A rebuttal to Tyler's musings of India. If you have not read them on his blog then you should. They are at http://tylergoestoindia.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html
So here it goes.
1 Even though people don't have pets as companions, don't be surprised to find any animal in any place. Like a hen in a kitchen, dog in a classroom, cat in a hospital room, rooster in a living room. All of which I have seen.
2 Ninataka choo and Ninatoka choo do not mean the same thing. Choo means toilet. Ninataka means I need. Ninatoka means I come from.
3 People like to decorate their walls. About every house has a picture of Jesus and/or Obama. But I have seen posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Titanic, and The Undertaker from pro wrestling.(all in the same room)
4 Just because a man is wearing a Chicago Bulls shirt doesn't mean he likes the Bulls, has heard of Chicago, or has even knows what basketball is.
5 Even though you are on the sidewalk, you still have to watch out for Matatus(commuter buses). If there is a traffic jam, no place is off limits to them.
6 If you feel homesick for America, just find the closest mall. They are pretty much the same everywhere
7 Most Kenyan students know more American rappers and R&B artists than I do.
8 Sometimes in order to get from where you are to where you need to be you have to just jump in the back of a random truck.(or walk for hours up a mountain)
9 I have seen Pepsi products in Uganda and Tanzania but none in Kenya. I wonder if it has anything to do with Kenya's website url endings. ie. www.google.co.ke
10 You don't really appreciate western style toilets until you have the runs and your looking at a small hole in the ground.
11 Sometimes it is better to just close your eyes and take a bite. Wait till you are finished before you ask what it was you ate.
12 Don't be surprised to hear a cell phone ring at any time or place; restaurants, church services, funerals, weddings.
13 There is always room for one more. This includes taxis( I have been in a five-seater car with ten people in it) matatus( 25 people with 12 seats) Tea time(26 people sitting and drinking tea in a room not much bigger than a bedroom)
14 If you ask what time an event begins don't put too much stock in the answer. First of all the system of time here is 6 hours different than ours. For instance at noon they say it is 6:00. And it is pretty safe to show up about an hour after the supposed start of anything.
15 Even if you can't figure out what time it is, it is probably Chai(tea) time. As they say here, "Every time is chai time."
16 If you like music at church then show up on time to the service. The first hour is almost always singing.
17 Every place is a path(or road if your a matatu). If there is no razorwire in front of you then it is ok to walk there.
18 Every place outside of a building is a toilet(at least for the boys).
19 It is rude as a guest to refuse food and drinks if you come to visit. So just put on a smile and eat the whole thing.
20 Don't drink something too fast unless you want more. As soon as you finish a cup of tea it will be instantly refilled. So if you don't like the beverage, but you want to be polite and finish, time the cup so that you finish as you are leaving the house.(It took me too many cups of bad coffee to figure this one out)
21 They also play the roll-the-hoop-with-a-stick game. They are pretty inginuitive at figuring out things that can roll. I still don't get out they roll them uphill.
22 Kaka kakamavu ana mkakate ka kakakaka. Try saying that out loud. If my Kiswahili grammer is correct(which it most definitely is not) this means "My cunning older brother has a plan to rapidly sit.
23 When we were walking through a mountain forest the other night. I told the Pastor I was with that it was "so muddy" he that I said it was "samadi" which was kiswahli for cow manure.
Hope you got a few laughs from these. I am having a great time. Stay in tune for stories from Tanzania. Merry Christmas!
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Waitence
Word of the day; Patience.... and Waiting. I guess thats two words. Lets try that again. Noun of the day; Patience. Verb of the day; Waiting. No, I like to have only one word of the day, lets make one up and call it Waitence, which now means waiting with patience. Now I'm rambling. Thank you for your waitence.
I can't speak for all of Africa, but at least for the parts of East Africa that I have seen, I can say that time is relative. America absolutley loves time. So much of what we do revolves around being places at very specific times of the day and doing things for very specific amounts of time. Even when I was in America sometimes I would say that we are slaves to time. Being in Africa has only reinforced that idea. Don't get me wrong, they do have clocks in Kenya. They are just not always in places where they can be seen, or have batteries in them.
I remember my days at Shelbyville Middle and High Schools. Each class period was an exact number of minutes,and I remember even setting my watch to the precise second so that I could know when to jump up and run to lunch. The passing period between classes was 4 minutes I think. If you weren't in a classroom in your seat when that bell rang, you would be listed as tardy and there would be consequences. Looking on that now from an African lens it makes me think "We Americans do like stress don't we." Here when it is near the time that the 40 minute class period is over a student will get up and ring a bell. If the student is five or ten minutes late or early, not a big deal. Nobody stresses. Then the teacher will mosey towards the classroom when he or she feels like it and start class. If there is an interesting conversation in the staff room, then the students can wait by themselves a few minutes until the teachers arrive. Nobody stresses.(If I remember right I think some of the math/social studies teachers at SHS employed this technique.) I have not seen any place to keep attendance, let alone tardy slips. And you know what, its ok. Why should the kids be policed to come to school. They realize the importance of an education and want to be there. If they do not show up then it is probably for an important reason. Maybe there is work on the farm that needs done today. Maybe a mother is ill and needs help. I don't think that we could use these policies in America unless there was some major overhauling of our attitudes. We are very rule oriented and we like that structure. Time, as a rule, rules our lives. Sorry I'm rambling again. Have some waitence.
Anecdote 2: I went to Uganda this past weekend to go white-water rafting at the source of the Nile. (God did a very nice job wih the Nile.) Traveling to and from Uganda we took large coaches, kind of like Greyhounds. From Nairobi to Jinja it was supposed to take ten hours. Actual travel time; thirteen hours. But whats another three when you are already sitting for ten right. I slept through most of that anyway, so not a big deal. It was the trip back that really tried my waitence. My group had to split up going home because of the availability of tickets and work schedules. So my friend Lauren and I were to take the 6:00 pm bus to Kisumu where we were supposed to meet our friend Anselm. Leaving at that time we should have arrived by 10:00 pm when our friend would be waiting to pick us up and take us to his home. We arrived at the bus station at the scheduled time of 5:00. We waited. Six came around, no bus. We waited. Seven, no bus. Some buses passed through, but the workers said these were not our buses. They were going to other places. Eight, no bus. At about ten we find out that one of those earlier buses was our bus, but that it was full and could not take us on as passengers (even though we had bought the tickets a day earlier.) But we could get on the next bus. Midnight, finally a bus arrives that they tell us to get on. YAY, more hours of sitting. We get through the Kenyan border ok at about 2:30. After another police check, we are off again. I ask one of the bus employees to let us know when we get to Kisumu so that we don't fall asleep and go all the way through to Nairobi. To our chagrin he informed us that this bus was not going to Kisumu. Surprise. After some conferring they decided we should get out and wait for another bus. Fortunately there happened to be a Matatu bus going to Kisumu for whatever reason at 3 in the morning. Not a pleasant ride, but anyway we finally get to Kisumu as the sun is coming up. My first American reaction was "Who can I sue, or what can I get out of this bus company in compensation." My next thought, "Haha, we are in Africa now, it happens, don't stress."
I'm trying to learn now. If I am supposed to be at a meeting at noon, it may or may not get started at two-ish. If a post office's posted hours say open till six, I better get there by three if it is important, because they close when they feel like it. I'm going to try really hard to master this way of looking at time.
So in conclusion. I apologize in advance for when I return to the States and Orem time is two hours late instead of only fifteen minutes. Have some waitence with me. Peace and God Bless
I can't speak for all of Africa, but at least for the parts of East Africa that I have seen, I can say that time is relative. America absolutley loves time. So much of what we do revolves around being places at very specific times of the day and doing things for very specific amounts of time. Even when I was in America sometimes I would say that we are slaves to time. Being in Africa has only reinforced that idea. Don't get me wrong, they do have clocks in Kenya. They are just not always in places where they can be seen, or have batteries in them.
I remember my days at Shelbyville Middle and High Schools. Each class period was an exact number of minutes,and I remember even setting my watch to the precise second so that I could know when to jump up and run to lunch. The passing period between classes was 4 minutes I think. If you weren't in a classroom in your seat when that bell rang, you would be listed as tardy and there would be consequences. Looking on that now from an African lens it makes me think "We Americans do like stress don't we." Here when it is near the time that the 40 minute class period is over a student will get up and ring a bell. If the student is five or ten minutes late or early, not a big deal. Nobody stresses. Then the teacher will mosey towards the classroom when he or she feels like it and start class. If there is an interesting conversation in the staff room, then the students can wait by themselves a few minutes until the teachers arrive. Nobody stresses.(If I remember right I think some of the math/social studies teachers at SHS employed this technique.) I have not seen any place to keep attendance, let alone tardy slips. And you know what, its ok. Why should the kids be policed to come to school. They realize the importance of an education and want to be there. If they do not show up then it is probably for an important reason. Maybe there is work on the farm that needs done today. Maybe a mother is ill and needs help. I don't think that we could use these policies in America unless there was some major overhauling of our attitudes. We are very rule oriented and we like that structure. Time, as a rule, rules our lives. Sorry I'm rambling again. Have some waitence.
Anecdote 2: I went to Uganda this past weekend to go white-water rafting at the source of the Nile. (God did a very nice job wih the Nile.) Traveling to and from Uganda we took large coaches, kind of like Greyhounds. From Nairobi to Jinja it was supposed to take ten hours. Actual travel time; thirteen hours. But whats another three when you are already sitting for ten right. I slept through most of that anyway, so not a big deal. It was the trip back that really tried my waitence. My group had to split up going home because of the availability of tickets and work schedules. So my friend Lauren and I were to take the 6:00 pm bus to Kisumu where we were supposed to meet our friend Anselm. Leaving at that time we should have arrived by 10:00 pm when our friend would be waiting to pick us up and take us to his home. We arrived at the bus station at the scheduled time of 5:00. We waited. Six came around, no bus. We waited. Seven, no bus. Some buses passed through, but the workers said these were not our buses. They were going to other places. Eight, no bus. At about ten we find out that one of those earlier buses was our bus, but that it was full and could not take us on as passengers (even though we had bought the tickets a day earlier.) But we could get on the next bus. Midnight, finally a bus arrives that they tell us to get on. YAY, more hours of sitting. We get through the Kenyan border ok at about 2:30. After another police check, we are off again. I ask one of the bus employees to let us know when we get to Kisumu so that we don't fall asleep and go all the way through to Nairobi. To our chagrin he informed us that this bus was not going to Kisumu. Surprise. After some conferring they decided we should get out and wait for another bus. Fortunately there happened to be a Matatu bus going to Kisumu for whatever reason at 3 in the morning. Not a pleasant ride, but anyway we finally get to Kisumu as the sun is coming up. My first American reaction was "Who can I sue, or what can I get out of this bus company in compensation." My next thought, "Haha, we are in Africa now, it happens, don't stress."
I'm trying to learn now. If I am supposed to be at a meeting at noon, it may or may not get started at two-ish. If a post office's posted hours say open till six, I better get there by three if it is important, because they close when they feel like it. I'm going to try really hard to master this way of looking at time.
So in conclusion. I apologize in advance for when I return to the States and Orem time is two hours late instead of only fifteen minutes. Have some waitence with me. Peace and God Bless
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