Day 31 v2.0

Last night John and I were up until 1am having beers and chatting. Luckily he mostly had questions about film, television, and law, all ground that I can handle. One thing they have here that's interesting is called "Anticipatory Bail". What it is, is that you go to court and post bail before you are arrested. Perhaps you beat someone up, perhaps someone said they were going to file charges against you, whatever. If you know that you may be arrested, you can go and post anticipatory bail and when they come to arrest you, you show them the paperwork. There are a lot more complications to it, like the fact that there are no home addresses here so it's virtually impossible to locate someone unless you go to someone who knows the potential defendant and have that person physically take you to the suspect's home. So many things here are unimaginable (there's no such thing as credit, they have debit, but no credit) and no registration with the government (their driver's licenses don't have addresses because, there are no addresses) it's nuts.

I took my first suitcase to Dickson today. I have a large suitcase that was filled with crap for the kids and a small carry-on that had more crap for them plus my own clothes. In case you were wondering, carrying a big heavy suitcase while walking down a muddy unpaved road is not fun. I had to hold the suitcase in my lap on the mutatu and guess who I was seated next to? Potatoe sack woman. So there's a big fat Kenyan woman with a giant sack of potatoes on her lap in the front seat, and next to her is this anorexic mzungu with a giant suitcase on his lap. The seats are in rows of three and no one even tried to sit in the third seat.

On the mutatu ride I was looking around a lot more than I usually do. Out the windows, at the riders. This is because I normally read the paper or a book, but with the suitcase in my lap all I could do was sit and look. (BTW; I'm reading "A Tale of Two Cities"- which is really good- at a snail's pace because I used to read at night and now I'm subjected to a deafening hour, yes hour, of nightly Ramadan prayers by the Islamic community here) But back to looking around on the mutatu. I realized that it's not racist of me to think Kenyans look the same. They do look the same because they are all Kenyan. The population is like 99% homogenous here. Living in America, which is such a melting pot, we forget that in a lot of countries the majority of the population looks alike. In hindsight I remember being in Iran and Italy and such and mixing people up or confusing someone for another. So whew. I'm not racist. They really do look alike. It's funny, after being here, I can differentiate a Somolian from a Kenyan. It's not that all Africans look alike, just the ones from the same nations. Now if only they'd lay off the fried chicken with waffles and that rap music I hear so much about.

I have another caterpillar bite. I mean, it's not a bite, just that they're poison to the touch. So I have another caterpillar...contact? Anyway, I bought poison for the tree but it's industrial strength so we're having someone come to spray it. The bite is this huge welt that just burns. Fucking horrible. Although (God I love Kenya) all I had to do was take my old, empty prescription bottle to the pharmacy and they gave me another round of the medication. No prescription, no questions- despite the fact that it's a prescription drug. Love it.

Speaking of creepy crawlies, today was the first time I was actually scared by an insect in my entire life. I'm the one who laughs at other people and just takes my shoe and smashes the bug. Once in France, I was on a bus and the tourists were all shrieking and trying to shoo this wasp off the bus. I finally got up from the back seat and just smashed it with my hand. Then I found out they were all like Buddhist monks or something and COULDN'T kill the wasp. Total douche move. But ya, I smash bugs all the time. But today I flipped. I moved some wood steps and the kids started shrieking "Spider! Spider!" and went to fetch sticks to kill it. I looked and saw a daddy long legs spider so I just let them poke. They kept shrieking and I kind of ignored it because I thought they were just being excitable. Then I saw a spider- no exaggeration- the size of a gerbil or hamster crawl up into the classroom. I flew across the patio and grabbed a stick from them and tried to kill it, but it then crawled outside. I ripped off my shoe and smashed it hard. My heart was actually racing. I have never, ever, seen a spider move like that nor of that size. When I showed the dead body to the teacher and asked if it was poisonous she looked at it and said "Um, not very poisonous" so apparently I killed a semi-poisonous spider today.

Speaking of new experiences, there were monkeys all over the yard today. They don't really come to Dickson, they just are around Dickson, but today I had to shoo away no less than 1/2 a dozen monkeys by hissing and shaking broomsticks and taking flash photography of them. Mind you I'm terrified of these monkeys because they travel in packs and aren't terribly afraid of humans and if they decide to attack, they attack as a group. But I figured I could handle rabies shots better than the little ones, so I spent a good hour chasing monkeys.

I taught a math lesson in the morning and an English lesson in the afternoon. The kids were surprisingly well behaved today.

During lunch, the house mother who allegedly beats the children came to talk to me. After our talk, I'm now really ashamed of myself. Not because of what I did or how I reacted, I'd much rather over react than under react in an abusive situation, but I'm ashamed that I condemned her as guilty without any proof or even hearing her side of the story. I have a J.D. I am (hopefully) 2 months away from hearing that I am fit to practice law in the state of New York. I should know that there are two sides to every story. I don't necessarily know if I believe that she hasn't been beating the children (and she did admit that she had in the past, but had stopped when she learned it was unacceptable at Dickson), but what I do know is that I now understand temporary insanity. I went utterly berserk and was ready to kick the shit out of her on the basis of allegations. It is a very, very, very embarassing thing to have reacted as I did given what I know about the law and what I've studied for the past 3 years. I love these children so much that the idea of someone laying a hand on them put me into this blind rage. I see why people in criminal law have to be completely detached from their cases. I became judge, jury, and executioner and that's totally antithetical to what we belive as a society, what I believe as an individual, and what I want Kenya to belive in and adopt. I'm going to purchase a apology card for not waiting to hear more of the story- but I am going to stress that if it's true I'm going to be horribly pissed and that I don't apologize for immediately going to Matheka and Ria; only that I condemned her in my head before even entertaining the idea that these are children and children have wild imaginations and unrealistic concepts of time. 3 spanks become 10, a beating in January becomes last month, a lecture on homework becomes a threat. I should have waited before completely writing her off.

The other thing about all this is that it's also very difficult for me to accept that she has ever beat the children. That she had to be told that beating is unacceptable at Dickson. The problem with that thinking is that it would be like saying in America "You must beat the children if they are bad"- it's completely foreign to us. To a Kenyan, not having permission to beat a child is completely foreign. So I think a lot of factors played into my immediately wanting this woman dismissed (although I still want a thorough investigation done), but irrespective of all that, I am deeply ashamed that I reacted and condemned her the way I did. I will apologize to her and I apologize to all of you. My only defense (and it's a pretty pathetic one) is temporary insanity.

I think I get my Kenyan card today. I looked out the window and saw it was raining. I shot out of the classroom, ran up the stairs and grabbed every bucket I could so as to set them out and collect the rainwater. I didn't think about it until after I was done and I was like "Whoa, my first instict is to collect rainwater" so I thought that was pretty crazy for someone who insists on taking cabs when there's merely a forecast for rain.

The teacher came over to me and started asking my opinon about this "Dickson Report Card" she was trying to fashion. No one ever asks for my opinon. As soon as she started I cut her off and said "Do you want me to make photocopies for you?" and she smiled and laughed and said "You're so funny. Yes." I'm totally happy to do it, it's for the kids not her crazy Christians, but I again was pretty proud that I didn't subject myself to 20 minutes of song and dance. I immediately recognized where this was going and saved myself 20 minutes of head nodding. Although she does give me the heeby jeebies a bit. She's always talking about the blood of Christ washing the kids and today she again brought up the thing about children being made evil while in the womb and she also said that Mombasa used to be hotter but the people couldn't handle it so the influx of her branch of Christianity brought with it God's grace and he brought down the temperatures in Mombasa. I explained to her about global warming and that weather everywhere is being fucked with. She didn't seem too convinced.

So, this is probably my last post until I get to Schipol on Monday. I'm staying at Dickson tomorrow night and Saturday night and leave Sunday. I might be able to slip out for a bit at some point on Saturday but I don't think so and what's more I don't think I'll want to take the time. I gotta soak up a year's worth of them, so I think I'm Dickson-bound for the next few days.

Don't unsubscribe to this blog just yet, I promise there'll be a post on Monday at the latest.

Lots of love to all you beautiful people. Talk soon.