Saturday, August 22
I am sitting on the steps outside my apartment. Around me I hear the call to prayer being sang at several different mosques simultaneously. Sometimes it sounds like a jumble of noise, but today it is nice. Several beautiful tunes, all of them saying “Allah au Akbar” in different ways. There is one that has emerged as my favorite and I catch myself singing along to the Imamu’s beautiful tenor voice each time I hear it through out the day. I often stop, feeling that singing along is not something that I am supposed to be doing. I asked Abdul if that was ok, to sing along and he shook his head. I guess this makes sense, but it feels like such a contrast from what I am used to in a church. I have met so many Muslim people over the last year, but Islam still remains largely a mystery to me. Now the sun has gone down completely and the neighborhood is closing their fast after the first day of Ramadhan. I am now staying in Old Town, the historic Swahili neighborhood of Mombasa. Nearly everyone living here is Muslim, or so it seems to me anyway. I remember last year when I tried fasting and the excitement I felt that first day when the sun went down and we got to eat. I have the feeling that around me in the stacked apartments and crowded houses, there are a lot of people who have that same feeling of relief right now.
I find that I am still in the honeymoon phase of being back, especially when it comes to Kenyan food. I am back in the land of mangos, avocados, grilled meat, deep fried everything and spiced chai. On top of that Ramadan is the season of good eating. Yesterday I stopped by one of the food stands that pops up only at this time of year and found a whole table of goodies. There was the typical mahamri, which are triangular doughnuts, some doughnut hole type sweets rolled in sugar and simosas with beef and onion filling. But then there were all these other things, like ground cowpeas deep fried, mashed potato balls stuffed with beef and deep fried (sensing a theme yet?) that I had not seen since last year! And dates! Tons and tons of dates. I was making dinner for some friends so it seemed like a good excuse to get a sampling of what this man was selling. It was a great dinner and I want to go back and ask the man selling the food if he will teach me to make the cowpea things. Wow, it wounds really good now. Tonight I had ramen (ew, I know, I was tired). Recipes, if I can get them, will be forthcoming (Not the ramen).
One thing I have gotten really into is using this masala tea mix. It is a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, cardamon, nutmeg, cloves. This is part of the Indian influence here on the coast. Holy smokes, that stuff is good. It is meant for tea, but you can put it into coffee too which is quite good. I have also started mixing it into my oatmeal, rice pudding, and pretty much anything sweet.
August 24, 2009
Being back feels like coming home in a way that I did not quite expect. I know my way around town, I can hold basic conversations in Swahili, I have a lot of friends and people who have come to feel like family here. I knew I was returning to a place and people I knew, but somehow being here and seeing them is more comforting than I anticipated. I think part of the amount of time to plan for this. And what tends to happen when I have a lot of lead time (and this certainly happened before my original trip here), is that there is an enormous amount of time to project what things are going to be like, what I am going to feel. And somehow, in my mind, who I am at home, and who I “will be” when I get to Mombasa feel like they are going to be two different people. It seems silly, but I find it hugely comforting that I am, in fact, the very same person. I think we expect ourselves to change a bit when we travel away from home.
September 6, 2009
Three and a half weeks in to my stay here and things are still going very well. Since I arrived I was staying at my friend Alia’s place. I have just moved to Nyali, the area north of Mombasa, to live with my friend Kati for the next month. She has a lot of traveling to do and two boys (Malcom, 12 and Caleb, 9 almost 10), so I am going to look after them while she is away. So I have a few weeks to find my own place, hopefully back in Old Town.
Work has gotten off to a good start. I am learning all of the ins and outs of the FSD policy and trying to read all of their extensive material. In the next three weeks or so we are doing a comprehensive impact assessment of all of the FSD projects that have been undertaken in the past three and a half years. It is a good step for us because we often have a good idea about how some projects help the targeted communities in the short term, but we don’t always know if the projects are sustaining themselves and achieving the longer term goals. We are hoping that this gives us better information about our impact, help us better train our interns and figure out better ways of supporting our partner organizations. So far we have met with a few organizations and the feedback has been positive. More information to come once we have actual concrete data.
Let’s see other than that, my birthday this week was just fine. I didn’t do anything super exciting to celebrate 26 years. I had to work all day Friday, my boss brought in a yummy chocolate cake, then we went out to eat for lunch and had some delicious chicken biriani. In the evening I got home and there was a leak in the water heater and the kitchen flooded. After we cleaned that up I made a nice dinner of mshakiki (think the best shish kebobs you have ever eaten) with Abdul and watched Little Miss Sunshine. It was pretty low-key and felt sort of unlike a birthday, but it is hard to have a party during Ramadan, because it is a time of fasting and prayer, so a lot of friends would not be able to make it. Ok I am off to a friend’s going away party. More to follow.
Love from Kenya,
Mary
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