christmas vacation & my triumphant return therefrom

This is not a post about what I did on my Christmas vacation (I’m refraining from calling it ‘winter vacation’ because, although I was in a very wintry area for it, it’s currently summer in Nairobi). This is a post about what being in the UK was like after living in Nairobi for over three months, about what the transition both to a first-world country and then back to Kenya was like.

To preface this post, I just want to say: despite the impression you may get, I had a wonderful time during my vacation. It was my first time in the UK, and I had a great time in my three-week visit. (To summarize: I spent all three weeks with fantastic boyfriend, Ben. The first few days in Aberdeen, which were mostly an exercise in HAVING FULL ACCESS TO A KITCHEN AGAIN AND COOKING YAY, we were joined by brother-by-choice Jacob. After he left, Ben’s parents came up for Christmas, and the four of us went on to Edinburgh for New Years. Following his parents’ departure, Ben and I spent a couple of days in London before heading back to Aberdeen for a day, at which point I headed back to the good old KE). I am super glad that I went.

And now I’m going to summarize my visit with the fact that I made the mistake of getting mango in London.

It was everything I would have loved before I went to Nairobi: firm yellow flesh, sharp peppery taste… and yet, now that I know what mangoes are supposed to be like – juicy and golden and soft and spicy, but hardly peppery at all – well. Let’s just say I was super disappointed by the reminder that, a couple weeks from now, I will be back to eating lackluster non-tropical fruits. No more wide variety of bananas, no more passion fruit or tree tomatoes… no more apple mangoes THOUGH I will say that I’m excited for melon in the states – it’s just not as flavorful here.

The adjustment to being back in the first world was… interesting. For example, in Kenya, most of the public restrooms are either holes in the ground or toilets without seats. As such, it took me several days in Ben’s male-populated flat to notice that their toilets actually had toilet seats – admittedly, toilet seats in the ‘up’ position almost permanently, but toilet seats just the same. Adjusting to the richness and differentness of the food didn’t take as much as I expected it would, and adjusting back to the water and food in Kenya was also largely a nonissue. I did feel rather ill after a feast at McDonalds (what can I say, I’d really missed chicken McNuggets in Kenya!), but, then again… that’s McDonalds.

Honestly, the biggest thing for me was adjusting to transportation. Luckily, in both Kenya and Britain, people drive on the left side of the road, so I didn’t have to readjust for that, though I imagine that when I return to the states, it’s going to be a pretty significant change. There, however, the similarities end. In Kenya, what few traffic lights there are, are frequently ignored if there’s no oncoming traffic – in fact, my host mother and I have had multiple conversations about how it’s just dumb to sit at an intersection if no one is blocking your way. In the UK… well, let’s just say, red lights are strongly followed (as one would probably expect). I quickly grew impatient with this, as well as with the expectations that pedestrians use cross-walks – what do you mean, most people don’t just run across the street the second there’s a big enough gap to get across without being pummeled by a speeding matatu?

And don’t get me started on public transportation. I hated hated hated the busses in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and although the London Underground was a lot easier to deal with – quick getting on and getting off and pretty reliable transfer times, etc – I still got pretty impatient with the wait. The longest I’ve ever had to wait for a matatu – during the day, at least – is seven minutes. There was a day in Aberdeen, on our way back from dropping Jacob at the airport, that Ben and I had to wait half an hour for a bus – and my feet were soaking wet and freezing. The other benefits of matatus is that they have a really quick onload/offload – most just seat 14 passengers (including the tout, who takes money and keeps the driver in the know about when stops need to happen), and you don’t pay until you’re back in traffic. Busses, with set schedules and without the ability to weave in and out of traffic super easily, just made me extremely impatient in general. I hope that my impatience with traffic laws doesn’t stick when I get back to the states.

I also manifested reactions to being in a country where I was not obviously a foreigner in interesting ways. Being in Kenya, I’ve grown accustomed – however reluctantly – to being singled out as white and female, to getting a lot of unwanted attention for that. I’m not going to say that I hate the situation, but I am going to say – it’s been an education, being in the minority bracket, and there are some days when I am sick and tired of hearing people shout “MZUNGU” when I walk down the street.

When I was in the UK, the greatest signifier that would have marked me as an other was my accent. As such, for the first week or two that I was there, I was reluctant to speak to most people, in order to achieve optimal blending-in.

What’s interesting is that, upon my return to Kenya, I realized that I feel more able to blend in, to be someone who doesn’t stand out as an Other, than I did in the UK. Maybe it’s due to the fact that I have residency in Kenya; maybe it’s due to the fact that I get a certain amount of respect because I speak Kiswahili (whereas, in Britain, I had no such way of accumulating, what shall we say, street cred?), maybe it’s just the fact that I’ve spent so much longer in Kenya.

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The transition back to Kenya was both easy and difficult. Difficult, because my time in Britain broke my stride in Nairobi, and it took me some time to get my swagga back, to get used to being back in a hot, dusty country after three weeks of coats and snow; to get used to not spending every waking moment with my boyfriend; to get used to not traveling all the time, to returning to a routine and an internship and an established life.

 

And that’s the thing about going home, I think. Two weeks from today I’ll be back at home, and I think that the weirdness and readjusting back to being in the states will be less readjusting to the first world – after all, I did have a practice period in December – and more of changing the routine I’ve established. When it comes down to it, I’ve made a life in Kenya, and though I’m excited to go back home… well, it will be a little bit weird, exactly how different the change will be.

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Upcoming posts: summer in Kenya/working on my ICRP, my visit to my family’s rural home, and my upcoming trip to Tanzania! I’m also considering a post about what it’s like to celebrate holidays and birthdays in a foreign country with people who aren’t family, and I’m definitely planning on posting some follow-up readjustment to life in the US and reflections on study abroad overall blogs over the next few months.

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