Today, or tomorrow, is the Tibetan new year.  And, incidentally, the Chinese new year.  So xin nian kuai le, and losar tashi delek to everyone out there.  

…now that I look at a calendar, I guess maybe it was yesterday.  bu hao yi si

I’m enjoying the pleasant, sunny confines of Nairobi right now.  After wandering around last week, I enrolled in a kiswahili course.  Cheaper than a safari, more useful than a swiss army knife.  The time spent in one area has been a good chance to get my bearings and learn how things work.

For the most part, what you think about Kenya is probably right.  There are lots of elephants and giraffes and other charismatic megafauna (as the legal jargon has it), but you’d have to go at least 10km out of the city to find them.  And, it is also true that the city and the country are not 100% safe, so you’d be right about that.

However.  Brooklyn is also not that safe.  It’s difficult to convey the levels of daily life here, and just how distorted our western vision is:  the downtown streets are mobbed with women and men in suits, jawing on their cell phones while matatus (van-taxis) bump reggae and the odd street preacher screams biblical prophecy.  Occasionally a masaai tribesman might pop out of the crowd.  It’s a regular, mashed-up multicultural, capital city.  It’s true that you wouldn’t want to walk around after dark, but that piece of common sense is pretty much universally applicable.

The young crowd at the hostel are international travellers, and a mix of local students, NGO workers, and artists.  I share a 20 bunk room with the guys from the Kenyan Youth Performing Arts Group.  They have been recruited from all over, and spend their days studying hip-hop and classical dance.  Everyone has a cell phone, and everyone knows who Barack Obama is (his grandparents live in a village in the western part of the country).  The kids are alright.

Kiswahili is a mixture of Bantu and Arabic, created by regular trade up and down the eastern coast.  So, after my last crash-course class tomorrow, I’m obliged to head to the coast and soak up some real cultural fusion.  It’s with a heavy heart that I head to the beach.  A heavy, heavy heart. 

practice with me:

safari – journey, travel

jenga – build, construct

simba – lion

salamuu – greetings

soda – soda