Day 22

I really really really hope people are reading and appreciating my blog. You dickwads out there never comment so I don't know if I'm sharing my stories or if I'm just a raging narcissist putting himself out there for the world to see. I suppose I'm both. I'm sorry for being such a flaming cunt, it's just that today's internet process was particularly gruesome. Usually it takes about 8 minutes to get to this page, today it took 11. I seriously want to find the guy who invented the internet and slap him.

Anywho, now that I'm here, I gotta tell ya, it's been a juicy day.

On the way to Dickson, I got off the mutato at one stop so that people could get off. Before I could get back on, the woman who was sitting by me pushed in front of me and STOLE MY SEAT!! I had the good seat and the bitch straight up stole it. I was so mad, but restrained myself. She's lucky she doesn't live in New York because if we were on the subway she'd get an earful until one of us got off the train. Then, when we were getting off the mutato, there were so many people crowded around that they were trying to shove onto the bus before letting us off. It was such a zoo that I saw a full grown, well over 200 pound man SHOVE a woman out of his way so that he could beat her onto the mutato. This is not the first time I've seen a man shove a woman to get on, but it was definitely the hardest I've seen a man shove a woman to get on.

I'm sure upon reading that you'll think the same thing I initially thought. What the fuck is wrong with these people? Are they classless? Rude? Savages? While in some ways the answer may be yes, it ultimately is no. I really don't believe that people are inherently like this. I think societal pressures make people cave. Imagine if you can for a second that you are the man who did the shoving. Here (because of shoddy transportation), it's very likely that you are late for work. Your shitty job that pays you shit so you can live in a shitbox in a shithole country. If you show up late, you get fired and some other asshole takes your job because there are a million more people than there are jobs. If you don't shove this woman and beat her for that last seat, you will be fired and your family will be another homeless family. Now, I don't know for a fact that THIS particular man had THIS particular problem, but getting fired for the tiniest thing is not uncommon and when jobs are scarce and money is tight, one tends to flip out.

This realization did not come to me right away. At first I thought what a misogynistic asshole pig savage fuckwad, but after a half mile trek of thinking, I think (and hope and am fairly certain) that the above is more likely the case.

About the trek; Kenyans are known for being INCREDIBLY slow people. They walk slowly, talk slowly, live slowly. We were told time and time and time again that we'd have to adjust to the pace here. It's killing me, but I'm getting better. Now, you needed that background because it relates to our walk to Dickson. Today, Clueless, Idiot and myself were PASSED by several Kenyans. That is how slow they walk. Every day I die a little bit more because of these two. Now, I should take a moment to defend Idiot by saying she's not actually an idiot, she's actually rather smart. She's just a social/travel/life idiot. Clueless is a full on idiot. Example: When I spell things so the children won't understand, like say C-A-N-D-Y, Clueless will inevitably not understand what I'm spelling and keep asking me to repeat it to such an extent that the children can figure out the word I'm spelling, OR she will say the word out loud. FUCKING IDIOT!!! Also, I hate that Clueless is at my project because she's a total slacker. Idiot and I are all about our work and the kids and Clueless dips out early, doesn't bond with the kids, and complains incessantly. I seriously want to ask her why she's here, but I don't want Dickson to have their shitty volunteer become a complete whorebag, so I keep my mouth shut.

Today while she sat and watched the children (she doesn't even play with them, she just sits on a stoop and watches them), I learned why in old movies and TV shows when a new maid comes on the scene she says "But I don't do windows". Doing windows SUCKS BIG FAT HAIRY NUTS! It's laborious, thankless, endless, and infuriating. Between the glass wiping and ass wiping, I'm wiped.

Who else is wiped? Moses. He was sweaty all morning and then on our walk he passed out. I carried him home and told the house moms that he's sick. They looked him over and said that he was just a little overheated because it was a cool morning and then it got really hot. I said "No, he's sick". Two of them said not to worry. In about an hour he was up and about playing again. They were smug, I was smugger. I knew I was right. Lo and behold about 20 minutes later he started throwing up. They took him to the doctor. Malaria. I fucking told those woman 2 hours earlier that he was really sick, but because they're Kenyan women and I'm some sheltered mazungo they didn't listen. It's not like it was days, it was just 2 hours, but that was 2 hours of treatment he could have been getting. Now, I don't mean to paint them as being bad or neglectful, they're not, they're amazing, but I just like to point out that the natives don't ALWAYS know better. I have education and western medicine on my side. Moses is going to be fine and I hate to gloat over the illness of one of my kids, but if I don't know wassup, I do try to keep my fool mouth shut. When I proclaim to really know something though, it's because I know it. I love my fat ass Mr. President and knew something was amiss. He's going to be a-ok. Still, he has malaria. That's 2/28 currently battling malaria.

Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes, but they're not the only out of control bug here. All bugs are everywhere. I routinely eat food that I have to brush ants and flies off of and today when I opened the flip-top to my face wash, an army of ants came out and started crawling all over my arms. It's really fucking annoying to deal with at 6:30am. By the way, woke up at 6:15am feeling completely fine. As though yesterday's ailments never occurred. I normally, begrudgingly, get up at 6:20am here, but today I woke up at 6:15 feelin fine. So I think it was just a bout of exhaustion or heat or something. No malaria. Yet.

Today we took the afternoon kids to the restaurant for soda and french fries. We then hung around and took the older kids to the restaurant for dinner. They had a really good meal, but weren't very talkative. We haven't really bonded with them because we only see them for 20 min at lunch. They are gone before we get there (8:00am) and they get home after we leave (4:00pm). Tonite, Monica and Florence, the two oldest, couldn't join us for dinner because they don't get out of school until 8:00pm. 7:00am to 8:00pm 6 days a week and 11:00am-3:00pm on Sundays. How this country is so illiterate and poor I'll never understand. For the amount of schooling they're forced to do, these kids should be curing baldness, fatness, and acne (or other things that really matter).

Anyway, younger kids KILLED me at the restaurant. There's a playground and everyone wanted shoulder rides and piggy back rides and to box and to basically beat me to a bloody pulp. One of their favorite things to do is to make me flex my bicep and then they punch my bicep repeatedly to see if they can bruise it and to demonstrate how it's solid muscle. They revel in how big and hard my arms are. I swear it's like God created these kids to cater to my vanity. After that we went home and watched the Scooby Doo DVD I bought them. I bought the older kids Tomb Raider starring Angelina Jolie and by looking at the box they thought I bought them porn. They were shocked and extremely grateful until I told them it wasn't porn. Still grateful, but less so.

Spinning off of porn, there's SCANDAL at Dickson. Evidently one of the girls from Dickson was dating a boy from Onesmus, a BIG no no. There was a lecture given (I wasn't included in the meeting) and I'm not sure of the outcome, but it between the restaurant, the malaria and the salacious ongoings, it was a full day.

My final note for the day: Manu's little dick was hanging out of his potty while he was sitting on it today and he ended up peeing on the floor. He tried to lift himself out of his potty by putting his hands on the urine soaked floor to push himself up, but he couldn't quite get out. When I bent over to lift him up, he put his hands on my head so that he could get the leverage to lift himself out. Yes, his hands. His urine covered hands. On my head.