Kipilefti

I got home three days ago, and it’s almost like I never left. I get flashes of “…wait, that’s not right”: looking right instead of left when I cross the street; a doubletake when I reflexively poured myself a glass of tapwater; astonishment at the cleanness–no dust! no mud!; the feeling that I should know […]

So I’m home! I’ll be around until January 8th. Drop me a line if you’ll be in DC or Philly!

Sitting with my friend at her duka in the afternoon, her daughter brings food and we move behind the counter to eat it. As we eat the ugali and beans with our hands I flash back to the trip I tagged along on with my father, when we went to Zambia. In Livingstone, the town […]

I notice a strange sepia light coming through the curtains, so I pull them aside and look out on the most beautiful evening I’ve seen here, which is saying quite a lot. It’s like a Lisa Frank landscape come to life, but subtle and natural and minus the unicorns and dolphins. Each cardinal direction has […]

Walking back to my house this evening, I noticed a kid at the tap in the back, filling a bucket with water. As a rule this would be par for the course here, but today it made me unutterably happy: the water had been out for more than a week, and on the walk home […]

Tickets have been purchased for my visit home this winter. I’ll be coming in to DC the evening of December 15 and leaving the evening of January 8. I’ll be in DC for much of that time, hopefully spending the days around New Year’s in Philly, and a weekend sometime in Delaware.

A quick primer on Swahili I’m likely to use without realizing it: Lakini—but or though. More like though, since it’s usually tacked onto the end of a sentence. Pole–Accurately described by a friend as “like sorry, but better.” An expression of sympathy, for anything from dropping an orange or tripping to the death of a […]

This afternoon Mama Ismael told me that I was coming with her to visit a bereaved friend in the evening; having nothing better to do, I agreed. She came by to pick me up a short while before it got dark and we walked over. After saying “pole” (sorry) a lot when we arrived, the […]

The ocean is Dutch Blue. I painted it today. Inspired by the previous resident of Linda’s house, and the fact that my cats are slowly shredding all the paper maps I have, I’m painting a world map on my living-room wall. I took down the small map I’d had up, overlaid a grid (10 squares […]

Things here proceed as usual. September 17 was our one-year anniversary in country. Looking back, if I look at the experience overall it seems like much less time, but if I review events in my head I realize that rather a lot has fit into that year. Also, there are a few more pictures up […]