Day 27 v2.0

7 days left. It’s coming way too quickly.

Yesterday, the girl’s name was Jacqueline. I also forgot to mention that she said that the gays in Kenya are becoming a real problem with their spreading of AIDS and recruiting young men. I told her that gays are accepted in American society (to a degree, but I left that part out) and that Kenya’s understanding of gays is just another example of how far it needs to come. I guess that’s now ANOTHER person I have to tell when I’m leaving. Why are people so stupid? Although, they also believe in witch doctors and mob justice here so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Last night I was chilling out in my room when John started calling for me. It was time to drink. I’m not so into this, but he really is so I’m trying to indulge him. After a lot of drinking I had to finally be really firm with him and say I was done. I hate doing this. Why can’t people just respect my boundaries the way I respect theirs? I’ve noticed this to be common amongst drinkers. I don’t necessarily need to drink to have fun but I find they are very uncomfortable if I’m not drinking. So after 3 cocktails I finally had to tell him, adamantly and firmly, that I was done.

While we were drinking we were watching the 2008 B.E.T. Awards (they don’t have B.E.T. here, it was airing on another network) and just talking about Kenya and stuff. I got quite the lesson.

So to go to college here, the process is as follows: In 10th grade, all students (roughly 800,000 Kenyans) take a test that does an assessment of them. Before the test, they are told to select their top 3 choices for what they would like to do. Within these choices, there’s 1st, 2nd, and 3rd tier. 1st is doctor, surgeon, architect, and oral surgeon. 2nd is dentist, lawyer, and any type of engineer (civil, chemical, etc.) and 3rd would be something like an economist or political science major. If you do well enough, depending on availability, you will get to do what you want. To put it in perspective however, there are only 8 national universities (which are the only ones worth attending) and each one specializes in something. For example, the school in one province specializes in architecture. They accept 20 students each year. 20 out of 800,000. John was lucky enough to get a score that allowed him his third choice, economist. If you don’t do well enough, you do not get a college education. 10 years ago, this changed and universities started offering “Parallel Programs” which permit those with money to also attend. It costs an insane amount and it’s called “Parallel” because they don’t get to sit with the students who actually tested in. They two groups (those who are given a free education and those who pay for it) never meet, the courses just run alongside one another, hence the name parallel. This infuriated those who tested in because now the value of their degree would go down. Further, everything is corrupt here, so if you weren’t rich, the one way to get ahead was with a degree because rich people couldn’t obtain those without the proper scores. Now, they can. So, when this was first instituted, there was massive violence here. Students were destroying campuses and killing people in protest. John’s friends killed several people. He claims he didn’t get too involved with any of the violence because he was very young for being where he was at in his education and thus was intimidated by it all. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.

Apparently something went down recently with the Parallel Program, because the campuses are in turmoil again. I was reading about it in the paper (which is how the conversation came up) and asked him for the story. Now, in addition to killing and trashing the campuses, they’ve taken to destroying the areas around the campuses and raping staff and faculty.

It’s so crazy to hear this stuff. The president here lost the last election but won’t step down and since he controls all the government, no one can stop him. That was what sparked all the violence last year. Then add on mob justice. And HIV rates. And child prostitution. And corrupt…everything. I was telling John that the things I hear about in Kenya are as foreign as if someone were to say “Tomorrow, aliens will land in Baltimore, MD”. I mean, can you imagine if George Bush said in January “I’m not stepping down” or if UCLA had garbage cans on fire and corpses along Westwood or seeing a mob of people set a man on fire on the Upper East Side? It’s just so fucking crazy.

While talking we were watching the B.E.T. Awards and I used the opportunity to mention that Alicia Keys and Queen Latifah are both lesbians. (I haven’t personally seen them munch on a lady’s box, but I have it on good authority). I also mentioned that Oprah likely is too. He is fascinated with Oprah because Esther considers Oprah her idol whereas John thinks she’s nothing more than a wannabe-white woman celebrity. I’ve told Esther and John about how any product mentioned on her show is sold out the next day, how any book is #1 on Amazon, how she got the National Guard to go after Nate Berkus’ missing boyfriend after the tsunami, and they are just amazed. As they should be, Oprah is amazing. He started asking about her core audience last night and I said it was predominately women and gay men and he was shocked that gay men would be into Oprah. He asked why I was into Oprah. I gave him the following answer, which is fully true, but I omitted the fact that I am a gay man and thus part of her target market: I told him that her philanthropy is obviously very inspiring to me since I consider myself a budding philanthropist. That seemed to satisfy him and his phone rang before we could get any deeper, so the conversation was dropped.

He then said that his idol is Nelson Mandela. At first he made a joke that this rebel tribe leader was his idol, but I didn’t know who he was talking about at first, so the joke fell flat. I’ve seen the man on the news and in the papers. Kenya has 42 tribes, and basically none of them get along. There’s this one tribe that is out in the middle of nowhere and has this wanted-criminal-rebel-leader who like lives in the woods. He is constantly cutting off the ears of people in his tribe for what he thinks is them planning and plotting against him. They show it on the news a lot, a guy with a huge bandage wrapped around his head, one side of his face blood soaked because his ear was cut off. That then reminded me of a story in the paper yesterday about a father of twins who cut off the right ear of one child and the left ear of another so that he could differentiate them. Ya. Aliens are landing in Baltimore tomorrow.

After all this, abortion came up and John is pro-choice, which is nice. So is Jacqueline. Unfortunately, the majority of Africa, and Kenya specifically, is not. 50% of all the women in the world who die from illegal/make-shift abortions are in Africa. (That stat was in yesterday’s paper). It’s pretty nuts, but what’s even more nuts is what legalized abortion could mean for Kenya. “Freakonomics” is an amazing book and you must read it immediately. In it, an economist makes the argument (very persuasively) that the #1 cause in the decline of crime rates in the early 1990s was because of legalized abortion in the 70s (Roe v. Wade). Because children born to women who would abort them if they had the chance are more likely to become criminals, the drop in crime is related to the increase of aborted fetuses. The crime drop occurred when the would-be criminals would be reaching the age at which they'd start committing crimes. It’s obviously a lot more complicated than that, but you must read it. Anyway, I think legalized abortion would solve MULTIPLE problems here (crime, street kids, deaths from illegal abortions, etc) but of course one of the Members of Parliament said the other day that the bill would “…never see the light of day” so that’s out the window.

I also learned that Kenyans drive drunk all the time and it’s not illegal. John killed a quarter bottle of vodka and 2 beers and then drove off to go out with his friends (at 1am). Basically, if you’re conscious, you drive. Scary. Jaqueline said the clubs he goes to have bad reputations for cheating and drugs and stuff. That’s another thing about Kenya that’s nuts to me. It’s assumed that all the men cheat and it’s accepted. All the advice columns and all the women’s magazines and everything about relationships is how to deal with and how to cope with cheating. I have a solution. Leave him. Can’t cheat on you if you’re not with him. But ya, it’s pretty much given that all men cheat on their wives here. The men are always going out to nightclubs and strip clubs without their wives and the women are supposed to just shut up and take it. In fact, there’s a huge campaign going on here (to fight AIDS) that is based on the premise “Stay faithful to your partner” because infidelity is such a problem and spreads HIV. I don’t know if people in American cheat a lot too and they either don’t talk about it to other people or if they keep it from me specifically because I’m such an ardent supporter of monogamy, but I can’t imagine that everyone out there is cheating. Here, it's weird if they're not. Although I guess what do you expect from a nation that allows a man to have up to 6 wives? So nuts.

This morning I went to White Sands and read and laid out and ate and while there I was overwhelmed with this feeling of “What did I do to deserve this?”. Seriously, I can’t imagine what I did in a past life to warrant the amazing, fantastic, charmed life I’ve been given in this one. I’ve traveled all over, lived in the best cities in America, was given two loving parents, have my health, was given an amazing education, I could go on and on and on. What is it that makes someone born me and makes someone born one of the street kids here who is basically pulled from the womb and plopped on a street corner? It’s such dumb luck, such unfair happenstance. I am so amazingly grateful for everything I’ve been given, but it’s also really hard to wrap my head around. I’m dreading leaving the internet café because I have some groceries I bought from Nakumatt and I know there will be street kids outside when I leave. What am I supposed to do? I can’t give away everything I buy, but how am I supposed to say no to starving children living on the streets? Why am I in the position that I am and why are they in the position they are? It’s really crazy and I guess part of the reason I believe in God. There’s just too much weird shit going on in the world, there’s too much love and misery and life and death for it to all be pointless. Still, I’d really like to know what the deal is because a lot of these people sure got the shit end of the stick.

I have two more pages of notes, but this is going very long so I’m going to just wrap it up with a few things.

Today I burned my mouth at the buffet at White Sands because I was trying to shovel the food into my mouth quickly because if I stopped eating I wouldn’t be able to start again.

Yesterday I wanted to drop kick Jacqueline in the vagina. When I introduced her to Yvonne she said “Is this a girl?”. A) Her name is Yvonne. B) She’s beautiful. C) She’s wearing a skirt. D) She’s a person, do not refer to her as “this”. I mean, how do you think that made Yvonne feel? I don’t know, but I could have shoved my foot up her stank pussy for that comment. (Although I do want her to volunteer at Dickson so I guess I should refrain from doing so)

I was all angry about this when I noted it in my notepad today (while eating) and then I put a piece of mango in my mouth and literally smiled. I went from pissed at Jacqueline to smiling because of a piece of mango. It’s like Prozac meets Spanish fly.

Finally, on a scale of 1-10, how bad is it that I had never heard of the country called Qatar until today? 3? 7? 10? I am fully aware of the fact that while I may be good at some things, I may not be so good at many other things, but not knowing of a country made me feel pretty fucking retarded. How long do you think I can coast on my abs alone?