Halloween

Picture a person who has never been outside of their village located in the middle of nowhere in Africa (99% of the people who live here).

Now picture this conversation with them:

"What are you doing tonight? It's Halloween!"

"WHAT IS HALLOWEEN?"

I bet you have never met anyone who has NO CLUE WHATSOEVER about Halloween. 

And I mean it: no idea, nothing at all.

So it's kinda hard to explain to them what Halloween is. I mean everybody has at least heard about it 

and that makes things easier but here they were staring at me with a blank look in their eyes. 

So I just started babbling something about witches, blood, scary things, ghosts, murderers.. Yeah that did not make a very good impression. So I tried again explaining that in the Western world it's just a day where we dress up and celebrate scary things decorating pumpkins outside our homes. Yeah well that was even worse. So I told them we do it just for fun and to have parties because the 1st of November is a public holiday (not like here!).. and they started to understand (I mean just mention parties and fun and things start to make sense). 

Then Geoffrey (remember Geoffrey? my favorite guy) said something really funny:

"Oh yeah we have something similar to that: we scatter ashes around our huts to keep the spirits away."

Yeah I guess, it could work. I mean they are all about beliefs like rainmakers, bonfires, souls of the ancient villagers blablabla.. so I guess It wouldn't be too hard for them to grasp the concept of Halloween.

Bottom line is:

They don't have Halloween but they sort of have it too. That's a big degree of civilization.

Now the best part is about to come: I am going to teach them how to carve pumpkins. Hope my camera will capture the looks on their faces.. and hopefully I'll be able to post the pics too!!

Happy Halloween!! 

Not here, not at home, not at all

Yesterday I realised that there are some things here that cannot be linked to any degree of civilization, they are simply unacceptable7not changeable and that's the way things are.

Remember how I said that mostly we just laugh of all the odd things that happen here on a daily basis just to make it ok? Well some things just cannot become ok; not here, not at home, not all (thank you Paola for this perfect sentence that summarizes my thoughts).

This thought was obviously triggered by something: a peculiar event. 

I was in myoffice yesterday when my colleague (Italian) called me from the other room telling me that "there was something in her desk". Now this sentence may sound like the beginning of a story like Jumanji or Narnia or Harry Potter where a magic portal takes you to another world populated by the weirdest creatures. Nope, this was reality: I got into her office and as I entered the room she started hitting the desk to show me what she meant. After a few seconds we started hearing some scratching sounds from one of the drawers, a very disturbing sound I have to say. So yes there definitely was something INSIDE her desk. How did the thing get there you ask? still a mistery to me. You wanna know the creepiest thing tho? The drawer was LOCKED and we did not have the key. So the animal must have passed from a tiny hole or something.. as I said everything is still a mistery to me.

Anyways we called one of our guys, one who is never scared of catching animals with their hands or disgusting stuff like that. I am not gonna make a big deal out of it, it was just a mouse which was instantly killed by our staff as soon as the drawer was opened (and by killed I mean beated to death). 

Needless to say that this was quite an event in the office since everyone went to the room to assist the slaughtering of the mouse. I found it quite strange tho, these people are quite used to seeing these animals, everyday and everywhere: it should not be a big deal. 

The reason was quite simple: they were happy cause they had fresh MEAT. Yes you heard it: everyone was excited about the mouse because they knew they were gonna get a meal out of it. (Apparently mouse meat is quite tasty).

The staff obviously asked us if we wanted to join them and have a tasty mouse for lunch; our disgusted faces left them puzzled and one of them told us:

"you know, this is our culture: we love eating mice"

And right then it occured to me that some things just cannot be translated into any civilization degree.

TIA.

  

Jambo Kenya!

Took me a while to write a new blog post but I was trying to recover from my last holiday in Kenya and that was not easy.

Let me tell you why: beach, sun, great food, cocktails....

I spent a week on the Kenyan coast, a couple of hours away from Mombasa, in the tiny village of Watamu which is basically an Italian colony. It was quite surprising to see everybody speaking Italian, even better than us.
"Ciao, come stai? Come ti chiami? Vieni qui, piacere blablabla.."

I felt home!

The explanation is simple: Italians started going there on holidays and building homes, restaurants and casinos long time ago and Kenyans got used to that and obviously made a business out of it (let's face it, Italian tourists can be fooled quite easily!). So everywhere you go you meet Africans speaking an almost perfect Italians, offering tours for cheap prices, showing you local places, taking you out to the best clubs in town. It really is like going back to Europe! There are also many other tourists from all over the places (mainly French people and Dutch tourists) but the African-Italian community there is the biggest!
Every Kenyan has an Italian name (I have heard the weirdest ones!), dresses Italian, listens to Italian music and is obviously looking for an Italian wife so that they can fly back to Europe with them.
Nope, I will not go through this again, I have definitely covered the proposals topic; besides also in Kenya my answer was the same: thanks but no thanks.

Anyways this is just the Watamu coast part of Kenya, not the entire nation. Kenya was that but also much more. Kenya is nature too, beautiful nature.

We did a safari in Tsavo East National Park, the biggest park in Africa.
Only problem with that is that it's huge so it's not that easy to spot animals which are always moving around (but yes we did see lions.. yayy!!)






The landscape is quite dry, almost desert but that's the beauty of it: you just get lost staring at the horizon hoping to see every now and then a zebra trotting or a gazelle sprinting to somewhere.. beautiful.

And the best part of it is that Kenyans definitely know how to treat their tourists: staying in one of the lodges in the park is a unique experience: beautiful tents, tented camps, lodges on the rivers, in the middle of the park and among the animals.. It is the real thing just with a but more comfort and luxury!  A MUST GO!

And then of course there is the beach, my element, my favorite spot, the one that never disappoints

Kenya is on the Indian Ocean: needless to say that the seas is simply perfect. Only there is a small problem: as I said Kenyans really made a huge thing out of tourism so it is nearly impossible to enjoy the beach without the very famous BEACH BOYS. This is a very annoying category of people who literally surrounds you and starts talking to you from the moment you set foot on the beach.

"Do you want to buy this, do you want to go there with my travel agency, do you want weed, do you want sex, do you want to marry me? My name is Paolo, Carlo, Licia, Giordano remember me when you decide to do this and that and that.."

these constant incessant voices are the only turn off of a beautiful place: tourists get really annoyed after a while because they can never be on their own, always surrounded by beach boys while walking on the beach, taking a bath or just sunbathing outside the designated beach areas of their hotels (yes, THANK GOD the beach boys cannot enter the hotel beach areas!!).

But then again... this is the beach (so I guess it's worth a bit of suffering)

so RECAP.

Kenya is nature,                                        amazing/crazy people

and animals!

(I am so glad I got a picture with a monkey: it had been in my bucket list for a couple of decades now)

And the best part is I got to see my sister who is definitely a civilization person: it was just great to see all the paranoid stuff she was going through as a European in Africa, PRICELESS!!