In no particular order

Some stuff:

I went to see a play/poetry reading about Kenyan national identity. It was called "homecoming." I wanted to find a description of the play and post it here, but when I googled "Kenya Homecoming" all I got was 3,400,000 results for "Kanye Homecoming." Oh well. It was really interesting, and had the (somewhat expected) elements that most poetry readings have: jabs at colonialism, anger about racial profiling at airports, and a love story told through an extended metaphor (in this case, surprisingly, science). Afterwards we all went for beers at the bar above the theatre, which would've been normal except for the fact that we were in a Middle School. really. it was like a private Prep School, where on the first floor were crayon drawings of "The Wind in the Willows" and on the second floor were fly-ly dressed Kenyan dudes taking shots and shouting at the television. Nice juxtaposition, actually. Come to think of it, maybe the whole thing was a performance piece and the afterparty was actually the play. But i digress.

Some other things I've did: I went to the "arboretum," which is this beautiful natural park by the Nairobi statehouse. I went on a Sunday, which was my good luck bc everyone was either having a picnic or worshipping something, and both were cool to see. There were groups of people singing in a way I've really only seen on television, and I mean that in the most non-consumerist way possible. It was all beautiful. Except that one crew of faithful people who were just sitting on a log being reprimanded in Swahili by someone clearly displeased with their "naughty/nice" ratio that week. They looked less like devoted attendees at a sermon and more like trouble-makers at recess put in ecclesiastical time-out.

I still don't know how to tip here. I had a beer at the bar and gave the bartender 10% and she literally made the sign of the cross. I'm like, "is this a good thing or a bad thing"?

I went to Nairobi Central Park. It's like New York's, but with less references to John Lennon. I got stopped a lot on the street downtown. Imagine if Times Square only had one tourist a day, and that tourist was wearing a sandwich board that said, "I am the only tourist you will see today." ok its not that bad.

In sum, here are some pictures of my apartment.






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