Day 5: 3 Times a Lady

After I left the internet cafe I was reminded of that gutted feeling I got when walking the streets at night. First, I saw DOZENS of teen and pre-teen boys huffing glue. They seem to have increased in number substantially since last year. In case you forgot, they mix gasoline and industrial glue in the bottom of a water bottle, stick it into their mouths, and breath. Not just a few times. They just put the bottles in their mouths and leave it there for hours on end. It's fucking horrifying. Then, 4 children under 5 came running up to me for money. I never give money, I give food. But still, they were all the sizes of Mwangi, Emmanuel-Charles, Moses, and Joram. It really, really sucks to see a barefoot, dirty, orphaned child begging.

That segues nicely into why I lose so much weight while here. I could never put my finger on it, but it's not just that the food is impossible to even choke down when being polite, it's that when I have access to my own food I feel ashamed to eat it. If I eat it at the Kiambi house I offend the maid. If I eat it on the street, hungry children see me eating. If I eat at Dickson, the children watch me eat foods that they don't get. There is no where safe. Today I hid behind the mutatu to suck down a juice box. I felt like a little fat kid hiding his snacks; a feeling I have very often here since I'm always trying to sneak a little snack without getting caught.

I love when people have pride in their homes. I saw a woman sweeping the dirt in front of her hut that is on a dirt road. Apparently the top layer of dirt was dirty and she wanted to access the fresher, cleaner dirt underneath. Weird, but it made me smile.

What certainly doesn't make me smile is the pungent aromas that encircle Kenya. This must be a land of mouth breathers because I can barely keep from fainting. Sweaty people, air pollution that makes LA air seem like it's Fiji air, embraced public farting, rotting garbage, and my favorite, burning garbage. That is how you get rid of garbage when it's piled too high. You burn it. So if you haven't smelt a month old rotting pile of garbage while it's on fire, I gotta tell you, it wakes you up better than a gram of cocaine. There are no droopy eyelids when there's burnt compost up your nose.

People are always shouting things at you as you walk by. Whether it's to give you a mutatu ride or a tuk-tuk ride or to sell you shoes or to sell you their pussy, they're always hollering things at you. There seems to be an etiquette to who you ignore and who you acknowledge. I look like a shizo tho constantly trying to acknowledge everyone. "Hapana" "Hapana sasa" "Asante, hapana" I just do it over and over because I don't want to be rude. I kind of stick out here as it is.

It flash flooded here today. I think I prefer wet ground to dry ground. When it's wet, it's muddy and you get mudsplashed by vehicles, but when it's dry you get covered in this duststorm that makes my eyes burn and my nose stuffy. The Kenyans can walk on water; they are so adept at walking and avoiding mud puddles and gliding over puddles while balancing a basket on their head that I'm pretty sure they taught Jesus a thing or two about maintaining balance on bodies of water.

When I got to Dickson I helped hang laundry. I know that doesn't sound very arduous, but there are 31 kids at Dickson. It takes a solid hour. Luckily by this time around I've learned how to do it properly so the housemothers don't come and redo all the work I do.

After I went inside I was asked to tend to Eric, the 8 month old. I walked him around for a good 2 minutes before he peed so much that he soaked through his diaper and onto my shirt. So, 3 days and I managed to get peed on. It seems like my pee-free streaks are getting shorter with each trip. Next time someone will just whip it out and whiz on me as I'm getting off the plane. It's actually become shocking to me how OK I've become with it. The first year I flipped out and scrubbed my torso and changed my shirt. The second time I shrugged my shoulders and changed my shirt. This time I sat in the sun for 5 minutes and went about my day.

Brian may have a run for his money when it comes to being the only gay kid. Joram spent a solid hour doing my hair today. My 1/4" of hair. He just brushed it and styled it as much as he could for an insane chunk of time. Nima, you may say, a child brushing hair isn't that gay. Well, What do you want me to say? We were sitting on rainbow unicorns, singing Cher, and farting glitter while we were doing it. It's not just the hair combing, there are other signs. The hair care is just one of them that I'm taking the time to share with you.

I played Memory (see yesterday) with Mwangi and Marion today. In addition to being kinda hard, it's really boring.

I took the kids to the cinema today. We saw "G-Force" which is one of the most god-awful films I've ever seen. The children loved it.

It's crazy how much we take for granted. I swear we could have just ridden around town in mutatus and the kids would have thought it was a great day. Riding in a car. Something they rarely get to experience. They were shrieking and laughing and giggling like they were in a moonbounce filled with candy. It was really refreshing considering I get bored waiting for a table. Not only do I have a phone to make calls with, but I have an iPhone filled with games and other applications to amuse myself with. And I get bored. They find the excitement in a car ride. I have to do some re-thinking.

The movie was in 3-D and the kids spent the first 10 minutes trying to grab the things that were coming at them. It's actually a really fun movie for all the 3-D elements, but the plot is so horrible that it takes away from the cool 3-D stuff. Luckily the kids don't speak English well and thus were very, very entertained. BTW, if anyone happened to see "G-Force" I'm curious to hear what you thought of the Tracy Morgan guinea pig. He just spouted black-isms throughout the entire film; right down to "Ah ya, they pimped my ride". I'm not being so much racially sensitive as I am attesting to the poor caliber of the writing, but maybe it's just my snobby B.A. in film rearing it's ugly head and it really was an acceptable movie.

1/2 the kids fell asleep on the mutatu ride home which boggles my mind. Even paved roads feel like we're off-roading. I get whiplash going 1/2 a block and they were sound asleep. Brian's head was resting against the window and we hit a huge bump and his head swung back and knocked into the window with such force I thought the window was gonna break and Brian would wake up crying. Instead, Brian just kept right on sleep drooling all over the window.

When we got back, I was reminded of something that I either notice less or has become more socially unacceptable. I'm hoping the latter. I forgot that public nose picking is acceptable here. That is, I forgot until one of the housemoms started a conversation with me with her fist up her nose. Chatting away digging so far up that she must have been poking her brain. I try to avert my eyes, but it's just so shocking that I end up staring. She either didn't mind or didn't notice.

My dynamic with the older boys is very strange this year. They are completely ignoring me but get upset when I leave at night and ask me to spend the night. I don't know if it's that age where you are too cool to hang around adult supervision but you still like them around or what, but it's very odd. I tried conversing a bit and it wasn't happening. Yesterday we kicked around the soccer ball for a bit, but that's been almost all my interaction with them. There are enough little ones that I can focus my attention on, but I'm not exactly sure what's going on there. Sigh. Boys. I don't think I'll ever understand them.

Mwangi-Joshua has taken a shining to me. He's the one who has only been at Dickson for a month. He still spits and hits a lot, is fascinated with light switches and the TV, and eats out of the garbage when not supervised. Somehow he jumped on the Nima bandwagon and we were playing for quite a while. Then some other boys came over to play and he started beating on them so as to keep me for himself. Needless to say I had to stop playing with him so as to prevent him from giving the other boys concussions.

Jumwa and I chatted for a bit after the movie. It was nice because she's pretty shy. Last year at the end of my trip she apologized for being so shy so I guess this year she's trying to break past that. The older Mary is still painfully shy. When I asked her what kind of soda she wanted at the cinema she started giggling and looked down and whispered it to the teacher. I can't push, but I thought by the third time she'd relax a bit but I guess not. Maybe on the 4th.

Time to wrap up. To give you an idea of how crazy the stomach stuff here is, I'll tell you a little story. I have been on this earth for 27+ years. I like to think after that much time, I know my body. Clearly, I do not. I thought I was a little constipated because of all the starchy food. I sat down to try to force a little something out and instead my ass exploded all over. Not only does everything here make you sick, but you don't even know what kind of sick until you sit down. It's like toilet Russian roulette.