Molly to Kenya: We Eat With Our Hands (and other Msambweni Adventures)

Msambweni is teaching me more about myself and about life than I could have imagined possible in less than a week. Every minute there seems to be a new way of life I have to adapt to, a new custom to learn.

My home is one of the nicer homes in town (except of course for the couple of mansions owned by Europeans), but we still don’t have a stove or a refrigerator. We have mosquito nets over our beds and plenty of food to eat at each meal, but my 18 year old sister Mariam returned home from secondary school yesterday because they couldn’t keep up with her school fees. Our home is nice and big—it has to be—at last count there were at least 15 people sleeping here each night. There are children from previous marriages (I’m still trying to figure out exactly how many kids my dad has), cousins, my mom’s brother who has Downs’ Syndrome, and family friends who are down on their luck. I’m incredibly spoiled to have my own room; some of the boys share a mattress on the living room floor.

Mealtimes are one of my favorite parts of life at Msambweni. Mama has been teaching my how to cook a dish each night. So far coconut rice and sukumu wiki—cooked greens with a yummy sauce, are my specialties (read: the things I didn’t mess up). We eat from a communal dish with our hands, it’s so much fun! Two year old Suleiman gets his own plate because his favorite game is putting rice in his cup of milk and other such shenanigans. My dad also gets his own plate, I think out of respect. The rest of us rinse our hands and then dig right in, laughing as I inevitably make a mess trying to scarf down my delicious rice pilau with my hands.

I’ve been taking advantage of my location and going swimming in the Indian Ocean two or three times a day. I live about 2 minutes away from the hospital where I work and we get an hour and 15 minutes for lunch break—the perfect amount of time for a midday swim! My cousins are always eager to accompany me down to the beach and show me the best place to swim at that time of day with the tides coming in or where to find the coolest shells. We sing songs and they ask lots of questions about life in America.

Baba took me to Nakumatt (like a Wal-Mart but without all the negative connotations) in Ukunda, the nearest town of a reasonable size, to buy a fan today. Ukunda is 25 minutes away by car, but we took public transport (matatus) and the journey was 3 hours round trip! Needless to say, I won’t be venturing to Ukunda very often. It was really interesting to go there—there were lots of white people because it’s a resort town, and even though there’s a Nakumatt that I used to frequent in Nairobi, after a few days of the simplicity of Msambweni I got a bit of culture shock upon entering the store. But ohhh, my fan is my new favorite thing in the world now, so it was worth it! (Remember, we don’t have a fridge, so that means NO COLD WATER. I die. This makes the fan extra special!).

Can’t wait to see what tomorrow will bring :-)