I officially have RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) status!
On top of meaning that I managed to live in a rural and incredibly different place for two years, it most importantly means that I now get to obnoxiously start my setances with "We'll when I was living in Africa..."
I haven't written a post in a very very long time. I know this, and I promise you it's not from lack of trying. Every time I decided on a topic and started writing about an observation or bizarre interaction I would inevitably abandon it and then eventually delete it. It all started sounding condescending or trite to me.
Then I realized, that the things that were so amusing and interesting to me at the beginning of my service, the things I thought could be shared with the world on the internet, started losing their novelty. I couldn't find the right voice that both made you amused in reading the post while also portraying the people and this place correctly.
All the weird grammatically flawed conversations, the rude comments intended as compliments, three men a goat and a box of chickens on a motorcycle, getting my hair twisted in a plastic chair on a dirt road with 40 school kids watching, marking the year via mango/plum/pear/potato season, fetching water from tanks and wells for laundry, cooking and washing, fighting over the price of a pre worn pair of trousers, saying "trousers" instead of "pants", having fire ants attack you while they climb up the legs of your trousers...these things were just part of my everyday life now. Like starting and warming up the car before getting in to go to work, buying stickers for garbage day or buying groceries.
Towards the end I stopped trying almost completely because I didn't want to waste time thinking about how I could translate this on paper with words while doing it justice. The people in these new stories were now a part of my life. They most likely cooked me some kind of meal and/or introduced me to many memebers of their family. I just wanted to focus on collecting my memories in the quickly diminishing time.
Maybe when Gwakiongo and Kenya lost its novelty and amusement factor to me was also the moment I lost some, definitely not all, of my mzungu (white person) novelty? Maybe?
Even though I didn't share a lot of stories in real time with you internet, know that awesome, crazy, rude and border line commitable things happened here and to me.
To the people reading this back home, I can't wait to tell you these same stories using my real life human voice, far too many hand motions and hopefully some kind of meal between us.
See you soon America.
Dear Kenya,
Thank you for all if it.
With nothing but equal parts of love and distain,
Iwona Mwihaki
