Finally, consistent wifi! I’m a little under the weather right now, so I’m just hanging out in my apartment. It’s been a long time since I’ve posted something, but here is something I wrote last night. I promise to write something semi-serious soon.
I have a nemesis. This nemesis has been targeting my morale, employing dirty tactics in order to weaken me throughout the day. This nemesis has been keeping me awake for the past two nights and left me exhausted and angry. This nemesis is relentless in its pursuit to bring me to an end.
This nemesis has a name, and its name is “mosquito.”
Warning: This post contains graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.
Another post about food! This is weird to talk about, since it happened last Thursday but I really should catch up on this stupid blog. So since my last post about the whole egg disaster, I learned how to cook something! Beef Stroganoff! It’s one of the simplest things to make though, so don’t go collapsing in awe yet. All it requires is pasta, ground beef, mushroom soup, garlic powder, sour cream, and some salt and pepper for flavor. Even I couldn’t mess it up. This past week, I decided to spice things up (haha literally god I’m funny) by making some chili. Again, I found a very simple recipe that only required a few ingredients. But when I got to the supermarket, I knew I would have to use my improvisational skills to create my chili.
This post is to talk about two things. First, some issues I’ve had with classes and second, WIFI!
First, I should talk about the more important stuff I guess. At the place we are staying, wifi is uber inconsistent. I really don’t know why people complain about Eaglesecure at AU because it really isn’t all that bad. Wifi at my apartment is bad. I think last week, we had wifi for a total of three days maybe? And that’s being generous. It starts working at random times and stops working at random times with no reasoning as to why this occurs, which makes it really awkward when you said you would talk to someone at a certain hour or have a scheduled video chat. Right now, I am at Java House because they have wifi access and there was no wifi at my apartment. ONLY THE WIFI ISN’T WORKING HERE TOO! So I’m just going to type this now and upload it later.
Wow, I’m such a whiner. I’m embarrassed. Anyway, onto something that’s less important: academics. Basically there isn’t a whole lot I want to say about the issue for the former professor’s sake. But I will say that the first two weeks of class, none of us learned anything and we were actually doing the teaching. And we provided feedback to our program director about this, and he later met with our professor. And then she respectfully resigned. So now our class is in super turbo mode because our classes were ALREADY CONDENSED so we would finish classes at the end of October. And by losing the first two weeks of class, we essentially lost four weeks of instruction. AND our new professor decided we’d be better off if we started over. So yeah, that’s been a little bit of a struggle but hopefully won’t be a huge issue.
That’s it! The song of the post is “Madame Coquette” by Tape Five
So it’s been awhile since I last used this. I knew I was going to be bad at blogging. But we didn’t have a whole lot of WiFi this week, and when we did, I wanted to watch some TV. So obviously I first have to talk about THE GIRAFFES (and the elephants and the gypsies I guess)!!!
It was over a week ago, but I still remember the fateful day of September 13, 2014 like it was yesterday. The day started off with taking a van/bus to the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage. Right away, it was so apparent that this was a tourist hotspot just by the racial make-up of the attendees. Mzungus as far as the eye could see. We were all walked to this area where a rectangular perimeter was roped off. Then, THE ELEPHANT BABIES. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god they were so cute. The were fed by the staff and then started playing with one another and walking around the perimeter. It was too much. It was actually too much for some people, cause the women behind me was making semi-orgasmic sounds and it was making me really uncomfortable. But when I got a chance to pet the elephants, IT WAS LIFE CHANGING!!! I didn’t realize just how rough their skin would be. And the tips of their trunks were all wet and a little slimy. We only had an hour to see/touch them, but it was magical.
So I’m pretty bad at talking to strangers. Like, really bad. So when I went to get a haircut yesterday, I was expecting to sit in silence as some stranger cut away at my hair, pay, say “thank you,” and walk out. But instead the woman who was cutting my hair and her daughter, who was sitting next to me, started talking to me. At first I was like “Ahhh, small talk! Abort! Abort! Abort!” But the conversation was actually super interesting and it ended up being the best haircut ever. I was telling them about how I was a student from the U.S., where I was studying in Nairobi and all that good stuff. Then they asked if I felt safe in Nairobi and I said, “Yeah. Our program is really looking out for us here. Plus a lot of the guidelines they give us are just common sense.” They were really happy to hear that. They talked about how the U.S. media tends to exaggerate everything and makes all of Africa seem like it’s hell on earth. And I absolutely agreed with them. After all, in my previous post about some of the reactions I got when I told people I was going to Kenya, most of them were ridiculous. I told them what people had told me and they seemed saddened. “This is my home. This is normal. Any major city is going to have crime, have dangers. Why does America make us seem like we all live in grass huts and are shooting each other to death?” Many areas of Africa are dangerous. Even some communities within Nairobi are more dangerous than others. But to generalize all of Africa as one big cesspool of humanity? Not okay. I knew this massive generalization that is so common in the U.S. was wrong before I came to Kenya, but it was different seeing it from a local’s perspective. I have a lot of hometown pride and pride for D.C. If someone was to tell me, “Oh my god, how could you live in D.C.? Aren’t you scared of a terrorist attack? What if you get shot?” or something along those lines, I would be pissed and saddened.
So, in summary, not only did I get a haircut, my hair washed AND dried (I wanted to keep on talking to them) for 1650 Kenyan shillings ($18.60 in U.S. dollars), but I had a very nice conversation for about 20 minutes. Everyone is a lot less wired in here in Nairobi compared to most places in the U.S. Hopefully by the end of this semester I’ll be even better at shutting off all electronics and enjoying the people who are around me.
The song of the day is the Flash Gordon theme song
I LOVE our Swahili class. I’m pretty bad at learning languages, but our professor is great and I really feel as if I’m learning a lot in his class. I also learned that some of the characters in “The Lion King” have Swahili names. “Rafiki” means “friend” and “Simba” means “lion.” Who would name their child after their own species? Like what if someone named their child “human?” Maybe Mufasa wasn’t as great as everyone made him out to be. Anyway, here is a paragraph with some of the things I have learned in Swahili and its English translation:
Ninaitwa Andrew na mimi ni mmerikani. Ninaishi Westlands lakini ninasoma University of Nairobi. Mimi ni mwanafunzi wa afya ya umma na jinsia. Sijeoa. Ninapenda nyama, nanasi, marafiki, mandazi na simosas. Pia, ninapenda sana julala na matwiga. Nina miaka ishirini.
Asanteni!
Ni hay tu.
My name is Andrew and I am an American. I live in Westlands, but I’m studying at the University of Nairobi. I am a student of Public Health and Gender Studies. I’m not married. I like meat, pineapple, my friends, mandazi and simosas. Also, I really like sleeping and giraffes. I am 20 years old.
Thanks!
That’s all.
Oh yeah, and in my culture class I was baptized with the Swahili name for giraffe: Twiga. The song of the day is “Rhythm Nation” by Janet Jackson
It’s been awhile! Whenever I wanted to make a blog post over the past few days, the wifi has not been working. And whenever the wifi has been working, I just wanted to watch emotional X Factor UK videos and cry about it #myhobbies. So this will just be a mess of random thoughts, mostly about orientation and classes!
Orientation was INCREDIBLE! It feels like it was forever ago! It was a smorgasbord of sight-seeing, learning and eating.
Insert cheesy rendition of “On Top of the World” by Imagine Dragons
Oh and the eating. We went out to such nice restaurants and on two separate occasions I had the opportunity to eat with my internship partner at Seeds of Peace Africa and my professors. I almost screwed up talking to my internship partner, because the conversation at our table (there were three others) got shifted to queer issues and of course I was like “BOOM! THIS IS MY JAM YO!” So I talked and talked and talked about queer issues/history/etc. She was so nice and was just nodding her head, but the man to my right, who represented an organization I wasn’t interning for, didn’t seem to happy with the conversation. He started saying things like how gay people can’t reproduce blah blah blah. But it did teach me that I do need to pick my battles. I also learned some survival Swahili, including “mzungu” which basically means “white people.” My go-to response for when I’m called a “mzungu” by a stranger is, “Wapi Mzungu?!” as I look wildly around, which loosely translates to “Where is the white person?!”
Speaking of Swahili, my Swahili class is going great! I’ll create a separate post with some of the things I’ve learned in that class so far. My other classes are going great too! I’m taking Epidemiology, Community Health, a class on Kenyan Culture, and Environmental Health. Our professors are normally teaching much more educated students, but it is just AU students being taught by these highly educated and established professors. One of our professors had to switch his class to another day because he needed to meet with the first lady of Kenya. Casual. I’ve only run into minor issues with the classes so far. One was in our epidemiology class where some translation issues led to a whole lot of confusion. And another was in another class where the professor made a racist remark involving Chinese people and dogs and nobody knew how to react. After talking to Frances, our professor for our culture class and a member of the AU Abroad team in Kenya, I learned that I don’t have to feel uncomfortable about speaking up in those situations. Being at the University of Nairobi is really great, and they have this cheap and delicious cafe place right outside of our classroom.
I think that’s it for this post, but I’ll be making a bunch more in a sec! STAY TUNED.
Last night I cooked eggs. This is what I wrote last night after the experience. If my current or future apartment-mates read this, just know that I’m getting better and my culinary skills will be wowing you in no time!
Holy shit. I’ve never felt so incompetent in my entire life. I’m literally a giant man-child. I’m in a semi-dangerous area of the world and I can’t even cook eggs right.
So the first thing I did was crack open an egg and put it in a bowl. That part I aced. But then came a truly daunting task: lighting the stove. I turned on the gas and then went to light the match. It took me a little too long to light the match, so when the match (and my hand) were six inches away from stove….WOOSH. Flames everywhere. I briefly freaked out, and then told myself it wasn’t a big deal. I then put some butter on the saucepan and put it on the stove. I spread the butter around and tried to create an even coat, but it wasn’t quite enough butter. But I had already had the gas on for a couple of minutes and I didn’t want to waste anymore, so I just poured the egg from the bowl onto the saucepan. The way I poured it caused the egg yolk to not be in the center, but rather on the edge of the egg white. I tried pushing it to the center with my fork, but instead the egg yolk burst in the saucepan. One of my apartment-mates came in and I immediately felt a rush of shame sweep over me. “Wow, these are some pretty bad eggs….” I said self-defensively.
Being in Kenya, I’m already a little paranoid about making sure I eat food that won’t make my insides explode. So I left the egg on the saucepan a little bit too long. To the point where I burnt the egg. Have you ever seen a burnt egg before? Probably not. Because only pathetic man-babies burn their eggs. Anyway, I heated up some leftover Indian food and put the egg on top of it. My apartment-mates left to watch a movie in another apartment, so I ate my Indian egg smorgasbord with only my disgrace as company. After I ate the burnt egg (which didn’t actually taste too bad) and a little bit of the food (it was still a little cold), I mustered up some courage and decided to give it another shot.
This time, I wasn’t going to mess up. This time, everything would go smoothly. I had learned from my previous mistakes, so I decided to light the match BEFORE turning on the gas. So I tried to light the match and it snaps in the middle. But it hadn’t fallen apart yet so I still tried to use it. I managed to light the match, but the bent match burnt my hand and I dropped it to the ground. I saw a small flame on the ground and immediately stomped on it and then tossed it in the trashcan. I then tried once more, lighting the match successfully and then turned the gas on. Huzzah! The flame has been lit! I then blew out the match and tried to throw it in the trashcan. I said “tried” because it actually fell into the corner and the flame reignited. So I quickly tossed the trashcan aside and stomped on the match and then threw it in the trashcan (I was becoming an old pro at this by now). I put some butter on the saucepan, more than before. I then try to crack an egg and put it in the same bowl as before, but I somehow manage to not crack it properly and I force it open. When the egg falls out into the bowl, I see not a golden sun of a yolk but rather what looks like the crime scene of a murder. I decide there is nothing I can do and I pour the egg onto the saucepan.
The egg yolk is all over the place and nowhere near the center, but I know better than to try and fix it. I had waited about 90 seconds when I realized that I hadn’t microwaved the Indian food yet! So I quickly dashed back to the living room and grabbed my plate of Indian food. I tried to open the microwave, but the door was a little stuck. Finally, the door flew open and my hand knocked my bottle of sterilized water into the kitchen sink. I could hear the egg sizzling in the background. I grabbed the bottle and put it back on the counter, then turned on the microwave for two minutes. I then rushed back the egg and was relieved at what I saw. The egg hadn’t burnt yet! I turned off the gas and decided to wait for the Indian food to get out of the microwave. But even though the gas was off, the egg was still cooking! My dream of a perfectly fried egg with a runny yolk was in danger of becoming another failure! So I lifted the saucepan off the stove and just held it in the middle of the kitchen. It was still sizzling, so I just grabbed the Indian food out of the microwave and put the egg on top.
Overall, the egg was much better than the first one. Still, the yolk was solid and not at all what I had hoped for. The Indian food was still a little chilly. It seems that my experience in Kenya, and in the kitchen, will be a trial by fire. Here’s hoping that I don’t set Nairobi on fire in the process.
Get it? Instead of “Can’t Let Nobody Know I’m Queer,” I said, “Can’t Let Nairo-body Know I’m Queer.” That’s comedy gold right there.
I’ll get to other parts of orientation a little later, but there was something I wanted to talk about first. When I first told people that I was studying abroad in Kenya, I was met with a wide variety of reactions. Here’s a taste of just some of the reactions:
Watch out for AIDS!
What about those kidnapped girls in Nigeria? Aren’t you scared?
EBOLA!
They have schools in Africa?
Are you going to be living in a hut?
Why aren’t you going some place civilized?
Will you even have access to electricity?
But you’re gay, why would you go there when you can’t be open and “homosexuality” is a crime?
Don’t get shot.
What about malaria?
Why?
As you can see, I faced a wide variety of reactions. Some were reasonable, some were ignorant, some were insulting and some were just downright offensive. So I will use this post to address each of those concerns.
When I first woke up the morning of September 1st, 2014, my first thought was, “Fuck this.” I had barely slept the night before and I knew that it would be a long while till I was doing my favorite thing again: sleeping in a bed. I was also a little groggy probably because of the several bottles of hard cider I consumed the night before. I wouldn’t call myself a light-weight and I wasn’t actually hungover the next morning, but I feel as if the bottles contributed to my overall “Fuck this” attitude. My two check-in bags have already been packed, but I still had to pack my carry-on backpack. Mom made a super amazing breakfast (sausage wrapped in bacon is my favorite thing ever) and it was really nice to have a sit-down breakfast with the family before I departed for a few months. I wish I had been more awake for the good-byes, as I was kinda just like “Bye parents. See ya.” Everything was smooth sailing, from the jitney ride all the way through security at JFK.
A Giraffe Abroad: Stories of a Tall Skinny Man Abroad 