Leo Njema (Good Day)

Hey winners,

I’ve actually been somewhat of an Emo Pete for most of my Nairobi experience thus far. I miss D.C., my friends, my family, and the conveniences of being home.

But today I had a jolly good day!

As part of the Study Abroad program, each one of us (us being the 14 girls participating this semester) is placed in an externship. Our program adviser tried to explain why they call them externships as opposed to internships, but all I really heard was “blah blah blah this is arbitrary but just go with it.”

We’ve been visiting all the available ones over the past couple of weeks, and this morning we had to make a case for the one we want and then leave it to our program adviser to place us. I’m pretty stoked on life because I got my first choice! Score and a half!

I’ll be working at Heshima, a very new NGO that gives refugee girls (mostly from Somalia) basic skills. It’s cool because it’s really new and they’re trying to expand the program to include life skills and job training as well as basic math and English. I do often have the urge to hug it out with refugees*, so I’m glad that my desire will be satisfied! I start Tuesday in Eastleigh, a sketchtastic area of Nairobi with a lot of refugees. Hooray!

A few of the girls and myself had a little touristfest in Town today, which I’m making a proper noun since everyone refers to downtown Nairobi simply as “town.” We went to Maasai Market, which sells mostly curios. It’s fun, but also pretty stressful to shop there. There are endless stalls selling fairly similar items, and if you stop to look (or even if you don’t) the assumption is that you will definitely buy something. Saying “just looking” is silly and quaint in this situation.

If your eyes happen to linger on an item for more than a second, the seller will just be like “Which one do you like? How much will you pay for it? I’ll give you good price!” It’s weird because they act like you’ve somehow betrayed them if you don’t want to buy anything, as if entering the market is a promise that you will purchase something from every one of the 100+ vendors. If you explain that you don’t want anything, they’ll just continue to ask how much you’ll pay, that they made it themselves, that you can see the quality, etc.

Also, various people will come and introduce themselves to you, tell you how attractive you are and then drag you to all of the stalls they’re affiliated with. By the end, you feel obligated to buy something since they spent so long with you.

You meet some fun people and get some exciting dating and marriage proposals, but it’s a little exhausting after a while. One of my favorite ones went like this:

Kenyan Vendor: Hey, you are cutie. You have boyfriend in America?

Me: Yes, I do.

Kenyan Vendor: You have boyfriend in Kenya?

Me: (laughing) I don’t think my American boyfriend would like that

very much.

Kenyan Vendor: How about me?

I like how he adapted his requests based on what I said!

The best, though, was back in Thika. I was talking to this guy in a mix of Swahili and English, and at one point he was like, “Unapenda Obama? (You love/like Obama?)” I told him ndiyo, yes.

So then he gestured to himself and said, in English, “You think you can love a black man?” I laughed and said “What?”

He then pointed to his arm, showing me that he was black, and slowly, in English, repeated “BLACK MAN” as if I didn’t understand. I was like…dude, you said it in English, I understood you.

I’m not sure if these stories translate that well in written format. But I promise that they were actually pretty funny. If you skype me, I will narrate them for you.

You’re supposed to bargain at the market, but I suck at bargaining and probably could’ve gotten stuff cheaper. I guess my mentality is that I really do have a ton more money than the seller, I can afford it, and even their high starting price is a third of what that item would be in the US. Hopefully I’ll lose this mentality and save myself some cash eventually.

No one in Kenya actually says “Jambo” ever. A formal greeting would be “habari,” informal greetings include “mambo,” “sema,” and “sasa.” But if they think you’re a safari tourist, they’ll say “Jambo” to you, so we got a lot of that today. I do find it endearing that they love when you can speak Swahili at all, they typically love Obama and demand to know that you’re voting for him. We’ve gotten a couple of sweet Obama discounts.

I got some sweet scarves, jewelry, and these amazing carved coasters that I’m in love with. The market is problematic for me because I love black and white spirals, and a lot of the vendors were having a black and white spiral party. After the market, we proceeded to consume more at Dormans, a super-Americanized coffee place with epic mocha shakes.

I think I’m going to continue the consumerism trend by getting me some dinner. But it was a glorious day of good internship news and consumerism. Hooray!

Peace,

Dana

*Note: This direct quote from my interview totally sealed the deal on this job!