Hujambo!

No, scorpions are not furry. Neither are snakes. I guess some spiders are, but now I’m bringing back too many memories from Tala. I don’t think those wild animals will be bugging me any more now that I’ve moved to Nairobi. Instead, I have two wildly energetic dogs constantly disturbing me, Peanut and Mascha. Peanut’s probably a black lab and Mascha is… furry. My roommate recently inherited them when his mom passed away, so last month he flew back to New York and arranged to have them brought to Kenya. They’re a great addition to the house, and I’ve missed having dogs as pets (since the only other interaction I’ve had with dogs was them chasing me in Tala while I was carrying groceries on my bike. On a bumpy dirt road. At night).

Peanut is the friendlier of the two, but he’s also the youngest and a bit more excitable. He likes to come sit on my bed when I’m on the computer in my room. If I leave for more than a minute or two, he’ll jump up and run to find me. The other night he was sleeping on my bed and I didn’t want to disturb him but I wanted to sleep too, so I just climbed under the sheets. I kicked him off the bed in the middle of the night when he refused to scoot over and was hogging all the blankets (and I was starting to get cold). I don’t think he took it personally because he still runs to greet me when I come home from work in the evening!
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This goat is the king of Tala’s market (or at least he walks around like he owns the place). I’m not sure how old it is, but I’ve been seeing him for nearly two years now. That means it has lasted through at least two Christmas and two Easter feasts. A colleague of mine swears the goat has an owner, and I guess he’s probably right, but what gives? If it has an owner, it’s oblivious of the fact; this goat is does what it wants when it wants to! I took these pictures yesterday as I was walking home with my buddy Sammy (the jamaa (“dude”) in the shorts). I even saw it again tonight. I tried to take a picture of it last week but my phone’s battery had died. Good thing too, because my buddy was calling me a tourist, haha!

One afternoon I took a back route home from the market and I saw a girl relaxing on a blanket and smoking some weed; there was nobody else around, but the goat was proudly standing just a few feet away from her. I just cracked up. Another time I walked past a church crusade (singing, dancing, evangelizing) on a Sunday in Tala’s market, and it was standing right behind the crowd of people, as if to remind onlookers of that age-old duality of good versus evil. Yet another time I was leaving the market a bit late and I saw it just chillin’ in the public transit terminus (a bit creepy because it was dark, the wind was blowing, and the market was nearly deserted). Besides, look at the horns on this thing!

We’re used to it by now, but it never ceases to crack me up. Crazy Tala!

I posted back in April how the rains had come, and that I expected to get a lot of new friends in the house because of it. Well the rains have been scarce, but I think that post served as an invitation of sorts, because I’ve had some creepy crawlies. I saw this guy a few nights ago in the kitchen as I was cooking dinner. The scary thing to me is that it was on the ceiling; the five or so scorpions I’ve seen previously were all chillin’ on the floor.

I read a bit about scorpions on Wikipedia and was somewhat relieved to read:

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Ugh! This morning I was rudely awakened by a big, stupid bird making a racket on my roof. I looked around the web and apparently it’s a Pied Crow, by the way. I have a roof made of aluminum and these stupid birds love to party up there. They are neither beautiful to look at nor lovely to listen to. They are only annoying as hell. I don’t know what kind of dance moves he was working on this morning, but I was just trying to catch some last Zs before work and the noise was so loud. I jumped out of bed yelling all sorts of bad words, rushing to see if I could catch a peek at what was going on. Unfortunately, by the time I opened the door he had heard me and flown away.

This is not the first time. They even go collecting things from my compost pit and take them up there to hang out and eat a nice meal. One time I heard something rolling down the roof, so I ran outside just in time to see an egg shell hit the ground (a chicken egg shell I had thrown, not like “awww, poor baby crow never had a chance…”). What the hell? Anyways, other favorite moves of theirs are dive bombs; they just get a lot of speed and land on the roof with everything they’ve got. Whaaaaam! Ahhh!! And it always happens at the worst time (like when you just want FIVE more minutes of sleep).
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The rains have started to fall in Tala. As far as I can tell, this has two major ramifications:

1. Farmers will grow food this season (rains were sporadic last season)
2. Lots of animals will crawl into my house

Let it be known: I come in peace, but if you scare the shit out of me I might kill you. Especially at night. Visitors I’ve had in the past year and a half:

• Scorpions: 5
• Snakes: 2.5 (one was technically in the pit latrine in my backyard, so that’s half ;)
• Spiders: 6

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