I haven’t been on hiatus, I’ve been on holiday! Actually I’ve been working a lot, but I did make it across the border this past weekend for a little rest and relaxation. One thing I realized during my 24-hour stay in Tanzania was that my Swahili is permanently Kenyan-ized. I’ve already accepted that I’m nowhere near fluent by Kenyan standards, but I’m a disaster by Tanzanian standards. You see, after their independence, Tanzania embraced Swahili as the national language in order to unite their country as a common people, no longer colonized and no longer a collection of tribes — they were Tanzanians now! Kenya chose both Swahili and English, and while people here do speak Swahili, it’s kinda a watered-down, English-ized version (“sheng”). Kenyans even make fun of Tanzanian Swahili because it’s a chore to speak correctly, it’s boring, and it even sounds funny because it’s so polite. And I know it’s terrible, but I do too.
A Thousand Words
I’ve talked about how surreal running around ILRI during my lunch break is before. Two or three days a week we go jogging around the countryside surrounding the ILRI campus. Rain or shine, we strap up and run through the little towns of Uthiru and Ndambuini, on through the quiet village of Soweto (no, not the slum in South Africa), and down into a small valley filled with streams, cows, corn fields, and local dudes. You hear people speaking Kikuyu, Kiswahili, Kikamba, and then some little kid yells, “Mzungu!” and you remember, “Oohh shit, I live in Kenya.” I have gotten so used to this life that I do it without even thinking. I know I’ve written a lot over the past two years, so you guys must have some pictures in your head of what my life is like, but I also know that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Marathon Pictures
“Pictures or it didn’t happen!” Well it happened: I ran ten kilometers in the 2009 Nairobi Marathon, and here are the pictures to prove it! There were almost sixty of us from ILRI, and we all finished without the aid of an ambulance. Finishing ten kilometers was a bit anti-climatic because we didn’t finish inside the stadium. I’m not even sure I crossed the finish line because by the time I got there people were already lined up waiting for medals or certificates or something. Next time I’ll do the half marathon (twenty-one kilometers).
Some people even told me they saw me on TV running. I guess I’m on my way to being famous, maybe?
Update (May 3, 2016): pictures got lost, oh well.