How Are You, Mzungu? Or How My Personal Space Was Demolished

My first week in my first homestay is a major adjustment to say the least. The idea of "lone wolf time"? Extinguished. My homestay family rolls 10 deep in a house roughly the size of my living room back in the states. Even as I type this I am pressed firmly against two large Kenyans (one of which not smelling especially appealing) in a tiny cyber cafe.
I am in Riruta Satellite, a suburb of Nairobi that resembles absolutely nothing like a suburb of America. Forget clean, ticky tack mansions with lawns and Pomeranian yapper dogs. I'm not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
I arrive at the house with my mother Ruth who has bought me a Maasai cloth, now draped around my shoulder, only making me stick out more. Not only am I the only gangly white boy in my neighborhood, I'm the only one dressed in traditional tribe garb. As we open the turquoise iron gate to the small complex, seemingly endless hoards of watoto (children) pause from their daily activity of rolling tires and playing with half burnt garbage. The awkward pause is followed by a chorus of shrieks, laughing and yelling "mzungu! Mzungu!" or for you in the states, "White man! White man!"
I move into the cramped house to meet my brothers Richard, Eunice and Joshua, my sisters Winnie and Maggie, my aunts my uncles, my cousins. My father is still at work (and even today he has only said "how are you" to me, before he decompresses with a Tusker beer and an evening with KTN Leo). The rest of my weekend? Television. Simply television. It's a relatively new shipment to this suburb, so no matter where you go in Satellite, you will here a TV blaring 24/7. It's not that I don't love WWE Wrestling or overdubbed Spanish soaps, or even the freakin' news for that matter. But to be truthfully honest, I didn't come here for that. I could do that in Bend (and believe me I did).
Lately though I have been working to have my family speak in Swahili with me, walk with me, even if I have to drag them from their programs.
I've gotta say, of all the women in the world that I've seen (and Mama Barb, I mean no offense) Ruth is by far the strongest. She wakes up at 5 every morning, cooks and cleans for the rest of the day (for 10 people mind you) for the soul purpose of allowing her children to attend schools worth going to. She's tough and witty and doesn't take any of my mzungu shit. If she serves me a meal, by god, I'm eating that damn meal, even if it's more than I eat in a week (and normally, that's exactly what it is).
So what have I learned so far? A little Swahili (although no one here uses it; it will be very useful in Tanzania, however), some tribal studies. Mostly I have come the conclusion that Nairobi is a town of contradictions. The sweet tantalizing smell of roasting maize on the cob and samosas filled with goat meat dance around your nostrils, but are swiftly kicked in the shin by the grotesque odor of raw sewage and burning trash. Riruta claims to be a family-centric neighborhood, but as soon as the clock strikes 6, children best be inside, not to mention the speeding matatos and buses fly through the thin roads like their in a Tom Cruise movie. And finally, in a city as politically corrupt, a city that is run with the intentions of feeding the full rather than the hungry, it was my brother Eunice who said it best:
"It is not the garbage, or the sewers, or the politicians or even the land that makes a community. It is the people. We Kenyans are all about community, therefore, we are all about the people". And that I have seen most prominently.
More to come--
Tim