$$$ issues

Okay, so first off I want to say that YAY SARA IS FINALLY IN KENYA AND I'LL BE GOIN TO SEE HER IN A WEEK OR TWO!! For those of you who don't know, Sara is a friend from Wisco who has been in Belgium all last semester, but now she's here on the same program as me! Psyched to have her here and be able to show her around. :)

Now, on to the subject of this post. I assume you all know that my wallet was stolen a couple weeks ago--along with my Visa card and my ATM card. So I've had no way to pull out any money since then. Thankfully my mom wired me some bills that have been more than enough, but I have to budget the money until my new ATM card gets here. It puts a new spin on my thought process whenever somebody asks me for something now.

One thing that you may not know about African culture (not trying to generalize, its just that I've seen it in every country I've been to), is that people here have no shame in asking you to give them things. Even well-off people will ask...or rather tell...you to give them things. They want money, they want food, they want your iPod, they want your clothes, etc. No shame whatsoever! It's probably the single most off-putting thing an American will experience here, because to us, begging is shameful, and there is even shame is asking politely to borrow something! Think about it! We're always soo soooooo careful when asking to borrow something from a friend. And if we don't bother to ask that person we took from, even if it's our best friend, they will get really really mad.

Living in Nairobi and Mombasa was different because, a). I always had access to money with my ATM card, and b). yes, people need help, but in the cities it's not as widespread as in the rural areas. There was a level of guilt associated with it for the first few months. But then the cultural difference in how people beg started getting to me. I know things are lost in translation, and in Swahili it's not rude to say "nipe pesa", meaning "give me money". But of course, if someone comes up to you and in English says, "you give me that shirt" or "give me money, mzungu"......well, it feels rude and you get mad!

I had learned to tune it out, but now that I actually CAN'T give out money (because, let's be honest, I normally could afford to give away something small), I feel even more violated because people see my skin color and EVERYONE just comes straight to me. And I actually don't have anything now! Yesterday I was stuck sitting in a matatu in Kisumu for 1 1/2 hours waiting for it to fill up so I could go home. I was sitting in the front seat next to the window, and I had to almost FIGHT people away from my window. At one point, I got so sick of it, that I spent 5 minutes explaining to one guy why it's really rude to say "mzungu, give me money". At the end, he laughed and then said "okay mzungu, please will you give me that Obama pin?" I had a few pinned onto my bag. I figured, okay, that was relatively polite (though I still hate being called Mzungu), and gave him one pin. He'll love it forever and maybe now he'll remember to say please.

Anyway, in the rural areas, I get it three-fold compared to the cities because just about everyone here could use a few extra shillings. I'm really tired of it. Today I walked around with my iPod on to try and block it out just for a little while. Unfortunately, then they wanted my iPod.

ARRRGGHHH!!! Okay, I feel a bit better now. But man oh man, will I be glad to get back to certain American social standards in a few months! There is something to be said for our isolated, unfriendly, personal space bubble culture at times!