Lists

As I sit here in the office eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and working on my Community Needs Assessment, which I'll hand in to the Peace Corps in a few weeks, I can't help think of spending my weekends in the Skidmore library writing my thesis. I'd pack my lunch and spend all day in the library with Emily. Sadly, I can't run out and grab iced coffee to keep me going like I could then. Closest thing is probably getting a soda at the little shop next door. Is it weird that I miss school? Maybe it's because we've spent so much of our lives in school. I definitely want to go back to school after the Peace Corps, I just don't know for what yet. I change my mind all the time. Last year it was law school, right now it's nursing.

Anyways, since I'm procrastinating (just like I did in college too), I'm putting up one of the many lists I've started in my journal.



Things I would not put up with in the US, but I embrace/deal with in Kenya

-Picking the dead bugs out of my lentils or rocks out of the rice before cooking them
-Allowing an anthill to live in the corner of my room for a few weeks
-Continuing to eat at a restaurant where I watched a cockroach climb out of my friend’s rice
-Considering 7AM “sleeping in”
-Having cows eat my grass instead of using a lawnmower
-Peeing on the side of the house instead of facing dogs which chase me and might have rabies (I only did it once)
-Drinking wine out of a plastic cup with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner alone. Actually, I probably would do this in the US
-Drinking/using rain water as my main water source
-Being weirded out when I see other white people in my town
-Being really excited when children DON’T have “tabia mbaya” (bad manners). For example I get excited when a child says hello and doesn’t ask me for money, chocolate, my watch etc. or when they don’t pinch their noses and say “how are you” in a really annoying/whiney voice. Instead of appreciating the presence of good manners, I just get excited when there is a lack of bad manners.
-Cutting around the mold on foods/vegetables and then eating it
-Considering an hour’s walk “not far”
-Eating meat/chicken that was alive just an hour beforehand
-Being scared of cows. After being headbutted by one and then seeing them fight each other at the market, I’ve become a little scared.
-Being excited when matatus have seat belts and i have a seat to myself and am not squished against other Kenyans or have chickens flapping at my feet. (Finally the police are enforcing seat belts and the capacity limit on matatus)
-Drinking a warm beer or soda (sadly cold ones are not always an option)
-Drinking hot tea while it is 80 degrees out
-Calling bread with blueband (it's like I can't believe it's not butter)lunch
-Using a headlamp/flashlight/or lantern to cook with at night