daily life: a commentary

Although Mombasa enjoys its reputation for having a slow pace of life - in every sense of the word, from its relaxed (some may argue nonexistant) sense of time and space to the very slow unspeed its residents walk - the people here work hard. They work to get by, they work so their children can attend a decent primary school, and they work with their hands because technology's time-saving traps have no place here.

If not working with their hands, they're working out of a sense of community ownership. Or they're commuting, attending a meeting, or manning a duka, a shop, hands idle but bodies dedicated to the cause.

Or maybe they're not working. Widows and AIDS victims number in plenty here, and unemployment is high.

But for most people, every day is long and unfulfilling. The girl who works the cybercafe works from 8 AM - 8 PM every day but Sunday. No, Sunday is not a day of rest. Sunday is a day of laundry and cleaning and church. She gets paid 3000 Ksh month, the equivalent of $43 US dollars. Her son's nursery school fees are 750 ksh per month.

Fatuma, who runs the MCI pharmacy, works from 8 - 7:30 PM every day but Sunday. Sunday she only works till 1 PM. For this, she gets paid 3250 Kenyan shillings per month.

Mama Kibibi isn't paid at all: she volunteers her time as a Community Health Worker Monday through Saturday, 8 - 3 PM. She has 2 weeks off around Christmas.

The pace is relaxed for most people, though, in line with the culture - a 2-hour lunch, lots of chatting, chai. Social life overlaps with work. Here clocks provide a vague sense of daily order, but spare time is not strained through an hour glass. Sunday is too short even to drag your feet, so Monday isn't compartmentalized.

As an American, I feel as though I straddle the line between the relaxed work-week of Europe and the long work-week of this place. I feel guilty if I waste time "on the clock", but even a 2-day weekend feels too short. We keep work-time and play-time separate, look forward to Friday and drag our feet back to Monday. I feel like a lazy mzungu with my long weekends and complaining, even though I help with cooking and laundry and dishes. My effort meets with pleasant surprise. "Kira is so hard-working!", Mama Kibibi says; an anomaly of the lazy Western world.

It's not exactly strenous, and it all runs together: work a little, chat a little, work a little, chat a little, and then walk home. Walking home consists of walking a little, chatting a little, stopping to make exclamations, stopping to poke at vegetables, buying vegetables, walking a little, buying meat, stopping at someone's house, chatting a little, stopping to buy some more vegetables.
Then you go home, you wash the laundry from the day before. Someone comes to visit; you chat and give them lentils to sort, or rice. You wash laundry for an hour, squeezing out the soapy water and hanging the clothing to dry. You wash last night's dishes. You chat with the neighbor as you cook dinner. The actual eating part doesn't happen until right before bed, whether by force of habit or because there is more chatting to be done, I don't know. But eventually a pathetically bad Nigerian movie is put on, maybe about a dwarf whose girlfriend cheats on him with a normal-sized man, or about a jealous man who gets a witch-doctor to make his successful brother go mad so he can steal his house and money. Don't worry, the heartless brother is the one who goes mad in the end, after the wife of the madman prays for 7 days to restore her husband's sanity.

Then you rinse the grease off your fingers, eat your 3rd banana of the day, and go to bed.

Remember, this isn't a definitive study on Life in Kenya. This is just the way my host family lives. Me, my life isn't quite like that. It's a slight variation because chatting in Swahili isn't really my thing. So multiply the boredom and mild confusion, take out 3/4 of the chatting, and there you have it: my life in Kenya.