3 Weird Things About Kenya.

Men Hold Hands.
Yeah. They even interlace fingers! These are not gay men (homosexuality is very rare and scandalous here), they could be two businessmen sauntering down the street, two high school guys walking home, two old men at the market. Over a month living here now and it still throws me off.

It’s Almost Like England.
I never knew how much British influence Kenya/Africa has, thanks to its colonization long ago. The kids are not allowed in school without the official formal school uniform – collar shirt with a sweater and shorts or a skirt. It generally costs around $10 (a lot of shillings here, and thus the main reason a lot of kids aren’t in school).

Drivers seats are on the right side of the car, and cars drive on the right side of the road (unless they’re avoiding massive potholes on the right side of the road, which is 90% of the time).

Letter boxes and telephone booths all look like they were imported from London; so out of place on the dirt roads with dust and cow manure everywhere.

If someone is wearing a nice outfit, people will say they look “smart”, which I’m quite sure is not a Swahili term. When you ask the kids how they are (easy Swahili slang -- “sasa?”), they respond “Fit!”, which I also don’t think has any Swahili roots. In English, they call French fries chips, napkins servillettes, and pants are trousers.

Incidentally, the word pants means women’s underwear to Kenyans. This is especially funny in a restaurant when one of the guys spills something and asks for a napkin to wipe his pants with.. lots of weird looks from the waiters.

Americans Are Celebrities.
When we take the bodas out to the orphanage on Saturdays, we drive through a rural village with around 40 small huts in it. As soon as they hear the bodas coming, every single kid and adult will run out of their hut to wave and shout “howayou!” Even in Kitaletown, where white people are seen pretty frequently, a Kenyan will stop a conversation with someone just to turn around and gawk at you, or say hi, or shout “mzungu!” in excitement. (Technically mzungu means European, but that’s cool with me.) If they find out you are from America, you are even more popular because they want to make sure you are voting for Obama.

More to follow.
Of course.