Thursday, July 10, 2008

nothing new is something new


A funny thing happened the other day. We were driving to work. you know the roads here are bad. Well in Nairobi they aren't so horrible. It's the drivers that are the crazy ones. So Peter is navigating his little red Toyota around matatu's (public transporation vans. Example to your left), cars pulling in front of him without signaling, and people walking in the middle of the road to hop into the still moving matatu's. All the sudden a biker swerves out of the way and we are coming up fast on a horse drawn cart loaded with vegetables. Except there's no horse (no horses in Kenya only something they call a ZeebDonk which is a mixed breed of half zebra half donkey. whatever anyway). Instead of a horse there is a skinny-as-sin man in floppy leather shoes and red pants that barely reach his ankles running up hill, clutching this two wheeled cart with the grip of death. he's running and behind there is another guy, equally as skinny in a half buttoned dress shirt pushing the vegetable cart from behind. The tales of his shirt flapping in the morning breeze. Peter slams on the breaks and casually whips the car into the right lane, cutting off a giant truck whose tale pipe is busy chugging black smoke at pedestrians walking on the median. I watch to my left as we speed past the two men and their veggie cart. The crazy thing is, none of this even registered as strange till about two minutes later. We were driving off the speedway onto the road leading to the Caucus when it struck me how nonchalantly I reacted to the traffic set up. Yes... in spite of all my cries for home I'm actually getting used to Kenya. Trash pits on the side of the road mean nothing to me. I think I'm starting to see past all the dirt and confusion. After nearly two weeks I see people, I see a civilization, I see a society thriving and flowing just like everything I've known in the US. Crazy right? I wonder what's next.

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