As you may
have guessed, a majority of my day was spent continuing on my research report.
The report seems to be coming along, just very slowly. With time the words and
ideas will come together and fall in place. I am beginning to feel as if my
hands are permanently attached to my keyboard, though. I arrive in the office
each morning to respond to e-mails and begin writing my paper. When I go back
to my room at night I write my blogs and am now working on projects for
college. One benefit is my typing accuracy will be retained this summer.
Instead of fumbling to regain the hang of typing out long papers, my hands will
already know which keys to press in the fall.
This
afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting the Director General of icipe, Dr. Christian Borgemeister. After
having suffered a back injury in a car accident he was on sick leave for quite
some time. The respect people throughout the office show him is remarkable. Our
interaction was quick, but I felt honored for him to take time out of his busy
schedule to even come and say hi to me.
Throughout
my stay in Kenya I have been keeping a list of differences in customs and
culture. Beyond the obvious differences such as wall plug-ins, there are so
many little differences I notice on a daily basis. For starters, as I have
discussed before, the time. When I say everything
is done at a leisurely pace, I mean everything.
For instance, lunch breaks usually last for an hour or more. People very slowly
eat their food. I have yet to figure out how they can eat a plate of food so
incredibly slow. Even just walking back from the supermarket—the steps taken
seem in slow motion. The atmosphere at the work place is laid back and slow
also. People take multiple breaks and never carry work home with them. The
slowed pace is hard to get used to, but I think I have mastered the hang of it.
My patience has definitely improved at the very least.
Culturally,
greeting people is very different. I am still slightly confused on the whole
greeting thing, but so far this is what I know. Handshakes have a weird twist
to them. You shake the person’s hand, then grab it, then return to the position
of a firm shake. Sometimes people do this and other times they don’t. When they
do, I am thrown for a loop. I often fumble my way through the greeting, hoping
they don’t notice my novice greeting skills. Other times, greetings are done
with a hug. The hug consists of touching your cheek to both of their cheeks. I
believe this is a British influenced custom, but I could be wrong. These hugs
are always incredibly awkward for me and never feel quite right. My beginner
skills are bound to shine through on this one.
There are
many little things different as well. Keys look ancient, as in there are key
holes and the types of keys girls wear as jewelry in the States. This also took
me a while to get used to, as each hole is different and entering my room can
sometimes be a challenge. Also, reliability of sources can never be counted on
here. For instance, power comes and goes—sometimes for no reason at all.
The way
sentences are formed and how people refer to different articles confused me at
first. The basics I have down, such as a napkin is called a serviette (French?)
and when you say you are going to call someone you tell them you will flash
them. The word have is normally replaced by the word take. So in Kenya, I take lunch with a group of people, I
never have it. And the list
continues…
Despite
all of these differences whether cultural, customary, or others, I have come to
understand we all share many similarities, connected by an unbreakable bond of
human nature.
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