Hujambo!

I was just riding the matatu to work when an mlevi (drunkard) got on the bus. As soon as he saw me he started shouting, “America!” and then something indistinguishable about Jesus. I don’t know if it was in English or Swahili because he was slurring. By now he had put his teddy bear in my lap (I know, what the hell?) and everyone on the bus was obviously staring at me. When I finally understood that he wanted me to say, “Amen” I just smiled and looked nervously around.

How can you out wit a charismatic drunk man with Jesus on his side? I admit I was at a loss for words… all I could come up with was, “I don’t say ‘Amen’.” I didn’t say it too loudly because I didn’t want to start a debate. I guess I shocked him but it didn’t matter because after a few seconds he went on shouting about America and Obama.

Today was International Women’s Day and ILRI held a few events to honor women in science. In addition to listening to speeches and drinking coffee, seventy girls from local high schools came to tour the labs and talk to our female scientists. In the afternoon we watched a few videos, one of which, by writer and activist Isabel Allende, was very moving. The speech was given as a TED Talk in 2007.

If you want to see more inspiring videos, check out ILRI’s video archive on blip.tv or head over to the TED Talks website.

And I always loved toast with peanut butter and honey. I forgot to pay my electricity bill on time and KPLC came and disconnected me. That was almost a week ago, and I am still trying to figure out how to get it turned back on. Surprisingly, my hot water heater was hot for about a day, and then luke warm for another day beyond that. Hot water is great for shaving, but lighting the bathroom with a candle really sucks.

I guess my internal “pay the bills” clock was off this month (probably because I was in Ethiopia for two weeks), but the system still totally sucks. I always wait a few days to pay an electricity bill after I get it, which would explain why I never quite know which month I’m paying for. I blame it on KPLC. I had the bill sitting under my door when I got home on February 19th, but my housing agency stamped that they received it on February 10th (who knows when it got to my apartment), and the “due date” was February 6th. It doesn’t make any sense, but I’ve still learned my lesson: don’t mess with KPLC bills because getting it reconnected is a pain in the ass.

Nevertheless, having no power for the past five days has been a hoot. I’ve gotten to know my neighbors (“Do you guys want this food from my fridge?”), I’ve been eating my favorite breakfast food for dinner (toast and peanut butter), and I’m a pro at taking cold showers, something I’ve always known I could do, but never had to (except that one time in Jaipur with Randi). Not to mention I feel like a volunteer again… haha.

What is really lame is that they don’t answer their phones during business hours, and I can’t go to their office because I have a day job. These people don’t make any sense at all. I’m going to take a bit a of time off work in the morning and try to go see if I can sort all this out. Wish me luck.

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee and I can assure you they make a damn good cup of joe in Addis Ababa. The Ethiopians were never colonized, save a few years in the 1930s by the Italians, so the culture of drinking coffee is truly their own. Coffee has been drank ceremoniously in the region for hundreds of years, spreading eventually to the Arabian peninsula, Europe and finally the Americas. Thanks to Starbucks and their “gourmet” blends, many Americans have an association between Ethiopia and coffee, but very few people know that it actually originated here.

You can drink good coffee in Nairobi but, compared to Addis Ababa, you really have to go out of your way to get it. Until very recently there wasn’t really a culture of drinking coffee in Kenya, Kenyans instead preferring to drink tea (a habit brought by the British in the early 1900s). Now there are several European-style coffee shops in Nairobi (Java House and Dorman’s, for example) and it’s becoming more popular to go hang out over a cup of coffee. That being said, Kenyans are very frugal and coffee’s still a bit expensive in Nairobi, so you really have to LOVE coffee to do it often; I always end up offering to pay just so I can get MY fix…
Read more

The refugees on my street corner. I ain’t talking about the rap group, I’m talkin’ about real ones, from Somalia… just chillin’ on the corner of my street. I’m not sure if they sleep there, because they’re gone when I leave for work in the morning, but they do have blankets. I guess it makes sense, because the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (Somalia Mission) is just down the street. I’m not sure why I’ve never seen them until recently, because my new apartment is just a block from my old place. Lately I’ve even seen them cooking food on wood fires. It’s obviously very awkward for me when I walk by them because I usually have a big bag of groceries…

In addition to the UNHCR, there’s an International Organization of Migration office around the corner, which I’ve long assumed was the reason 50% of the people I see when walking to the bus stop in the morning are Somali women covered from head to toe in hijab (the men, however, are wearing the latest in trendy fashion). I wish I knew more about these organizations, like: what is the probability of repatriation for refugees? Are there any criteria, maybe something which could disqualify you? Which country do most of them go to?

On a related note, I just saw this irrefutable evidence in Somalia proving the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: http://www.venganza.org/2008/04/14/somalia/

Update, January 28th: I heard the people speaking Swahili today, which leads me to believe they’re from Congo or Rwanda… That’s not to say that Somalians can’t speak Swahili, but Somalian Swahili doesn’t sound like the one I heard! I still don’t have any insight as to why they are there.