The Particulars

When my mom was here in Kenya, she often said that she really couldn't imagine what Kenya was like, and that coming finally made the pictures made sense (or something like that). So I want to explain a little bit about what Kenya is actually like, what it looks like, what it smells like.
In most areas, the ground is covered in trash. There aren't really public trashcans, and there are only one or two landfills in the entire country. So you can imagine what the ground looks like. When I first came, I didn't want to throw garbage just on the ground. But eventually you realize there isn't much point in not doing so; it's going to end up there anyway. In our neighborhood there is a garbage service, and you can put your garbage outside in a plastic bag. However, then the homeless people go through it and it ends up on the ground anyway.

Nonetheless it's worth mentioning a bit what exactly is on the ground. There are tons of scratch cards for airtime. They're bright little pieces of paper in green or orange, with little scratched-off barcodes on them. There are also a ton of Ken King bottles, which is the cheapest Kenyan liquor there is. Sometimes the bottles get filled with glue for little kids to sniff. Lovely, isn't it?

Kenya also has a variety of good, and bad, smells. When you walk through a densely populated area, so many different things come to mind. You can smell roasted maize, which you can buy for ten shillings as a little snack. Sometimes there are samosas or mandazi. Other times you can smell chang'aa, a home-brewed liquor that is dangerously strong. Beyond that of course there's garbage and raw sewage. Some parts of the city reek so much that I breathe through my mouth. The garbage is often burned on the side of the streets, so one of the most common smells is smoke and burning plastic bags.

On the side of the streets are countless informal businesses: little metal shacks where you can buy airtime, bread, margarine, gum, candy, soda, soap, buckets, cushions, etc. Other rickshaw shacks have a few tomatoes, a few mangoes, some carrots, and plastic bags full of whole milk. This is where, everyday, we get our ingredients for lunch and dinner. Beyond that, there are tarps laid out with used clothes and shoes, cheap bootleg DVDs, socks, hats, combs, scrunchies, etc. Anything and everything, either used or very cheap. These tarps and stands are on every street corner, for your convenience. They are often run by women. I almost trip every few minutes staring at the assorted goods.

I'm sure that America's streets will seem infinitely boring when I return...