The days are beginning to blur together. I can’t tell what day of the week it is without looking at my watch and 3 days feels like one. Every day is some combination of hiking, walking around town, sitting in lecture, playing volleyball or sleeping. I certainly don’t want my blog posts to get redundant so I figured I’d describe some cultural differences that have begun to stand out in all my interactions with the locals. First, is the use of cellphones. My parents would be appalled if they saw the type of cellphone manners that are practiced here. Africa managed to completely skip the era of landlines and go straight from no phones to cellphones, just like that. Now, everyone here has one and everyone uses it. Texting is big, but so is calling. Sounds pretty familiar so far, right? Well, here, it is quite common – no – the norm for people to pick up their ringing cellphones in the middle of a meal, an activity or even a conversation. It’s just the way it works here and it’s perfectly acceptable. It’s also funny to hear the locals speak sometimes. Especially here in Kenya where a lot of people speak English, the language blends into what I’m beginning to call “Swanglish”. When we did our PRA’s the other day (participatory rural assessment) to interview the community about human/wildlife conflicts we had the opportunity to hear the locals speaking to our translators in Swahili. I would listen carefully to see how much Swahili I could understand and every few words would be in English! The words seemed to be completely random too like “fence”, “farm”, “animals”, and certain numbers. That’s just what happens when you’ve got two languages swimming around in your head I guess!
Some other interesting observations come from differences between Kenya and Tanzania. There are actually quite a few which is surprising considering our close proximity to the border. There are some differences in the Swahili which probably comes from the wide use of English in Kenya. The formal greeting for elders and those that deserve respect, “shikamo” is hardly ever used here. Some people will actually look at you funny and might not respond. “Pole”, which means “sorry” is also used very infrequently here in Kenya. Moses (one of the staff members in Tanzania) told us before we left that people in Kenya will wonder why you are saying sorry for everything if you use it too much. Pole is used for everything in Tanzania from feeling badly for someone doing hard work in the field, to bumping into someone on the street. Another, interesting difference is the hair. I would say that about 80% of everyone’s hair in Tanzania was completely shaved, children, adults, men and women. I had gotten completely used to it until we came to Kenya and women actually have hair! The dress is a lot less conservative (more American) and people actually have substantial heads of hair. I’m still trying to figure out why this is…

I’ll try to keep an eye out for more interesting observations!

Kwa heri

Location: Kimana, Kenya