On Mombasa’s Weddings

So if you are in Mombasa, chances are you are attending a wedding this weekend. Some people are attending two at the same night, jumping from one to another. Needless to say I am currently at one part of a five-part wedding series. Of course, the only reason I’m actually here is because I had to go (I.e. Family wedding) but it really got me thinking; why do people have many parts in their weddings so I figured maybe it’s just to make sure people actually know who the people who got married are. Sometimes when I go to weddings (having been forced of course) I don’t even know who’s getting married. Chances are I can’t even be bothered and the main reason I go is due to “logistics” (i.e. My mother needs a ride and I’m the only driver around), and if I ask sometimes my mother spares me the headache by stating, “You don’t know them.” So maybe having long-running weddings will make you figure out by the series finale who is actually getting married.

The main thing you need to remember when going to weddings is to keep your shoes close by. Of course it is needless to say that weddings here are held in places where people sit on the floor (no shoes because of janvi) so they remove their shoes to sit. Why keep shoes close by? Because they can easily be stolen. During my brother’s wedding, the groom himself lost his shoes.

Just my thoughts as I am blogging this straight from the wedding hall (which operates as a school in the morning).

P.s. Just in case you are wondering, I actually know who’s getting married this time (HINT: family wedding)

Mombasa’s First Mall

So today I went to City Mall (Mombasa’s first…um…only…proper mall). Until they built this mall, all that Mombasa had were a bunch of stores connected to the name “Plaza” or “Center”.

For instance, “Mombasa City Center” consists of a group of stalls where vendors sell the most random things you can think of. The building where vendors used to sell before burnt down a few years back and the burnt building still stands as you can see from the second image.

There was nothing fancy about the mall especially if you are used to Emirates Mall and Dubai Mall. It’s quite simply built and you might notice that you can actually see the limits of the building from the inside meaning that it doesn’t keep on extending on and on like Dubai malls.
I couldn’t snap a picture so this image is courtesy of Google Images.

So of course I tried the coffee at Dorman’s (Vanilla Mocha) and this is what was written on the glass (back to snapping my own pictures).

Please focus on the fourth line, “Shirt and Shoes required.”

The mall was as empty as UAE malls are full but at least there is progress to be seen in Mombasa.

The only thing missing was a Frozen Yogurt place. Apparently there isn’t one in Mombasa at all (for those looking for business opportunities), even though there is Planet Yogurt in Nairobi.

(Swahili) Food For Thought

You know how they say, “Out of the fire and into a frying pan.”

So today while being driven around on the wild streets of Mombasa, I thought of a similar saying (Kenya-style), “It’s like avoiding a Mkokoteni only to hit a matatu.”

Sounds and More Sounds of Kenya

So today I figured instead of talking about the “Sights and Sounds” of Kenya, I’d just focus on the Sounds only.
You could wake up to the sounds of birds twittering outside the window, crows squawking or the loud sound of your neighbor’s radio (or their screaming voice as they wake their children up). If you live in a house that’s close to the road, the most prominent sound is the famous tuktuk, whose sound goes something like tuktuktuktuk (are you surprised?).
During the day you have people going around selling vegetables, fruits or snacks. So you might here someone calling out loudly, “Sambusa! Sambusa! Sambusa!”
Then there are the sounds of revving trucks, shouting people and if you live close to the hospital, the sounds of sirens become a daily occurrence.
Some apartment buildings have an area where children can play so when it reaches 4 pm, you might start hearing screaming children as they play football. Other children (who happen to be grounded) could also be heard given instructions from their position at the window. Sometimes they play coach and other times they play referee. Basically, they do anything to increase the noise.
And later on at night, you could fall asleep to the sound of rain pattering against the window, wrapping up the day awesomely.

On Introverts Part 2

You know how they sometimes have awareness campaign for autism, AIDs or breast cancer. I think there needs to be an awareness campaign for introverts. I’ve written about Susan Cain’s book (quiet) in a previous post, and it hit me as ironic that people who need to read the book are actually extroverts; extrovert parents who should stop treating their children as abnormal, forcing them to go to social events and (eventually) psychiatrists “to get out of their shells”; extrovert colleagues who should stop thinking that just because someone is quiet doesn’t make them stupid with nothing to contribute. Extrovert spouses who may think the introverts have so much to hide.

The thing is, just because extroverts talk a lot doesn’t mean they talk a lot of sense. It’s well known from biology that the circulatory blood system is required for the body to remain alive.

The thing with most Mombasa people is that the blood that keeps the society alive is called maneno-ism. (Note that I said “alive” and that does not necessarily mean “healthy”). So just like harmful CO2 is replaced by healthy O2 with the help of the blood, talk tends to be taken from one place to another.The only problem is that while the circulatory system makes sure that the body is well and healthy, maneno-ism system poisons society. And the sad thing is, people thrive on that, from deciding where they go to have their morning tea, to where they go for aerobics class to where they decide to work (or not). Kids are taught to mind everybody’s business and spread it if they can because after all people’s reputations need to be known to the public if they are going to get married at some point.

A change in this could be done through blood transfusion; changing the talk that’s going around but that would be difficult especially because it is only natural that the more scandalous talk is the more it gets around. So detox would be difficult. Maybe that’s why introverts keep to themselves a lot. Yet the society don’t see it that way. Susan Cain wrote, “Introversion is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.”

Interesting enough she also noted that Introverts are more likely to talk about their lives online. Maybe it’s the anonymity. Maybe it’s one way thet involves expressing themselves without having to come face-to-face with people.

So maybe introverts need to wear a t-shirt that says

Image taken from AboutYouInc.com

It’s All Child’s Play -Part 2

Even though my kid cousins like playing with my phone, sometimes they settle for good ol’ gololi (marbles).

The past two days I’ve also been working with them to build stuff like what’s shown in the images below (a bit too Masdar-ish, if you think about it).

But it’s good to observe children as they build stuff like this, whether they can follow instructions from a book or need to be told what to do; whether they have the patience to carry something through until the end or will give up midway; whether they will give up straight away or will try different approaches until they get it. Also one thing that seemed to work was separating the kids while working on these models, so they won’t fight with each other or start throwing things around out of collective hyperactivity. Plus that way I can actually study them separately.

I wonder how long today’s children could enjoy such good ol’ games before being bitten by the Facebook and iPad bugs.

It’s All Child’s Play

I’ve been spending so much time with the children lately (aged between 3 and 12) and I am learning a few new mind games on how to get what I want from them.
1) Turn it into a Game. This is an old trick that I played a few years back. When I first came this year, I wondered if it would still work. The kids stormed my room so I told them to start racing and set the starting and finishing line outside the room. When they went out to race,I closed the door and stayed in.
They fell for it.
Again.
Another game that I made up had one rule only, “Whoever moves or says a word is disqualified.”
It also worked. Surprisingly. One person wouldn’t stay still but at least he restrained himself, and calmed down a bit which was good enough for me.

2) Incite sibling rivalry. Once I was supposed to tutor my cousin, but he didn’t want to sit and study. So I told him I’ll be teaching his older brother instead. Again I didn’t know how it worked because someone else would have said, “Ok, teach him first.” But no, the younger one rushed, got his books and started to fight for attention saying, “My exam is before his. Me first.”

3) Turn it into a challenge. Whenever I want the kids to do something and they resist, I say, “Of course, because you don’t know how to do it.”
“No, no. I know it.”
“Prove it.”

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

4) Bribe them. I bribe them with my smartphone sometimes. “Do this and I’ll give you the phone (or take away the phone).”
Most times it works.

5) Call their mother. This is my plan F, when they are sooo hyper that I can’t get them to listen to me. They get scared of their mother when she’s angry, so this always works as a last resort.

I have to admit I like playing mind games with them. After all, to me, it’s just child’s play.

On Perception

Someone once said, “An attempt to run away from your past is only an attempt to run away from yourself because your past has helped mold you.”

Some people living abroad might be scared of returning back home because no matter how much they change, the people they left behind don’t want to see past their past selves.

No matter how much one tries to prove that they’ve changed, their past reputation doesn’t stop sticking to them like a shadow during the day.

So in reality, “who we are” really becomes a matter of perception. The book I spoke about earlier (“Quiet; The Power of Introverts in A World that Won’t Stop Talking”) spoke about the transformation of society from focusing on building character (or who we are in private) to building personality (or how others perceive us).

But then that raises the question, If personality consists of how others perceive us, how true would it be?

In Literature classes they teach you that there are many interpretations of even the shortest stories.

Yet some people read the actions of other people and make up a certain truth about them based on their own personal experiences and then take that pre-conceived notion as The Real Deal. And I wish they stop at that. They don’t just keep The Real Deal to themselves but go around spreading it. And when you try telling them that they could have misinterpreted the situation, you’re seen as the stupid one.

Another thing worth mentioning is how The Real Deal is sometimes based on stereotypes that are extrapolated from bits of information that’s highly amplified.

So before you impose your personal experiences on how you perceive someone else, keep in mind that they could be doing the same.

“Truth is a battle of perceptions, people only see what they are prepared to confront. Its not what you look at that matters but what you see. And when different perceptions battle against one another the truth has a way of getting lost and the monsters find a way of getting out” – Emily Thorn

On Introverts

Growing up, I’ve always had people call me abnormal just because I enjoyed sitting alone instead of socializing with others. The problem always exacerbates in Kenya because the community is so tight-knit there’s a phrase they use, “if you sneeze everybody knows.”
I don’t know if it is because the houses are so close together that you can literally hear the neighbor wake their kids up in the morning (and sometimes you wish that was properly censored because its not the sort of thing you’d want other kids to hear). Or maybe it’s because of how your business is everybody’s business because that is how it’s been from one generation to another. Add the 1000+ people who get invited to the average wedding, and Hodi rounds and you get a society that lives around socializing and has no place for an introvert.
And trust me, I would know because I grew up being called “abnormal” and my relatives always spoke about sending me to a psychiatrist because I was not normal. ( I even heard the comment yesterday.)
When in reality I’m just an introvert. People here fail to see that because of their own point of view of what “normal” really is.
So I am currently reading a book called “Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that won’t stop talking.” In terms of writing, I’ve read better-written books. But I love some of its ideas because it makes me feel like I’m not the only one with this personality trait. I guess it has helped me accept that I really don’t need to change just to be accepted by our society especailly when I read that some of the world’s greatest leaders were introverts. Introversion can also be a blessing because helps creative people because it gives them the 10,000 hours that they need to practice something to become a true world-class expert at it. (I read about the 10,000 hour rule from
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers book). Creative people who are extroverts get too distracted to actually excel at the same rate as introverts.
And in a study they even showed that introversion could be 40-50% inherited so I don’t really need to cast the blame on anyone for how I turned up to be because it could be in my genetic make-up since after all, even my father is an introvert.
So no, I’m not abnormal, I’m just an introvert.

A New Kind of Race

So you’ve heard of different types of races in your life. When you were a child you probably participated in an egg-and-spoon race or a three-legged race in those dreaded-by-many sports days. As you grow up, depending on your athletic abilities you might have seen-or participated in- track races or steeplechase. Or you might have attended one of those charity runs for cancer awareness or diabetes awareness or autism…
If you are in Abu Dhabi you might have watched a formula 1 car race in Yas.
But have you ever -like ever- heard of a wheelbarrow race? Apparently they just held one in Kenya to raise awareness about the dangers of poaching.
I found the idea very interesting- very Kenya style.

Does Kenya Ever Change?

So I am in Kenya and this is part 1 of The Kenyan Diaries Season number I-have-lost-count.
There is one thing that I noticed about my Kenyan vacation and that is that they’re always the same; it’s like we use the “copy-paste” function in real life as well. The thing is I’m used to changes happening in my life in Abu Dhabi, I’m used to changing rules, changing lifestyles, changing friends but in Kenya there is one thing that’s consistent and that’s consistency itself.
And the amazing thing is that it even starts from the airport where we still have to fill these cards to state the flight we come in, the purpose of our visit and the place we’d be staying. Isn’t there an online system for this? I don’t know how it is with other countries but do you guys have to fill such forms when you travel? Am curious to know.

So lighthouse is the same, katchri they serve there is the same, the matatu/car/truck/mkokoteni roads are the same if not more congested. However there is something new happening; they are actually painting the buildings. I remember once I used to think painting can be such a lucrative business; as lucrative as corruption. But it was just a passing idea. Now the government is forcing people to paint the buildings. (If only I bought a painting supply store from before. See this is what happens when you don’t work on your ideas).

Yesterday, surprisingly I saw a garbage truck at work. The sad thing about Mombasa is that it’s really pretty but it’s quite dirty. You can find the dirt in the weirdest of places. For instance this garbage is at the top of an entrance to a building. You seriously do not want to see some of the roads in Mombasa but you can easily extrapolate from this image.

But if you turn your eyes away from these little things, Mombasa is pretty…and pretty much the same as well.