Day 5 v2.0

Good thing it’s Saturday because there’s a LOT to write.

If eating here is Russian Roulette, then last night I finally got an empty chamber instead of a silver bullet. For dinner we had Kenyan spaghetti which is noodles with this lentil bean sauce on it. It's fucking awesome. Well, I dunno if it's awesome when in the US, but by comparison to my other options here, it's fucking awesome. Actually, after writing that I've decided it would indeed be awesome in the US too. It's a little bland, but it is indeed yummy.

After dinner I went into my room and saw that the dumbass maid not only removed all the Band-Aids I used to cover the holes in my mosquito net, but that she then took the liberty to stick them onto my laptop! Hm, again, as I write things come to me and now I'm wondering if it was that cunt Michelle. Who, incidentally, is not really a cunt. That adjective I reserve for the most vile of females and today Michelle and I bonded over Teletubbies so I've promoted her to bitch. She still fucking sucks, but she's not a cunt.

MOM & DAD- I suggest you skip this upcoming paragraph. Stop reading now and move down to the next paragraph. Although neither of them are known for their ability to follow instruction. I say that because they are both staunch leaders and have a tendency for know-it-all-ism. I have no idea how I ended up so wildly different from that. Last night, for the first time since Sunday, I came. Now usually, I cum at least once a day with a preference for twice a day. So after 5 long days, I forced myself to masturbate. I say forced because this place is so gross that it's hard to feel sexual. It's hot as hell, dusty as hell, and the air is filled with the aroma of AIDS (1 in 3 Kenyans is HIV positive) so none of that really aligns with dirty thoughts of impurity. Nonetheless, I was worried for my health and I become a really cranky bitch when I'm pent up, so for the sake of all at stake here, I did. And it was good. I won't tell you what I thought about, but suffice it to say it was raunchy as hell because it took a lot to get me in the mood to even masturbate and even more to get me to finally cum. Remember, I'm in 500 square feet with 5 others and have a bedroom door that doesn't close. Not conducive at all. My Elmer glue-like geyser of jizz lead me to think that I should probably not wait 5 days next time.

So, I have become a ninja during my stay here. My first newly found ninja skill is getting into a bed that's covered with a mosquito net. You have to tuck the net under the mattress all around the perimeter to prevent mosquitoes from getting in from underneath. You can't really do this from the inside and the problem is getting in once you've tucked everything. So, you have to untuck a tiny little part of the net and sort of roll into the bed without untucking the rest of the net. Trust me, it's a lot trickier than it sounds. The other ninja skill I've developed is sensing when something gross is about to happen. Today, Yvonne (age 4) tried to sneeze into my mouth. Now, it wasn't on purpose, but she did nothing to try to keep herself from sneezing directly into my face while I was speaking. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her close her eyes and something told me to turn away and I did and managed to get the sneeze all over my neck. While still gross, highly preferable to in the mouth.

This morning I headed to Dickson to get the kids and then we were all going to the wedding of one of the employees at Onesimus Boys Center. OBC is a home from older street kids who need to be rehabilitated. They need to be detoxed from the gasoline/glue concoction they're all addicted to, learn to not grab/steal/take whatever they want, how to basically act normal. It's really quite scary and horrible the life these boys come from. So, OBC is adjacent to Dickson and both are run by Ria and Matheka and thus there's a fair amount of crossing over in respect to certain things. So all 29 kids, staff, and volunteers went along with all the OBC boys and staff.

On my way, I picked up the paper as I do almost every day, but today I accidentally called the newspaper guy "wewe" which is "you" instead of "bwana" which is "sir". Even though it's not a HUGE deal, I feel like it was rude and sort of like a mzungu talking down to a paper guy by saying "Hey you" to get his attention. For those of you new to the blog, mzungu is a term equivalent to "white-y" which is what people call non-blacks to be funny or mean or rude. Whenever they call me mzungu I saw "Mimi si mzungu" which means "I'm not a white-y". Then they ask "Wewe nini?" which means "What are you?" I've found that "Mimi m'kenyan" gets the biggest laugh out of them (it means I'm a Kenyan).

The mutatu took a turned on a different street today, so I had to jump out as soon as it turned. You never know what route they're going to take and if for some reason they deviate from the norm, it's not like I can figure my way out. As a result, I have to keep a constant vigil. This sucks because it's not really in my nature to be like that. I'm pretty in the clouds a lot of the time (which is why I don't like driving). Another thing that requires a shift in my personality/thought processes is the whole lack of personal space thing. I'm becoming terribly suspicious of people who are too close because I'm expecting them to try to pickpocket me (which happens a lot and last time the SECOND I stopped thinking I was going to get pickpocketed, I got pickpocketed). So I walk around with this sort of distrusting, aggressive air about me and I haaaaate that more than anything. That's totally not me. I keep doing that straight guy head nod to people to acknowledge them when we make eye contact. I'd much rather break out into my usual standard in America which is a big toothy grin or if I think they're gay a lil wink, but that's not really the way it works here.

So I read in the paper that the profit margin for a mutatu driver is something like 40Ksh. Less than a dollar. It's because of the gas prices and I thus decided to just overpay and let that be that. I used to argue about the mutatu rate all the time because I'd get charged the mzungu rate and I know what rates are for which routes. It wasn't about nickeling and diming them, but a principle of not ripping me off. I should pay the same as everyone else. But I realized today that that's not true. I should pay more than my share because I can. The 5-10Ksh difference between Kenyan rates and mzungu rates is about 30-60 cents. Even with 2 mutatu rides a day for the remainder of my trip, the amount is so little I wouldn't even know it if I lost it. I'm here to help and that doesn't just mean the children. What's the point if they grow up to enter a Kenya that's worthless? Everything needs a massive overhaul and I hope by being here, my fairy godfather wings can create a hurricane of change in Kenya. (That was a deeply buried reference to the butterfly effect, it's the best I could do, I'm tired).

All this and I haven't even gotten to the wedding yet. So. The wedding. A Kenyan wedding. An evangelical Christian wedding. A Kenyan, evangelical Christian wedding performed entirely in Swahili. A ceremony that lasted 5 hours. Yes. That's right. 5 hours. They began officiating at 11am and we were released to eat at 4pm. I don't even know where to begin.

I'll begin by saying I HATE myself and wanted to kick myself in the balls because of all days, I forgot my camera today. My words will have to do.

Fashion- the wedding was like something out of the 70s. More glitter and beads and lace than I think Joann Fabrics carries. The wedding gown had more rhinestones on it than I have worn collectively in my life. Ok, that's an exaggeration. No one can wear more rhinestones that I do.

During the processional Manu wanted to see them walking down the aisle so I put him up on my shoulders. 11 minutes later, when they still hadn't made it down the aisle, I officially became the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Even though he's tiny, try holding a kid on your shoulders for 11 minutes. They literally shuffle their feet halfway down the aisle and then begin to dance in the aisle and then dance and dance and dance and then finally make it to the altar. There were two chairs at the altar for the bride and groom and I remember thinking, "Hm, chairs? That's kind of weird" but now know that they were a warning of things to come. The bride and groom need chairs because the ceremony is 5 fucking hours long.

So Jurjanne makes me so wet I'd do her if she were a guy. And attractive. Around hour 1 I began to worry about the little ones and cursed myself for not bringing some candies and toys to an event that was bound to be boring for little ones. No sooner had I thought that than Jurjanne pulled coloring books and colored pencils out of her purse. See? This is the type of planning that makes me drip for Jurjanne.

Today I heard the words "Hallelujah" "Glory hallelujah" and "Praise Jesus" more than I have collectively in my entire life. And that is not an exaggeration. It seemed like every line was punctuated with one of those phrases. Every line for 5 hours.

After the ceremony, was the reception. All of a sudden, there were 300 more people in the reception hall than were at the wedding. (I use the term hall loosely, it was a covered shack). Apparently, when anyone sees a wedding going on, they just crash in the hopes of free food. This initially was crazy to me and then ended up breaking my heart. People just come in off the streets and start eating the food? What the fuck kind of madness is this? But I realized I'm in a country where 60% of the people live in poverty. 60%. They come to eat because it's crash a party and eat this or don't eat at all. I had to throw down a couple of times because grown men and women were literally trying to get food away from the Dickson kids. When you're stealing from orphans, you must be pretty fucking starved. And I don't mean starved like we do, I mean like actually in the physical state of starvation. So all that kind of shook me a little.

This is why I get into a huff when people bash America. People within the US that is. Yes, we have some shitty policies and a horrible set of people in power, but I routinely defend America when the gripes get out of hand because I tell you, there is nowhere better. Free health care your problem? Do you know what the survival rates for cancer are in those nations? Gas prices your problem? Do you know what they are here? America is not perfect, but we don't have hundreds and hundreds of toddlers living on the streets and we don't have adults stealing from these toddlers so that the adults can eat. Our government is not so corrupt that you can't go to the police with a problem or that foreign visitors are charged customs taxes or have a con man on every corner. Ok, enough of my soapbox. It was just really a jarring experience.

I'll end on a funny note because I hate to leave you all with hunger and me preaching. On the bus ride home, Kezia (the BIG HUGE housemom who is the prototype for the Mammy character one sees in old movies) was standing up and telling the kids to do something and the bus lurched and she came crashing down on me. Her gigantic breasts fell on either side of my head and her 2 tons nearly snapped my neck.

I feel that wasn't funny enough. Um, Milka farted on me today, so I guess that's a new trend. While not my first choice, I'll gladly take it over last year's multiple head butts to the nuts. And the toilets here don't really have a downward flush, they just sort of use gravity and swirl water around in the bowl. Last night it took three flushes just to get one little piece of poo down the toilet. By the third flush I decided if it didn't go down, such was my fate. Luckily, everything works out like it should, and the little poo that could finally couldn't.