well, here i am in kenya.

At rush hour, and especially if it is raining, this isn’t an easy task. For the longest time, I felt quite sheepish; I didn’t want to be the White person elbowing my way into the matatu. Then I started working in another part of Nairobi from where I’m staying, and I started confronting the crowds in the evening, when everyone is tired from the long day and we’re all wet because, yet again, it is raining right when you want to go home. Raining hard. And I’ve stopped seeing myself as the White person pushing her way towards what she wants. Now I’m the tired Person vying for the same last seat as that old mama and the dude in a business suit with his copy of the Daily Nation. I’m not saying that I elbow; I’ve just gotten a lot more tricky and take the risk of standing at the front of the crowd, and thus on the street right where the matatus come racing up. But if you want to get on the matatu, it’s a risk one has to take. And I don’t necessarily bump people out of the way, but I’m not a pushover any more. Before, when an old mama would use her hips to bump me away from the door I would go flying. Not any more. Not any more.

Okay, it’s enough rain now. We’ve all got enough, and some parts of Kenya have much too much. No flooding around Nairobi and Central Province, but bad floods and subsequent crocodile and drowning deaths in Coast Province. It’s discouraging to transition from a drought to floods.

(wrote this a week ago. things have calmed down generally, and we're hoping this is the end of the short rains. Kenya's meteorologists say it might rain to the new year, so let's all hope that they are not very good at predicting...)