to make, but it’s true).  And how the best thing ever is an Arab Taxi Driver? The love continues.

 I met Mustapha at the airport in Seattle and he drove me to all my destinations during my very brief trip. He used to be a flight attendant on Jordanian Airlines and has been to every country in the world except for three. We did a fair amount of talking about religious tolerance and American foreign policy and there was a smattering of “how do you say this in your Arabic, how do you say this in YOUR Arabic”. You know, the usual.

Anyway, I have very little else to share other than I had several delightful taxi rides and my company will never convince me to rent a car when it could mean not having these interactions. Also I’m reasonably sure after 5 years in New York I’ve basically forgotten how to drive.

Auntie

One thing I love about Indian and African culture is that little children call people they meet “Auntie” or “Uncle”. You don’t have to be related, just older and of the associated gender. Kids don’t have to remember everyone’s names, just a term of endearment. This strikes me as lovely- I feel instantly connected to a little kid when he calls me Auntie.

Another thing that I’ve noticed kids do in Morocco and Uganda is to present themselves and greet a whole room. They enter, start working clockwise and handshake or kiss every person in the room. Hello Auntie. Hello Uncle. My colleague’s son who was 4 already had it down. Love it.

Be a marine!

I spent one afternoon with my colleague and his friend and 1.5 year old son. We did some fun budget review while playing with the child which I of course loved even if it mostly involved the kid in my lap briefly chewing on my food before returning it to my plate and strangling me while grasping my shiny necklace.  Small prices to pay for some toddler time. I’d venture to say that all mundane business tasks should be livened up with a little child.

Anyway, the point of this story is that the kid’s Dad kept saying he wants his kid to grow up to be a Marine. I assumed there was some Ugandan Marine Corps or something but actually, he aspires to have a son who joins the American Marine Corps. This struck me as odd- it’s rare that you hear about people wanting their progeny to grow up to fight for another country. Most of all, my inner liberal-arts-free-spirit wanted to be sure that the child wasn’t stifled by his father’s vicarious aspirations. Don’t you think we should rule out that he’s not the next Mozart, Gandhi, Monet, Dalai Lama, Mandela, Einstein, or Pasteur before we ship him right into the Marine Corps?

What do you want to serve me?

I’m not a ‘super-taster’ (if that’s actually a thing and not something the Food Network invented). I don’t actually care what I eat as long as it isn’t still alive or involving mushrooms. So I’m perfectly happy deferring to the powers-that-be to make my food selection.

During my West Africa business travel, the ‘powers-that-be’ come in two forms. The first and by far the most dominant is availability. Most stuff just isn’t available, and don’t be fooled by a silly listing in a menu. First you get brought a massive menu, then you pick something, then you’re told it’s not available, then you pick something else, then the waiter disappears for an hour, and then you’re brought something totally different.  I try to start with “what is your plate of the day” and if I’m lucky, they just tell me what they do have.

But then, once in a while there actually are multiple things to choose from. In that case, the second ‘power-that-is’ enters, and that’s what the waiter really wants you to eat. This was my first lunch at the hotel restaurant in Niger. Supposedly everything on the menu was to be had. So I picked something at random and then the waiter came back a few moments later to say “well next time you really should try this”. And then he hovered a lot. He then described to me how it’s really their best dish and then lingered some more. Alright- bring me that then! A giant smile spread across his face and when he actually brought me the meal you could see how happy he was to give me the specialty. Fine by me.

So new strategy is “what do you have” and then “what do you want me to eat”. 

I am the weird one

At 8am I got a phone call from the hotel receptionist who wanted to know whether or not I was planning on going to breakfast this morning. I declined and then at 10am housekeeping came to clean my room which necessitated me getting dressed rapidly in order to shoo them away. For a few moments, I got really annoyed. My flight arrived at 3am and I was exhausted. However, I was operating on US hospitality rules that dictate that you can do whatever you want in the space you are ‘renting’ which includes sleeping past 8am if you so choose. However, here I’m just throwing off the whole system. There are only 10 rooms in this small Niger hotel and there isn’t an endless staff to feed me or clean up after me at whatever weird hour I decide to start my day.  I am the weird one in this situation.

Safety

There was a lot of concern from my friends and family regarding my safety on this trip to Niger. However, I have a new philosophy which is that my safety is directly proportional to how many people love me where I am. I’m two for two so far- met one taxi driver and one hotel receptionist, and they both love me. So I’m feeling pretty safe. I’m not saying they’d take a bullet for me if we were under attack, but I feel pretty sure they aren’t dialing 1800-alqaeda to report an easy target for the taking. Anyway, this is why I sleep soundly.

New Delta

It's been a long, lovely while since I've flown Delta. But here we go again. 

 I just did a ridiculously fast West Coast run for a study training. I left at 7:40am from New York, arrived in Seattle 11am had a meeting, wandered around, slept, and was back at the airport for a 7am flight back to New York. Quick trip with as many hours spent flying as being awake in my destination.  Anyway, I actually had the same flight crew on both flights (and oddly they didn't recognize me...). Not sure why this struck me as weird- but apparently I’m on the same schedule as Delta employees. It makes me feel like I should be able to monetize this somehow. Be a freelance flight attendant or something.

Whoa- new domestic safety video on Delta (or new to me). Lots of trying to be funny which I’m not sure I’m super into in a safety video (see TAP). Also, the real nerd in me recognizes the creepy red-headed woman from the old video in her cameo in the new one when she does the weird finger wagging about smoking (to a man who is smoking a comically large pipe). Put away your typewriter? Look at exits behind you, except man in neck brace? Triplets at the emergency exit row? I prefer my comedy after we are safely in flight.

Also why is turbulence now called “rough air”?