Lamu Chapter 3: The Bat Cave

Instead of getting an extremely overpriced hotel room, some friends and I rented a house for the week in Lamu. The house was three floors and a rooftop. In Lamu most of one’s time is spent on a rooftop. The house itself was and open air house, all the floors were connected by the open stairway that lead to the roof. There were two bedrooms and a kitchen. There were of course other rooms, but a strange one-eyed man lived in them so we did not venture near. He was, (I’m sure somebody mentioned this) the house guard. The house was dark and had a new, unfinished quality, but at the same time seemed neglected and abandoned. Parts of it were clean and Spartan while others were cluttered and dusky. And there were also a surprisingly large number of bats also living in the house. So while me, my friends, a one-eyed man and about 20 bats were cohabiting, high jinks were sure to ensue. On the bottom floor was where most of the bats lived. When moving through this floor the best thing to do was to not look up and pretend they weren’t there. One gigantic mother bat lived in the thatched covering on the roof, she had a baby with her, I named her Kate. During a dinner party on said roof we discovered that bats in the roof is not an ideal decoration to a party, and they tend to leak…..

Lamu Chapter 2: The Land of donkeys

The island of Lamu has only one car, they say, it belongs to the chief. Though how or where he drives it is anyone’s guess. The roads and alleys are barely wide enough to fit you and a passing donkey. Donkeys consist of the majority of transportation on the island, the other is by boat. This has both good and bad aspects. The good part is that it is very quiet and relaxed on the island the bad part is that the ground is almost entirely covered with donkey droppings. However this only detracts slightly from the quaint beauty and ancient reverie inspired by the town’s old buildings and labyrinthine streets. Five minutes after arriving on the island everyone knows your name and who you came with, within a day you know all the restaurant owners and dhow captains and dress makers and their names. Because Lamu is such an interesting mix of tourism and small town charm, everyone you meet has a funny nickname like “fish-brain” or “Charlie Chaplin”. For the first time in 2 months we are able to walk the streets after dark without fear or even strange looks. Some of the other tourists are even wearing TANK TOPS! It’s a crazy place this Lamu. Even though the entire island is Muslim it seems that the crazy antics of the foreigners is seen as harmless or at the very least fastidiously overlooked for practical reasons. This does not make Lamu a party island by any means, as there is really only one bar, two if you count one that floats in the middle of the estuary. But people don’t really come to Lamu to go to clubs. They come for the quiet and the peace and the wonderful overpriced pasta.

Lamu Island: Chapter one

Lamu is an island off the coast of Kenya near the border with Somalia. The bus to the ferry to Lamu takes about 7 hours. The ride feels slightly more jarring than exiting earth’s atmosphere. Half the time the road is not really a road. The terrain of the ride is rather bleak. Open treeless fields and marshes give way to dry forests where monkeys dart out of trees to narrowly miss getting hit by the giant bus going 60 miles per hour. Part of the bleakness of the ride is due to the severe drought that Kenya is currently suffering. The rainy season is about a month late, and people have started to get creative. But back to the ride, we finally arrive after 7 hours of unforgiving bumps that lift you several inches off your seat in an a way that makes everyone laugh the first time it happens but by the 100 time you fail to see the humor. We are now hurried onto a small dangerously overcrowded ferry where we sit waiting for another hundred people to be put on a boat made to seat 30. Just when we are ready to leave we see the creepy guy who kept staring at us on the bus, he has just got on the ferry with a large suitcase. “There’s the creeper” my friend whispers. Suddenly a man tackles the creeper to the bottom of the boat, a brief exhilarating scuffle ensues before the creeper is restrained by a man who (it has suddenly become apparent) is a policeman. The creeper is handcuffed and roughed up a bit, by this time a large crowd of cheering people have surrounded the two men. What you would then assume would happen next is that the cop would lead the man away, but apparently in Kenya prisoner privacy is not an issue. The man’s bag is ripped open and torn though by someone who is either an undercover cop or a Good Samaritan. He comes back with what looks like hollow sugar cane. This causes some excitement with the crowd as this seems to be the thing they were looking for. Now he is dragged away from the boat with a crowd of people surrounding him, he is not resisting and doesn’t even look that bothered by the whole thing. His face is peaceful as if this was his plan all along, instead of selling all those drugs to the hapless tourists in Lamu his real plan was to be tackled and dragged away in handcuffs. Now that the entertainment had departed it was time to add another hundred people to the boat and finally to depart for Lamu island.
Chapter 2: The land of donkeys

Greetings

In Kenya greeting people always begins with a handshake. Whether you just saw the person before lunch or you have never met before, handshaking always takes place. When you get to work in the morning, or when you enter a room of strangers or you meet a friend on the street or really anytime at all really it’s like a physical manifestation of the word ‘hey’. Though this ‘handshaking’ can take many different forms for different people you are greeting. There is in fact a science to trying to sense what type of hand-involved greeting is naturally expected to take place. For instance when greeting a new person a normal up and down handshake will take place…probably, but you should remember to be prepared for the other options as well. Now if you are greeting a young person who is male and you have already met, a handshake/ thumb snap will probably be required. (A thumb snap is when you grip your hands in a vise, press your thumbs together and simultaneously snap them, resulting in something that looks super cool) Remember not to get flustered and try again if the thumb snapping doesn’t work. If the young person is a female then a half-slap pause, grip, shake will take place. This is also true for male kids ages 13-16. If you are greeting a young child and the child is Muslim then you will gently place your hand in theirs and they will kiss it. This is really cute and makes you feel like you are worshiped. Next on the list is the “My hands are dirty because I am eating” handshake which entails placing your hand briefly on the back of their hand or wrist. Then there are the miscellaneous ones I have not yet categorized as logical and have just randomly appeared occasionally. There is the handshake where both people kiss the backs of each other’s hands. Make sure you don’t initiate this handshake as it is apparently a specific tribe’s handshake. There is the one where you shake hands and one person scratches the inside of your hand. There is the handshake that is what we call in America the “limp fish”. And Last but not least the Fist Bump. I could keep going of course because there are three or four different types of fist bumps but I’ll save it for the book I’m writing.

Vindication

Last weekend my friend stayed with my host family and me. It was a pleasant break for me because instead of me the kids thought it would be fun to torture my friend for awhile instead. I cant say I’m not a little bit happy about that since I had been going on and on about this psycho three year old who haunts my nightmares. “I mean come on, Julie, she’s just a three year old how bad can she be?” they said. Well I’ll tell you a story shall I? I was in my room, sleeping on my bed, it had been a long day…. when suddenly somebody slaps me across my face. For those of you who know me pretty well you will know that nothing drives me closer to murder than being awakened from sleep, this includes adorable three year olds, especially when they laugh and try to do it again. All this went through my mind as my friend was been abused by the children. I now had proof from another person; yes the tiny psycho child is real. The other day I was talking with my host mother. I had not really mentioned anything about how crazy her youngest child was thinking, correctly that she was fully aware of this fact, but today I was still peeved about the latest broken thing in my room. I point to the little girl who has now passed out from her day of being evil. I say “this one is crazy”. “Yes” My host mother laughs. “I don’t know why though, my mother, she says that the worse a child is when they are young the shyer and quite they are when they get old.” I think about this, I think about my own childhood tantrums. I say “let’s hope” and we laugh.

Stag-Nation!!!!

Some fun facts I’ve learned since coming to Kenya.

Fact one: Women were put on earth for men, to do dishes cook and generally do all the essential things in life like raising offspring. I did not know this before coming here; I guess I was living blindly in the blissful ignorance of equality. Oh well my eyes are open now and I am free to pursue a life of babies and sweeping.

Fact two: I have been rather constantly made aware of the fact that 22 is really really old and I should have a husband by now and maybe a few kids as well. This fact seems to come right before the teacher of said fact offers to help me with that problem.

Fact three: According to the national newspaper women only go shopping before their periods, women will never leave abusive husbands because of their DNA and abortion rights groups in the country are secretly trying to cause HIV to spread faster.

Fact four: If your first wife and your second wife get along well they are probably planning to kill you.

Fact five: If a women stands next to a man who is wearing nothing and the women is wearing a skirt that goes above her knees people will stare at the women because she still looks more scandalous than the naked man.

Fact six: Swimming in a full Burka is surprisingly easy.